Steve sighed and thumped his head back on the wall for the millionth time. He remembered Michael saying in his message that time moved strangely on the ship. Glancing at his phone (on but with no signal) he saw that only a few hours had passed since they'd been locked up, but it felt like years. Waiting always felt longer than it really was. But this was something else.
The sound engineer glanced down at his friend. Michael had been unconscious for a while. Steve had done all he could to make him comfortable, but there wasn't much to be done in the tight space they were confined in.
Questions that had been circling his mind for ages resurfaced. Michael worked more closely with the purple matter than any of the rest of them (after all, as Steve had been told on more than one occasion, he was the last guardian of the purple matter; what exactly that meant or how much truth lay in the statement the sound engineer had no idea). More than one misadventure had proved its ability to increase one's physical abilities from strength to recovery from injury. Seeing Michael as beat up as he was, then, was increasingly worrying. Just how much green matter had he been exposed to? What other trials had he gone through to put him in a state like this? How did time on this ridiculous ship work?
Was Michael going to be okay?
He sighed again.
Steve heard a faint noise. He ignored it at first, but it began to grow closer until he recognized it. His heart leaped. It was exactly what he'd been wanting to hear for ages: hurried footsteps.
They stopped outside the door. There was a long enough pause that Steve began to lose hope again, but at that moment the doors were thrown open. Sure enough, there were Rory, Sam, and Amy.
"Guys!" Steve exclaimed, clambering to his feet.
The latter two stood back in surprise, staring at Rory. "Wow."
"Did you see that? I just threw that door open! I just threw it open!" Rory cried. He seemed unnaturally excited.
"Yeah. We saw." Amy looked concerned.
"Uh, guys?" Steve repeated. He regained their attention.
"Ah, Steve! Glad to see you're still with us!" Sam gave his bandmate a friendly pat on the shoulder. He eyed Michael on the floor. "Let's get out of here, shall we?"
"Yeah…" Steve watched the Ponds, where Amy was trying to calm her husband down. "What happened to him? He's bouncier than the Jon during an ice cream parade."
Sam was trying to figure out the best way to get Michael out of the tiny cell. "He got hit square in the chest at point-blank range by a shot of purple matter," he explained absently. "As soon as he came out of shock, he seemed to have enough energy to run from here to Seattle and back."
"Huh."
Rory saw them trying to gently lift Michael out of the cell. "Oh, can I help? I can do that! I'll help!"
"Thanks, Rory, but I think we've got it," Sam grunted.
"Are you sure? Cos I can help. Really, I can!"
Before anyone could say anything, Rory had scooped Michael out of their arms and had him in a careful piggyback. "Let's get out of here before any more zombies show up," the nurse said, sounding ever-so-slightly more like his usual self.
As Rory sped off in the direction they'd come from, Amy dropped her head in embarrassment. The two men gave her sympathetic looks, the feeling familiar from whenever one of their bandmates got into trouble in public. They hurried after him.
Sam had picked up the purple matter ray from where they'd set it in the corridor outside of the cell and he and Steve discussed it as they rushed through the ship. Amy was lost in her own thoughts, again grateful and relieved that they'd found their query so easily. She was very aware that it hadn't ended well the last time and was determined that the Doctor's promise that they'd return every member of the band safely home was kept. The ginger woman watched every open corridor or door they passed like a hawk and was debating whether she should take the purple matter ray back from Sam when out of the corner of her eye, she saw something.
Amy stopped in her tracks, not noticing that Sam and Steve hadn't seen her and walked past after Rory. Looking to her right, she saw Cmdr. Umber at the end of a long corridor.
She froze, staring at the man who had put them through all the worry and fear of the past several hours. He saw her, but simply smiled a terrifying, malicious smile and disappeared inside a door.
A terrible feeling of foreboding rose inside of her. Amy looked around and saw that the boys were gone, so hurried in the direction she thought they went and soon caught up to them. She didn't say anything.
Fortunately, they made it out of the ship with no trouble. The sun had risen slightly higher above the sea. Amy stood guard as Rory (who had begun to chill out), Sam, and Steve delicately loaded Michael into the van. Rabbit and the Jon, seeing that their human friends had returned from the ship safely, ceased Delilah's ridiculous prancing about and came to see what was up with them.
Amy watched the part of the beach the ship was on. Everyone was back; everyone but the Doctor and the Spine. She couldn't imagine that they, too, wouldn't return safely. She hoped with all her being that she wouldn't have to find out what would happen if they didn't.