A/N: In case any of you were wondering, "Clara" is intended to be pronounced the English way, as "Clah-ruh" and not "Clair-uh". The more you knoooooow uvu
"So if we turn down this hallway, I think we'll make it to the main security room. That's how it was last time I was here."
Slowing his pace, the Doctor stopped short when he heard no response from behind him. That was odd. As he turned around, he cursed himself at the sight of an empty hallway. He should have known better—he knew he hadn't heard footsteps behind him. He should've trusted his instincts, rather than trusting that he and Clara wouldn't get separated. Companions, always getting themselves into trouble.
Tentatively, he began to walk back down the hallway, but his actions were short-lived when he heard footsteps coming from the opposite direction, behind him. He turned on his heels again, half-expecting Clara to be there, and also half-expecting some shapeshifter to round the corner and snatch him up. Both hypotheses were wrong, however, as a blue-clad guard came around the corner instead, looking completely nonplussed at the Doctor's presence.
"Ah—Hello!" The Doctor eased up, a warm smile finding its way to his face. "You're one of the guards here, aren't you? I'm the Doctor. Um—" He reconsidered his choice of words for a moment. "Dr. John Smith, that is. I was sent straight from the top to deal with the bombing."
"Oh, thank goodness. I'd heard about you," the guard replied. "I'm Thomas. I work just under the head of security here, I was doing a sweep of the hallways… Um, mind if I see some identification?"
"Ah, of course not." Pulling out the psychic paper from before, he flashed it at the guard. The young man studied it for some time, before nodding, giving the proper signal for the Doctor to put it away. He did so, and paused a moment, waiting for the man to offer up his own form of identification; when he didn't, it struck the Doctor as a bit odd, but he brushed it off—After all, it wasn't really his place to be asking for identification, the man was clearly a respectable officer of the law.
"What have you noticed so far, if I may ask? Or, did you not go straight away to the east wing? Did you speak to the officers of state instead?" The guard watched him curiously, awaiting a response.
"Uh—well, no, I went straight to the west wing… It was likely an inside job, to say the least, but I should likely save the rest of the information for the British government till it's declassified…" The lie rolled fairly easily off his tongue. But there was no other choice, of course, he couldn't exactly reveal that extraterrestrials had infiltrated the government.
"Really? What makes you say that?"
"Classified, remember. This is high class government stuff, I wouldn't have been sent here if I ran around blabbing all the Crown's secrets!" Making a face, the Doctor shrugged. That should be enough, the guard should know better than to trifle in the affairs of his highers. But still the man pushed on.
"Did they specifically order for the information here to be classified? I mean, I think I rank pretty high…"
"Yes, yes they did." It was difficult for him to keep a calm tone when it appeared Thomas was making a point just to push his buttons. "I'm sorry, but can I see some of your ID?"
"Oh, that's not really necessary, sir."
"Right…" At this point, the Doctor was getting awfully suspicious. He was pretending to be a high authority man of the law, this boy could show him some more respect! Digging around in his pocket, he looked for his sonic. "If you don't mind, I'm going to need to check something." Whipping the sonic out, he set it to a lower "scan" setting and aimed it at the guard and…
Without warning, Thomas kicked the sonic out of his hand. Instinctively, the Doctor backed up as quickly as possible, startled. His sonic laying on the ground a good number of yards away, he eyed Thomas warily, backing away from him slowly as the man advanced upon him.
"That actually tells me everything I need to know, 'Thomas', don't think you did yourself any good!" The look on his face was stern, if only a little cagey.
"But at least I won't have you controlling how I change. At least my actions are left to my own devices!"
By the way the man talked, it was likely the shifter was one of the two in the back. Perhaps one with domination issues, especially considering it seemed that the two in the front were the leaders of the two, despite the woman being the most authoritative all of them. However, the man was anything but cowardly, and he soon grew tired of his own slow advancements and began to give chase, the Doctor stumbling more than turning on his heels and bolting down the hall, looking for an easy escape. He was a considerable distance from the other, and was likely rather safe from being snatched up, from the looks of things. As he passed the point where he and Clara had been separated, he was filled with a small hope that he'd encounter her somewhere along the way, and he could at least gain the advantage of strength in numbers. With another by his side, it wouldn't be hard to outwit 'Thomas.'
To his left, he spotted a pair of grand mahogany double doors, likely those leading to a conference room with a number of different doors and escape routes, or at least vents. If he could get to the vents, he could probably find Clara from above an in the meantime, come up with a plan of retaliation against the shifters below. Throwing them open, he dived inside, quickly shutting his pursuer out and locking them—which was a difficult task, he'd gotten used to doing it with his sonic. Jamming a chair in the door for extra support, he sighed with relief and turned around, taken with shock at those in his presence.
Two identical copies of Clara sat in the conference room, one seated at the table and one standing. And both looked at him, watching completely disconcerted. Suddenly, the one standing piped up, voice laced with palpable panic.
"Doctor, thank god you're here—this one, she's a shifter, she's not me, she's been holding me here and waiting for you to stumble in to trick you," she said, rather alarmed.
"Are you mad?" The other directed her words to the standing duplicate, then turned to the Doctor, the expression on her face frustrated. "She's the imposter, I—this is going to end horribly, isn't it?"
The Doctor eyed them both carefully, his eyes calculating. "Right… So I don't suppose I really have a way to tell who's who, do I? What with the psychic link and all…" He thought for a moment, and suddenly a wide grin spread across his face. "I've got it! Remember the conversation in the hall? No, no—don't think of it, just recall what I said! What was the name I first gave you?"
The one in the back gained a look of sudden realization on her face, and the one in the fronted shouted out, without much thought, "Pears!" Wrinkling her nose, she made a face of confusion, turning around at the other. "What?"
Grinning, the one sitting shot up, darting forward. The Doctor, quickly tossing the chairs out of the way and unlocking the door first, snatched up her hand, and while the shifter behind them gave a hiss of anguish, the two bolted out the door, kicking it closed behind them. They ran in the direction from whence they came, and when they came to the crossroads where they were first split up, the Doctor checked around for a moment to make sure 'Thomas' wasn't lying in wait. When he decided he wasn't, they turned around a completely different corner, down a hallway they'd yet to find themselves in yet. Dropping Clara's hand, the Doctor looked around for a moment, hands on his hips as he pondered the surroundings.
"I don't see anything of particular use around here right now," he mused. "I'm not sure how long we can stay out here before we get caught, either…" Moving one hand to his mouth, he rubbed his chin, contemplating. "Want to crawl into the air ducts and see what else we can find?"
"By Cardiff Law, it should be regulation for a fire alarm to be installed and functioning every 30 yards in a government building. So, if we go this way…" Slowly, Clara made her way to the end of the hallway, which cut off into a left and a right turn on each side, failing to continue on. "We're sure to run into a fire alarm on either side of the hallway…" The Doctor looked at her, the expression on his face rather thrown, and when she turned around, she just looked at him, nonplussed. "What? I spend a lot of time on Wikipedia."
Suddenly, the Doctor laughed. "Oh, that's brilliant, a fire alarm works perfectly. Who knew that was actually regulation? You learn something new every day, don't you?" Contented, he loped off down the right hallway, Clara quickly following after as he hunted down a fire alarm. Upon finding one, roughly 60 feet down the way, he looked up at it, a little frustrated.
"Oh, bugger, this would be much easier to set off if I still had my sonic screwdriver…"
"What happened to your sonic?"
"I lost it down one of those hallways in a little tiff… I don't trust the guy not to be slinking around there, either, the little rascal!" The Doctor stared up at it, beginning to fish through his pockets.
Admittedly, Clara was concerned that the shifters would get ahold of the sonic, but she let it pass—for now, at the very least. She'd had another question, after all. "What good will the smoke detector do? Won't they know better than to escape from the building and into plain sight so quickly?"
"Water burns them. Kind of like the Wicked Witch of the West, I'd think. But didn't Elphaba trick them into believing that water harmed her when really she was just scared of it to escape death? I never did finish that book."
"Well, in that case, I wouldn't want to spoil the end for you." A little smugly, she grinned a bit.
The Doctor looking quite frustrated in his search at this point, Clara took it upon herself to fish through her jean pockets for something that might be of assistance. Thankfully, she happened to have a little packet of matches on her, the cheap kind you find in hotels on occasion, sometimes in airports.
"Where'd you get that?" The Doctor queried. She didn't seem like the kind to smoke.
"Ah, well, I used to smoke in university, and a few days ago I met up with an old friend, and she handed me these. I guess she never heard I'd quit, and I guess I never threw them out…" Flipping the top open, she pulled one out, and the Doctor shrugged. Appearances could be deceiving, after all.
It took a moment, but after a few attempts, Clara finally struck the match just the right way and got the bugger to light, the orange flame engulfing the tip. Reaching up, she had to get on her toes to reach the alarm, being the rather small stature that she was, and it took a moment to get herself steadied enough to cup her hand around the match, letting the smoke and heat waft up to the fire alarm. However, she still couldn't quite reach, as the alarm was all the way at the very top of the ceiling, and the Doctor took it upon himself to nudge her slightly, getting her attention.
"Here, just hand it to me," he offered, and she obliged, not wanting to make a further fool of herself. He admittedly had to reach up as well, standing on his own toes, but thankfully that did the trick and all throughout the building, the fire alarms began to screech and the sprinklers let loose, dousing the whole building. The match went out with a sizzle in the Doctor's fingers, and he settled back onto the flats of his feet, giving a gratified little smile like it wasn't raining indoors and soaking the two of them.
"Well, that worked well, didn't it?"
Clara stared at him for a moment, a bemused smile tugging at the corners of her lips, and she just broke out laughing—He soon joined her, of course, and they just stood there looking like mad-men, every inch of them soaked.