Clara put her head in her hands, trying to think of a way out. She wished the Doctor was here as he would have known exactly what to do. She shook herself out of the thought, saying to herself, "there has to be a way to survive. I just need to find it."
"Have they really shut down the exits to this place?" Francis asked out loud.
"Yes," Trudi nodded, her face glowing bright red as he turned to look at her. "From what we can see, there is chaos at every exit."
"Can people get in?" Kodey asked the obvious question, returning to the table holding Sky as she was beginning to fall asleep. Clara moved her head up.
Leon shook his head, "not on Black Friday, once it clicks to midnight nobody can get in, only out."
"So these exits, can we open them?" Clara asked, folding her arms and leaning forward on the table, sensing this was now a conversation to get involved in. "Surely if we can get some people out that would be better than getting nobody out?"
"We could try to override the system," Flack replied. "However," he looked to his left at the charred remains of the computer, "I don't think the mainframe is working."
"Your friend-" Roo started.
"She's not my friend," Clara dismissed in an almost sing song tone.
"Your girlfriend-" Roo continued.
"Again, also not my girlfriend," Clara said, annoyed. "Really not my type-"
"Didn't you say earlier that you fought some bloke for her-" Francis interrupted helpfully.
"Shut up," Clara interrupted back, narrowing her eyes. "Glad to hear your memory is that good," she snapped sarcastically under her breath as she turned away.
"Your… special friend has certainly has left a trail of destruction, hasn't she?" Roo finished, half smirking, perching on the edge of the stool.
"If it wasn't for her," Clara narrowed her eyes, "we," she indicated Kodey and Francis by lilting her head to the left, "would probably be… be… diced up on the bottom of the warehouse floor like sushi right now, so I'm having a very hard time agreeing with you." She let the silence she had created hang in the air for a few seconds.
"Can't you fix the computer with the sunnies?" Francis asked.
"They're good," Clara sighed, "very good, but resurrecting a burnt out computer from a pile of ash... that would be frankly miraculous." She slipped the sunglasses on, "but I can have a go." She aimed the lenses towards the computer, genuinely expecting nothing to happen, shocked when a large projected screen appeared in the centre of the table.
"Seem pretty good to me," said Kodey, "what technology are they using?"
"Sonic," said Clara quickly, "so Flack, any good for you?"
Flack got up and paced around the table to stand next to Roo. He waved his hands below the screen for a minute before slowly shaking his head. "There's no way to override the exits," he sighed loudly, "this is read only now without the base station."
Clara aimed the sunglasses trying to let them absorb information. She pressed the button on the top and set them on the table, as she had done in the skyscraper mainframe yesterday. The screen scrolled through hundreds of pages of information. She leant back in the chair, looking up at the ceiling, the lights bright in her eyes. Roo got up off the stool and walked off the platform, arms folded, pacing around in the direction of the leather chair on the other side.
Flack turned around, hands on hips, looking to the ceiling and then to the floor. He noticed a jacket lying on the edge of the raised platform and moved to pick it up. "Did she set fire to someone as well?"
"Knowing her, probably yes," Clara managed a small laugh. "That completely sounds like the sort of thing she would do."
Flack flopped the jacket onto the table, half obscuring the projected screen as it landed. "Maybe they have left something?"
Clara looked at the jacket, instantly recognising it. "This was, what's his name's," Clara tried to remember what Ashildr had told her, "the Russian man's, something phonetic..." She clicked her fingers, searching for the name, looking down at the jacket on the table as Flack checked the pockets. "Francis?" she faced towards him, "do you remember?"
"Why are you looking at me?" Francis shrugged.
"Well, you seem to be having no trouble recalling finer details," Clara said snidely, "of a throwaway comment in a private conversation we had ten hours ago, so this shouldn't be a problem, should it?"
Francis smirked back at her, knowing she was rattled. "Not a clue, sorry."
"Funny that," Clara observed, sarcastically.
"Anyway," Leon talked over her, "the Russian man?"
"Oh yeah," Clara said, returning her attention to the more pressing issue, saying dismissively, "he came in after me and Ashildr in the main entrance."
"He did?" said Leon, surprised.
Flack searched the pockets of the jacket, coming up with nothing. He rubbed his hands to get rid of the black marks left by the blackened material. He took it off the table and threw it onto one of the horizontal scaffolding supports, leaning his weight against the structure, dropping his head down.
"Yeah," nodded Clara. "We were talking to him in the queue."
"That is quite a coincidence," Leon said, a large smile filling his face. "It is also very good news," he stood up and made his way to a black metal staircase. "Everyone stay here, Captain Oswald, come with me," he said, before adding, "Trude… I need your magic touch up here," he said as he walked behind Trudi. She smiled to herself and followed him up the structure.
"Why?" said Clara, curious, hands on hips, watching them walk up for a few seconds before going in that direction. The sonic sunglasses were still scrolling through the information, she left them on the table.
"We may, just may, be able to see who he is," called out Leon from the floor above. "And how he got in here."
Clara emerged onto the next landing. Trudi was sat on a chair at a small black desk that was pointing out towards the video screens. Leon was stood behind to her left, leaning on the back of the chair. They were backlit against the light of the scrolling images, both staring at a small computer terminal.
"Right then," Leon said as she approached, "let's unblock her hand." Clara rolled a loose chair from the next desk across to sit on Trudi's right.
"Unblock?" said Clara uncertainly, "hang on... is this going to hurt?" she looked up at him, initially holding her hand out but then quickly pulling it away from them
Trudi pulled out a small piece of equipment that was the size and shape of a hairbrush from under the desk and held it in her right hand, smiling slightly.
"We don't have scanners in here," Leon explained, "but we can unblock your tag to show it as a string of numbers that we can search."
"Why would you need to do that?" Clara said, not yet willing to extend her hand through fear of it being painful.
"We had a spate of fake tags a few years back, this was the only way to tell them apart," said Leon.
"You didn't answer my question," Clara repeated, knowing this could only mean 'yes', "is it going to hurt?"
"It shouldn't," said Trudi, smiling slightly. "Put your hand on here," she pointed down on to the desk.
Clara cautiously nodded permissively, setting her right hand onto the smooth shiny black surface, she looked them both in the eye, trying to read their expressions on whether they were lying to her. They clearly were.
Trudi turned on the device. It emitted a small beam of harsh neon blue light and a soft buzzing noise. She waved the light over Clara's hand. She watched as the light moved across her hand, seeing it erase the black tattoo slowly. Clara was initially transfixed until she felt an intense burning sensation covering her hand, she couldn't feel the heat. She narrowed her eyes at both of the others as she winced in pain. Clara heard a loud sizzling noise and could have sworn the aroma of burning flesh was hanging in the air.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry," said Trudi, apologising, "I'm almost done."
"Just burn off my hand, why don't you?" Clara said sarcastically. She bit into her left index knuckle against the pain. "Jesus!" She contemplated whether having her hand amputated would have hurt less.
Leon laughed at her. "Would you have done it if we'd told you?"
"Probably not," she winced quietly.
"There," said Trudi, "all done."
Clara looked down at her hand, bringing it to her chest to try and rub the pain away, observing a much smaller square containing numbers and letters had replaced the tag. She held out her hand, Trudi typed into the keypad without looking as she read the symbols the light had revealed.
"Don't worry," Trudi smiled, "it will be back to normal in ten minutes. OK, got it."
"Does that hurt?" Clara blew out breath onto the back of her hand to try and ease the pain.
"I'm lead to believe it is a little... tingly," Leon laughed, watching the monitor as Trudi typed frantically. "So you say you saw him at first transmission?"
"Yes," Clara said, annoyed, extending the fingers of her right hand and then balling them into a fist.
Trudi searched through screens of data, occasionally pointing at the screen. "Bingo!" she exclaimed loudly.
"Got something?" said Leon expectantly.
"Yes," said Trudi, "found him... and the people he came in with."
"Yes!" said Clara excitedly. "This is what we need."
Eight photos began to appear on the screen. Clara recognised the first four as the grey haired man, the blonde woman, the Russian man and the teenage boy. The fifth man was the man who had infected himself with the purple liquid. The next two pictures along were two men she didn't recall seeing before, the eighth mugshot was obscured by the angle she was viewing the screen at.
"Good work," Leon said, putting a reassuring hand on Trudi's right shoulder. He put his other hand on Clara's left shoulder, she smiled up at him, distracting her from the monitor momentarily as she moved to see the eighth picture more clearly.
"Thank you," said Trudi, smiling up at him, blushing. Clara looked back at the screen to see the photos minimised at the top of the screen, the main part replaced with scrolling information. She was unable to make it out against the others.
"Get me all the information you can on this lot," said Leon. "Bring it to me when you've finished. Thanks Trude."
"Will do," said Trudi, typing furiously, collating what was clearly a large amount of information.
"Come on, Captain-" Leon started as he walked away towards the staircase.
"Call me Clara," she said warmly, putting the chair back at the desk she had taken it from. "Although," she mused, following him down the steps, "Captain Oswald does have a nice ring to it, doesn't it?"
"If you say so," Leon laughed as he reached the ground floor and a few paces away from the bottom, "it is your name," he said slowly.
"I wish I could remember what Ashildr said that man's name was," Clara said as she stopped two steps from the bottom, tilting her head, holding onto the central support, "the Russian guy, it's really annoying me."
"Victor," said a voice on her left.
"Yes!" Clara said relieved. "Thank you! That's right! Victor! I knew it was something phonetic, I just couldn't remember what she said to-"
She stopped suddenly realising there was now someone else in the operations centre with them.
