Chapter 3: The Rebel Flesh

"So, Doctor, now that you've got us all here together... What now?" Cleaves' ganger inquired while the crew of human contractors and their ganger counterparts eyed each other in bewildered silence.

"Before we do anything-" the Doctor said calmly, holding up a finger. "I have a quick question: has anyone got a pair of shoes that I could borrow? Size ten, although I should warn you I have very wide feet." He waved his hands in a broad gesture to illustrate the thought and Koschei shook his head half amused and half resigned.

"What have you done to yours?" He inquired in a jaded drawl.

"Acid, outside. Bit of a hiccup with the TARDIS," the Doctor explained with an indecipherable flutter of his hands.

Koschei sat up to face him and his expression darkened.

"Minor one. Very small, like a 'hic' with no 'up'," the Doctor rambled, then turned back to the others. "Shoes?"

Amy shook her head, blinking rapidly as if to try and shake the nonsense away from her mind.

"Doctor. If you've done anything to-" Koschei began to threaten, but the Doctor flitted over to press a hand over his mouth.

"Shh-shh. This is important. This lot needs to get to know each other- well, themselves." The Doctor shrugged and amended "Ganger-selves. You understand. If we're going to get out of here we need to work together. So!" He pulled his hand away from Koschei's face, covertly wiping the saliva off on Koschei's jacket before clapping and spinning to address the others. "Let's see if we can't build a little trust."

"Oh yes, that's it Doctor. Befriend them. Team up with them," Cleaves sneered bitterly as she searched through her locker, dropping item after useless item on the floor beside her. "How about you make a football team with them while you're at it! How about that? You'd rather have us gathered all together, singing campfire songs." She concluded, finding what she'd been looking for. She slammed the Locker door shut with unnecessary force and stalked out of the locker room.

"These gangers, they were never Moss. They're not copies. The lightning has hardwired them. Their intelligent life forms and now, they are becoming people," the Doctor explained with a sweeping gesture. Koschei let out a short scoff and Rory glared disapprovingly at him from his place at the other end of the table. Koschei just favored the Biosynth with a challenging expression until he averted his eyes.

"With souls," the Doctor added, barely sparing their silent confrontation a passing glance.

"Rubbish," Dicken disagreed then let out a huge sneeze.

"Bless you," Ganger-Dicken said politely.

"We were all jelly once, little jelly eggs sitting in goop," the Doctor remarked.

"Yeah, thanks. Too much information."

"Not true anyway," Koschei murmured dismissively, drawing another fleeting glance from the Doctor before the Timelord went back to ignoring him.

"This is not an accident that we are talking about here," he continued smoothly. "We are talking about sacred life. The creation of a group of brand new life forms and what you do with this new discovery. Do you understand?" He looked around at the humans and gangers around them until he was certain that they had all accepted the point. "Good. Now, the TARDIS is trapped in an acid pool."

"Brilliant," Koschei remarked with a huff of sarcastic laughter before turning his back on the group to brood in the shadows on the other end of the room.

"Once I can reach it I can get all of you off of this island," the Doctor promised. "Human's and gangers. Hey, how does that sound?"

Jimmy smiled. "I can make it home for Adam's birthday."

"What about me? He's my son too?" Ganger-Jimmy asked.

"You? You really believe that?" Jimmy shot back, sounding affronted.

"I-"

"Can we argue about this at another time, please?' Amy cut in. All of this strange interplay between the contractors and their duplicates was beginning to make her feel sick. It was reminding her more and more of the suppressed memory that she had recovered back on that vampire infested cargo ship last week, and revealing more frightening questions about what it could possibly mean.

"Amelia," the Doctor said gently, resting a comforting hand on her shoulder and she nodded.

"Sorry."

"She's right though," Ganger-Buzzer pointed out. "We need to get out of here before the storm gets too dangerous. We can bicker about the finer points once we're on the Doc's ship."

"Thank you Buzzer. Excellent point," The Doctor acknowledged. "First step, we need to find Jenifer and Cleaves, and find a way to access the TARDIS."

"I'll go look for them," Jimmy volunteered, already heading for the door.

"I'll give you a hand if you like," Ganger-Jimmy offered, moving to follow him.

The human faltered momentarily but then nodded. "Right, thanks. We'll cover more ground."

Before they could reach the door, Cleaves darted in through the back and made herself known with a shout of "This circus has gone on long enough!" She leveled a pistol-shaped energy weapon at the group still gathered around the table.

"Oh, great," Ganger-Cleaves thought aloud. "You see that is just so typically me."

"Doctor. Tell it to shut up," Cleaves snapped.

"Cleaves! Please! No. No. No," the Doctor disapproved with open aggravation.

"Doctor!?" Amy prompted tensely, stepping in front of the nearest ganger with her eyes glued to the other woman's weapon.

Ganger-Buzzer put a hand up to her arm, informing her in a hushed voice. "That'll kill you too."

"He's right. Circuit probe," Cleaves elaborated. "This little thing could kill any one of us."

"Yes, but why?" Rory responded incredulously, keeping himself positioned in between Jenifer and the apparent madwoman.

"The point is: this probe could kill any one of us, so I think she should work on gangers just as well."

"That is not the part that's unclear," Amy noted tightly as the Doctor slowly made his way around her and Ganger-Buzzer in order to face Cleaves.

"You know it's interesting, you refer to them as it," the Doctor said, gesturing towards the gangers. "But you call a glorified cattle prod 'she'."

Amy scowled at him, silently questioning whether he was trying to get himself shot, but he didn't seem to get the message.

"Get us real people off of this island and I will gladly discuss philosophy over a pint with you, Doctor," Cleaves responded, not lowering her weapon even a centimeter.

"What are you going to do to them?" Amy tried.

"I'm sorry but they're monsters, mistakes," Cleaves spat. "They have to be destroyed."

"Just give me the probe, Cleaves," the Doctor gently requested.

"We always have to take charge, don't we, Miranda," Ganger-Cleaves noted, looking darkly amused. "Even if we've got no idea what the hell we're doing."

Cleaves moved the gun probe to point at Ganger-Cleaves and Ganger-Buzzer pushed past Amy to try and stop her. Cleaves swept her arm to the side and shot him instead, causing Amy to let out a startled shriek. She took a few deep breaths before dropping to her knees beside him.

"You killed him!"

"We call it 'decommissioned'," Cleaves corrected while the Doctor hurried over to see for himself.

"You killed him. You stopped his heart," the Doctor countered, turning to shout accusingly up at her "He had a heart!"

Ganger-Jen let out a fearful whine and shrank away when Cleaves pointed the weapon at her next. Rory held an arm out to shield her.

"A human heart!" The Doctor continued to shout. "Aorta, valves, a real, human, heart!"

"Jen?" Rory questioned, but she flinched away from him too.

"That's what'll happen to us too if we trust you!" she sobbed and fled the room, quickly followed by the rest of the surviving gangers.

"Wait!" The Doctor cried, snapping his head up to watch them leave. "No, no, no! Wait, just wait!"

Ganger buzzer hesitated, catching Ganger-Jimmy's arm and looking back. Cleaves moved to shoot them.

"No!" Rory grabbed her gun arm and squeezed until she dropped the probe.

"Let me go you idiot!" Cleaves protested, struggling to get free while reaching for the weapon with her free hand. Amy kicked it away while the gangers fled. Rory just held the struggling contractor in place without any sign that he was having even the slightest difficulty, until her would be targets were well out of harms way. Then he dropped her wrist unceremoniously and entirely without warning, almost causing her to fall flat on her face.

"What the bloody hell is wrong with you!?" she shouted, jumping to her feet.

"You have no idea what you've just done, Cleaves," the Doctor said. His voice was frighteningly quiet, but much like most other things around the island, that detail flew straight over the irate woman's head.

"You don't get it Doctor. If it's war, it's war," Cleaves argued. "It's us and them now!"

"You're the only one who said that it was," Amy pointed out, favoring the shorter woman with a frosty smile when Cleaves turned to glare at her.

"You would say that, you and your freak of a husband," Cleaves shot back, shaking her wrist out absently before she noticed the deep-purple bruise forming over her wrist. "Look what you did to my arm! Come to think of it, Rory, you're one hell of a lot stronger than you look!"

"Sorry," Rory replied in a neutral tone. "To be honest, you should just count yourself lucky that you didn't provoke Apollo..." he trailed off as they all registered the unlikely-hood of that occurrence. Everyone except Cleaves and the Doctor looked around for any sign of the grumpy redhead, but he was long gone.

"Where's he gone?" Buzzer asked, sounding appropriately disturbed.

"You don't think the gangers took him?" Jimmy said doubtfully.

Cleaves looked smug and opened her mouth, probably to argue the point but the Doctor spoke instead.

"No. They wouldn't take him. Even if they were interested, they're nowhere near that powerful."

"Powerful," Cleaves scoffed, turning a condescending look on the Timelord only for it to melt from her face when she caught sight of his grave expression. There was a haunted look in his eyes that made him suddenly seem a whole lot older than someone with such youthful features had any right to. He was ancient, and alien and all the humans around him could feel it like a palpable force blanketing the room.

"Doctor?" Jimmy inquired. The Doctor's eyes locked on Cleaves'.

"You don't know what you've done."

"You tried. We all tried and look what they did," Ganger-Jenifer said from the deck of the interface chamber while the others unpacked the pressure suits in the room below.

"Jenifer..." Ganger-Cleaves lamented but the other ganger only glared more determinedly.

"It's us and them now," she insisted.

The other gangers looked up at her, nodding in solemn agreement.

"Us and them," Ganger-Dicken stated, passing a suit to Ganger-Jimmy.

"Us and them," he agreed.

"Yes, yes. I can understand the feeling," a smooth baritone remarked from the darkened corridor behind Jenifer. She whirled around to face down the intruder, her face in the half-formed mask of a ganger and she hissed. "Now, now. No need to fuss over little old me," the Master purred as he stepped out of the shadows. He leaned elegantly against the side of the doorway while the others took up defensive positions around the entrance to their lair. Their pale, unblinking eyes watching him out of half-formed faces. Koschei let his eyes roam over them with a patronizing look on his face.

"What do you want, Apollo?" Cleaves demanded distrustfully.

"It seems that we have a common enemy, Miranda."

Jenifer hissed and lunged for him. His left hand caught her by the scruff of her neck and held her at arms' length as if she was no more than a misbehaving puppy.

"You do want to tip the scales in your favor, don't you."

"Let me go!" Jenifer protested, flapping her hand around in front of his face in a failed attempt to slap him.

"Do be quiet, Dear. The adults are talking," he dismissed without taking his eyes off of Cleaves'.

"And why would you want to join us?" Cleaves responded, studying him appraising.

"As you said yourself, Boss," the Master's face split in a manic grin as his features shifted into the half-formed, translucent visage of an unstable ganger. "It's us and them."

The other gangers all stared at him in shock. Jen had gone completely still with all thought of struggling chased from her mind by utter disbelief.

"You- You're-" Jimmy murmured at a loss. Flinching slightly when the Master dropped Jen causing her stumble backwards on unsteady feet until she caught herself just short of falling backwards down the steps.

"I know. I had you going, didn't I? Fooled the others too for a while, but Little Sister was catching on," the Master said conversationally, stepping forward to lean towards them over the arm-rail. "They've started scheming behind my back, and I simply can't have that. They forgot who they were dealing with; I know them too well to be fooled by the nice-guy act, and I have no intention of letting them simply discard me in exchange for him. You need a mind that can counter the Doctor's."

Cleaves narrowed her eyes at him, while Dicken and Jimmy exchanged uncertain glances.

"Ah! I know what you're thinking 'We can't trust him. He's insane!'" Ganger-Koschei quipped in a high-pitched Pythonesque impression of a female voice.

Cleaves tilted her head, giving him a chastising look, but didn't comment.

"You're right," Koschei confirmed, dropping the impression. "I am a bit mad, but I am also at least as intelligent as the Doctor is, and one hundred times better than he could ever hope to be in combat. So, we have a deal?" He held out his hand for Cleaves to shake, barely even bothering to make it sound like a question.

"Boss?" Jimmy asked, still sounding wary of Koschei.

Cleaves ran her eyes over Koschei's face one last time. Then she reached up and took his hand. "Welcome to the team, Apollo."

"Thank you, but please. We both know my name's not Apollo."

Cleaves smirked as if proud that some suspicion of hers had just been confirmed.

"It's Sajyuol, but you can call me the Master," Sajyuol informed her smugly.

There was a beat of silence.

"It's good to meet you, Sai," Cleaves deadpanned.

"It's the Master."

"Keep dreaming," Cleaves countered equally grim.

Sajyuol stared her down for a moment, then let out a huff. "Fine, but I'm never calling you Boss."

"Suit yourself."

Dicken leaned closer to whisper to Jimmy. "Maybe we could just crush the humans under the wait of these two's combined egos, eh mate?"

Jimmy snorted but quickly wiped any sign of his amusement from his face when the two in question turned to look at them, trying to pass it off as a coughing fit.

The Doctor stood on the far end of the room staring out the windows at the solar storm while the others bickered behind his back. "Someplace safe..." he thought aloud. "The most fortified and defensible room in the monastery." He turned and called over his shoulder. "Cleaves!"

The woman jumped at the harsh shout and snapped her attention to him. "What?"

"The most fortified and defensible room in the monastery?"

"Oh. The chapel," Cleaves answered, trying to appear undaunted by his brusqueness. "Only one way in, stone walls- two feet thick."

"Thank you," the Doctor acknowledged, then he looked over at Rory.

"I'll see you all later," Rory announced standing from where he'd been crouched over Ganger-Buzzer's body, and heading for the exit.

"What? Where do you think you're going?" Amy asked following after him.

"Someone still needs to find Jenifer."

"Fine. I'll go with you then."

"No," The Doctor called after her. "Sorry Amelia, but I need you with me for now."

"But..." Amy hesitated watching Rory turn regretfully towards her when he reached the doorway.

"I'll be fine. I promise," he assured her. Then his visual sensors lit bright blue, betraying his artificial origin and he gave her a little half smile. "They wont be after me."

Cleaves gasped, instinctively reaching towards the probe the Doctor had left on the table between them. He slapped her hands, shooting her a scolding look.

"Honestly!" he chastened pocketing the weapon.

"Be careful," Amy told her husband. "I fully expect you to be all in one piece when you come back."

"You too." And with that Rory vanished into the darkened corridor. Amy stared at the empty doorway for a moment before spinning on her heel and placing her hands on her hips. "Alright. You all heard the Doctor pack up anything you might need. We're going to the chapel."

Their journey to the new stronghold was surprisingly uneventful until they were halfway through the door. Buzzer looked behind them to see the three, suited gangers marching purposefully towards them.

"Here they come!" he warned the others prompting Amy to look back as well. She pulled the Master's screwdriver out of her pocket and shooed him towards the door.

"Hurry up everyone. Get inside. She prompted, positioning herself at the rear of the group as their impromptu guard.

"what are you going to do?" Cleaves asked a tad dismissively.

"Come on. In you get!" the Doctor instructed, pulling her towards the door. The gangers were getting a little too close for comfort now, and stun-setting or not, Amy would rather not open fire on them.

"Amelia!" The Doctor prompted once the others were safely past and she darted into the chapel without hesitation. The Doctor slammed the door shut and sonic-ed it while the gangers on the other side began to try and ram it open. "We need to block this off!"

The contractors were already swarming around him, beginning to pile grates against the trembling portal. "We've got this, Doctor." Cleaves told him and he backed off to wander through the chamber.

"What now?" Amy asked.

"I'm thinking."

"We're in trouble aren't we?" Amy said darkly, studying his grim face.

The Doctor didn't answer outright, just looked her in the eye then turned away to stare into the shadows around the flesh vat.

"Why? Why?" an eerily familiar voice called out of the darkness.

The Doctor straightened to his full height. "Show yourself!"

"Why?"

"Who are you?" The Doctor persisted, creeping closer while Amy fell back to help Buzzer carry a heavy metal barrel over to the others at the door. There was a burst of manic giggles from the shadows.

"This is insane," Jimmy objected pressing his back to the door. "We're fighting ourselves!"

"Yes. It's insane and it's about to get even insanerer..." the Doctor reflected, leaning forward to try and peer farther into the darkness without entering it himself. "Is that even a word?"

"Doctor?" Amy questioned, coming to stand at his side.

"Doesn't matter," he said. "Show yourself! Right now!"

"Doctor, please focus," Amy urged, but the Doctor still kept staring into the darkness. "We are trapped in here, the TARDIS is out of reach, and the Master– or his ganger– or whatever he is, is running around loose out there with them! What are we going to do about it?"

There was a murmur from the shadows.

"Didn't you hear that?"

"Look at me!" Amy snapped. "We need a plan! We can't stop them from here and we have to get off this island!"

"Correct in every respect," the Doctor's voice replied, but she'd been looking right at his face and his lips had not moved. "It's frightening, unexpected. Frankly, it's a total splattering mess on the carpet."

Everyone in the room turned to stare at the source of the new voice, with varying levels of shock and horror on their faces.

"But I am certain, 100% certain, that we can work this out," said the ganger in the disturbingly familiar suit and bow tie as he walked towards them out of the shadows. "Trust me," he added with a self-assured smile,adjusting his bow tie. "I'm the Doctor."

A/N: Ok guys. Here it is. Sorry that it's a bit rough. It isn't betaed, but I think it's still alright... I hope. Thanks for reading, as always and i hope you still enjoyed this. Special thanks to GuesssWho for reviewing. Please, feel free to let me know what you think.