It should have been too much for her mind to take in, but instead of passing out, she felt the strangest sensation of being perfectly calm all of a sudden The light seemed warm and friendly, like the embrace of a friend. As though she was in a deep dream state, she could no longer feel her physical being, and seemed to exist on a higher plane of consciousness only. Her mind was clear of thoughts and impressions alike. It was an unnatural state, but it was affecting her in such a way that she was not concerned about it at all...

...And then, a voice spoke to her.

...As you know, the Master's plan to take me to some faraway planet or time failed.
Yes, he had me undergoing physical and mental reconstruction, but after the damages my TARDIS had taken from him, she wouldn't let him go anywhere without putting up a fight first. And so, as we dropped out of the vortex early and the Master was preoccupied with the energy fluctuations, I managed to break free.

He had not expected me to, surely, and quite frankly, neither had I. Since the process of the Chameleon Arch had almost been completed already, I struggled to retain a single clear thought, not to mention my consciousness. But, with the moment of surprise to my advantage, I overwhelmed him and caused him to flee from the TARDIS.

Of course, I followed him out of the door, but by that time I was hardly a Time Lord any longer, and so I failed to remember why I was chasing him. Somehow, though, I still managed to lock the TARDIS door behind me… Curious, isn't it? The force of habit, I suspect!

Even now, I don't remember where we landed. I must have collapsed too quickly to get a look at my surroundings.
And the next time I woke up after that, I had traded about seven hundred years of experience for a mediocre retelling of half a human life…

But you have heard all about it already, haven't you?

And then, with the last quiet echo of the voice fading in the distance, a new sound arose in the silence that had been left behind. Too far away and indistinct to identify it at first, the familiar wheezing noise of the TARDIS slowly grew louder and louder.

Sarah only really began to understand in what a sleep-like state she had been when, suddenly, she felt someone patting her arm. It was as though she had truly forgotten about her physical being for a time, but now reality was pulling her back in. She realized eventually that the ground underneath her was made of wooden floorboards, and quite uncomfortable, too.

"Wakey, wakey! Rise and shine!", said the voice now, but it sounded so much closer and stronger than before. There was confidence, and optimism, and just the hint of a laugh in it.

"Doctor?" Sarah blinked her eyes and attempted to prop herself up on her elbows, though her body still felt strangely numb and unwilling to move. The feeling ebbed away slowly, while it allowed her consciousness to take control again. As she blinked half-aware at her surroundings, she discovered her tall, alien friend squatting beside her. He was beaming his trademark ear-to-ear grin at her, and his eyes were sparkling with joy.

"Blimey, Doctor! What was that…?", muttered the voice of Harry, not too far away to Sarah's left. She turned to find the medical officer lying on the floor next to her, and scratching his head as he recollected his senses. It seemed that he had experienced the same strange phenomenon as she had.

With a light chuckle in response to his companion's reactions, the Doctor reached for the arms of both of his friends, and, after Sarah had found some grip on his wrist, he pulled them to their feet simultaneously. He seemed to do it with such an unexpected ease, too. "Come now!", he called out while his friends recovered from their little, unintended nap. "No wonder you humans miss out on all the interesting events! You spent half of your lives asleep!"

There was a happiness in his voice along with a certain, newly found energy which leapt into Sarah's mind as he spoke like an electric arc. She was grinning back at him even before she was fully aware why. "Doctor! It's YOU! I mean; You remember now, don't you?!", she exclaimed, and he nodded in response long before she had finished her sentence.

"Haha! Quick on the uptake as ever, Sarah!", he laughed, and you might be led to believe his face would crack in half if his grin stretched any wider.

Sarah was flailing her hands about as she held back her inner wish to celebrate the Doctor's recovery with a group hug, but when the Doctor suddenly raised a finger in front of her face, she kept still, perplexed.

Though his joyful expression remained unchanged, he directed a somewhat criticizing look at her and Harry. "And still-!", he began anew, "It makes me wonder why it took you so long to figure out what to do with that stupid little watch…!"

"Come, Doctor, we only did what was safe for us to do without putting your health at risk.", Harry attempted to justify the delay. "Besides, aren't you the one with time to spare? What's two months to a Time Lord?"

"Nothing! But to a human, it's a bloody long time!", complained the Doctor. He let his two friends stand there and walked back into the circle of the inner railing to take his rightful place at the console. "And apart from that, let me tell you: the human body is rubbish! How can an organic system be so high maintenance!?"

Sarah had a bad feeling – or rather, a good feeling – that he was only just warming up. Of course, now that he had his superiority back, he had to relish it. She crossed her arms in front of her body while she let him for the time being, and merely exchanged a glance with Harry to transmit an unspoken "Here we go again…!" to the fellow human. Anyone else might have taken the Doctor's words as offensive, but Sarah was glad to hear him complain, to draw that line between his kind and hers, because he was like that: He was not human, and, most certainly, had never wanted to be.

The Doctor made some smaller corrections to the TARDIS' systems and gestured to himself while he looked back on his experiences in the past months to draw more complaints from them. "Your nervous system blows every little thing out of proportions! No wonder you have no brain capacity left to deal with the important questions in life. And don't even get me started on the respiratory system!", the alien continued, before his head suddenly shot up from the controls in front of him and he directed his stare straight at the medical officer. "Harry, tell me! Why is the human body still affected by non-lethal illnesses? Shouldn't your medicine be advanced enough already to rid your society of such petty little problems like the common cold permanently?"

Harry, with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, gave a shrug in return. "Well, Doctor… we're trying to solve the problems we have with lethal illnesses first..."

Unsatisfied with the answer, the Doctor simply turned back to the console and muttered grouchily something like "Maybe you'd be more successful with that if you had approached the simple problems first..."

Meanwhile, Sarah began to giggle so loudly that it was not long until the other two members of the current TARDIS crew were looking her way. Once she had regained some control over herself, she attempted to explain what was so funny. "Did you just say the cold was petty?", she asked the Doctor with some amusement. "What became of: This wretched cold is going to be the death of me, Sarah?" For good measure, she even mocked his voice. If anyone would have known how much he had exaggerated his suffering, it was her!

"He actually said that?"
Harry raised his eyebrows as he turned to her, and, as Sarah nodded back, he began to laugh, too.

"Like I said, every little thing is blown out of proportions...", the Doctor justified himself. He spoke pronounced slowly, and shot them a haughty glare, just to show – or to pretend – that his dignity was hurt.

"Is that so? I thought that you were just not used to getting ill.", she replied, still smiling and chuckling quietly to herself.

"All right, enough with the idle chit-chat and dilly-dallying!", exclaimed the Doctor suddenly – presumably to change the topic before Sarah could think of more of his statements to blackmail him with.
With a hum, the scanner screen of the TARDIS opened behind Sarah and Harry, allowing all three of them to take a look outside. They were still in the mirror world, all right, but the picture showed that their reflections, along with a couple of others were standing between the support frames below them now. Yes, below! The TARDIS was hovering! Sarah didn't even know the machine was able to do that!
"Once we've made it out, we still have to deal with the Cobalttonis' invasion machine; The tetrahedron, as you called it. Which, of course, is no false declaration...", their pilot explained further, as though he had always known what they had been dealing with.

Impressed by the space craft's hover mode, Sarah could not help but notice that the time machine appeared to be working properly, after all. "Just how did you get the TARDIS to move again? I thought she was still damaged?", asked the young woman the Doctor, knowing very well that he had the answers now. All the answers!

"Oh, the TARDIS can bypass a broken conduction path herself, if only she has enough time to gather the energy for it. And she's had plenty of time recently.", replied her friend with ease. "You see, the problem was that my muscle memory could only recall the coordinates for London, but the coordinate system inside of this pocket universe does not extend far enough to have an equivalent to London. Of course it couldn't work. I was tearing the pocket universe's edges towards its centre by accident."
He was smiling victoriously as he took hold of a lever. "Not this time, however! This time, we're breaking right out of here back into our own universe!"
Taking a glance over to Sarah, then Harry, they knew he finally had a plan. The Doctor waved them over to his side. "You better hold on to something! It's going to be a very bumpy flight.", he warned his companions, though he was slowly pushing the lever forwards even before the two of them had made their way over to the railing.

The TARDIS tilted forwards lightly, which caused Sarah to stumble across the step into the inner railing, but she managed to grab a hold of Harry's arm, who had been slightly quicker to make it to the centre of the room. The medical officer pulled her closer so she could steady herself by the console frame like he did and they exchanged a smile. Things were finally looking up now!

When Sarah turned back towards the Doctor next to her, she noticed him licking his lips as he put the lever to full stop and eagerly waited for the forces of acceleration inside of the TARDIS to increase. Through the scanner picture, they watched as the TARDIS spun forwards through the seemingly infinite pocket universe. Whatever force the time capsule was exerting on its surroundings, it caused the world around them to distort and blur, like a bent mirror that was being shaken, or the ripple a drop caused on the reflective surface of still water.

"You're breaking through the infinite loop to get to the interface to the outside world!", realized Sarah with a gasp.

The Doctor smiled at her with pride. "Let's see what their field stabilizers are made of, shall we?"

Beyond the ripples in the pocket universe, the real world appeared, along with the vague outlines of UNIT soldiers still fighting against their reflection counterparts. The TARDIS shot forwards, towards that window, and with a loud crash, they were free!

==== ==== End of EPISODE 5 ==== ====


So obviously, I am not quite done yet!
It seems, however, that Episode 6 might turn out a little short, now that this story is merely missing its conclusion. Not that it will be easy to write, there are so many things that need explaining in order to wrap everything up.

Anyway - there's not much for me to remark on Episode 5. It was much fun to write and adds so much to the character's premise and moral of the story.