From Within

Amy and Rory lay side by side in the tent they shared with twenty other people. Most of the others were asleep, and the two of them talked in whispered voices.

"I hate it here," Amy said. "I hate it, I hate watching people go to their deaths and not being able to stop it!"

"I know," said Rory.

"But I don't want the Doctor to sell out the entire earth for us! It's not right, it's not...it's stupid...but..."

Around them people snored and shifted.

"Do you think we'll die here?" Amy asked. She had never asked it before, and she sounded so sad, so grown up.

"No," Rory said. "No, I won't let you die. Even if it kills me, Amy, I won't."

Amy sighed. "You're so noble," she said sadly. "And you need to stop it now before you get yourself killed."

They lay there in silence.

"I have two sets of memories," Amy said at last, "and..."

"And what?"

"And I remember, I was about eight or nine, and it was only me. Because Mum and Dad were...you know...and Aunt Sharon was never around. And I went to the park, by myself, and I was swinging on the swings, and I was swinging so high, and I fell, and it hurt. Really hurt. And no-one was there. And I just stayed there crying for ages, and eventually I just had to pick myself up and walk back."

"Oh, Amy."

"But then of course it didn't happen like that and I went to the park with Mum and Dad and fell off the swing and they were right there. But...it feels like that first time! When I fell and no-one came at all."

"I'm here now, Amy," Rory said, taking her hand.

"I know."

"Tell me, Doctor," said Mort, "how did you arrive here?"

The Doctor was speaking to him through the locked door, missing the sonic screwdriver and working on a plan.

"Rory decided he would bring his Wii on board the TARDIS," he said.

"A curious beginning to this story."

"We were playing it. We were enjoying ourselves. And then this light came, and it took us away, and I wasn't happy, although I suppose I am used to it by now. I was in a cave, and Amy and Rory...weren't."

"Continue."

"I remember that something about the caves was strange...but then, that was it, I woke up here. With what I think may be very important memories completely gone."

"And you're working on a plan to escape this place."

"Yes. Yes, I am. You won't like it, Mort the Coming Son, you won't."

Mort just laughed. "The funny thing about that story is that you surround yourself with such worthless, pointless people. The whole of the universe at their feet! The whole timeline, everything that ever was! And they'd rather play video games!"

"Well," said the Doctor, rising from his position, although Mort couldn't see this, "I think it shows their humanity, myself. They have all that stuff, all that astounding stuff, but they still want the comforts of home. Games. Telly. Computers. A marriage."

Mort snorted.

"And I own every Super Mario game that was ever invented, so there," the Doctor said.

The next day Amy was sent to the sewers, and Rory was sent to Security, a small hut on the edge of the prison camp where the helpless 'volunteer guards' shot the things that occasionally approached the place. The weapons were old, the things (whatever they were, no-one seemed willing to talk about it much) were vicious, and maimings were not uncommon.

"Bye," Amy whispered as the alarms sounded, telling everyone to get to their posts or face the consequences.

"Bye," Rory said nervously. "See you in the evening."

"Yes," Amy said fiercely, "see you in the evening."

Both turned and ran away; had they looked back they'd have been tempted not to go, to stay with each other instead, and the result would have been terrible.

Rory found Alya at the hut, her and one other. She shot him a glum, angry look, and gave him a gun.

"I've never used one of these before," Rory said.

"You'll get used to it," she answered.

Rory didn't think he would. He had only ever used one gun, and that was the one that had been embedded in his hand all that time ago. "Um. What, exactly, do we do?"

"Shoot whatever comes near, no matter what it is."

"And if it's people? I don't want to shoot another person."

Alya gave a little smile. "You have no problem with shooting animals, though, right?"

"I'd rather not, but...if I have to."

"You'll be in with a surprise when the Green show up," she said, a sad, mad smile on her face.

"The Green?" Rory asked, but Alya had turned away and said nothing.

Another woman, standing at the front with the biggest gun, shook her head. Rory had seen her before, her name was Irene.

"We get one of them a day, maybe two," she said. "Keep shooting and they go down."

"Wait, what are they exactly?" Rory asked. "Animals, right?"

"Yes," said Irene, after a pause, "they're animals, and they're very very dangerous, and if just one of them reaches us it'll tear out our eyes and eat them, and we'll die in pain while it laughs."

"But they aren't as bad as humans are," said Alya.

Amy held her scarf (she had been allowed to keep the clothes she'd arrived in) over her mouth and nose as she was led down into the sewers. She was following a man, Alecath was his name. He didn't look entirely human to her, and she wondered if he had been locked in the camp for different reasons entirely.

"This all is quite simple, really," said Alecath as he helped her down. "We work, we shovel and we scrub, and we try not to think about the smell."

"There's just two of us?" Amy asked.

"It's a two-person job."

Amy took the shovel he handed her, and paused. "What happened to the last person who worked with you on this two-person job, then?"

"Died," the old man said. "At the last retirement. Her name was Moonlight."

"Oh," Amy said sadly.

"And the one before that," Alecath said, wearily, "died when a pipe broke and she drowned. So be careful."

"Come with me, Oncoming Storm," said Mort, five armed men backing him up. "I have something to show you."

For a minute the Doctor thought about overpowering him somehow, hitting him hard and running away, but he knew that would be just foolish. Mort smiled nastily and closed his fingers around his gun.

The Doctor followed him through dark corridors to a brightly lit room, where several screens, seemingly made of leaves, hung on the wall and control equipment littered the floor. Mort took the controls and pressed buttons, and the Doctor saw that the way out was blocked by men with weapons.

"You'll never have the key," he said to the tree-man, "and killing me won't help."

"Watch what happens next," Mort said, and turned the screens on.

"There's security cameras down here," Amy observed. Alecath was leading her further underground, through dripping pipes and foul-smelling puddles.

"Yes," he said, "they're everywhere."

"But down here? Do they work?"

Alecath shrugged, and Amy thought longingly of the Doctor, who would have simply raised the screwdriver and popped out all the cameras, and grinned, and saved them all. She gripped the shovel tight.

Something went drip, drip, drip...

Another security camera, this one in the guard hut, was training its all-seeing eye on Rory and the others.

"What sort of animals, exactly, are the Green?" Rory asked nervously.

"What do you mean?" asked Alya.

"Are they...I dunno..are they like elephants? Lions? What are they like?"

Alya gave a mocking laugh and turned away. This did nothing to improve Rory's confidence, and he felt his hands shaking, and cursed himself for it.

"I used to be a soldier," he said to no-one in particular. "And I just about remember it all, the things I did."

Alya, her back to him, shook her head and drew her weapon. "A soldier? Have you ever killed anyone?"

"Once," Rory said, remembering and feeling sick. "Nearly. Sort of."

"They're coming. Two of them." said Irene. "Aim."

"Stop," Amy said. "Alecath, stop!"

He did.

"I hear dripping," Amy said, "like from a broken pipe. And I really, really, really don't want to drown in sewage, that is not the way I want to go!"

Two strange, almost humanoid creatures were running towards them, and Rory raised the gun and aimed-

"Oh no," said Irene.

Rory understood the tone of voice, understood it all too well, and looked in the direction she was looking. Another creature was coming at them from a different angle, running strangely, limping-

He swallowed. And then he turned again, and there was another.

"There are never this many!" screamed Irene. "Never!"

The first two were coming closer, and Rory could see why they called them the Green. Because they were green. Because they were rotting.

"What are they?" he screamed.

"Oh, shut up!" yelled Alya, and she began firing blindly. Yet another one appeared, coming out from behind a rock, there were five now...

Irene shot one of them. A bloody hole appeared in its torso, but it kept running and then it jumped. It landed on her, and she screamed, all of them screamed-

The security camera was recording it all, in horrifying detail, every scream and shout, and the last noise Irene made.

"No!" yelled the Doctor, and he tried to leave the room, but the men with guns pushed him back.

"Stick with me," Alecath whispered urgently, "and you won't drown."

"What does the dripping mean?"

"It means that somewhere down here a pipe is leaking, and it's about to burst and flood this place, and follow me and run!"

She ran along with him, through a dark passageway in the side of a tube, and she heard a crash of waves and water...

Alecath grabbed her hand.

"Run, girl, run faster!"

She tried. But her legs were tired, every day she was tired, because every day she worked til she nearly dropped.

"Run!" screeched Alecath.

They turned a corner and there was a ladder. Alecath stood back and let Amy go up first.

"Hurry!" he said.

Amy climbed the ladder, she seemed to be safe, and in one awful moment she felt nothing but crushing relief that her own skin had been saved. And then the filthy, foul water came cascading down the passageway, churning the mud, crashing down on Alecath...

"No!" screamed Amy. A hand rose from the water, and Amy lunged for it, but within seconds it had sunk again.

"No," she said again. And then she swore, furiously, and swiped her tears away.

Her hand clutched the rusty rung of the ladder, and the water that had just taken away a nice old man splashed and soaked her shoes and feet. She pulled herself to the top of the ladder and let herself out. She lay, gasping and crying, on the sand for a bit. People were dying all around her, it seemed. She had faced so much, she'd died and come back, she'd helped save the universe, and she couldn't save anybody here.

"Rory!" she said out loud.

She ran, limping.

Alya shoved Rory to the side and shot one of the creatures. It fell with a horrible scream.

"They're zombies!" Rory shouted in bewilderment. "That's what they are, zombies, real zombies!"

"Would you get it together, you idiot!" Alya shrieked, and shot another.

Rory attempted to get it together. He had been a soldier, a Roman soldier with a gun in his hand, he'd fought off treasure-hunters and invaders and wild animals, he could only remember it like a dream, and he desperately wished for a kind of regeneration. He wished that badass-Roman-Rory would suddenly appear and take all the creatures down, not breaking a sweat, didn't have a sweat, he could do it!

"Alya!" he shouted. And he spun around and shot, and got one, and he didn't have time to even think about what he'd done-

-and another one jumped and landed on him.

He screamed like the helpless human he was pretty sure he was, and not the man of legend he'd once been, and in one split second he almost accepted his third death in a row, when Alya shot the monster and it slumped down against him.

Rory saw its face and screamed again.

"Stop it!" yelled the Doctor, face and hands pale. "Two are dead! Two innocent people! Shouldn't that be enough! Stop!"

"No," said Mort.

"Untie me! Let me go!"

"No."

The Doctor struggled, and Mort just said calmly, "This is your doing. Give us the key!"

"No," said the Doctor. "No. I can't."

Amy ran, past the caves, towards her husband, thinking of the times when everything was okay and there was adventure, not this sort of thing...

"It's her!" Rory screamed. "Moonlight! She's dead! She's dead!"

Alya pulled the corpse away.

"Yes," she said, "she came back, they all do."

"Came back?"

One more monster, this one the rotting body of Lois Beth Jameson, lept over the fences and landed in a heap on the floor, drooling and snarling. Rory and Alya both reached for their guns, fired, and the poor, poor creature lay still.

"That's all of them," Alya gasped. "There have never been so many, never!"

"Why today?" Rory said, leaning on the wall to steady himself. He couldn't look at the bodies, there were six in total, all had human faces, some he recognized, and he felt sick.

"They only send people they don't like to Security, they're hoping they'll get killed." Alya panted. "Maybe they really, really don't like you!"

"They-"

"Rory!" someone yelled.

Rory turned to see Amy, covered in mud, running towards him. He ran towards her and they squashed into a hug, a messy and frantic hug.

"What happened?" Rory asked, almost shouting.

"There was a flood, and Alacath's dead, drowned."

"Oh God."

"What happened here?"

"Zombies," Rory said, and the word seemed downright laughable, but Amy didn't laugh, she was crying.

"Zombies! Zombies, of course, zombies!" She let Rory go. "I want the Doctor!"

Rory said nothing.

"He'll come. Won't he? He'll sort all this out."

Rory thought she was talking about him like she'd talk about a father, maybe, possibly. But that little stab of jealousy made him feel rotten and ashamed.

"Yes," he said hopelessly.

Amy gave a sort of heartbreaking little howl, that hurt Rory to see it, and then she stood up and put on another face. The heroine, the world-saving girl, the Doctor's companion even if there wasn't a Doctor.

"We have to do what he would do. He's coming, I know, but in the meantime we have to get out of here. You. Me. All of us. 'Cos that lot will never let us go alive."

"What should we do?" Rory asked, and he longed for that other person, that Lone Centeurion Legend Rory, to take over his body and soul once again. "We need a plan."

Amy nodded, and he wondered if she really, truly believed the Doctor was coming. Would Amy, wearing any face, wait for the Doctor to save her and do nothing herself? Not ever, surely. Amy's faith wasn't blind, but oh, they needed the Doctor.

Amy went into the guardhouse and Rory followed. Alya was sitting on the floor amongst the bodies, and Rory felt guilty, he'd left her there.

Alya looked up.

"We'll all become one of these," she said, touching the skin of one of the rotting dead. "When we go into the caves, this is what we'll come out as, and we'll all go in."

Rory and Amy waited, skin crawling, hearts beating.

"I heard you. Give me a plan," said Alya.

"There isn't one yet," Amy said. "The Doctor will save us...or we'll save ourselves. We need to-"

Alya suddenly jumped up and shot the security camera. In a shower of golden sparks it fell from the wall.

"Um, thanks," said Rory.

"We need to think of something," Amy said. "If the Doctor's even on this planet, we need to free him, and he can bring Mort down."

Alya looked at her curiously. "You think he can save us, this man who's been captured and imprisoned and relies on his friends to save him?"

"Yes," Amy said fiercely. "He can do anything."

"Also," Rory said thoughtfully, "he's not exactly a man."

Alya shrugged.

"Alya, you've been here longer than us," Amy said. "If you know anything, anything at all about how we might, I don't know, get into the Phoenix Building or something..."

"I'll see what I can do," Alya said. "But I promise nothing."

"The Doctor will save us," said Amy onscreen, "or we'll save ourselves."

"How about some highlights of your friends facing death?" Mort asked. With a smirk he wound back the videos, and Amy fled for her life once again, and Rory was nearly killed by a human-like monster. Again and again and again it happened, and Mort's smile growing wider all the time.

The Doctor's eyes flashed.

"Now," said Mort, "tell me, Doctor, what use are emotions if you won't save the people you love?"

"I've heard something like that before," said the Doctor, "a very long time ago."

Mort said nothing, just smiled, a knowing smile.

"The Key?"

"You know," the Doctor said, "there's something you don't know about me, about Time Lords."

"What's that?"

"We have long memories." He was still tied to the chair, but he seemed suddenly different, sort of...far-away. Alien and fantasy. "I remember so very much. I remember Sarah's favourite band, Jamie's favourite colour, Susan's favourite book. I remember the times I loved Rose Tyler and the times I didn't, I remember the noise when Adelaide Brook shot herself, and I remember Amy remembering me- and I know who you are."

"Really," said Mort.

"Yes," said the Doctor.

The two of them looked at each other. And then the Doctor smiled.

"Jamie's favourite colour was blue," he said, "but you wouldn't know that, would you?"