Chapter 18

Pride handed the Doctor the strange device he'd pulled out of the control room. She examined it for a moment.

"Well this explains everything," she said.

"Does it?" Pride asked, too tired to care anymore.

"Yes. We haven't moved. We're in a pocket dimension of sorts. This place is still overlapping with the location of the town. Makes sense. Getting a teleport that automatically sends half the people in town to a jungle would actually be a bit more complicated, and you'd have to have a jungle handy, and it didn't feel like teleportation to me."

"Me neither."

Pride's only experience with teleportation had involved feeling like he was falling apart, and being put back together was about as unpleasant. He'd puked once it happened. Not an experience he cared to repeat. This hadn't felt like breaking up. In fact, it hadn't felt like he'd moved at all. It felt more like the world had moved around them. Which, he supposed, was what the Doctor was saying.

"Can we get back with that?" Lilly asked, pointing to the device the Doctor was now holding. "The alien said we could, but I'm not sure I trust her."

"Hard to say," the Doctor said. "If we can, it's for individual travel. We'd have to track down everyone in this jungle and use it on them."

Of course there were people here she wanted to save. Pride wasn't even going to bother arguing.

"So what do we do?" he asked.

"You don't know? I thought you were intelligent," Lilly said.

Pride knew that tone. That was so aggressively innocent it switched into malicious. He used it many times himself. It was effective when you looked like a child. Well, what did she know? He was pulling his weight. He'd gotten them here while Lilly got herself kicked out of bars and hung from the roof.

"And in my intelligence, I know the Doctor knows what she's doing."

She always got them out of these messes.

The Doctor frowned. "Are you two alright?"

"We're fine," Pride said.

"Don't speak for me." Lilly turned her attention to the Doctor. "We've been arguing all day."

"That's not important right now," Pride said. "We have to get out of here."

"You're right," the Doctor said. Well, that was nice. He was tired of dealing with Lilly's whining, and he'd thought the Doctor would take her side. (Not that it was too late for that to happen, but it would happen later.) "A group has gone ahead to the tower. We've got to cause a distraction so the dustballs leave. Then we can join them. There should be wider range controls in there."

"Dustballs?" Lilly asked.

"Well we don't know the official name. I liked dustballs. Come on."

She started walking off.

"Where are we going?" Pride asked.

"The tower, eventually. But I'm going to have to cause a distraction first, and it'll be easier to stretch the range of my sonic from higher up."

She stepped onto a tree branch and started going higher. Her two companions followed her. Looking around, Pride noticed the trees were all easy to climb. Apparently that was supposed make it more of a challenge, if they were hunting humans for sport.

It did however, get harder as they got higher. One of the branches wobbled precariously under him. He quickly pushed himself up, grabbing something more secure. Lilly made the mistake of holding the wobbling one. She noticed, and quickly started looking for another way up.

"Do we have far to go?" Pride asked.

"Not long," the Doctor answered. "What's wrong? We're climbing a tree. It's brilliant."

And with a grin, she climbed even higher. Pride sighed.

Why are we doing this anyway?

He paused, hand hovering near the trunk. Why was he doing this? The Doctor was the one with the sonic screwdriver. She didn't need them for this part. He stopped, leaning against the trunk as comfortably as he could.

Lilly barely cast him a glance as she clambered after the Doctor. She seemed almost pleased with herself. Another example that she was stupid. She was just wasting her energy.

The Doctor eventually reached a place she was satisfied. It was hard to see her through all the leaves, but he saw her raise her arm, and saw the light from the screwdriver. Several sounds, they seemed like animals noises, went off in the jungle. Nearby, in a neighboring tree, a small device sparked and blew up. It was probably one of the cameras. Pride and Lilly had seen the screens in the control room.

"Time to go," the Doctor said, sliding down. She passed Lilly quickly, moving toward Pride. "I'm sure they can track where that came from."

"You could've mentioned that sooner!" Pride shouted. He began to scramble after her.