Amara stepped back and away from the bones, trying to look at anything but them. Bill jumped and backed away. "Oh my God!"

The Doctor bent down and picked up a skull, holding his hands to the sides of its temples. He closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again. Amara placed a hand on his arm tentatively. She knew he'd somehow telepathically connected with the skull and seen how it died, and that must've been a horrible experience, irrespective of how much death he'd seen. He looked down at her for a moment before turning back to the skull. "Despite appearances, they haven't been dead very long." He murmured.

"What, those are the colonists?" Bill asked in an extremely high-pitched voice.

"The colonists aren't here yet. This is the set-up team, the skeleton crew. Literally."

"Why did the robots feed them to the garden?" Bill's voice cracked as she slowly moved towards the Doctor and Amara.

"I dunno, maybe they ran out of fertiliser." The Doctor turned around, grabbing Amara's hand in the process. "Let's not ask them!" They all ran towards the exit of the greenhouse when they ran into the small robot. Amara forced a grin, letting out a huge breath through her nose and taking one in, trying her best to maintain the smile.

"Hello!" The Doctor wheezed, Bill waving weakly at the robot. "We were just admiring your garden."

The robot turned to Amara, it's eyes now in the form of teary faces. She widened her grin, her cheeks starting to hurt as she nodded. "Mmhmm!" Her voice was high pitched and breathy and she pressed her lips together tightly. The robot turned back to the Doctor. "Moving on now because there's nothing of particular interest here. Cheerio!"

They ran past the robot outside the greenhouse and ended up in front of a white staircase, down which they started running.

"If he's chasing us, he's moving very slowly!" Bill exclaimed between breaths.

"Makes you wonder why it's doing that, doesn't it?" Amara exclaimed, struggling to maintain her smile. She knew they were under complete surveillance, and even though she knew they were going to be safe for the time being, she didn't want to take any chances. Especially not when there were a bunch of murderous emoji robots spying on them.

"What?!"

"It means they don't have a reason to run!" The Doctor yelled, running behind both of them.

"Great, we're going to die!" Bill yelled as they ran into a building.

"Not if we escape first!" The Doctor yelled back. The three of them ran into the middle of a corridor which then split into three other paths. All of which had a bunch of robots slowly dawdling towards them.

"Okay, they're slow, but the city is full of them, so they catch you in the end." The Doctor said.

"What do we do?" Bill turned to Amara, "And why are you smiling? How is any of this funny?"

Amara shook her head. "It's not, but I suggest you both do the same."

"Why?!"

"Well, because of this!" She turned around, showing off her mood patch, hoping it was a smiley face and not the poster child for anxiety.

"Yeah, they show what you're feeling, what's the point?"

"Smiles aren't just smiles. Psychologically, they have a measurable effect on your mood states. Yes. These robots, they built this place, they grew those trees. Something went wrong, but they were designed to make you happy."

"How would massacring hundreds of people make me happy?" Bill frowned. Amara gritted her teeth and shook her head, slowly moving closer towards the two of them.

"'How would massacring hundreds of people make me happy', smiley face!" The Doctor shook his head and forced a grin. Bill forced one too. "Smiley face!" She said in a singsong voice. Amara slowly diverted her gaze towards the robots, frowning as she saw their faces were now crying emojis. She continued to keep an eye on them, though. In case they decided that they didn't want to be standing still anymore. Which was extremely probable.

"The magic haddock." The Doctor said intensely. Amara placed a hand on his arm as the robots' expressions slowly went from sad to doubtful. "Smiley face!" She hissed, and he inhaled sharply, smiling.

"What magic haddock, she said it was an analogy." She nodded towards Amara. "For what?"

"The robots want you to be happy but they got the wrong end of the stick. I think we should give them what they want. Don't even try without smiling." He turned towards the robots in one of the corridors and started walking towards them, a huge smile on his face. "What a lovely place you have here. Thank you so much for your hospitality."

"We will come again. Doctor, I was thinking maybe next time we might go to Wiltshire, perhaps, or Aberdeen." Bill said, in an equally false cheery tone.

"Or somewhere with snow." Amara said in the same tone, trying to keep her smile level. She was serious about the snow thing, though. Having grown up in South India, she'd never actually seen snow before and was planning on doing so. In fact, it was at the top of her ongoing bucket list she'd started making before the whole time-jumping mania started. That and Apalapucia. Well, Apalapucia when there were no epidemics there. Alright, she'd put Apalapucia after getting vaccinated for every possible disease that could be prevented with a vaccine.

"Ah, yes. Two thumbs up for Wiltshire slash Aberdeen slash somewhere with snow." The Doctor said, listing his hands into two thumbs up as he and Bill slid past the robots against the walls, while Amara carefully stepped through between the two of them.

The moment they knew that the robots couldn't see them, the three of them took off towards the exit of the building. They'd managed to escape the city, even though they hit two not-so-tiny problems: Bill getting caught by a robot, which the sonic took care of, and them being chased by a huge chunk of the Vardies which were part of a wall. But, they finally reached the TARDIS. Which was the good part.

Bill ran towards the doorway of the TARDIS and turned around. "Are they coming after us?" Amara shook her head, placing a hand on one of the TARDIS's walls, breathing heavily as her chest constricted. She really had to find a way to get used to all the running.

"I'm guessing that once we're out, we're not their problem." The Doctor answered as he reached the TARDIS. "Right. You'll be perfectly safe in the Tardis. She'll look after you until we get back." The Doctor started running back towards the city again. Amara, however, stood by the wall, knowing that Bill was going to ask the Doctor a bunch of questions, causing him to run back and forth- and if she was going to be facing a bunch of killer robots she possibly needed to run away from, she'd rather save her energy whenever she possibly could.

"Where are you going?!" Bill exclaimed, causing him to run back again.

"There's a giant smiley abattoir over there and I'm having this really childish impulse to blow it up! Be right back!" He was about to turn away and run, but turned back again, pointing towards Amara. "Why are you still standing there?"

Amara shrugged. "Why can't I? I want to stand here."

The Doctor shook his head. "No, no, no, no, no. You always do stuff for a reason. I'll have to figure out the reason."

"You might also want to de-confuse your already confused student, which should be your bigger priority at this moment…" She nodded towards Bill, leaning against the wall. The Doctor turned towards Bill.

"Yeah, de-confuse me! Why do you want to go back in? We've only just escaped! I thought we were going home."

"Home? Why would we be going home? That place is a living deathtrap. We can't just leave it with its mouth wide open!"

"But they're all dead. We saw them. It's too late."

"We have to assume that there is a colony ship on the way. What do you think's going to happen when all those people arrive? They're expecting the new garden of Eden. What they are not expecting is to be the fertiliser." He pointed towards the TARDIS, "There's broadband in there." It was when he said this that Amara finally pulled away from the TARDIS and walked towards him. He slightly turned his head towards her and then turned back to Bill. "Go! Go and watch some movies or something!"

He held out a hand for Amara, which she took, and the two of them started running back towards the city, leaving Bill shouting behind them. "I get that someone has to do something but why is it you? Can't you phone the police? Isn't there a helpline or something?"

Amara turned around briefly. "Read the sign!"

"And stay away from my browser history!" The Doctor turned towards Amara, who had a disapproving frown on her face. "What, I can't scar another human with it! You lot faint too easily!"

She shook her head and continued running. "I don't even know if I want to know at this point."


They'd eventually stopped running once they reached the city because they didn't want to attract suspicion from the robots. The two of them entered a pristine white corridor with grey floors, and were walking through it. There were no robots in sight, which Amara was extremely grateful for.

"How are you feeling?" The Doctor suddenly asked her out of the blue. She turned towards him and frowned. "You know, after the whole jumping through the timeline shock and the emoji robots and the skulls."

She shrugged. "It all feels like I'm in a weird fever dream even though I know this is real." She folded her hands and rubbed her arms, taking a deep breath before forcing another smile. She had to be careful, he could see her mood patch.

"You don't have to pretend to not be worried, you know." She turned up to him, frowning slightly. He gestured to her mood patch. "That thing might fool a bunch of robots, but not your best friend."

"Bold of you to assume you're my best friend." Amara scoffed, attempting to change the subject, which he thankfully seemed to accept.

"Bold of you to assume I'm not, because last I checked, we've known each other and worked together for almost a thousand years."

Amara nodded slowly, before a realisation hit her. "Wait, what? Was I there for the whole thousand years?! Or have you known me for a thousand years while I just randomly jump in and out in short intervals?"

He shrugged casually. "Like I said, last I checked, we've known each other and worked together for almost a thousand years." They walked around a turning, only to come face to face with a robot, snuffing out the question Amara was going to ask. Or, well, scream.

"Ah! Good morning! I'm happy! Good morning. Look at me, I'm happy, happy, happy, happy! What a lovely, beautiful morning, it makes me so happy. I'm happy. I hope that you are happy, too."

"Your subtlety makes me extremely happy." Amara grinned, trying to ignore the pain in her cheeks. "You see, it's totally not obvious that you're lying at all."

"And your sarcasm utterly overjoys me." He turned to the robot and turned around, Amara doing the same. "See? We're both happy."

They turned around, and to Amara's relief, the robot's frowny face became a smiley one. It slowly toddled away and the two of them walked in the other direction. The Doctor stared at the locket he was holding before he placed a hand on one of the sloping white walls. He turned to Amara, his eyebrows raised. "I was right and Bill was wrong, these definitely are the superior robots."


The two of them were walking down a spiral staircase with railings that looked like the sloped walls when the Doctor grabbed Amara's arm, preventing her from going forward. He placed his other hand on his ear. "Hello? Is someone there? I can hear you breathing."

"Why are you Scottish?" The Doctor and Amara turned around, the former relieved that it was just Bill and the latter grinning at her. The Doctor grabbed Bill's arm and started walking down the stairs behind Amara, who giggled.

"I'm not Scottish, I'm just cross."

"Is there a Scotland in space?"

"They're all over the place, demanding independence from every planet that they land on. Why are you here?"

"Because I figured out why you keep your box as a phone box."

"I told you, it was stuck."

"You also said that there was a way to fix it in the instruction manual." Amara turned around and told him. He rolled his eyes. "That's my way of rebelling against an established set of rules that I'm bound to follow to keep the timeline intact."

"No it's not. See, you don't call the helpline because you are the helpline." Bill said.

The Doctor stopped, scowling. "Don't sentimentalise me right now. I don't just fly around helping people out."

Amara shook her head while Bill threw her hands up. "What are you doing now?"

"I just happen to be passing by, so I'm mucking in."

Bill frowned. "You've never passed by in your life! You didn't even leave me serving chips, so I'm not going to leave you." She grinned at him. The Doctor turned to Amara, who shrugged. "She has a point."

He stepped down onto the landing and went to stand in front of Bill. He pointed to the wall beside them and muttered, "Look at the wall."

"The wall?"

"Closely."

Bill walked towards the wall and placed her hand on the railing in front of it. "Before, when the Vardy, the little microbots, were going to attack you, you asked me where they came from. Well, they didn't come from anywhere. They were here all the time."

"Wha- in the wall?"

"No. Not in the wall." He pulled Bill back. He pulled out his screwdriver and pointed it at the wall, pressing a button that caused the portion he was focusing on to magnify. It was still the wall, except it looked a lot like a white-silver mass of buzzing maggots. Amara stepped back, scrunching up her nose a little.

The Doctor swept the screwdriver along the wall, magnifying different parts of it, everywhere having the same result. "They are the walls. They're all the walls. These little robots, they didn't build this place, they became it. They can be a part of a wall one minute, flying around the next. This whole structure is built from interlocking microbots." He turned to Bill, who was staring at him, dumbfounded. "Smile! You're in the belly of the beast."

Bill smiled back. "So, what do we do?"

"Well, the obvious. We find a real wall." He looked at Bill, who was grinning. "Oh, you really are smiling, aren't you?"

"Do you know why? You're an awesome tutor."

"When am I not awesome?"

Amara shrugged. "I could name at least three instances from the last adventure we had with the Nestene Consciousness."

"If any of them involve me not formulating an escape plan before we went into Henriks, I'd like to point out that you wouldn't be here if it weren't for my genius last minute epiphany."

Amara scoffed. "Whatever."


They'd finished going down the rest of the stairs and were now in a passageway that had white walls which appeared to be more cracked and patterned than the smooth ones they'd seen before. "When the Vikings invaded, they used to pull their longboats out of the water, turn them upside down and live in them as houses until they'd pillaged and looted enough to build new ones." The Doctor said.

"So?"

"You didn't see a space ship outside, did you? When the settlers first landed, they must have lived in it and built out from it, so it's still here, somewhere inside this building."

As if he'd conjured it up, they reached a turning where the pristine white wall slowly faded into a metal wall with patches of crimson-brown rust coating it, growing bigger as they got closer to the door. "Ah. Bits of meteor damage. Flecks of rust. Rivets. Oh, I love rivets. A wall. A real, honest wall. Not made of tiny robots but made of any old iron." He ran his hand across it as Bill grinned.

She walked towards the handle. "Every spacecraft needs a door!" She pulled onto the handle, and seeing that that didn't give any satisfactory results, she attempted to push it. As she was struggling with the door, the Doctor casually placed his hand on a square-shaped screen, which lit up, making the door open.

"It's not even locked." The Doctor said incredulously as the opened doors now revealed a huge corridor made completely of metal with red lights all over the place and tubes hanging from the ceiling. The corridor lit up in sections, a loud clicking noise sounding every time a part lit up.

"They really were expecting to live in peace." The Doctor mused as the three of them entered the spaceship. Bill walked forward, looking around, her eyes wide, while Amara looked at her surroundings while also glancing back a few times to see if there were any robots that had followed them there or something. Once the Doctor got in, he pointed his screwdriver at the door. "We'll lock it after us, shall we?"

"That would be great." Amara smiled. "Unless we need to make a quick escape and the locked door will just prove to be an inconvenience because it'll take us a while to open it. But also we'd be safe from anything outside if we do lock the doors-" Her voice trailed off as she saw the two of them staring at her. Bill's eyes were wide and the Doctor looked like he seemed to be expecting it in a way. Shit. She closed her eyes and shook her head before opening them again. "You know what? Just- just lock it. Or not. Do whatever, I don't care."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows at her. "You sure?"

She shook her head. "Yeah, yeah, completely, whatever you think is right."

He shrugged and turned towards the door. "Right." He pointed the screwdriver at it again, and the door slowly started to close. "Locked the door." He turned around and grinned at the two of them. "Shall we?"

They walked down one of the corridors as the ship continued to light up and start cooling down. "The ship's life support systems are starting up, it knows we're here."

"Whoever did the interior decoration in here needs to take lessons from whoever did it out there." Bill said, gesturing to all the metal pipes and tubes and cylinders.

"Ah, this was built by humans, that was built by Vardy. Wet brains, dry brains."

They walked for a little longer when the Doctor turned around and grinned at the two of them. "Ah! Good, old, universally compatible, incorruptible maps." He pointed to a huge metal sign that had a map of the entire ship on it. It was also covered with rust and dents and some other things Amara really didn't want to know about. Among those things, there was a bright red pin at the top left corner of the map.

The Doctor ran his hands across it, making Amara recoil a little. "You are here. This is the engine room. That's the target. That's where we're going." He gestured to himself and Amara.

"Where am I going to go?"

"You're staying here and you will be guiding me to here, using this map. I'll hear you through the thingamabob." He tapped his ear and walked away, Amara following him. Bill muttered something about her being in a real live spaceship, when the Doctor said, "Right or left?"

Amara flinched, shaking her head at him. "Don't scare her!"

"Yeah, don't scare me! Thanks Amara!" The Doctor rolled his eyes at Bill's reply and was about to say something again, when Bill said, "Oh, and go right."

They went right and entered a room full of all sorts of things. There were random Egyptian artefacts and paintings, a few computers ranging from primitive to modern, and Amara even thought she saw the stuffed head of a Tyrannosaurus Rex in there. It was probably there because of time travel.

"Well, they were certainly planning to make themselves at home here." The Doctor picked up a statue of the head of who Amara thought was Nefretiti, and walked around with it. "They brought all their favourite knick-knacks."

"There should be a door that leads into a corridor." Amara jumped slightly when she heard Bill say that. It really was unsettling to hear Bill even though she was far away, but Amara pretended that they were all on a bluetooth call. That'd probably normalise things. "I really am on a spaceship." Bill murmured.

"Yes. Which we're about to blow up." The Doctor grinned.

"How are you allowed to do that? Like, how are you allowed to blow something up and not get into trouble? I mean, blow something up, get into trouble. That is a standard sequence."

"Keep in mind that this is the Doctor." Amara said. "Blowing up stuff is how he communicates. But seriously, you might not want to do that."

The Doctor rolled his eyes again. "What do you mean, allowed? It's a moral imperative. This is a murder machine."

"Beautiful, though, I mean, the whole place. You should be able to see a staircase."

They went towards said staircase in a dimly lit corridor. What was it with Doctor Who and its dimly lit corridors? Amara knew that they had to set up some sort of an ambience, but would it kill people to make the places brighter?

"All traps are beautiful, that's how they work. Up or down?" The Doctor asked as they reached the front of the staircase.

"Down." They started walking down the stairs when they heard Bill's voice again. "What? What's this big bit in the middle? There's a big empty space in the middle. The engine is right in the middle of a big empty space. What's that for?"

"Attention. Attention." Amara jumped, grabbing onto the railing as a voice was heard all around them. She let out a huge breath when she realised that it was just the PA systems. "Erehwon systems initiated."

"The ship's systems are set to respond to human presence. It was sleeping. We walked in, now it's waking up." Once they got down the stairs, the two of them walked straight towards what looked like a dead end that just led down.

"There should be a ladder." Bill said, and the Doctor confirmed it. They went down the ladder, and once they reached the bottom, the Doctor pulled open a trapdoor, releasing a lot of white steam. Amara looked down and saw that the place downstairs seemed to be a lot brighter than where they were.

The two of them walked down the ladder and ended up in a huge room that was basically just a chasm with four railing less balcony-like paths that led to a circular centre, which was where the engine was. It was a huge rectangular shaped object with dials all over it.

"Beautiful. Fleishman Cold Fusion Engine. All I've got to do is back the flow into the calorimeter and run. It's like it wants to get blown up." The Doctor got down and started walking towards the engine. Amara, on the other hand, was a lot slower than he was. She hugged herself and started walking forward, trying her best to stay at the centre of the path and not look down. She wasn't afraid of heights, but the prospect of someone falling down thousands of feet wouldn't be appealing for anyone. And Amara was the type of person who would look down from a huge height and wonder what it would be like to jump off, so she wasn't willing to take any chances.

"Hold on, I'm being thick." Bill's voice sounded in her ear. "I can come with you." There was a soft clicking sound from her side, and the Doctor chuckled. "Took that long to think of photographing it?"

"You've already memorised it, haven't you?"

"Yup."

"Stop trying to keep me out of trouble!" She exclaimed and Amara shook her head. She was extremely close to reaching the Doctor, who was close to the engine. "There's no trouble!" The ground shook, and Amara screamed as she stumbled, falling onto the Doctor, who grabbed onto the engine for support. "This is gonna be a stroll in the park."

Once the ground somewhat stabilised, Amara straightened herself, muttering an apology to the Doctor, who shook his head. He inched his way to another side of the engine as she walked forward and grabbed hold onto the side she was in front of. The ground was definitely vibrating more than it was before. Amara grabbed onto the engine tightly even though there was a path behind her.

The Doctor was sonicing different parts of the engine while asking Amara to press a few buttons at times when Bill's voice suddenly came through. "Doctor, why did people come here? Did something terrible happen?"

"I can't hear you!" He lied as he pulled out a wire, only for a gust of steam to hit his hand and make him drop the wire.

"Are you alright?!" Amara exclaimed and he shrugged. "I'll be fine, don't worry- seriously, I was overreacting." She frowned and turned back to the engine when Bill said, "I've got to know!" Her voice cracked and Amara closed her eyes tightly. "The people who came here- were they the last people?"

"Humans live for a really long time, Bill, don't worry- we make it to the end of the universe…" Amara whispered.

"She's right. Earth was evacuated because of a bunch of solar storms." The Doctor pulled out a metal grate on the floor. "But there were a number of ships. I've bumped into a few of them over the years. Right, I've re-routed the flow."

Amara raised an eyebrow as a wheel on the engine continued turning, making a creaking noise. The Doctor noticed as well and went towards the wheel. "No, no, no, no. That's not right. Bad noise. That's not right, no, no!"

"Maybe the universe is giving you a sign to not blow up the place!" Amara exclaimed and he frowned. "Is that a hint?"

"Yes!"

"I'm gonna need your help here, the engine's malfunctioning. And Bill's as well!"

Amara tried to step towards him, but recoiled again as her foot slipped. She breathed out shakily, tightening her grip on the engine. She turned to the Doctor, who was holding out a hand. "It's alright, you won't fall down! Just concentrate on the engine and not what's below us!"

She pursed her lips together, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath in and out. She opened her eyes again, slowly moving her foot towards the other part, her grip still tight on the engine. She looked at one part of the engine and concentrated on it, humming the first thing that came into her head as she slowly made her way to the Doctor. When she was going to shift her handholds, she hummed louder and tried not to look anywhere else as her heart rate slowly started to increase and the lump in her throat started to become painful.

The Doctor placed his hand on hers and gripped onto it as she stepped off the platform and onto the path he was on, breathing shakily. He was smiling at her. "See? I told you."

She nodded. "You did. Anyway, what do I do?"

"I need you to pull those levers over there." He pointed to a bunch of levers as he grabbed onto a wheel and started to turn it.

"Doctor, there's something you need to know." Bill's voice sounded in their ears.

"I'm too busy!" The Doctor attempted to pull back the wheel, which was continually spinning in the opposite direction to what they needed it to be. Amara made the mistake of looking to her side, where she saw an emoji robot standing there, two skulls for its face. "Doctor!" She exclaimed, when she suddenly felt a rush of blood in her head, making her vision blurry. "Doctor!" She yelled a little louder, feeling something tug at her in her stomach. Her head started spinning and she felt a warmth in her chest and her hands, her grip on the levers slowly beginning to slacken.

"It's alright, don't panic!" His voice seemed like he was talking to her from a mile away, even though his voice was directly heard in her ear.

"Doctor, what's wrong?!" Bill exclaimed. "Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, well, mostly, anyway." His voice started to become more distorted and distant as the tugging in her stomach increased, making her feel mildly queasy. "Amara-" Was all she heard before everything went black.