AN: Well this one only took me three days... And I abandoned what I said I was going to do in the other fic. No schools.
The Case Of The Green Visitors
Oswin
What was the worst possible thing that could happen to you at a sci-fi convention? Well, Oswin would know as soon as she discovered what had happened to her and her sister to put them where they were that day. She wasn't even entirely sure it wasn't the same day, and the bomb scare was a diversion from whatever was happening now. She knew that if she opened her eyes too wide she was completely blinded by lights, and she knew that she was cold, which was odd, because she was sure her hologram-status had been returned to her. For a frightening moment, she feared Clara had in fact died as a result of the EMP and this was the afterlife. And then someone flicked her forehead.
"Ow," she said, squinting against the brightness at the silhouette.
"I'm not dead, genius," Clara grumbled. A bad mood already, so early on into consciousness. "If you'd just let your eyes adjust... Let me guess, you didn't have bright lights on Horizon?"
"There were always lights on Horizon. It was constantly lit, for safety purposes," Oswin explained, cupping her hands around her eyes like pseudo-binoculars and squinting at what she supposed must be a wall.
"Your home is beginning to sound more and more and more like a fish tank," Clara commented. She was standing, looking slightly nervous, next to Oswin, who was sat on something that might be a gurney.
"Where are we?" she asked, her head still throbbing from the blinding light making her want to run and hide in a cave for the majority of the foreseeable future.
"Space jail," Clara said, "I mean it... It looks like what I imagine space jail would look like."
"Don't suppose you remember any of your echoes being in a galactic prison?" Oswin asked, rubbing her head. "How do you people live so close to the sun?" Clara kicked her in the ankle, and Oswin kicked back and Clara made a dissatisfied grunt. "Well, I can see why it took you so long to tell your husband you love him."
"Maybe I have an excuse, but why is taking you so long to tell Adam Mitchell you fancy him?" Clara asked.
"Oh my god, you're like a bloody broken record! On and on going on about this like a kid in a playground who finds out who someone fancies so they won't drop it because they want to be the centre of attention!" Oswin practically snarled at Clara, "Can you actually just forget it until we get out of this dream?"
"I'm just trying to distract myself," Clara mumbled.
"Yeah, well, so am I, and you're not helping one bit," Oswin snapped, sitting cross-legged on her floating bed thing and leaning on the smooth, shiny walls. They were in what seemed to be a cell of some kind, and it was long a capsule-shaped, with another gurney on the other side which Oswin presumed was Clara's. The walls were all silver and polished and they curved straight into the roof without a break, the only gap in the structure being the sealed doorway. Then she pulled a puzzled face and strained her ears.
"What is it?" Clara asked with a note of regret and apology. Oswin shushed her and knelt on the gurney, pressing her ear to the wall.
"Engines," said Oswin. She listened harder, "It's a spaceship. A big one, too. But I don't know what kind, which is weird. I should know..." Oswin said.
"What, you memorised the sound of every engine ever?" Clara asked incredulously.
"I was bored," was Oswin's reply. She wondered how long it would take Clara to finally come to terms with the whole Total Screaming Genius thing. "But this is weird. Maybe an unrecorded species."
"...Species..? This is... Okay, sister dear, be honest. Have we been abducted by aliens?" Clara asked carefully, but not being able to efficiently contain her excitement at the prospect of being victim to a glorified kidnapping.
"You tell me, you're the expert," Oswin said, keeping right ear to the wall to hide her smirk from Clara.
"Me? Why?"
"Well, you've been probed aboard spaceships by aliens loads of times," Oswin said.
"No, I... Oh. Very funny," Clara said, getting the gist. Then Oswin hit her fist on the wall and Clara jumped. "What was that for!?"
"I can't believe this. Of all the clichés, this is the last one I would have thought of. Alien abduction, of course... I'm far too smart to think of something I didn't think of..." she complained, returning to sitting cross-legged and now pouting.
"Oh, woe is you," Clara said sarcastically. "Is that what that light was? A tractor beam?" Oswin strained her memories, and fainly recalled a bright green light and seeing the city below her. She groaned and rubbed her forehead.
"Yes, a tractor beam..." she said, "which are stupid and way too visible. This is like a B movie already..." She slumped back down. There was nothing in the room at all to help them, and neither of them had any clothes with pockets, which meant no screwdriver - nor any other gizmos, which was annoying.
"So what do we do?" Clara asked, staring around nervously. Of course, she was from before man went to Mars, back when humanity spent their time dreaming up little nightmares of non-consensual experimentation, memory wipes, little green men and kidnapping. Even after travelling with the Doctor, her Earthling delusions clearly still took priority.
"There isn't anything we can do except wait," Oswin said helplessly. She didn't like being trapped (illegally) aboard a uknown vessel, either. The fact the spaceship was unknown was highly unnerving. If their anthropomorphic dream-world was going for realism, it could have just plucked a spaceship right out of Oswin's memory, one she understood and could guess the floor plan of and find a way out. Which drew the conclusion that perhaps they were not supposed to find a way out, however it also raised the likelihood that this scenario was from somewhere in Clara the Star Wars Fanatic's imaginings, and would possess the accordingly bad layout and physics, and would also be home to every 20th Century stereotype assigned to Visitors From Outer Space.
"Seriously? You've got nothing? No ideas?" Clara asked.
"I've got plenty of ideas, Clars," Oswin said. The usual escape plan sprung to mind consiting of pretending to have a fight and then turning on the aliens when they came to break it up, but they didn't have any obvious reason to escape, and Oswin was sure if they were patient the opportunity to speak to one of their kidnappers would arise. "None of them I care for."
"Oh, great." Oswin didn't say anything in response - she was thinking. She didn't spot a camera anywhere, which would be the optimal monitoring device... Why would they be keeping them unmonitored and stuck in a room? Surely that was counter-productive. What if someone had a heart attack or a seizure? They wouldn't know to send help, because they obviously didn't want their subjects to die. Not accidentally, at least. All that meant they must be watching from somewhere, so Oswin stood up and started looking at the walls.
"What?" Clara asked her, staying put. Oswin said nothing, merely stood in the centre of the room and frowned at the doorless wall. Then she went back to the side wall where she had been listening and knocked on it, once, listening. "Seriously, what-"
"Shh," Oswin said, then she went over to the doorless wall and knocked on the one too, and found the sound to be different. Yes, it seemed to all be made out of the same piece of metal, but that was not the case. The back wall was far thinner, and the material was definitely different. She likened their cell to a police interrogation room, where the mirror was a window leading to an observation room. It seemed the aliens had implemented something similar, because with the way the silver walls were polished, it was nearly the same. They were watching through one-way glass.
"No I will not shush," Clara said after Oswin had already figured it out and no longer required the silence. It had only taken a second a theorising. After all, it would be stupid not to have CCTV in a prison. She thought it improbable that they wouldn't speak a word of English. At the very least, if they were being thorough they may have studied Earth's languages, which meant it likely they knew a word of something, even if it wasn't English. She didn't know what to say to them though. Then again, maybe, like they seemed to in most films, they thought themselves above learning the languages. Maybe the humans were like pets. "Are you going to tell me what's going on?"
"Alien abduction, as I... uttered priorly," she said, getting an idea. It was highly doubtful that anyone else who may be trapped on the spaceship had figured out the aliens were watching from a secret room, and even if they had, they probably wouldn't imagine the aliens could understand them. She'd guess that had continually spoken in simple terms, so if Oswin and Clara even slightly changed their vocabulary and basic words like 'said,' the aliens may not know what they were talking about.
"Why are you speaking like that?" Clara asked.
"One is... Conversing in tongues... So as to befuddle the... Observers," she said carefully.
"Observers?" Clara asked.
"...Aye," said Oswin, "Visitors, in the easterly direction. Eastern of your sister, that is." She meant on her right.
"Visitors?" Clara asked.
"Visitors. Those of the titchy, emerald persuasion," Oswin said. Clara understood what she was doing at that point, and Oswin hoped that unless the aliens had an Oxford English dictionary they were safe enough.
"Oh. What events shall us partake in?" Clara asked, meaning, 'What do we do?' Oswin shrugged. Gestures would probably be even more effective that strange word choices and slang.
"Remain located in quietness and patience," was Oswin's best suggestion.
"Reckon a brawl should rile them up, give ourselves a break," Clara said, putting forward the idea of a fake fight, which Oswin had already disputed in her own mind. She didn't think showing the aliens either of them had a violent streak, pretend or not, was a good idea. And then hidding the aliens and trying to injure and kill them was an even worse idea - maybe they would be civil.
"Nay to the scuffle, Clars. Far better occurance we would have if the Victorian were here to talk her peace at the wall," Oswin said. If only Victorian Clara was there, she could use her nonsensical slang terms to confuse the aliens so much their heads exploded.
"Ain't not a Victorian present," Clara said.
"One is aware," Oswin replied dryly. Her idea of waiting and staying put was looking like the glamorous option at that point, and Clara went and sat back down on the other side of the room. "So, how goes the marriage?"
"How goes the hypocrisy?" Clara countered bitterly. "I aren't having fun either, you'll know."
"Has anyone been having a joyous time of it as of late? Honest? In fairness, this trap may be the lesser of ten-and-four evils."
"Why? In what direction would your lies swing this when you recount it to our cohorts?"
"B&B, full board. Waited on hand and foot. Very exotic resort," Oswin told her.
"Oh? What say you to a probing, sister? I dare you to put your optimistic spin on that," Clara challenged, smirking slightly. Oswin stood and thought for a moment, before grinning mischievously.
"Colonic irrigation," she replied.
"That's disgusting. Don't you be saying nothing like those words to the others, lest they think their schemes be worth it," Clara threatened as Oswin sniggered to herself. But she was definitely not going to wake up and tell the others how she and Clara had colonic irrigation, that was all kinds of wrong.
It was at this point they both heard unmistakably alien voices from outside their door, which was sealed by a buzzing, green forcefield and resembled television static and was completely opaque. Neither of them had gone near it, Oswin assuming if they did they would suffer something not dissimilar to an electric shock. Then there was a loud hum which cut off suddenly, and the door was opened and a third party was thrown into their little clubhouse. The forcefield was brought back up so quickly Oswin couldn't see whoever or whatever had opened it. But she could see who had been thrown inside.
"For once the Clecho found us," Oswin commented.
"Don't... Don't call them Clechoes," Clara said. Oswin didn't reply to her. She was going to call Clara's echoes Clechoes as many times as she liked. "You're calling yourself one, too, you know."
"Untrue, I'm calling her," Oswin pointed at the Clecho, who was hunched over on the floor and looking thoroughly exhausted.
"That's tight. She's unaware for what reason she exists. Probably," Clara said in the Clecho's defence. "And you shan't tell her, I'm quite informed that she is experiencing a worse enough time without you adding to the mixing pot."
"When was the last instance you jumped to my defence like this, Clary?" Oswin asked, pretending to be hurt and keeping one eye trained on the Clecho, who wasn't paying either of them the slightest bit of attention.
"I don't know, the other week? Three days ago? Something like that," Clara said. "You're such a baby." Oswin glared at her and stopped the conversation to avoid further insults. Then the echo passed out.
"That's unfortunate," Oswin said blandly. "What do we now?"
"You're the expert," Clara said.
"All grouped due to physical coincidences, clearly," Oswin said, eyeing the echo suspiciously. "But zero help. What we need is... Food. Sustenance. Nourishment. Vitamins."
"One is familiar to those items," Clara said. "I am sort of hungry though."
"Exactly, we're famished. Parched. Starving. In desperate need of nutrients, water and edible supplies," Oswin said.
"Well, I wouldn't say-"
"No, Clara, you're not listening to me. We are starving. We are very hungry. We maydie very soon if we do not eat," she said slowly. Clara looked at her like she was insane. In actuality, she was sure that nothing bad could happen if she asked their alien captors for food. It wasn't like they absolutely had to eat it. Oswin was still unsure about whether she was a hologram or not, and with the aliens watching from their secret observation room, she didn't dare a test run.
Voices were outside yet again, and this time Oswin had her eyes trained and ready on the shimmering doorway to catch a glimpse of whatever species was keeping them locked up like hamsters. Although it did remind her of home a little - the infintely filtered, stagnant air, the moderate temperatures and the artificial light. Not to mention the claustrophobia.
The forcefield's hum died again and the green glow subsided. Out in the corridor Oswin could see at least one other cell, but it was dark and there were a pair of aliens in the way. The aliens who were, as predicted, four foot tall and bright green in colour, with long hands bearing three spindly fingers each, a lanky form and bulging black, angled, oval-shaped eyes. They were a stereotype if ever Oswin saw one, and Clara seemed alarmed at this too. As far as Oswin knew, there was no substantial evidence or race record to back up human claims to the commonly misconstrued appearance of extraterrestrials.
The two aliens were carrying trays, three of them, and they were placed in a stack, slotted together, on the ground and slid into the room. They were conversing in a language which seemed to consist mainly of words like 'bleep,' 'bloop,' and 'blah,' which was a gibberish language Oswin didn't recognise at all, nor could she decipher. It was completely random noises.
"We are so in a crap movie," Oswin said, shaking her head as the green forcefield reappeared in all its glory. Clara went over and picked up the top tray, revealing the second one to be identical. It was the poorest assessment of human dietary requirments she had ever happened across. There was a scuffed, metal cup holding a mysteriously viscous crimson liquid, what looked like a quarter of a completely raw steak, an uncooked egg in one of the compartments, a marble-like ball of what might be dough and then a small stack of salted cashew nuts and raisins. "Is that blood?" she asked in regards to the red stuff, leaning forwards to peer into the tray. All of it except the nuts and raisins seemed to be completely inedible.
Clara picked up her cup and examined it, then she sniffed it carefully and her eyes widened.
"What? Oh my god, it's blood, isn't it?" Oswin asked. "Maybe they think we're vampires."
"It's ketchup," Clara said. "In a cup. A large cup. There must be half a pint at least here. Is that a raw egg and a raw steak?"
"Yes," Oswin said.
"Well, you have to give them credit for trying, I suppose... To be honest, I would rather eat alien food than this that I'm going to get food poisoning from," she said, both of them giving up their strange talking to complain about the food.
"Do you think there's a handy feedback form? Do you think it's Four In A Bed?" Oswin asked.
"You did already say it was a B&B," Clara shrugged. Then she picked up one of the cashews and eyed it, then put it back and poked the colourful dough ball. "Play-Doh."
"Mmm, delicious," Oswin said sarcastically.
"What a fine feast we have ourselves," Clara added to the fray of dry humour.
"Maybe you should eat it to show respect for our hosts," Oswin advised in a serious voice.
"No. You will not carrying on convincing me to do stupid things," Clara said firmly. "Unless you tell me your IQ."
"Not this again... Fine, don't eat it. How do we request an audience?" Oswin said, but instead of patiently waiting for Clara to give her an answer she continued on her original path and went and knocked in the back wall. "A word please? A talk? A conversation? Discussion? Interrogation? Information? Briefing? Audience? Interview?" She kept knocking on the metal.
"Are you alright?" Clara asked.
"It's a one-way window," Oswin explained to her.
"How do you know?"
"Because it's obvious."
"How is it obvious..?"
"Because! Experiments and cameras!" Oswin snapped, kicking the wall again and turning back to the room and her puzzled sister.
"There aren't any cameras," Clara said.
"Yeah, I know, that's my point." Clara gave up trying to understand Oswin's logic. "Abiding to the conventions set down by the Shadow Proclomation I request for you to state your species and place of origin!" she shouted through the wall. They both waited for a good few minutes to see if they got a response, although they did not.
"Where am I..?" the Clecho groaned, coming back to life while Oswin thought of ways to get the attention of the aliens. So they only intervened when they thought somebody was going to die. Her faith that maybe they were polite aliens was quickly dwindling.
"A spaceship," Clara told her. The Clecho remained on the floor and Oswin did her best to ignore her and go back over to the food trays. She sat on the floor and set the three identical trays out in front of her and stared at them, thinking. She was going through lists of chemical compounds, trying to determine if she could create a metal-eating acid out of steak, nuts, fruit, eggs and play-doh. She determined she could not. "What are you doing?" Clara asked her.
"Something," was all Oswin replied. She picked up one of the steaks and cringed at the cold, slimy thing, dropping it on the floor. "Ew..." she then removed the other two steaks onto the floor.
"What are you doing?" Clara repeated sternly.
"I'm gonna spread ketchup and eggs all over their window," Oswin said, lifting one of the other trays and tipping the egg into the one she had now completely emptied of solid food. She did the same with the other tray, and then grabbed one of the ketchup-filled cups and turned it upside down and tipped the gloopy substance in with the eggs.
"That's actually gross," Clara said. Oswin continued pouring the ketchup.
"You've got no idea how long it's been since I last smelt ketchup," Oswin said, "At least a decade."
"What's going on?" the Clecho asked. The Clecho who was now sitting up. "Who are you? Why do you have my face?"
"It's not your face..." Clara muttered. "And you've been abducted. By aliens. Little green men with laser blasters and death rays."
"Oh great, they have death rays," Oswin said. This was getting worse and worse, she thought, giving the vile potion she had concocted a foul look, mixing it around as best she could with the spoon she had been given, made out of a strange rubbery material, probably for 'safety purposes', so that their captives didn't try to kill each other.
"They might not," Clara said.
"You said they have death rays, now you've jinxed it and they probably have death rays," Oswin complained, and then she picked up one of the steaks, coated one side of it in ketchup-eggs, and hurled it at the wall where it squelched and began to slide down.
"You freaks, why are you trying to provoke them?" the Clecho demanded.
"They're here illegally and all this is illegal. Also, they're not listening to Shadow Proclomation laws. If you asked a Judoon, this would be punishable by genocide," Oswin said, going over to the dirty steak and rubbing it across the window like a sponge.
"Why do you both look like me..?" the Clecho asked. 'What do we tell this one?' Clara thought. Oswin wondered if the aliens were monitoring their mind patch somehow. She replied, 'We're all part of an alien cloning experiment?' 'No, she'll believe that and then she won't trust us.' 'Play the separated-at-birth card? Play completely dumb?' 'Are you sure you can manage playing dumb?' 'Clara. I am currently painting a wall with a steak covered in ketchup. Yes, I think I can trick one of your Clechoes.'
"Dunno," Clara said. "But I mean, this is a spaceship, so we're the least of your worries in perspective." Oswin went to replenish her ketchup supply and threw the steak at the wall again (it was admittedly fun).
"What kind of spaceship? I don't recognise the metal," the Clecho said, remaining sitting and flicking her gaze between the two of them.
"Why? What do you do?" Oswin asked, before adding telepathically to her sister, 'I swear if we have another 'genius' on our hands...' 'At least this one realised we look like her.'
"I'm an engineer for the Empire," the Clecho told them.
"The Sith Empire?" Clara asked, bewildered.
"No, not the Sith Empire, the Human Empire," Oswin told her. "You're still living in yesterday, honey." Oswin flung the steak for a third time and wondered if the aliens just didn't care if they covered their cell with food. Clara sat back down.
"Oh. Which human empire?" Clara asked the Clecho. A sensible question, as opposed to, 'Can you shoot lightning out of your hands?'
"The fourth one... Why..? Where are you from? Are you Time Agents?" the Clecho asked.
"No. Freelancers," Oswin said.
"Didn't your boyfriend go to the Fourth Great And Bountiful Human Empire before?" Clara asked.
"I don't know," said Oswin limply. He had. "He might have been lots of places. I haven't had an awful lot of conversations with him. And he's not my boyfriend."
"You spent two days isolated with him," Clara stated the fact.
"Yes, one of those days spent trying to kill a goat and the other one sleeping," Oswin said. "We did not have any weirdly meaningful conversations." She kicked the glass again, having half a mind to spit on it too.
"Then who were you talking to?" Clara asked.
"Ooh, let me think..." Oswin said in mock thought, "...Um... Oh yeah, that's right: You."
"Are you both underestimating the severity of this situation?" the Clecho asked them, disbelieving of the fact their conversation would suddenly change tact and drift towards boyfriends.
"Well, two days ago we were getting hunted by Nazis," Oswin said, "And three days ago was the zombie apocalypse, so we're not strangers to these sorts of predicaments."
"Time travel a lot?" the Clecho asked curiously. Wow, Oswin thought solely to herself, an echo of Clara's she didn't instantly hate. Aside from herself, obviously.
"That's how it goes when you marry a Time Lord," Clara said, and then there was a noise from the other side of the wall and Oswin dropped the steak and stepped away.
"Time Lord? An actual Time Lord? I thought there was only one left," the Clecho said.
"There is. That would be my husband. The Doctor," Clara said.
"The one responsible for taking out Satellite 5 a decade ago?" the Clecho asked. At least this answered the question of what year it was; 200010.
"Er, yeah. But he's changed his face twice since then and he dealt with all the consequences of Satellite 5 a few centuries ago," Clara said. And by 'dealt with the consequences,' she meant, 'thwarted a Dalek invasion and got himself killed'.
For the third time in about ten minutes the door was opened and the green glow ceased. The aliens completely blanked both Oswin and the Clecho, and fanned in a quartet procession towards Clara. Oswin and the Clecho backed away from this scene, Oswin watching guardedly in case she had to rescue Clara.
"What's going on..?" Clara asked. The aliens were speaking, but again in their nonsense speak which was not an actual language at all.
"Err..." Oswin said. The four aliens appeared to be fawning over her, and she was trapped in the middle and definitely not having a good time of it.
"Time Lord," one of the aliens said in a cruedly accented, distorted way.
"Girl Time Lord," another said. Well, their English was terrible, but they recognised what a Time Lord was... To some extent. 'They think you're a Time Lord.'
"They - what!?" Clara exclaimed to Oswin telling her this revelation psychically. She shot Oswin an alarmed look. 'Tell them yes!' Oswin ordered her, since it seemed she was rather helpless and Clara was the one holding all the power in the room. "I, er, yes," Clara spluttered, "I am a Time Lord..." The aliens made a sound of awe, and then proceeded to grab Clara's arms and pull her out of the room, not bothering to close the door behind them, so Oswin and the Clecho got out. "Oh lord, their finger-holders are so crude and odd.." Clara resumed their strange-speak.
"Where do we go!?" the Clecho asked Oswin.
"We follow them," Oswin told her in a whisper, going after Clara and the aliens, keeping a few paces behind and peeking into the other cells lining the walls. "They might have our stuff."
"Is your stuff really more important than escaping?" the Clecho hissed.
"Maybe not, but my sister is and I'm not going to leave her here," Oswin said, automatically defending Clara.
"Do you have a plan? Because I think we should try and find a map," the Clecho suggested, begrudginly keeping up with Oswin, who was quick-walking to keep Clara in view. She wondered how quickly the aliens could run, but she knew from their height and body mass that it couldn't be faster than any of the three identicals.
"Well, that's... Actually a good idea," she said, annoyed one of the echoes was intelligent. She hadn't met one yet that had a half-decent idea, it was certainly new. She knew she'd be able to get a map easily as soon as they got the sonic back and found a computer or an interface. 'Hey, what if they're like... I don't know... I mean, I imagine that from a medical perspective examining a Time Lord would be fascinating... Maybe they'll want to test the whole regeneration-thing...' Clara thought. "Crap."
"What?" the Clecho asked.
"Nothing," Oswin said. 'Ask for our stuff.'
"You can't keep me in the dark," the Clecho argued, Oswin nearly running to catch up to Clara, who was out of her sights. "We're in this together."
"No we're not," Oswin said coldly. They were in nothing together, she and Clara were there to orchestrate the happenings and solve the mysteries, the Clecho was there to stay locked up in a safe room and try not to die. Although now it seemed Clara was the one who needed locking up in a safe room to keep her out of the sadistic clutches of a gang of ET wannabes.
"Something's going on," the Clecho said.
"Yeah, we're stuck on a spaceship. That's what's going on, try and keep up," Oswin said, then she walked past a window and spotted Clara in the room, and knocked on the window. Clara who was now being bombarded by what seemed to be questions. Clara said something to them, but the room was soundproof. Although apparently whatever she said worked, because one of them opened the door and Oswin and the Clecho barged in.
"No, something else," the Clecho said.
"Oswin, have you chanced across a means we can utilise to flee yet?" Clara said.
"Oswin?" the Clecho asked her.
"Yeah. Why?" Oswin asked rather coldly, still annoyed she hadn't had a chance to test if she was a hologram. She had been able to smell the ketchup, but then again, she had been able to taste the chips the day before after her teleportation antic.
"Oswin what?" the Clecho asked, and Oswin got a nervous idea that this one had her name, which she hoped she didn't. That would only further serve the idea she was not remotely unique.
"Oswald, why?" Oswin said, resisting the urge to kick the blockade of aliens out of their way. There didn't appear to be any surgical tools.
"You're Oswin Oswald? Oh my god, I know people used to joke and say I looked like you, but..." the Clecho said, staring at her weirdly. She stepped away. Clara was ignoring the aliens now and watching this instead.
"Why..? Am I famous..?" Oswin asked slowly.
"You're the genius who got converted into a Dalek!" the Clecho exclaimed. The aliens incessant noisemaking instantly halted and all eyes turned on the pair of them. 'Oh my stars, please tell me that 'Dalek' isn't one of the words they know...' Oswin thought slowly.
"...Got the screwdriver back..?" Clara said edgily, holding it up. Oswin stepped back from the aliens, hoping the Clecho knew she had potentially just signed their death wish.
"...Can't believe that's my claim to fame..." she muttered. Clara gave her an apologetic look. "So... We're just gonna go..." Now all the focus was off Clara and on her sister, she phased through the back-turned aliens to the corner and the wall where she could escape out of if necessary without any of them noticing.
Then they started screaming in a frenzy, and Clara flung out her hand and they all started floating, although what good that was going to do was beyond her, they were still yelling.
"What's that meant to do!?" Oswin demanded of Clara.
"Give us time to escape!" Clara said, backing straight out through the wall. In a single moment, Oswin was outside the room, too, and the Clecho was left damned and confused. "Here, you have the sonic," she gave the screwdriver to Oswin.
"This is your damn Clecho's fault," Oswin grumbled when the Clecho reappeared in the hall and they started walking and talking without her, Oswin trying to think of some kind of solid plan other than find a map.
"She's your Number One Fan," Clara snickered.
"I thought you died on the Dalek Asylum?!" the Clecho said, following them.
"Could you stop saying Dalek? I don't think the aliens like it," Clara said.
"You'd know what aliens like," Oswin commented.
"My husband also dislikes me talking profusely about Daleks," Clara said boredly.
"Seriously, how are you alive!?" the Clecho continued to ask.
"I'm not, I'm a hologram, I am dead," Oswin said, "And then Clara was getting married so she brought me back to life for selfish reasons."
"I didn't, Jack and Amy did," Clara said. "Anyway, please tell me you have a plan?"
"Escape," Oswin said, and then an alarm started to blare overhead. "Wait, the plan has changed. Escape quickly."
"Oh? What were we doing before then? Escaping at a leisurely pace? Escaping in an orderly fashion? Tell me, in which directions are the fire exits?" Clara snapped.
"Shut up, I don't know how we escape yet. I have no schematics or specifications for this ship. They're speaking a nonsense language and they don't actually exist as far as I'm aware. I am not a magician," Oswin said firmly. Finally she relented however, and decided if she was a hologram again she could probably hack the spaceship without the use of a terminal, and she dredged up her holoscreens.
"Are you still walking google, then?" Clara asked.
"Apparently not. I'm dead again," Oswin muttered.
"I thought you'd be thrilled, you've been complaining all week about being hungry and the weather and not being able to teleport," Clara said, staring around the surprisingly empty and identical corridors, all silver and curved around.
"Ah yes, I'm overjoyed at the prospect of being a ghost again." She was hacking fervently into their mainframes, which were very poorly protected. She guessed they didn't think any of their hostages would break out (which had been a fantastically easy thing to do when they were in awe of Clara Oswald's sex life). In Clara's defence, she had been rather angsty about not being a hologram (see, she even defended Clara against her). Truthfully, if she could have all the benefits of being a hologram minus the whole dead-part (and the fact the only ones of her five senses she still possessed were sight and hearing), that would be perfect. Being a computer was still vastly appealing to her fundamentals. "Ugh, look at all these deadlocks..."
"Deadlocks on what?" Clara asked.
"Everything. Really badly coded deadlock seals on all of the systems. They have a firewall protecting the air vent system, how ironic..." Oswin muttered. "I am not crawling through an airvent though... Hang on... Eugh... Um... This is weird... Ah..."
"You're doing the noise thing again," Clara informed.
"The what? What's the noise thing?" Oswin asked in befuddlement, but she didn't wait for an answer, "I got locked out! Look at this bullshit!"
"Whoa there, language," Clara said.
"An outside hacker locked me out of the mainframe!" she repeated herself.
"Who? How? I thought you were a computer genius?" the Clecho asked.
"I am. They had a trap set up for anyone hacking, now a whole portion of their system maps is inaccessable because the power cut off and the whole thing's been externally downloaded and erased," Oswin complained.
"How come you didn't spot it?" Clara asked, clearly confused about Oswin's intellect 'letting them down' for once, despite the fact it wasn't her fault power had been cut from somewhere on the engineering deck.
"They were watching me hack from somewhere else and they flicked a switch... Stupid thing... Ack... They're in a maintenance area somewhere," she said. "Whatever, I already got a map, joke's on you, wasteoid..." she muttered to no-one in particular.
"Can't you hack back in?" the Clecho asked. "You hacked into the Daleks."
"I can't hack into something with no power going into it," she said. Surely this was obvious? It was like trying to google something on a computer that wasn't stwitched on.
"Hang on, who's she?" the Clecho pointed at Clara, who was affronted and clearly didn't want to defend the Clecho any more. Why were all of Clara's echoes exept Oswin complete arseholes?
"...Clara..." said Oswin slowly.
"You said sister," the Clecho said.
"...Yep... She's my sister," Oswin said. "Why? And why didn't you ask her yourself? I'm sure she's capable of speaking."
"You don't have any sisters, everybody who knows anything about you knows that. And how much you struggled for attention with your brother, Andrew," said the Clecho.
"I don't really remember a power struggle between us, as it goes," Oswin said, following the map to what she supposed was a lift or a staircase. It had arrows marked on it, so she supposed it was a way to traverse the different floors.
"It's famous! And then you got into a firefight, and you stormed off to the SS Alaska," the Clecho said.
"None of that is true, we got on fine. I mean, he's really broody and obnoxious, but he's always like that," Oswin said.
"Is he hot?" Clara butted in.
"What? I'm not answering that, Clara," Oswin said.
"She's your sister but she wants to know if your little brother is hot?" the Clecho inquired disbelievingly. Oswin glared at Clara for this, and then made note of what the echo had said.
"Andrew's a year older than me, what are you talking about?" Oswin asked, wondering why they hadn't bumped into any aliens yet. Maybe they were scared of the Time Lord With Telekinesis Who Could Walk Through Walls and the Dalek Who Could Teleport And Hack Into Their Mainframe. "What are you, president of the worst and most ill-informed fanclub ever?"
"Who's Clara?" the Clecho asked again.
"Clara's right bloody here and can actually hear you," Clara said loudly and bitterly. The Clecho seemed surprised she had spoken, and Oswin finally found the lift, and she had to sonic it to make it start when she found power had been cut to the transportation units, too. It was either the aliens trying to keep them isolated, or it was the mystery hacker trying to keep them away. It barely mattered, at any rate. "Where are we going now?"
"To find the hacker," Oswin said.
"Why? We could just leave them, we don't know who they are and they might be dangerous," Clara said. The Clecho was merely listening, which was annoying, but Oswin was in no mood for an entirely telepathic conversation at that moment as they all stood around in the strange, alien elevator, silver with green lights like everything else, the buttons lit up with flashing and unknown symbols.
Oswin thought they could use the other hacker for their own means, which was devious, but nobody was abiding by any galactic laws anymore in the flying saucer (her plans had told her it was, indeed, a circular, saucer shape, in the conventional UFO way). Someone as smart as her would be able to knaw the ship's systems down to their bones, but nobody was as smart as her, which meant it was definitely someone intelligent (possibly someone lucky) but it had still taken them a while. Also, the fact that they were holed up in the engineering deck and not in a cell. Her primary theory was a stowaway, and she was sure that whoever they were, they were definitely a member of the TARDIS crew. She didn't know who though. She found herself not wanting to tell Clara the hacker was a beyond clever member of the TARDIS crew with the initiative to stay hidden aboard an alien ship such as this, lest she give her false hope they were going to run into a warped version of her husband. It could well be the Eleventh Doctor, however it could also be the Ninth Doctor, or Professor River Song, or Captain Jack Harkness, even Rory Williams. Any of them could, potentially, be the hacker. Maybe Clara had already drawn that conclusion on her own.
"Well they don't know who we are, and we're dangerous enough," Oswin said, "You killed a man the other day."
"He was already dead. And it was not fun," Clara said defensively. Oswin hadn't had an awful lot of fun when Clara had killed the zombie, either - though that was probably because her ankle had been shattered and repositioned at a harsh, 90° angle (physical pain was another reason she would prefer to be a hologram).
"You still lodged a crowbar in its brain," Oswin said, "I was so proud of you, there were actual tears."
"Very funny," said Clara.
The lift doors slid open without another word on the subject of the mysterious hacker they were hunting. Not until they saw the person who was standing waiting for them, surrounded by piles of freshly slaughtered aliens and pools of greenish blood and holding a rifle aimed straight at Oswin's head, who instantly put up her hands in surrender.
"H-hey, River..." she said.
"Why are you surrendering?" Clara whispered.
"Because it's a holorifle, and it kills scum like her," River Song answered Clara's question. "It also kills Time Lords."
"...Well the thing about that is, you see, I'm not actually a Time Lord," Clara said, laughing like this was all some huge misunderstanding.
"I know you're not a Time Lord, I'm not an idiot like you three. What are you? Triplets? Clones? How'd you find me?" River demanded, "And how'd you know my name?"
"I'm kind of a genius," Oswin said, remaining completely still, "And if you hadn't shut off the mainframe, we'd be well on our way out of here."
"Well I only did that to stop you finding me," she said sardonically.
"Yeah, and it totally worked," Oswin said. River narrowed her eyes and glared. 'Instant hatred, yet again,' Oswin thought, 'The only person I ever met who didn't like me.' 'That's not true, I don't like you.' 'You're making me blush.'
"What were they saying about Daleks?" River asked, not moving her gun barrel away from Oswin's head at all.
"They were talking about me," Oswin said, "It's a long story involving my death. This one told the aliens." She pointed at the Clecho, who was the only one not in the loop about River's person.
"They're on high alert now, do you realise what this means?" River growled.
"It means we should follow through with our idea to escape..?" Oswin suggested, but it was plain this was not the answer River was looking for. It was also plain she had some kind of ulterior motive for being there. There were at least ten dead aliens around her in a circle, and she was completely unpertubed by this, which meant she could easily hold her own. So why was she hiding in the engineering core and hacking? "Why are you hiding down here?"
"Who says I'm hiding? Can't you see the bodies?" Oswin knew she had touched a nerve.
"Because you're not as smart as me, so it takes time to get that extensively into the mainframe. A lot of time," Oswin said. "What's your angle? You could've killed them all and hijacked the ship."
"Maybe," said River. "What's your angle?"
"My angle isn't coming anywhere near your ears unless you put that gun away, Song," Oswin said coldly. She thought that River was too intrigued to shoot her. Not yet, anyway. Accordingly, she lowered her rifle, but kept her hand on the trigger. She could raise it at a moment's notice and blow their heads off, they weren't really any safer. "We just want to escape."
"Escape? How'd you get on board?" River asked.
"How'd you get on board?" Oswin countered.
"Stowed away in their hold when they passed over Poosche," River said. Oswin would be damned if that was the whole story. A clearly hardened combatant just 'stowed away' on board an unknown vessel, and then instead of hijacking it (which she clearly had the means to do (and also, if she was obviously capable of mass murder, hijacking was not quite that extreme)). And then she hacked deep into the mainframe, while remaining coyly undetected, and set up a failsafe to ward people away?
"...Who are they?" Oswin asked, following a hunch.
"You're on their ship and you don't know who they are?" River sniped back.
"Oh, so that's why you're here..." Oswin said.
"You're doing the Face," Clara said next to her.
"Face? What? What face?" Oswin asked.
"The Face."
"I don't do a face, Clara," she said.
"Yeah you do, the, 'I've just figured everything out in five seconds' Face," Clara told her.
"Can I have a photo of the Face?" the Clecho asked.
"You're a complete weirdo and you should be quiet now," Oswin said bluntly. "And she's here to find out who the aliens are, she's got no idea either, which is why she was hacking the mainframe and hiding."
"I had an instantly bad feeling about you lot," River said, then her eyes fell on Clara and narrowed sharply, "Especially you." Clara seemed obviously offended and Oswin sighed, knowing that she had no input in any of their current location and it was exclusively Clara's imaginings. Which meant this version of River Song was created by Clara, too. And it was in no way a realistic interpretation.
"What?" Clara asked Oswin.
"Nevermind," she said. She'd explain it later, she told herself. Clara's own portrayal of River was probably something her sister should think about. "I was right though, wasn't I? About why you're here?"
"...Perhaps," River said blandly.
"Which means yes," Oswin said.
"How did you know?" Clara asked. Oswin opened her mouth to reply, when Clara cut her off and said, "And don't say, 'it's obvious'."
"Err..." Oswin droned uselessly and monotonously for a few moments.
"Why do I bother..." Clara said.
"Because... Guns and... Waiting and... Stuff..." Oswin mumbled.
"Oh, don't strain yourself," Clara said, and Oswin was unable to tell if she was being sarcastic or not. Nevertheless, she shut up.
"Well. You three want to escape. I've been compromised, by you. I think you owe me," River said.
"Hey, technically you compromised yourself," Clara said, then River made motion to lift the gun back up and Clara stepped away, strategically behind Oswin.
"What are you doing? Move! I'm not gonna be your human shield," Oswin pushed her away and she crossed her arms and pouted, and Oswin shook her head. "You are a heartless user."
"Well actually I'm not using anyone right now, so technically I'm just heartless," Clara grumbled.
"Because that's better."
"Are they always like this?" River asked the Clecho, who shrugged and continued watching Oswin like she were a museum exhibit, which was unnerving and a jot threatening to say the least.
"Like what?" they both asked at the same time. River and the Clecho exchanged some kind of secret-look, which Oswin did not like one bit. It was suspicious. Oswin continued, "Anyway, we were escaping?"
"Yes, and you were helping me to escape, too," River declared.
"...Alright..." Clara agreed carefully, and River did not spare her a glance. "If you can't do it yourself..." River was obviously offended at this.
"Uh-uh, no honey, we're leaving now," Oswin said, taking Clara's shoulders and steering her away, back towards the lift.
"You are not the boss of me," Clara complained.
"I am when you're about to get yourself killed by having a go at your husband's ex-wife," Oswin whispered so that River and the Clecho couldn't hear, who were apparently insta-friends or something.
"I do what I want."
"Okay, Clara... So who do you work for?" Oswin asked River to avoid some kind of awkward silence in the lift (the Clecho was still being weird, and Oswin was beginning to stop caring that she didn't know her real name)
"You tell me, if you're such a genius," River challenged.
"There's quite a few possibilities. You could have your own reason to find out who they are, some government somewhere could've hired you off-the-grid, since you're clearly not an agent of any legitimate sort. Maybe you've been hired by a rich space-tycoon who wants to know if he can sell them anything? Maybe a secret organisation wants to know the weak points of their ship so they can blow them to pieces and steal the salvage?" Oswin rattled off suggestions and ideas. Really, there was no solid, concrete evidence about who River was working for, be it herself or somebody else.
"And you're gonna help me complete my mission so I get paid," River said, and then she reloaded her rifle for dramatic effect and Oswin nearly scoffed, except that was probably a bad idea.
When the doors opened there were aliens all around, all of them with their own glimmering silver weaponry, and it was all aimed right at them. None of it was a holoweapon though, so she was more or less safe, she guessed. It would probably be best to keep shots to a minimum anyway, however.
"Floor, now!" River ordered. The aliens did nothing. Maybe they didn't understand the crazy woman brandishing a gun, or maybe they thought they had the upper hand. In all fairness, they could very well have the upper hand. There were ten of them and they all had guns. "FLOOR!" one of them wailed, dropped its weapon and went scampering off around the corner. Another shuffled away to follow it. Then Oswin remembered she'd been clutching the screwdriver for the whole time, and sonicked into the air. The aliens all jumped and tried to fire, but all that was heard were clicks of countless weapons being jammed. "What did you do!?" River demanded.
"What's it to you?" Clara jumped back in, but Oswin elbowed her. 'Be quiet or she'll probably shoot you.' 'I'm not afraid of her.' 'She has a gun and she will kill you. And when she figures out she can't kill you, she'll kill me, and you remember when I explained the whole die-in-the-dream thing?' 'Yes. I remember. It's the Matrix.' 'Well, no, not... Okay, fine, it's the Matrix, if that makes it easier for you to understand...' Clara scowled.
"What's it to me is I'm the one in charge here," River said. Then, when River was briefly distracted by Clara pointlessly arguing, Oswin grabbed one of the alien pistols and held it straight up next to River's head.
"You're in charge, are you?" Oswin said. Clara seemed the most alarmed by this change of pace, but the Clecho seemed thrilled. Oswin didn't want to know what lies the Clecho thought she knew about Oswin's sordid exploits in the Dust War on Horizon. She didn't particularly want anyone else to hear a twisted version of the truth, especially if the Clecho was convinced she was right. Oswin sonicked River's rifle, and then lowered her own stolen pistol (she didn't want to get rid of it in case it turned out to be useful later). "I don't have to do anything you ask, I'm not your geek monkey and you're not the only one who knows how to use a gun." This River may be a fractured and flawed version of the original from the dark delves of Clara's mind and was most unlike her real counterpart, but that didn't change the fact she was being completely rash and uncivil. The aliens scattered.
"Lead on," said River with a cruel smirk, as though she had some miracle ace in the hole. '...Hey, don't let her lift that gun back up. Or hit me,' Oswin told Clara, who made no notion to show her acknowledgment of this request. Oswin got her map back up and wondered where they should go.
"We should blow the ship up," the Clecho said.
"What? No," Oswin told her, "There's never a good reason for genocide. We just have to escape. The escape pods are our best bet."
"What about other abductees?" Clara asked. Always thinking about the other people and overcomplicating things in the process.
"What about them?" Oswin asked, "We can't go rescue individual people. We don't even know how many there are, or who they are, or where they want - SHIT! AGAIN!"
"What is it this time?" Clara asked.
"Somebody closed off all the teleportation circuits!" she glared at River, who said nothing in her own defence.
"Can't we use the lift?" Clara suggested.
"No, the escape pods are on the other side of the ship two decks above this one, that lift only goes to engineering," she said.
"So what do we do now? Can you hack it?" the Clecho asked.
"No, it's a power cut. How many times do I have to tell you that if there's no power you obviously can't infiltrate it," Oswin shook her head. "It has to be restored manually... By the Captain... From the fortified cockpit..."
"Well that sounds fun," Clara whinged.
"Yeah, Clars, I'm sure you'll have a ball of a time in the cockpit," Oswin snorted. "But we do actually have to go there and reconfigure the computers. Which would not have happened if River had been sensible to begin with."
"I was keeping myself hidden."
"And you did a terrible job of it," Oswin criticised, walking off and following the plans towards the cockpit, which was thankfully nearby.
"But seriously, what about the others?" Clara pressed.
"...Okay, fine, I will figure something out, but I still need full access and I need the physical terminal for that," Oswin said grimly. She was wondering if this venture would involve the slaughter of more extraterrestrials... She wasn't too morally bothered about killing them. They were kidnapping and experimenting on people, plus, they weren't a species that actually existed and they were completely imaginary.
Then one of the aliens ran straight out of a door ahead of them, shooting wildly. Oswin ducked, and in the fray River snatched the blaster right out of her hand, aimed, and shot the creature straight through the brain so hard its head tore away from its body. Greenish spurted everywhere, covering the ground as the alien's muscles constricted and kept it running briefly until it fell to its knees and then straight forwards in front of them, a trickle of blood making a vomit-coloured pool on the floor at River's feet. Oswin and Clara both stared, completely dumbstruck at what had just happened. River gave the gun back to Oswin, who didn't know if she'd ever seen a head explode before. It was a sight, to say the least.
"Can I have my gun unjammed now?" River asked.
"Urrr... Yeah..." Oswin stuttered, sonicking the holorifle. Maybe she would let River do all the killing, if it came to it. In fact, that was probably the best idea.
There was cool silence surrounding them as the cockpit door loomed ahead, although it didn't look different to any of the other doors. Oswin wouldn't have realised that was what it was if she didn't have a map up.
Then River walked ahead of the other three and opened the door herself.
"NOBODY MOVE, DOWN ON THE GROUND!" she bellowed. The aliens had no idea what was going on (they really weren't an organised race, it seemed), and didn't obey. They probably didn't understand. And then River started shooting. The first one to go was the one standing on a raised, central platform and wearing grey in comparison to the others, who were wearing white. She assumed this was the Captain, and he exploded in the same gruesomely awesome way the other one did.
"Do you condone this!?" Clara asked Oswin, who was shamelessly fascinated by the gore.
"Hmm? Oh... No. No, not at all. It's despicable," she lied. Well, it was only a half-lie. Theywere despicable acts, but she was not outwardly against them.
Once the majority of the aliens were dead, Oswin wended her way through the messes of corpses towards the Captain's terminal, sitting in his throne-like chair to use it.
"This is super cool. Clara, I've decided, when we get home, I'm getting my own spaceship," Oswin said to Clara, who had nothing better to do except follow her and try to keep from annoying River so much she shot one of them.
"Get to hacking," River said.
"Well hang on, there's a lot of stuff I have to do," she argued. She unlocked all the cell doors to the other experiments, sincerely hoping none of them were insane and bloodthirsty, and then she only kept the doors going to the teleportation station open, and permanently locked the teleporter so it could only send people to the docking bay where there were ships to commandeer. "There, I've saved the people. Well, I've made it so they can save themselves. Unless you want to go escort them out?"
"I'm good," Clara said flatly. Oswin suspected as much.
"Private escape route over there," Oswin said, pointing to her left at a cylindrical pod she knew to be a teleportation module, which lit up the same vibrant green as everything else when she pointed. "For the Captain, I'd imagine. One at a time."
The rest of the aliens had been (needlessly) murdered by the time the teleporter was activated. River decided the Clecho had to go first, and then she followed.
"Is she that bad in real life!?" Clara asked Oswin as soon as River was out of the room.
"No. You've got a really weird problem, you know that?" she accused.
"Me? Why?"
"Today is all from YOUR head. This is YOUR portrayal of her, and it's so wrong it means YOU are looking for reasons to hate her," Oswin said to Clara.
"I don't hate or dislike her! I don't think anything of her at all!" Clara stated shrilly.
"Nobody told you to be a saint, Clars," Oswin said, "If you don't like your husband's ex-wife you don't have to keep it a secret. I mean, not from me. Maybe from your husband. And her."
"Not talking about this. Going to teleport," Clara muttered.
"I'll meet you down there. I don't need the thingy," she nodded towards the teleporter where Clara was standing, then Clara pushed the button inside and vanished at the same time Oswin locked down all the systems apart from the escape pods and the single teleporter in the cockpit.
Oswin was down in the shuttle bay a second later, just ahead of Clara.
"How'd you beat me?" she asked.
"Easily," was all Oswin said. Then the Clecho ran up.
"She flew away without us!" the Clecho shouted, pointing at one of the small ships, which was just about to fly out of the bay doors. Oswin shrugged.
"Meh, she'll be fine," she said, going over to the nearest ship and unlocking it using the panel on the side, then she flitted into it as the ladder lowered down for the other two. Ships and shuttles were easy enough to pilot.
"Do you know how to fly this?" the Clecho asked.
"Of course she does, she knows how to do everything," Clara said, then she gave Oswin a smug look, "Don't say I never come to your defence."
"You only did that to prove a point," Oswin disputed her as the ship's engines started humming, and she ignored the sight of fleeing humans and aliens in the hanger, and then they were out in the stars and she u-turned to do a fly-by and see what they had actually been on. "Whoa..." she said. For it was not just one ship, there was a whole fleet of silver flying saucers parked in space against the starry backdrop. Clara clearly had no imagination for making an alien spaceship escape remotely difficult, but she was exhausted enough after the whole day of sci-fi, then this hellish abduction. She wished she could sleep, but she hardly trusted the autopilot.
"That's a lot of spaceships," Clara said. "Who were they?" she asked. Oswin had downloaded the entire database and given it to River on a memory storing device, pretending she hadn't read them all already. River had got her information, but whether she believed it was another matter entirely. Oswin certainly did not.
"Doesn't matter," Oswin shrugged.
"You should tell me. You should also tell me your IQ," Clara said.
"Her IQ? It's 800," the Clecho said.
"What!?" Oswin and Clara said in unified shock. Oswin continued, "My IQ is definitelynot 800."
"Who were the aliens?" Clara asked as Oswin checked the nearby systems for any kind of fuel depot or civilised planet.
"Martians. Their files said they were from Mars."
"You're telling me there were little green men from Mars kidnapping and abducting humans in flying saucers?" Clara scrutinised. 'I told you. I told you it was a world of YOUR creation.'
"I know this system," the Clecho said, peering at the radar. "I also know how to fly this ship."
"Oh, you can fly then," Oswin, who was in no mood to chauffeur Clara and her still unknown echo around the systems. She relented the seat and the controls easily and went to sit in one of the three painful looking chairs in the back. "Just go wherever. But preferably somewhere with beds."
"Did this seriously all happen?" Clara asked in a lowered voice to stop the echo overhearing.
"Well, it is a dream. We better get to sleep though. It feels like the rest period is over... If I were you, I wouldn't expect tomorrow to turn up anything glamorous," Oswin advised grimly.
It was a good few hours of star exploration later that the echo finally found somewhere she decided was good enough to stay, and Oswin was none too thrilled to find out it was the interstellar version of a grotty motel. But then she reminded herself that so far in their dream-time she had slept in a rotted, partially-flooded cellar, another dingy hovel much like that one, a beach, a desert, a disgustingly filthy caravan, a destroyed house in the middle of the zombie apocalypse and a slimy alleyway. She wasn't one to complain about the squalor they were stuck in.
"I think I might cry tears of joy when we wake up and I get to sleep in my own bed," Clara told Oswin.
"I just think I might cry in general," Oswin said, seeing a rat scurrying out of a chewed corner of one of the room doors.