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Chapter Eleven: Short Circuit

It was a short walk from their makeshift prison to the back office, but Evan took the opportunity to sidle up beside the Doctor. "I was just wondering," he whispered, casting a nervous glance behind him at their Kemor-whatsit guard, "If they were using Jenny to convince you to do as they wanted, shouldn't they have locked her up somewhere else? You know, so we would be wondering if she was alright and everything?"

"The Kemorites may have computer brains, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are smart in the matters of coercion." The Doctor smiled and winked, evidently quite at ease. "Don't tell them I said that – they don't seem like the type of chaps to enjoy hearing the truth."

"Right." Evan looked back again; Jenny was directly behind him and the Doctor, and she smiled quite brightly when she noticed him looking. Evan blushed and turned away, wondering how she had managed to recover so quickly. Must be an alien thing, he thought grumpily. Why, oh why had he followed the Doctor from the school?

The closed door to the office loomed before them in the blue spotlight from their guard. Another Kemor-thingy was waiting there, and opened the door without a sound. Evan swallowed nervously.

"You have been summoned," a familiar voice announced from inside the office, echoed by the computer speakers behind them. "You have been summoned."

"Yes, yes, I know, old chap," the Doctor replied, stepping quickly through the doorway. Evan followed close behind, aware of Jenny at his elbow. The room was lit by the neon colours of the glow sticks, still laying haphazard on the floor from when he and the Doctor had dropped them in the struggle preceding their short imprisonment in the closet.

"You have been summoned."

The Doctor turned and rolled his eyes dramatically at Evan. "This fellow really does need to work on expanding his vocabulary. Come to think of it, quite a few of the robotic species have that problem. Do you recall the Daleks and Cybermen? "Exterminate" and "Delete" all the time. You'd think they didn't have access to a thesaurus."

Evan nodded non-commitally, wishing the Doctor hadn't called attention to him. Surely the Kemor-things were staring at him now. Evan felt as though he couldn't move.

"You have been summoned," the Kemor-thing repeated.

Maybe it wasn't looking at him after all, then.

"I have been summoned," the Doctor mimicked quite pompously. "Now what do you want?"

"What is your answer."

"My answer? Now that is a good question." The Doctor turned to look at Evan again and tilted his head thoughtfully to the side. Evan shuffled his feet uncomfortably and felt incredibly conspicuous. "You see, there are plenty of factors I needed to take into account. For instance, just what do I gain from bringing your people here? And what do I lose? There was this one time when…"

"What is your answer."

"No need for that," the Doctor responded testily. "I'm giving you my answer. You're just as bad as the Chancellor of Vorpeii – I'd say one thing and he'd swear I had said the opposite. Incredibly difficult to have any sort of proper conversation – in the end I had to resort to saying the opposite of whatever I meant. Still confusing, but at least I got the point across."

Evan was only half-listening to the Doctor's chatter. Part of him was wondering how any one person could have so much to say; the other part of his mind was worrying over how long the Doctor could possibly last.

- x -

Jenny bounced uneasily from one foot to another. There were two Kemorites behind her, and the leader one in the center of the room on the rolling chair. Oh, how she wished to do this the easy way! Really, it wasn't that difficult to decapacitate three robot-human things. Jenny ran over the necessary moves in her mind as though it were a mental exercise of the sort she generally did before sleeping. (Someone had told her it was the surest way to success, although, come to think of it, she'd heard the same argument towards a shot of Scarlet Verr Rum first thing in the morning each day).

It really was a difficult task for her self-control to stand still and listen to the Doctor's rambling voice and watch Evan shift uneasily. Really, though – what was wrong with some action?

"We aren't here to hurt them," the Doctor had chided her when she brought it up, and she had snorted in annoyance.

"We're only here because they lured us. Besides, we want to get rid of them, don't we?"

And his answer: "I have to give them a chance, first."

It irked her, although Jenny wasn't sure why. This whole business of following her father's instruction was very strange, and Jenny wasn't sure yet how she liked it.

The Doctor was busy listing off all the reasons the Kemorite's plan to come to Earth was sure to fail. She had to hide a smile; it sounded as though most of the reasons were being pulled from the top of his head. Apparently, the Doctor's amazing ship with the bigger-inside-than-outside could only hold a maximum of four passengers and one dog, which meant the transportation of an entire colony could take far too long. Also, too many trips to the same place in one relative time zone apparently caused holes in universes and exploding stars. And then there was the matter off…

Jenny caught Evan's eye and smirked good-naturedly. His eyes widened in shock before he smiled hesitantly in return. Was he always this timid?

"You do know" the Doctor was saying for the fifth (or sixth, or seventh) time, "that there is little chance of success with this plan of yours. Say… 0.72% chance. Maybe less. Certainly no more. What say you I just take you chaps home to be with your families, and see if I can come up with some sort of solution for your colony? There must be some sort of way to fix things."

"We stay here. You will bring our people."

The Doctor heaved a dramatic sigh. "If you say so. But another warning – this planet is covered in water. And you should know that water is incredibly bad for circuit systems."

"It does not matter."

The Doctor's voice hardened as he shoved his hands into his pockets. "I believe you will find it does matter very much."

Before the Kemorite could respond, a jet of water shot from the corner of the room, spraying everyone – including the Kemorite guards and the web of wires. Over the hiss of sparking wires, Jenny heard a movement behind her, and ducked just as a heavily-mechanized arm swung where her head had been a moment before. She kicked out hard behind her and heard the crash of her attacker falling against the far wall. Jenny straightened smugly, and immediately ducked again as the other Kemorite came at her. A moment later, it too was on the floor of the office.

Finally, a chance to do it her way.

- x -

The Doctor ignored the sounds of a struggle behind him, willing himself to trust that Jenny knew what she was doing. Of course she does – only it was so hard to think of her as a soldier and not his long-lost daughter.

His front was completely soaked with water, and was only getting wetter. He squinted through the cloud of steam and spraying water to the figure standing anxiously beside the water fountain.

"Excellent job, Evan Kirke!" he called, and nodded with approval. "It might be a good idea to make your way over here again – these circuits look as though they might do anything. Watch you don't touch the wires."

He waited as Evan bent over the water fountain – probably checking to see if the elastic band was still in place – and until Evan began making his way under the wires before turning around. Jenny was standing over the two downed Kemorite guards, wearing a familiar grin he had last seen on his own face in a previous incarnation. "I told you I could do it," she reminded him smugly.

Evan appeared at the Doctor's side, breathless more from the adrenaline than any real exertion. "Are they… dead?" he asked, stepping close to one Kemorite's side and leaning over for a better look.

Words of warning reached the Doctor's tongue too late as the Kemorite's mechanical hand clamped around Evan's ankle. The boy yelped and tried to jump back, succeeding only in losing his balance and falling backwards. The Doctor leaped forward in alarm, but Jenny was already there, delivering a sharp blow to the wrist that caused the fingers to slacken before twisting it from the arm and hurling it across the room.

"Sorry," Evan mumbled, and rose shakily to his feet.

The Doctor barely heard him, his eyes taking in with horror the wires that had been ripped apart by the flying hand. Red sparks were dancing lazily at the loose ends, dropping from the wires to the office desk covered in papers…

"Run!" the Doctor bellowed, and he grabbed Evan's arm with one hand and Jenny's in the other to pull them through the door. The seconds seemed to slow as his double-heartbeat quickened and a familiar and most unwanted hiss reached at him from behind.

Somehow they managed to navigate the tables and chairs of the front room without tripping.

"The door's locked!" Evan cried in panic, but Jenny had found the deadbolt and was already drawing it back.

Too late, too late, pounded the rhythm of the Doctor's hearts, but for a moment it seemed as though they would make it. Evan was already pushing the door open eagerly, the first breath of cold air reaching the Doctor's face.

And then the back room exploded in a blast of hot air and fire, knocking him forward off his feet and against the glass door.