Hi friends! I'm so sorry I disappeared for a little bit after I posted the last several chapters, but there was some work drama going on and I ended up transferring to another classroom, but things have settled a little bit now and I'm hoping that will allow me more time to write.
Apella: Yes! I'm so glad you mentioned that, the different Masters that BF has played around with are all so incredible and I'm hoping to use some of the audios for this story. I haven't heard much of McQueen, but I remember being really impressed by his performance when I first heard it. I also have a plan for probably my favorite Master audio, 'Master' with 7 and Geoffrey Beevers, which I've been brainstorming since probably 2017. If you have any McQueen audios you specifically want to see, let me know so I can buy them and start working on something! (I also wanted to say thank you times a million for reviewing the last few chapters, it's encouraging beyond what words can say)
Word Count: 7,249
A short walk down a sharp incline lead us to the edge of a snowbank that overlooked a small valley framed by mountains in the far distance and smaller hills closer to our current location. A small collection of industrial buildings had been huddled together in the valley and the rocket we'd spotted earlier had landed nearby, its passengers already unloading. It couldn't be very far, just a quick jog down the rest of the hill would lead us to the outskirts of the group and inside the complex. So when the Doctor got that wild, eager look in his eyes I resigned myself to the fact that I'd be doing a lot of cardio that day.
"Looks like something's about t' start." And the Doctor hopped over the snowbank with a cheerful spring in his step. Somehow he had the body of a 15 year old while I was pushing 26 and my knees already creaked if I sat for too long. "C'mon!"
"Some of us normal people don't have long, spindly spider legs like you, Spaceman!"
He shouted something clever over his shoulder that I couldn't entirely make out over the wind and my slightly labored breathing and the crunching of the snow. But we caught up to him just as he hit the outskirts of the group, still as casual as ever with his hands in his pockets like he hadn't just run down the hill like a fox on crack. I tried not to look as winded as I felt.
"...to the Ood Sphere. And isn't it bracing? Here are your information packs, with vouchers, 3D tickets, and a map of the complex." I caught sight of a pretty lady with dark hair at the front of the crowd, dressed in an all black blouse and pencil skirt and killer heels. She had big, round eyes and what sounded like a Hindi accent. "My name's Solana, Head of Marketing. I'm sure we've all spoken on the vidfone. Now, if you'd like to follow me-."
The Doctor bounced forward into her line of sight with a wave. He was dragging me along with him again, but I found that I didn't mind it so much. It's not likely I could have stopped him anyway. "Sorry! Sorry, sorry, late. Don't mind us. Hello." He started patting his pockets, top to bottom, but whatever he was looking for wasn't there so he rounded on me and reached into the outer pocket of his coat. He had to bend a little to reach it, which ended with his hair tickling my eyelashes as he dug around in the bottomless pit hanging near my hip, and I found myself breathless all over again. "Aha! There it is." The psychic paper. "The guards let us through."
The woman, Solana if I'd heard right, raised her eyebrows at him expectantly. "And you would be?"
"The Doctor, Diana, and Donna Noble."
Donna's head popped into view, all fiery red. "Representing the Noble Corporation PLC Limited, Intergalactic."
And it worked. "Must have fallen off my list. My apologies, won't happen again. Now then, Doctor Noble, Mrs. and Mrs. Noble, if you'd like to come with me?"
"Oh!" was all I could say. The other two were frantically shaking their heads with easily the most distressed expressions I'd ever seen on them. I probably wouldn't have said anything if it was up to me, Solana was only trying to be courteous, but the idea of the Doctor, myself, and Donna all being married was downright hilarious. I doubted any of us would survive being married for longer than an hour before something exploded or someone, most likely the tall streak of nothing, got smacked.
"We're so not married," Donna was saying. "That's all them, sweetheart, not me." Yet again, another reference to the Doctor and I being husband and wife. How exciting, intriguing, and absolutely terrifying.
The Doctor shook his head again. He was inching closer to me and trying to put some space between him and Donna, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to let him or not. "Never."
"Never ever."
Solana took it all in her stride and didn't even blink. She had a better poker face than I did. "Of course." She extended a stack of plastic pouches to the Doctor with the same winning smile. "And here are your information packs, vouchers inside. Now if you'd like to come with me, the Executive Suites are nice and warm."
The door behind her opened up and a gust of warm air shot out. What a wonderful relief after all that snow! I'd hardly taken a step inside, however, when a blaring alarm sounded overhead and across the complex. I almost thought I'd triggered it since it had started the moment I put my foot down on the metal floor, but Solana assured us it was just a routine end of work siren, nothing to worry about, and ushered us further inside.
The Doctor took the lead, or moreso I allowed him to shuffle in front so I could look over the packets. According to the information flyer, we were on our way to the presentation lounge where we would be able to view a few sample Oods and listen to what would basically amount to an advertisement. I'd gotten so caught up in marching through the snow and a second awkward reference to the Doctor and I being married in the span of a few hours that I'd half forgotten where we were. We were at Ood sales headquarters. The mere thought made me stomach churn, but one look at the Doctor and Donna told me that they were feeling curious and nothing more. Did it not strike them as odd that these sentient beings were being sold like chattel?
I didn't take in much of the decor in the presentation room - all I could see were the three Ood situated in the center on individual platforms and the handful of other Ood wandering around with serving trays filled with drinks. Could no one else see how wrong this was? Everyone in the room was, visibly at least, a human of every shade and gender, yet they stood there and ogled the Ood like they were pieces of meat, soulless and devoid of personhood. Sweat was breaking out on my forehead the more I thought about it, so I slipped off my coat and slung it over my arm to try and cool off.
"As you can see," began Solana, standing pretty behind her presenter's lectern like nothing was amiss, "the Ood are happy to serve and we keep them in facilities of the highest standard."
I scoffed. A nearby patron eyed me curiously, but only for a moment. Happy to serve? Facilities? They're not pack animals, they're living, breathing things. They're people. Why not give them actual homes, places to sit together with their community?
"Here at the Double O, that's Ood Operations," and everybody laughed, "we like to think of the Ood as our trusted friends."
Hilarious. I'd like to see you treat a human the way you treat them and get away with it.
"We keep the Ood healthy, safe, and educated. We don't just breed the Ood, we make them better."
More than anything else she had said, that struck me deep and painfully hard. I fisted my hands in my skirt as the sudden urge to hit something or someone washed over me. They bred the Ood? Like livestock? They improved them? How can you improve a person? How could they strip them of their personhood and treat them as inferior and still have the audacity to stand before polite company with winning smiles and a price cut?
"Di." I almost didn't recognize the Doctor's voice through my rage. His hand settled around my elbow and tugged, jolting my brain back to the current moment ever so slightly. "You're shaking."
I didn't look at him, I couldn't. I couldn't stop staring at the Ood, at the flashy, colorful Ood posters on the display screen, at the people musing over which slave they ought to buy and at what price. Disgusting.
"Because at heart," Solana continued sweetly, "what is an Ood but a reflection of us? If your Ood is happy, then you'll be happy, too."
The patrons erupted into cheerful applause and I had to turn my back. Surely I was in a nightmare. I had to be.
"Diana," said the Doctor, firmer than before. He had ducked down to bring his head closer to my level, eyes searching mine for an answer I wasn't ready to give. "Talk t' me," he begged, almost as worried and anxious as he had been in Pompeii.
Was he really that blind? He'd mentioned in the snow that Oods were servants to the human race and he'd said it so simply, like he didn't have an opinion one way or the other.
"Don't you see it?" I asked when I finally found the words. "The way she was talking about them, like they're animals. 'We breed the Ood, we make them better.' They're people. How can they say that about them, act like they're mindless, soulless meat sacks? It's disgusting."
He frowned. "Is this another one of those times, then? You know what'll happen?"
I certainly couldn't remember everything that happened, not all the dialogue or character names or minuscule plot points, but I knew that the Ood were being mistreated and I knew that the corporation was to blame. "Yes." There was that vague memory of a man transforming into an Ood again, a bad, bad man whose face I couldn't picture.
A hand came up to gently brush my hair back over my shoulder. "Then you know we're going t' help them."
In the background, the patrons were laughing over the different voice options included in their Ood package: generic male, sensual female, and Homer Simpson. They were laughing at the expense of the Ood, who hadn't fought back, who had had their voices stolen from them and repackaged into something consumable.
"It's wrong. There's no honor in it. They're stripping them of their dignity."
In a flash, he was bounding across the room with his brainy specs on and determination set hard into the lines of his face. We had to maneuver our way past several Ood, each of them standing quiet and docile and obedient, and when I accidentally shouldered one, he bowed and offered an apology. He hadn't even done anything wrong, that was all me and my big feet and my sudden lack of spatial awareness.
"No, that's okay. I'm sorry."
"For what?" the Ood replied.
For everything. I smiled and lightly patted him on the arm. "Don't worry about it. You're doing great."
Donna had caught up to me by then and we both came up beside the Doctor as he worked at the lectern Solana had previously used for her sales pitch. The screen-covered wall behind it lit up to show a purple-white mass of light and stars in the cloud of a galaxy. It didn't look like much, although it was very pretty.
"The Ood Sphere." His face was all scrunched up as he pondered the image. "We've been to this solar system before, years ago. Ages. Close to the planet Sense Sphere." Our eyes met. He'd last visited the Sense Sphere and the Sensorites when he was still traveling with his granddaughter. And he'd said 'we'. My heart plummeted into my stomach as the whole of time and space seemed to swirl around me. "Er, let's widen out." The image zoomed out to show four separate galaxies hovering close to each other in the vacuum of space with our location in the murkiest looking one in the center, and my panic-stricken contemplation of my own mortality and our future together faded away because it had to. Constellations began to draw themselves over each galaxy until they finally interconnected on our little circle of stardust. "The year 4126. That is the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire."
"4126?" Donna exclaimed. "It's 4126? I'm in 4126."
I couldn't look away from the screen and the inconceivable amount of space my species had stretched across. "So we really do make it? Covid and global warming and all those wars and bigotry, and we still make it? 2,100 years later?"
Donna pointed a finger at me as she nodded in agreement. "That's the thing. Back home, the papers and the telly, they keep sayin' we haven't got long t' live. Floodin', all the bees disappearin'-."
"Yeah, that thing about the bees is... it's odd," he said with a scratch at his jaw.
"But look at us! We're everywhere!"
The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire, stretching across four galaxies in defiance of every natural law and naysayer who claimed such things were impossible.
"It's good, innit?" He was smiling that Doctor-y smile again.
"Is that good or bad, though? I mean, are we like explorers? Or more like a virus?"
Both, of course. That's the human legacy.
"Sometimes I wonder," said the Doctor.
An arm still wrapped in a massive fur coat pointed at the different points of the constellations. "What are the red dots?"
"Ood distribution centers."
An empire built on slavery. The back of my throat burned as a wave of bile bubbled up from my stomach. 2,100 years after my time and we hadn't changed a bit, we were still invading and taking advantage of everything we could, so long as it was convenient for us. And we didn't even have the decency to stop at our own species, we had to go after others.
"Don't the Ood get a say in this?" asked Donna. although she didn't wait for an answer. She locked onto the nearest Ood and approached him, gently tapping his arm to grab his attention. "Er, sorry. Hello. Tell me, are you all like this?"
The Ood tilted his head to one side, innocent eyes blinking gently. "I do not understand, Miss."
"Why d'you say Miss? Do I look single?"
"Donna," I groaned, cutting off whatever protest the Doctor had started.
The bright shine of her sass dimmed a little as Donna's smile turned more timid. "Right. What I mean is, are there any free Ood? Are there Ood runnin' wild somewhere, like wildebeest?"
"All Ood are born to serve. Otherwise, we would die."
What exactly was that supposed to mean? Would the Ood die without purpose or would they die from the audacity of not serving their masters? Or maybe they died if there wasn't someone around to guide them, although that seemed unlikely seeing how intelligent I knew the Ood were and could be.
"But you can't have started like that. Before the humans, what were you like?"
The Ood blinked, all peachy-white skin and too real tentacles that looked shiny with... saliva? Ick. "The circle," he said simply.
Donna, the Doctor, and I all shared a look. "What d'you mean?" he asked. "What circle?"
"The circle." Another blink and I felt my heart hiccup in my chest. Was he about to go red-eyed like Delta 50? "The circle is-."
Solana's voice broke through the din and cut off our Ood mid thought. She was back at her podium with a confident and winning smile. "All Ood to hospitality stations, please." And off went our Ood.
The Doctor tapped Donna and I each on the shoulder then. "I've had enough of the schmoozing." He tilted his head back over his shoulder in the direction of the exit. "D'you fancy going off the beaten track?"
Donna snatched the map he offered from his hand with a grin. "Rough guide t' the Ood Sphere? Works for me."
My throat went dry as I managed to nudge the Doctor, elbow to elbow, and he flashed me that ever quizzical, ever charming expression. He raised his eyebrows and hummed, waiting, and I smiled. "I like the Yiddishism by the way." It shouldn't have made me so nervous to say that, but it did somehow and it was ridiculous.
"Learned from the best, didn't I?" he beamed.
The double door exit led us down an off-white hallway, past closed doors and staircases branching off every which way. Donna refused to give the Doctor the map because she was convinced he'd lead us to some sort of intergalactic stargate portal by mistake and then we'd be stranded on the asteroid of Koop and how would his Martian sensibilities help us then? He stammered out a rough approximation of a response that didn't really sound like anything, but it made us all laugh and the dark cloud of reality didn't loom so heavy overhead. That relief didn't last very long.
Once outside, double rows of Ood marched onward under the command of human soldiers while we three looked on in horror. When an Ood near the back of the line tripped and fell face first into the snow, a soldier stepped forward and cracked his whip into the snowy dirt near the Ood's face. "I said get up!" he snarled and the Ood recoiled.
This was sick. This was so, so wrong. It was worse than I had remembered and I wasn't sure if I wanted to cry or punch that soldier in the face until he bled. Maybe both, but there were enough other soldiers posted about the grounds, each with their own gun strapped over their chests, that it would have been suicide to rush in and start interfering. Though the despair throbbing in the fallen Ood's eyes very nearly talked me out of my senses.
The Doctor was frozen like a statue. "Last time I met the Ood, I never thought-. I never asked."
"That's not like you," said Donna.
"I was busy," he insisted guiltily. "So busy I couldn't save them. I had to let the Ood die. I reckon I owe them one."
The snow whipped harshly against my cheeks when Donna turned and looked at me. "Can I ask you somethin'?" Oh no. "I didn't think much of it at first 'cause it didn't make sense, but then he brought it up back there and again in Pompeii and I just, I want t' understand. 'Cause you knew about all this already. How does tha' even work? If you've both met the Ood before, if you knew this was goin' on, why didn't you tell 'im about all this? You could of stopped this."
My eyes stung as they began to water. "I haven't- I'm not-... I haven't been there yet."
The Doctor came to my rescue as I started floundering. She hadn't said it at all accusingly, but her queries cut me to the bone all the same. I would've asked the same things if I were her. And the Doctor had said that he'd let the Ood from before die. Why hadn't I stopped it? Could I have stopped it? Surely I would have tried? And he said as much, promised Donna that I had tried my best to help the Ood while we were stranded in the midst of a terrible situation, that I couldn't have disrupted the timelines no matter how much I wanted to, and that discussing this stood atop a staircase where any Ood or soldier could spot us was bound to get us into trouble, but it still made me feel like crap. I still wondered what kind of person I must become in the future to allow Ood slavery to rise to such prominence while I had the knowledge and power to stop it.
I collapsed into a black hole that blossomed in the center of my chest, fueled by the gravity of my grief, fear, and guilt over things I couldn't control. I let the Doctor and Donna talk among themselves about the balding gentleman who passed us by, the awful man I recognized but had suddenly stopped caring about, I let the pinstripe and sandshoe enigma take my hand and direct me while I reduced myself to little more than the equivalent of a ship running on life support - basic survival functions only, breathing, walking, keeping warm, but all brain power redirected to falling deeper into that black hole. Plot devices and dialogue be damned, I could only plummet further into despair while an actual episodic convolution played out around me.
I wasn't foolish or hopeful enough to think that either of them missed my sudden change in demeanor, but I did hope that they wouldn't bring it up. I could feel the air tighten and shift with every sideways glance Donna sent my way, and I could feel how uncomfortably stiff the Doctor had gotten. I was distantly aware of disjointed banter and the world changing from a snowscape to a chilly and dimly lit storage hangar. The air smelled wrong in a way that was difficult to understand. Like stagnated body odor and metal and death, but not quite so visceral. Either way, the change in scenery was enough to snap me out of my dissociative trance and back to the present. And when I was fully conscious of where I was, I realized exactly what that elusive scent was and that it was coming from the unfathomable amount of shipping containers that stretched out before us.
The Doctor's arm to where he pointed at the transport claw installed into the ceiling. "You see? Lifts up the containers, takes them to the rocket sheds, ready to be flown out all over the three galaxies."
Donna's eyes nearly bugged out of her head. "What, you mean, these containers are full of-?"
"What do you think? Ood export."
Just two simple little words, but they were sickening when paired together because the reality they implied was finally as solid as I was. This was no longer the sci-fi adventure series of my childhood. This was history in the making.
The Doctor unlocked the container nearest to us with a wave of his sonic. A wave of Ood stench swept over me as he drew the doors open, causing me to stagger back a step. I took another few steps when dozens of giant, slowly blinking eyes squinted in the new light shining in from the hangar ceiling. The Ood shifted quietly as they watched us. They didn't even look afraid, just sad.
"How many of them d'you think there are in each one?" Donna asked through the sleeve of her coat.
"Hundred? More?"
"A great big empire built on slavery."
"It's not so different from your time," said the Doctor and he had the unmitigated gall to sound almost smug about it.
"Oi, I haven't got slaves!"
He fixed her with a raised eyebrow. "Who d'you think made your clothes?"
"That's not fair," I spat from my spot near the exit. He'd managed to find one of my hot button issues by pure circumstance and I was already emotionally disregulated, so I wasn't going to be able to let it go until I said something. "Do you have any idea how difficult it is to actually act on moral consumption when you're just an average person? How expensive it is? You'll put yourself into debt and screw yourself over financially just trying to do something as simple as eating or shopping consciously."
He did, to his credit, have enough decency to look embarrassed once I'd finished, but Donna also had a piece of her mind that she was determined to share.
"Is that why you travel round with a human at your side? It's not so you can show them the wonders of the universe, it's so you can take cheap shots?"
His eyes faltered. "Sorry," he mumbled with a scratch at the back of his neck.
She raised a hand and that was that. "Don't, Spaceman." To the Ood who had so far been quietly watching, she said, "I don't understand. The door is open, why don't you just run away?"
An Ood at the forefront of the group raised his translation ball. "For what reason?"
"You could be free."
"I do not understand the concept."
And while I already knew all about the Ood, it suddenly made sense exactly why they were they way that they were. Those big eyes, the soft and downturned ears, a mouth full of noodles and most likely without a single trace of meat-ripping canines, the mostly docile demeanor and lifestyle. "They have no natural predators."
Donna turned to me with the most incredulous expression I'd seen on her yet. "You what?"
Granted, that was a pretty weird thing to say, I couldn't blame her for looking at me like that. "Think about it, they're the indigenous life forms. Before the humans, they didn't have anything to run and hide from. No giant Ood-eating birds to be afraid of. That's why they're so docile." They were like Dodos, but instead of being hunted to extinction they were being exploited. "So of course when we show up, they don't fight back. Why would they have to?"
The hundred strong empty eyes blinking at me in response was all the confirmation I needed.
The Doctor chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment. "Ood, tell me. Does 'the circle' mean anything to you?"
One hundred translator balls lit up as each Ood spoke in unison. The lights were bright enough to illuminate the entire inside of the container. "The circle must be broken."
"Oh, that is creepy."
Donna's remark when mostly ignored as the Doctor continued questioning them. "But what is it? What is the circle?"
"The circle must be broken."
If he wasn't careful, he was going to trigger another bout of red eye, that much I was sure of. It was strange. A moment ago, I had been so lost in the ruin of myself that I could hardly perceive anything other than the painful beating of my own heart and the weight of every negative emotion I'd ever felt, but now I could feel adrenaline pumping through my veins and puffing me up until I was strong enough to rediscover my voice.
"Doctor," I breathed, "wait. Just, just hang on."
"Why?" But his back was to me still. He wasn't asking me. "Why, Ood?"
"So that we can sing," they responded and this time I surged forward to put a hand on his shoulder.
"Doctor, stop it."
The hangar lights flickered then while an obscenely loud alarm began to blare from every corner of the building. The Ood didn't react and I wasn't even sure if they could hear it or if it didn't bother them, but it made my eardrums hurt.
I differed to the Doctor's sense of direction when he took off running. I had no idea where we were headed or what was going on inside his head, but I knew (or at least hoped) that he was leading us out of danger and back into hiding. The thing about the Doctor, though, is that he's very tall and very skinny and very fast. With him standing half a foot taller than me, my legs still sore from all the incline running I'd done in Pompeii, and I only being able to sprint in short stretches, it was proving to be difficult to properly keep up with him, so when Donna skidded to a stop I took the chance to catch my breath.
She'd spotted a door and tried to guide him toward it, but no sooner had she opened her mouth than the door opened and a handful of uniformed men with guns strapped across their chests filtered through it. The lights on the end of their guns locked onto Donna and I as we were quickly surrounded. Once again I was looking down the barrel of half a dozen guns with no hope of escape without the Doctor, but he was gone.
"Stay where you are," one of the soldiers ordered. "Don't move!" shouted another one, even though neither of us was foolish enough to try.
I knew he hadn't abandoned us on purpose. He probably hadn't even heard Donna when she called after him or showed him the exit, he was possibly still running around and wondering where the hell he'd lost us. I knew he'd find us. This story was early on in the season, so nothing bad could happen to him or to Donna. Hopefully not to me either. But having my eyes level with the barrel of what looked to be an AK-47 wasn't helping me to feel any better.
Hands on our heads, Donna and I were roughly maneuvered away from the exit and to the nearest container. While it was pitch black inside, I caught a glimpse of six quiet Ood at the far end of the container with heads bowed and arms at their sides, translator balls pinned to their breast pockets, as we were forced inside. Watching? Sleeping? Pondering the essence of the universe? The doors slammed shut behind us and the lock clanked loudly against the exterior as it was replaced.
Donna had been shoved inside with enough force to knock her over, so I helped her up and let her lean into me for a moment while I caught what was left of my breath and felt the tail end of my adrenaline rush streaking through my body. The Doctor would come for us. He would, he had to. Donna had so much to do before the end, which meant we would be getting out of here. I pretended not to hear the anxious little voice in the back of my head that kept telling me something terrible was going to happen before he could find us.
"You okay?"
I nodded even though she couldn't see it. "Yeah. You? Did they hurt you?"
"Not the first time I've been roughed up, I can tell ya tha'," she said lightly.
This seemed to finally draw the Ood's attention and one of them lifted his head enough to show his bright red eyes. The translator ball lit up and illuminated the outline of his hand cupping it at the bottom as it was removed from the pocket. The other five quickly followed suit until they filled the entire width of the container bathed solely in translator light and the soft glow of their eyes.
"Oh, no you don't," Donna said with as much of her typical spitfire boldness as she could muster. But she still grabbed hold of my hand and refused to let go. And backed up with me until our backs were firmly pressed to the door. "What have we done? We're not one of tha' lot!" The Ood didn't falter or reconsider, they continued forward one step at a time. "We're on your side!"
So maybe the little voice in the back of my head had been onto something. Backed into a literal corner and locked in with a pack of feral Ood. With no Doctor in sight. And a squad of armed men outside just in case we miraculously escaped. I reached for my messenger bag with the intent of grabbing my vortex manipulator, only I'd left everything back on the TARDIS. Like an idiot. All I had left was faith in the Doctor.
The Ood stepped closer and it occurred to me that this was what a field mouse felt when it spotted a hawk circling overhead. I slammed my fists into the door and screamed the Doctor's name at the top of my lungs. I loved the Ood, I wanted to help the Ood, but I was not about to get mauled to death in a rank storage container on a slave colony in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, space. I started feeling around the walls to see if there was a loose piece of metal, maybe one of those long door stopper things that slotted into the holes along the floor could be pulled out if I could just find one. Donna was still trying to talk her way out of death via Ood by ordering them to stop. Needless to say, it wasn't working.
Any second now, I told myself. I accidentally smacked my wristbone against a metal joint in the door and bit hard into my tongue as pain jolted up my arm. He'll be here, open the doors with that stupid grin and we'll be fine. But the seconds continued ticking by and the Ood were so close now that there had to be only seconds before it was all over. Doctor, if you can hear me, we need you! Please!
Metal scraped harshly against metal and the doors creaked open. Dim hangar light came flooding in through the opening while Donna and I stumbled outside, temporarily blind. There were the soldiers, all stern mouthed and posted in a circle around us, but in the center of it all was him. Restrained and under armed guard, but smiling and I'd never been so pleased to see him.
I threw my arms around him first, then came Donna as she wrapped herself around the two of us. The soldiers who had been restraining him retreated, leaving the Doctor's arms free to hold me as tightly as possible. "There we go," he murmured with a kiss to the crown of my head, "safe and sound."
Donna pushed back out of his reach and turned to the container, although I wasn't ready to let go just yet. I needed another moment to let the safety sink into my bones. "Never mind about us, what 'bout them?"
The Ood were exiting the container, translator balls brandished like weapons. The first one turned to the soldier on his right and pressed the ball to his forehead. The soldier screamed as his face was swallowed up by a lightning bright bolt of electricity before he dropped to the floor, dead.
"Red alert," shouted one man. "Fire!"
There were sparks everywhere, gunfire rattling my very bones as the Ood cried out in pain. The whole first row of them went down in an instant while the others behind them shuffled over their corpses. I was grabbing blindly for the Doctor because I knew instinctively he'd keep me safe, knew he wouldn't let me get shot, let him throw his arms around me and drag me away from the line of guards and their machine guns, but I kept looking. I watched the Ood start to file out of more and more containers, eyes red and their bodies redder as the bullets tore them to shreds.
"Diana, let's go!"
It was awful. "They're killing them."
A shock ran through me as something cold gripped my wrist. The dark void of my mind overwhelmed me and I found myself standing in it face to face with the Doctor. We don't have time, we need to run. There was music, faint yet familiar. And sad.
We can't just leave them, they're dying.
We can't save them if we're dead!
I was running. I couldn't remember wanting or trying to run, but it seemed my body had responded to the Doctor's plea before my brain could. He was ahead of me, a quick streak of blue and flashes of red, red like all that blood. I had to follow him. He was the only way out, the only one of the pair of us with a clear head because I was still lost in the fog of bloodshed and feral Ood clouding my mind. Everything felt wrong. It was so, so wrong.
There was an open door and the Doctor. Then snow and the Doctor. I followed. Had to follow, had to get out of there, had to run. The guns kept firing and the Ood kept chanting and dying. The snow was slick and I fell, but there were hands pulling me up, urging me along, a voice in my ear. I could see and hear everything perfectly fine, but none of it was sinking in. I was half here on the Ood planet, running wild through the middle of a massacre, and I was half in Mercy, watching the marshal die in the Doctor's arms. People were dying. I'd never seen anyone die before I met him, not someone real. I'd never seen people get gunned down in cold blood. Now I was in his universe and suddenly there was death everywhere.
"Doctor?" Donna's voice was translucent. I didn't know how such a thing was possible, but it was like she was hardly there. Or maybe I was hardly there. "What's wrong with her?"
Hands under the coat, grasping my shoulders, skin seeking out skin, shaking, or I was shaking. "She's in shock." I knew his voice. "Di, c'mon, look at me." There were the hands again, his hands? Tapping my cheek, guiding my chin up and around so my face was mirroring his. Eyes. Hair. Worry wrinkles. Face, he had a face. "We don't have time for this. Di, look at me."
"They shot them," I croaked as my eyes tried to settle on his face. The blood splatter on the containers kept trying to draw me back in.
"I know." His fingers were digging into my temples and it hurt enough to remind me to breathe. "I'm sorry."
And then he was everywhere, his essence lingering heavy in my mind, filling me up and blocking out everything except him him him. Only him and the song. I'm putting a wall around your memories, he said. I'll take it down when we get back to the ship if that's what you want, but right now we have t' go. It's okay, it'll be okay.
The world came rushing back around me. The song was gone, the Doctor was beside me instead of inside me, and there was a hole where a memory should have been. I still remembered what he had said, I understood what he meant, but when I tried to think about it there was nothing. Just a light push in the opposite direction when I thought about the hangar and the shipping containers. There were... Ood in there, but whatever else we had seen or done was gone. It didn't feel quite right.
"You alright?" I started at first until I realized it was only Donna. She looked worried sick. "You scared me."
I did? "Shit, what did I do?"
"Donna," the Doctor snapped and he looked about as furious as he sounded. "Not now."
She huffed at the sharpness of his voice and I visibly bristled, but the Doctor didn't acknowledge it. He was suddenly so far away, eyes focused on something that could not be seen or felt, but it was clearly disturbing by the way his mouth turned down and his brows furrowed. I didn't even want to ask and especially not if it was related to whatever he had blocked in my head. A rogue snowflake tripped over the bridge of his nose and melted atop one of his freckles.
"If people back on Earth knew what was going on here," Donna started, though she never finished the thought.
"Oh, don't be so stupid," said Solana. She was slightly out of breath and some of the baby hair at her temples had come free to catch a few snowflakes. ...Where the hell did she come from? I hadn't even noticed her until then. "Of course they know."
"They know how you treat the Ood?"
Solana blanched for a moment. She looked between the three of us, unsure and a tiny bit ashamed, and swallowed. "They don't ask. Same thing."
Something about that snapped the Doctor back into action and he leaned forward into Solana's space. His voice was stern, but low. He used her name. He made sure she knew he saw her and he asked for her help. "The Ood aren't born like this. They can't be. A species born to serve could never evolve in the first place. What does the company do to make them obey?"
"That's nothing to do with me."
A sliver of glacier ice slipped from behind the adventurer's mask. "Oh, what, because you don't ask?"
"That's Doctor Ryder's territory," she answered after having to look away from him.
"Where's he?" Solana didn't answer. "What part of the complex?" He unfolded the map she had given us before everything had disintegrated around us and softened the space around his eyes with tragic, broken hope. "I could help with the red eye." And when she still didn't answer, his face snapped back into that stern line of well-contained rage. "Now show me."
Somewhere behind us came the sound of officers shouting commands and boots on the ground. Solana's gaze flickered to an empty corner of the courtyard, then back to the Doctor and the map in his hands. She hesitated. "There." A manicured nail pointed to a nearby section of the compound. "Beyond the red section."
My lungs ballooned with a breath of relief. "Come with me," the Doctor asked. "You've seen the warehouse. You can't agree with all this. You know this place better than me. You could help."
I really thought she would. There was an impossibly long moment where Solana looked in the direction of the not yet visible soldiers and into the depths of the Doctor's offer where I thought she would come with us and redeem herself. That was part of the draw of the Doctor, wasn't it? He made everyone around him want to be better and smarter and braver. But Solana had to have chosen her lot a long time ago to still be associating with the Ood Sphere instead of trying to tear it down.
"They're over here! Guards!"
The Doctor grabbed my hand and we ran faster than we had in Pompeii. Soldier boots stamped so hard into the frozen earth and impacted snow that I could hear them even once we'd left them far behind.