Episode: Monsters of the Cosmos
Chapter: While Greater Love Lies Further Deep [2/4]
Summary: Amy wanted to travel and ended in the middle of the UK. The Queen wanted the truth and learned nothing new. A little girl wanted her friend back and almost caused the end of the world. The Master wanted the noise in his head to stop and realized he had been right all along. Or the one where they visit Starship UK and learn more about themselves than they anticipated.
Rating: T
If anyone had told Koschei—Harold, though he's not really sure about the name, it fits the situation but doesn't fit him—he would be skulking around in the engine rooms of a nation-spaceship in the twenty-ninth century to try and unmask the secrets of a police state, he would have laughed in their faces. Loudly. For a really long time. And, when he was done, he would have aimed his shiny new sonic screwdriver with a tiny laser function at their heads and told them he was not the Doctor.
He isn't the Doctor, but that doesn't mean he is not skulking around in the engine rooms of a nation-spaceship in the twenty-ninth century to try and unmask the secrets of a police state. Harold's not doing it out of the goodness of his hearts, or some kind of misplaced sense of duty, or whatever. He's doing it, as usual, because of the noise in his head.
Only, this time, it isn't the drums, it will never be the drums again. It's the screams.
Something is screaming, wailing in pain and moaning in agony, loudly and unceasingly, just high enough in the register that all the stupid humans in the ship can't hear it. He can't exactly fault them for their inferior biology, but he'll be damned if he can't smack them in the head a couple—or ten—times for how blind they are purposefully being.
As he uses his new screwdriver, the one the TARDIS made for him when repairing herself, to scan the walls and the power boxes all over them, he feels his scowl darkening.
A ship this big, with so many millions of ears and feet on it, and no one notices? Really?!
Harold's no Doctor, but he'll be damned if he doesn't look into this. He knows better than anyone, except for a handful of people aboard a certain flying ship on a certain date, just what kind of monsters the human race can be.
Besides, Theta the Ghost will drive him insane with his pacing if he doesn't at least try and see what is going on here.
"It can't be, it just can't. What is it saying? What are the readings showing?" Theta asks, trying to see over Harold's shoulder as he scowls at his yellow-lighted screwdriver.
"The impossible truth in a glass of water," a voice speaks up from down the corridor, and Harold feels Theta pop away so he can deal with whoever sneaked up on him unbothered. "Not many people see it. But you do, don't you, Doctor?"
"It's Harold," he tells her, holding his screwdriver by his side non-threateningly, but already thumbing for the scrambling setting, putting it at 'human' just in case the flesh under her mask is actually what it looks like instead of part of the disguise.
Worst case scenario, he'll have to turn it up if the woman under the red velvet cape reveals herself a machine, but that won't take that long. He would be preparing the laser function instead, but the TARDIS didn't think to give him a proper laser screwdriver, and so that function is restricted to cutting and soldering whatever the sonic functions can't deal with. He could've modified it into a proper laser screwdriver, of course, but he'd been busy with Amelia, the TARDIS holding back on her 'present' until the girl had been onboard.
Bah, he'll do that later.
"As you please, Harold. Now keep your voice down. They're everywhere," she concedes with a nod, obviously just humoring him. "Tell me what you saw in the glass."
"Oh, aren't you full of yourself," he scoffs, lifting his chin to give her a mocking grin. "What makes you think I'll do anything you tell me, your majesty?" he mocks, but doesn't miss how she tenses at his words.
… Nah. Can't be. Can it?
"Don't waste time. At the marketplace, you placed a glass of water on the floor, looked at it, then came straight here to the engine room. Why?"
"Why don't you tell me, Queenie?" he asks instead, observing her closely.
Her shoulders hitch as she clamps down on a startled breath, and Harold frowns. Oh, he's definitely onto something here.
Her head twists the tiniest bit, as if looking around, and so he decides to poke some more, see if he can get more answers to this now far more complicated puzzle.
"Engine vibration. That's what I didn't see. With a ship this big, there's no way it would go unnoticed. Trembling under your feet, water moving in the glass… People get used to it, sure, but they also get used to breathing and that doesn't mean they don't do it anymore," he answers, sonicking the box by his side and not even bothering to turn to it as he notices the insides from the corner of his eye. "Nothing. No couplings, no engines—" he adds, reaching to tap the wall loudly to make his point but stopping when he remembers her saying they're everywhere. "So, how is this ship moving?"
She lets out a breath, shoulders slumping, when he drops his hand, the gesture almost unnoticeable, before she collects herself.
"The impossible truth, Harold. We're travelling among the stars in a spaceship that could never fly."
"How."
"I don't know," she answers sincerely, shoulders tensing as she tilts her head down slightly. "There's a darkness at the heart of this nation. It threatens every one of us. Help us, Doctor. You're our only hope."
Harold scowls, ready to tell her again that he is not the Doctor, but freezes at her next words.
"Your friend is safe. This will take you to her. Now go, quickly!" she tells him, handing him a tracking device – and Harold grabs her wrist instead, immediately catching the other when she makes to grab at something, and slams her into the wall for good measure.
"What have you done to Amelia," he hisses, glaring into the wide eyes behind the eye slits. "Answer or say goodbye to your right wrist, your Majesty."
"Koschei, Rule Two!" Theta barks at his back and, as if zapped, Harold releases the masked woman and backpedals until his back hits the opposite wall.
She startles, rubbing her wrists with her whole body primed to attack, but Harold doesn't care about her anymore, rubbing his face almost violently.
"You can't just hurt people like that. She said Amy was safe, she gave you the means to track her…"
"It's a trap. It's a bloody trap!" he hisses, looking up to see a worried Theta—
The woman is gone.
The light flickers some more, but she's gone, no sign of her other than the tracker on the ground.
"Koschei…"
"Shut up," Harold spits, picking up the device and looking it over for any tricks. "I'm not losing her. I'm not losing anyone else ever again."
"… For the record, you are allowed to shout at them and threaten them. Just, don't get physical. It's…"
"Hard to stop once you've started, I know," Harold sighs when Theta falls silent, giving the ghost a shadow of a smirk. "And I'll take you up on that. Wouldn't want to end up all dirty, anyway," he huffs, following the tracker, and listens absentmindedly as Theta chuckles and starts babbling, muting the screams with his inane chat.
Finding Amelia is easy with the tracker, but also because there's a known girl sitting on a bench outside of where the device points him to. Theta falls silent, hanging back so as to not disturb, as Harold approaches her—
The door slides open and Harold doesn't think twice, changing his route towards the now accessible room.
Amelia is inside, leaning over a tiny console with four small screens, and with her eyes red and her cheeks wet.
"Listen to me. This isn't a trick. This is real," Amelia's voice is saying through the speakers, but Harold focuses on the girl instead, on how she's staring at him at a complete loss, waiting for rescue. "You've got to find Harold."
"What happened?" he asks stepping inside, and Amelia immediately slams a button that makes the screens go black for a moment, before the Starship UK logos flash in them. "What did you do?"
"I don't know," she answers, looking away for a moment before meeting his eyes with confusion. "I chose to forget."
He spends the next minutes scanning the screens and the console and even the lamp on the ceiling, while Amelia tells him what happened since they separated, shifting in her spot and trying to put things together.
"You'll be alright. It's just a basic memory wipe, erases about twenty minutes," Harold tells her calmly as he hops off the chair, and Amelia stops biting her nails to look up at him.
"But why would I choose to forget?" she asks him as if he had all the answers, and he can't help but frown as he juggles all the pieces of this bizarre puzzle.
"Because everyone does. Everyone chooses the Forget button," the little girl standing just outside the door, Mandy, tells them, clutching her bag strap.
"Did you?" Harold asks, frown darkening, because, as harmless as such a wipe is, it still shouldn't be used on such undeveloped minds as those of children.
"I'm not eligible to vote yet. I'm twelve," she explains, and Harold relaxes a bit as he listens to yet another piece of the puzzle. "Any time after you're sixteen, you're allowed to see the film and make your choice. And then once every five years."
A ship that flies even though it wasn't built for it. A truth made of secrets displayed in broad daylight, held in a net of fear woven by the same puppet in the booth inside this 'voting room'. A higher-up investigating her own people, searching for answers she should have. And the screams, the pained screams assaulting his ears to the point he's sure he'll be able to hear them even long after they're gone.
"Just what have you done this time?" he asks the screens, barely above a whisper, as he switches settings on the screwdriver and tries to trigger a response.
He needs to know what is going on here, what in Skaro these humans have done.
"How do you not know about this? Are you Scottish too?" little Mandy asks him, curious, and Harold snorts as he shifts around, looking for a panel he could pry off instead.
"And again with the same thing. Do I look human to you?" he huffs, shining his screwdriver behind the screens to see why they won't move.
"… Yes. Aren't you human? Scottish people are human too, you know."
"Oh, wow, thanks for that," Amelia harrumphs, puffing up like a bird with its feathers ruffled, and Harold can't help but laugh at that, pulling away from the console.
"Good one! But I'm actually a Time Lord. And, technically, I don't look human, you look Time Lord. We came first," he tells little Mandy with a huge smirk, which earns him a confused and curious frown.
"What's a Time Lord? Is it like a Captain or a Major? Are there more Time Lords around?"
Harold's smile freezes and, slowly, breaks, leaving him blank. Theta, standing next to Mandy, deflates, sadness and pain and guilt in his eyes, before giving him an encouraging nod.
It's over. It has been long since over. But to Harold and the ghost, it was only two days, nineteen hours, eleven minutes and forty-six seconds since they sent Gallifrey back into the Time War to be destroyed.
All those screams, all the fear and pain he heard when the time lock broke… All of that makes him realize that, while the current screams are louder, they are almost negligible in comparison.
What is one screaming voice, no matter how loud, when compared to a whole planet and a lifetime of memories associated with it and those on it?
"There aren't. I'm the last one left," he tells Mandy with a small sad smile that slips off his face almost as soon as it appears, before turning back to the screens and letting his grief and loss fuel his determination. "But I won't forget, no matter how much I want to. I failed once, but not anymore. I won't let the monsters win anymore," he hisses, looking down at the buttons before turning to a teary-eyed Amelia. "This is your chance to get out of here. Stay with Mandy, keep her company. Whatever happens now, you don't have to be part of it."
Amelia sniffs, wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her red sweater, and glares at him.
"Like Hell I don't, Raggedy Man. I chose to forget once. I'm not doing it again," she answers, lifting a hand so it hovers over the Protest button.
Harold gives her a wide proud smirk before turning to Mandy, who steps away from the door with her eyes wide, and Theta, who looks about as excited as usual.
"Alright then. Let's bring down the government!" he shouts, resting his hand on Amelia's, and, together, they press the Protest button.
The door shuts with a snap, trapping them inside, and the puppet in the booth rotates its head so that it's scowling at them instead of smiling, red eyes and pointy teeth included.
"Aw, isn't that cute," Harold coos with wide eyes and an innocent face, before letting a grin twist his features. "Do your worst."
And the floor vanishes under their feet.
Travel through high-speed air cannon is never nice, but what they land on, or rather in, is even worse.
Being covered in organic refuse is still better than the way the screams are suddenly louder, drowning Harold's very thoughts and reverberating inside his skull—
But they have nothing on the drums.
So, with a grimace and a shake of his head to get rid of the ringing, he gets to his feet and gives a disgusted Amelia a hand.
"Well, now we know why no one ever protests. Those who do end up six hundred feet down and twenty miles laterally, right at the heart of the ship. Or, rather, waste disposal," he informs her happily, shining the screwdriver around to try and see something.
"Ugh, it's disgusting! And the smell, urgh. What is this place, anyway? The floor is all squidgy, like a water bed," Amelia asks, shifting around carefully as she tries to wipe her face clean, and Harold frowns—
And closes his eyes, taking in a deep sniff.
It does, indeed, smell disgusting, rotting organic refuse and some kind of acidic aftertaste under it. The air is stale, especially further away from the tubes they dropped from. And the sound, the screaming, so much louder now that they are so further down, coming from one end of the waste disposal and bouncing off the other—
Oh.
Harold snaps his eyes open, tense, and finds Amelia staring up at him expectantly.
"Well? How bad is it?" she asks, brows furrowing in worry, and Harold looks around once more, getting his bearings, before swallowing and grimacing.
"Quite. It's a tongue," he answers, and Amelia's expectation turns to confusion. "The floor. That's why it's so rubbery. It's not a floor, it's a tongue."
"You're kidding. You have to be kidding – We're in a mouth? What kind of beast can be this huge? And why would it be here?! We're still in the spaceship, aren't we?" she questions hurriedly, gesticulating, while Harold grabs his screwdriver and checks their surroundings.
"Yes, this is still within the boundaries of the spaceship, which means – oh, shit. Too late," he cuts himself, fiddling more frantically with his screwdriver before pushing it into Amelia's hands so he can take off his jacket. "Hold that for me – Okay, here, let's switch. I want you to cover your head and face with the jacket and, when I say, hold your breath, understood?"
"What? Why? What's going on now?" she asks, her nervousness increasing, but obediently swaps the screwdriver for the jacket and puts the clean inside over her head. "And what about you?"
"I can hold my breath much longer," he answers with a shudder and a grimace, immediately pocketing the screwdriver when the whole 'room' shudders. "See, it was about to swallow, so I had to activate the emergency exit."
"Since when do mouths have emergency exits?" Amelia asks, face scrunched, and squeaks when Harold pulls her against his chest, looking down the 'corridor' through which he can start to hear gurgling.
"Ever had something tickle the back of your throat?"
Amelia is silent for a while, but the way she shudders as she realizes the meaning of his words is enough of an answer. Harold can see it now, anyway, the wave approaching them, so he tugs the jacket closed around Amelia, wraps his arms around it so it will hopefully stay airtight as he curls around her, and closes his eyes while praying to the Eternals that the beast won't just open its mouth.
The wave hits like a train, throwing them around like leaves in a storm, and Harold can only wrap himself tighter around Amelia and try not to let out the pained shout at the burning all over his back and legs from the initial impact. They whirl around some more, with Harold tugging on as many coincidences as he can to get them in the right currents, towards the center of what feels like a large tube – and the present snaps in place and they're pushed up and up and out.
Fortunately, they just slide for a bit before stopping, instead of slamming into something. The floor is grating, to allow the saliva and digestive juices to go back down the tube, but it's still infinitely better than slamming into a wall. Harold releases Amelia, letting her jerk off his chest with a terrified and only slightly breathless gasp, while he shakes his head and rubs off as much of the sick as possible before he dares take in a breath.
"Ugh, this stinks," he groans, rubbing his eyes as clean as he can before opening them, and grimacing in disgust and a tinge of pain.
Nothing broken, no concussion, but he'll definitely be sore for a while.
"Are we seriously covered in sick?!" Amelia shrieks, gagging, and Harold can't help but snicker, finally getting to his feet when she stands up to clean herself as much as possible with equally dirtied hands.
"Would you have preferred being eaten? At least you can fix this with a shower. Or three."
"No, no shower. I want a big bubble bath after this, you hear me?" she protests, pointing a finger menacingly, and Harold sighs at the thought.
"You and me both. I know a place, you'll like it. Best leisure palace of the forty-eighth century, great ratings. It lasts only for a couple hundred years, something about the x-tonic radiation being too much, but that's the good thing about owning a time – ah, of course," he explains, cutting himself as soon as he sees the two booths against a wall, each with a smiling puppet in it.
"Harold, there's a door there. But to go out, we have to push the Forget button," Amelia tells him from further away, but Harold takes out his screwdriver, gives it a couple flicks to make sure it's clean and functional, and faces the puppets once more with a scowl.
"What a surprise. Not. Now, are you going to explain what was that down there? We're going to forget anyway, so where's the risk?" he asks the puppets nonchalantly, but they just remain immobile, smiles painted on their faces. "Alright. One chance. Tell us, or I go looking for answers my way," he adds, serious, and the puppets' faces twist to reveal frowns. "Oho, you don't like that, do you? That means there's something juicy at the end, and that I can find it. Aw, don't scowl or your faces will get stuck like that," he tells the now snarling puppets, pouting sadly, before breaking into a grin. "Come on! Where's the fun in this place? Someone sniffs around and you throw them into the mouth of the beast? Yeah, why not! But what do you do to the ones who escape? Where are the soldiers, the torture – or, wait, do you jump straight to execution?" he asks, perking up, before twisting to give a wide-eyed and disturbed Amelia a huge toothy grin over his shoulder. "I love a good execution. Don't think Dark Ages though, too messy and unrefined. Nah, quick zap with a TCE, and the body shrinks to oblivion! Nasty sort of death, that one, and not fun at all. You can leave the body doll-sized, instead, it's a classic. Or use the laser. Not as freaky, but it has its uses too."
The booths open with a squeak, and the puppets step out. Harold thumbs his screwdriver to the sonic screech, hopping on his toes like a boxer.
"There we go! Took you long enough. I thought you didn't have it in you, honestly. Alright, brrrring it on!"
The robots step closer, Harold lifts his screwdriver – and with a screech, the creatures shudder, stumble, and fall on their faces, twitching.
Harold stills, looks down at them for a moment, and cracks his neck with a huff.
"Well, that was disappointing. Here I was hoping for a fight."
"Are you serious?!" Amelia shrieks at his back, and, grimacing, he casually turns around and switches the settings to scan.
He's getting better at this, learning this TARDIS-made screwdriver. There are some additional settings he's not sure about, probably more oriented to Field Technological Repair and Assembly, likely some for Xenotechnology too—Theta was always better at that, craftier and curiouser—but Harold's finally getting the hang of the everyday ones. Well, what passes as everyday for a Time Lord stumbling around the universe, that is.
"Oh, come on. Tell me you didn't want to sock them for the whole trying to get you eaten thing," he scoffs, rolling his eyes at Amelia, who crosses her arms against her chest disapprovingly.
"And all that about executions?"
"What? Never tried to unnerve your enemy? The faces are the best part," Harold answers with a big grin, deciding to omit how sincere he'd been when saying that.
Humans, as far as he's learnt, are really iffy about all that execution thing and the icky bits of any battle, especially those from the nineteenth to twenty-second centuries, after they leave most of the animal behind but before they actually grow into their space-faring greedy selves. After that, they tend to be just as morally stick-up-the-ass, but more capable of making things not look as messy and, consequently, not as wrong, even if they still are.
Enslaving the whole Ood species, for example, before the Friends of the Ood helped them rebel in the forty-second century. And Io's 'accidental' genocide after the introduction of some kind of virus – and never mind the fact human and Ionian genetic code wasn't compatible and thus the virus couldn't have affected the Ionian fauna. They passed the Ood as a naturally evolved servant race, impossible as such a thing is, and forgot all about any kind of life there could have been on Io after a measly decade, taking all the nice minerals and metals they could find. And many more examples like those.
"So, it was all made up? The TCE thing, and the lasers?"
"Of course not," he answers with a scoff, scanning the twitching puppets. "TCE stands for Tissue Compression Eliminator, but it's actually just a compressor. The Trzaki invented it to help them deal with almost everything, from waste disposal to building and transport. Obviously, the original compressors also had a decompressing option, but when the Rutans invaded the Trzaki home world, they only cared about the compressor option to use it in their scouting missions, so they could dispose of the bodies they shapeshifted into. The Sontarans, of course, followed after the Rutans, and the Trzaki were caught between the two sides and obliterated. I was getting some parts for the TARDIS and ended up in the middle of the mess," he adds, straightening and analyzing the results of the scan about the structure of the puppets, trying to figure out if they are really repairing themselves or are tougher than they appear. "I managed to stow away into one of the Rutan ships to get the tech I needed, and found they'd been playing around with the compressors. Death by compression is horrible, and the victim screams a lot, so, to stay undetected, the Rutans modified the compressors so that they channeled their own bioelectricity. Like that, they would fry the brain just as the process started, keeping the victim still and quiet. Swift, painless and clean. Of course, as soon as I got what I needed, I erased all their data on the compressors and blew up the ship. No more compression technology or TCEs," he finishes with a grimace after a second scan, because the puppets are repairing themselves.
What he doesn't say, of course, is that he had taken one of the Rutan-modified TCEs before blowing them up. No need to waste a perfectly good weapon, after all. It hadn't been too hard to adapt it to use a Rutan power cell instead of bioelectricity, either, and so it had remained one of his most useful and preferred tools over the centuries. Shame it was destroyed by the Daleks, but oh well. Regardless of its usefulness, it wouldn't have proven as useful as the laser screwdriver had been during the Time War. Which was why, when he found himself stranded on Earth after stealing the TARDIS at the end of the universe, he decided to recreate the laser screwdriver instead of the TCE, using what parts he could from the TARDIS and supplying the rest from human-made materials.
That, and the fact he really didn't know if he would have been capable of creating an actual TCE after the loss of the Trzaki. But no one needed to know that.
"Wow. Someday you have to tell me those stories," Amelia whispers, awed and cheerful once more, and Harold snorts.
"Oh, I don't know. There's a lot of death, gore, planet conquest, genocide and evil cackling involved – on my part, of course, I'm the best evil cackler in the known universe, and part-time world conqueror," he answers with a wide grin, finally pulling away from the puppets after delivering another scrambling sonic burst.
He could probably just dismantle them, but there are better uses of his time than playing with drones. Harold is not that curious about inferior human craftmanship, not at this stage of their evolution. The clockwork droids from the fifty-first century, on the other hand… They might be crude, but no one can deny their beauty and ability to unnerve with their constant ticking noise.
"Sometimes I don't know if you're serious or just have a really disturbing sense of humor," Amelia groans, pulling her messy hair into a bun, and disregarding his previous words.
So, Harold shrugs and makes for the door, intent on scanning it to figure a way out – but it opens of its own volition before he can.
On the threshold, mask off, is the woman from before, down in the engines. She looks startled, eyes moving quickly to the twitching puppets on the floor before returning to him.
"Hello again, your Majesty," he purrs with a sharp grin, aware of Amelia stepping up to them and clutching his screwdriver tighter.
"It won't take them long to repair. Let's move," the woman tells them, stepping back into the corridor, and, this time, Harold follows with just a huff and a muttered I know that.
"Did you just call her 'your Majesty'? Who is she?" Amelia asks, wide-eyed, as she leaves the room.
"You're alright!" Mandy squeaks excitedly but quietly, perking up before stepping away with a disgusted grimace. "And you stink."
"Ugh, honey, don't even start," Amelia moans, earning a chuckle from the woman.
"So, you tracked the tracker, huh?" Harold asks, though it's not really a question, and the woman meets his eyes over her shoulder with a nod as she guides them away. "Who else can do that?"
"Just me and my people, but they won't without my word."
"Your people? Does that really mean you're really the Queen? Or, uh, is there a queen still?" Amelia asks, surprise turning to discomfort, but their guide gives her an approving grin to calm her down.
"Yes, I am. Liz Ten, Elizabeth the Tenth. You must be Amy, Mandy has been telling me about you," she comments, finally confirming Harold's suspicions.
"Oh, it-it's an honor, your Majesty!" Amelia stammers before grabbing Harold's arm with a hiss. "She's the bloody Queen and we're covered in sick! You could've warned me! How do you even know the Queen anyway?"
"He's hard to miss, love," Liz answers instead while Harold shakes his arm out of Amelia's grip, catching their attention. "Mysterious stranger, M.O. consistent with higher alien intelligence, hardly ever makes sense."
"Oi!"
"She's not wrong, you know."
"Anyway, I've been brought up on the stories. The whole family was," Liz continues as if they hadn't spoken, and both Harold and Amelia perk up, curious as to what kind of 'stories' she must be referring to. "The Doctor. Old drinking buddy of Henry Twelve. Tea and scones with Liz Two. Vicky was a bit on the fence about you, wasn't she? Knighted and exiled you on the same day. And so much for the Virgin Queen, you bad, bad boy," she tells them nonchalantly, delivering a knowing grin, eyebrow waggle included, with the last name.
Harold – Koschei chokes on his own breath, the protest at being called the Doctor again tangling up with the horrified what that tries to come up at the same time.
"Oh my God, seriously?!" Amelia laughs, barely managing to cover her lower face with her hands, and Koschei looks between her and the grinning Liz with wide eyes.
"Wha—No—I-I—"
He looks at Theta, searching for some kind of explanation as to what in Omega's holy hands are they talking about, I thought you didn't like humans that way, but the ghost quickly throws his hands up.
"I'm just an echo, I don't know anything!" he hurries to say, looking as startled and disturbed as Koschei himself.
And, well, with good reason. Humans might look Time Lord, but they are most definitely not. And human reproduction – Urgh, my eyes!
No, no way in Skaro's radioactive flames would any self-respecting Time Lord, renegade or not, exiled to Earth or not, ever consider a human that way. Ever. Not even the Master did when he married Lucy as Harry Saxon, no matter how much she tried to come unto him. Ew.
"Are you talking about sex? We covered it in class last week," Mandy asks innocently enough.
Amelia stops cackling, going red as she remembers the girl is there, while Liz chuckles and faces forward once more, leading them through a door.
As soon as Amelia turns away, Mandy gives Koschei a mischievous grin and a wink, which he returns with a pleasantly surprised half-smirk.
Clever girl.
But still, the fact the question hasn't been answered doesn't mean it wasn't asked. So, Koschei can't help but wince as he realizes what that means.
"I don't want to hear any more 'stories'," Koschei groans, rubbing his eyes as he feels exhaustion weighting on his shoulders.
How long has it been since he last rested? … Huh, actually, he hasn't in this body, not since his resurrection. He'd just been so… busy. The forced nap from when Naismith 'kidnapped' him at the wasteland doesn't count, having to fight off sedatives is the opposite of resting.
"It'll be over soon," Theta whispers before popping off, and, with a sigh, Koschei rests a hand on the Memory Ring hidden under his shirt, hanging from a chain of Gallifreyan zinc he'd found in the wardrobe.
One of the strongest metals in the universe, and quite rare even before – well. Anyway, strong enough that there's no way it could break by accident, and that's all that matters. It also helps that it's vaguely magnetized to a Gallifreyan's bioelectrical signature and won't slip off. He wouldn't be carrying the ring around otherwise.
The ring. The thrice-damned stupid ring.
Fortunately, the next corridor is bizarre enough to take his mind off it, what with the tentacle-stinger things beating against the grating on the wall—
Oh. Oh.
Liz and Mandy walk ahead, talking about an elevator, but Koschei stops in front of the grate, eyes wide and breath caught in his throat.
"I saw one of these up top. There was a hole in the road, like it had burst through like a root. What are they, Harold? An infestation?" Amelia asks, squeezing his hand, and Koschei immediately rips it out of her grip before she can feel it shaking.
"Oh, I couldn't have put it better myself," he growls, striding after the two natives, with Amelia hurrying to catch up. "And don't call me that anymore. Anything but Harold. The British Royal family and I are going to have words," he hisses, catching Amelia's startled nod just before they enter the elevator.
Koschei tries really hard not to look at Liz Ten, hanging onto his temper masterfully – hah! – thanks to the absence of the drums spurring him on, but knowing himself enough that he's sure he won't be able to contain himself if their eyes meet.
Humans may be unable to communicate with their eyes alone, but they are still expressive enough that Koschei will try to extract information if he looks at her.
Rule Number Two says no hurting people, and he's pretty sure the shock of being hypnotized would count as hurting. So, for now, Koschei will be patient and get his answers another way.
And if they don't satisfy him…
Well, unlike others, Koschei will at least give humanity the chance to beg.