"Sleep dust?"
The Doctor nodded. He didn't quite understand why people kept repeating him. "Sleep dust."
"You're kidding," Nagata stated in disbelief.
"Well do I look like I'm kidding? Is this a kidding face?" the Doctor snapped back, annoyed. The crew was dead, they were being attack, why was it always this time in their adventures when people wouldn't believe him?
"To be fair, it is hard to tell," Jack joked. Danni pointed her flashlight at him.
"Really?" she asked him. "The crew is most likely dead. Is now the time to be a smartarse?"
Jack held up his hands, knowing that her shortness came from fright and not actual annoyance. Well, he hoped that anyway. For all he knew this Danni didn't like injecting a bit of humour into serious situations.
She shone her light on the Doctor. "It is ridiculous, though," she continued. She'd not been able to get a straight word from the Doctor since they'd left the room looking for Deep-Ando. "Sleep dust?"
"The stuff in the corner of your eye. The stuff you wipe away every morning when you wake up," he confirmed. "Yes, it is ridiculous."
"This is getting us nowhere," Rassmussen said.
"But probably not the strangest thing in the universe," Jack stated. "It's probably not the strangest thing we've come across. How can those things be made of sleep dust?"
"Well, they were made of mucus and cells," Danni reasoned. "That's what sleep dust is made out of, right?" The Doctor nodded again. "But that still doesn't make any sense. Dust I'd understand, but sleep dust? That barely builds up."
"His meddling has evolved it," the Doctor replied, nodding towards an outraged Rassmussen. "Hot-housed it. What used to be sleep in your eye has turned into a carnivorous life form."
"You can't just throw accusations like that around!" Rassmussen exclaimed to deaf ears.
"So, the longer you're in Morpheus, the more the dust builds up?" Jack reasoned.
Rassmussen turned to him. "That's slander!"
"Lying there in those pods," the Doctor replied, "people are a ready-made food source."
Jack fell to a stop. "Danni was in one of those pods," he pointed out. "What? Is she now going to become lunch for some sleep dust monsters?"
"I bloody hope not," Danni retorted. She turned to the Doctor. "I'm not, am I?"
"Of course not," he snapped firmly. "You were barely in there at all. At most there's a toe somewhere with your DNA."
"Is that what happened to the crew, though?" she asked, panicking slightly. She had come too far to be turned into a lumbering monster made of mucus. "You said food source."
He shot her a completely serious look. "Digested."
None of their conversation boded well for anyone. Nagata motioned with her rifle. "Come on, we need to find Deep-Ando."
The soldiers carried on, giving the trio no other option but to follow after them. The Doctor's long strides had always been rather hard for Danni to keep up with, even now she was in the tallest body he had met, and she had to jog slightly before walking quicker than normal to keep up with him.
"Tell me you're not lying to make me feel better," she commanded. "If I'm going to be eaten I deserve to know."
"You're not going to be eaten," he replied. "Do you really think I'd keep that from you?"
"I think you'd do anything to stop me panicking knowing how terrified I am at being forced asleep," she countered. "Promise?"
He stopped again, turning to her. Her face held a firm, serious look but her eyes were shining slightly in the emergency lighting. She was scared. "I promise," he said sincerely. "You're not going to be eaten."
"Damn right," Jack spoke up as he continued past the pair to the front of the group, where Nagata was leading them forward. "Your man, Deep-Ando, does he know what he's doing?" Jack asked. "Will he go for cover?"
She didn't reply straight away, her attention on scouting the way ahead rather than his questions. "He should be fine," she replied. "We're underfunded but we're well trained. I'm more concerned about us. We've all used the pods back on Triton."
"Not all of us," Chopra spoke up.
"This isn't a good time to be smug, pet," Nagata scolded.
"Well, my guess is that the ones you're using are pretty primitive compared to what's going on up here," the Doctor guessed. "These are a sort of a Mark Two, yeah?"
"Obviously, I have tried to improve the process," Rassmussen admitted. "Speed things up."
"Yeah, well, you've done that perfectly well," Danni snapped. "So these things are made up of sleep dust. Their—" she pulled a disgusted face. "Their bodies are built of the mucus and skin and… eugh, no, sorry, it's disgusting. They're disgusting." She looked at Rassmussen as she reached into the pocket and pulled out the hand sanitiser again. She couldn't seem to feel clean. "You've made human-eating, pissed off, globs of mucus. Well done."
"It wasn't exactly my aim to…" Rassmussen spoke up, trying to defend himself.
"That's what you did," the Doctor interrupted. "It's adaptable, it's clever." There was a roar from somewhere deep in the ship that reverberated off the metal walls. The soldiers powered up their guns. "And it's coming for us," the Doctor finished.
Rassmussen had, obviously, reached the end of his tether with the entire situation. "Look, you came to rescue the crew. I'm crew!" he exclaimed. "So rescue me!" He turned, looking down the hallway in the direction of the noise.
Jack and Danni shared a look. He did bring up a rather good point. "And how is it that you're the only one left, again?" Jack asked him. "All of the crew have been eaten by things you created. All but you."
Rassmussen turned around, not best pleased at the accusation. "Because I hid," he snapped. "I hid in the only place I thought those monsters wouldn't find me. Look, we've got to get out of here!"
"No," the Doctor replied, much to everyone's surprise. "We can't leave this place until there's not a trace of the dust or your machines left. Or that's it for your lot."
"Our lot?" Nagata repeated. "What do you mean?"
"Oh, the human race," the Doctor replied. The surprised looks were a little confusing. "You didn't realise?"
There was another roar. "Now is not the time to argue about what species everyone is," Danni declared. "We need to keep moving. We're just sitting ducks and…"
There was a loud scream from somewhere far away. The long, drawn out scream of someone who wasn't just terrified, but who was dying. They all seemed to recognise the sound straight away.
"Deep-Ando," Nagata breathed. "We have to find him."
"I think something already has," Jack broke to her gently. "Come on, we need to keep moving."
They started back down the hallway again. Danni was still walking next to her husband where she felt the safest. She had come across some bizarre things in her time, but this really ranked up there. In fact, monsters made of sleep dust came just under the whole 'moon is a giant egg' thing and just above 'talking to your husband when he was a child and finding out you were actually the monster in an adventure' situation she'd found herself in long ago.
"This is so weird," she whispered to him. "Are you sure about the whole 'sleep dust' thing?"
"Positive," he replied, which was enough for her. His gaze was firm as he stared ahead, his eyes searching the shadows for anything of use or anything of danger. If he was worried then she knew that their situation had to be dire. The Doctor would always do everything he could to save everyone, but she knew just how personally he took every death that happened before he could. His body language didn't hold the same glee it would normally when he found something new. His fear was outweighing it.
"Are you still scared?" she asked quietly. He nodded.
"Terrified," he admitted. Not just for her, although that was always at the forefront of his mind. How was he supposed to stop dust monsters? He had no idea what their weaknesses were, what they did when they fell apart, or where they really even came from. Knowing they were made of sleep dust was one thing, but how they slowly came together was quite another.
Danni nodded. She could appreciate that. Walking down dark hallways away from hungry monsters wasn't exactly a pleasant pastime. They both appreciated an adventure, but in the moment when people were dying, it wasn't a walk in the park.
"When I was on the run, when I was scared, I'd hold my gun," she explained, her voice still low. "It made me feel safe when I was in too deep. There were places where I could never be safe, you know? My gun made me feel like I was." The Doctor looked down at her, a little shocked that she was opening up at all about it so willingly, let alone in the darkness of a space station under attack. "Well, it gave me the illusion of safety, anyway."
"It didn't actually help?" he asked. She shrugged.
"It convinced me enough that I could take on whatever was coming," she offered. "I'd hold it tight in my hand, even if I was never going to use it. The weight was comforting. It made me feel like something else was there instead."
"Oh?"
She reached out and took his hand, threading her fingers through his. "The things that made me feel safe weren't there," she continued. "I had to make do with what I had. I still find comfort in the things I put in their place."
He gave her hand a little squeeze. "As long as you reach for the things you'd rather have first, I guess that anything else could be acceptable as well," he conceded.
There was another loud groan that echoed through the halls, although this time it wasn't a monster but rather the walls settling. They all felt the shift underfoot and paused in their trek.
"That didn't feel so hot," Jack stated. "Did the space station move?"
There was another groan and they all stumbled slightly. "Something's gone wrong," the Doctor stated. "All we need." He looked down the hallway, deciding on which door they should enter. There was one up ahead with a window in it that looked just like the door to the lab they had left. "Into the lab," he commanded. "Quickly!"
~0~0~0~
By the time Danni locked the door behind them, the space station was shaking violently. Alarms were going off and people held onto anything remotely sturdy for dear life. The windows looking out showed a rather beautiful view out onto Neptune. Unfortunately, as everything shook and shuddered, it was clear they were moving towards it.
"What's happening?" Jack shouted over the noise.
"Engines!" Nagata replied.
"No! It's the gravity shields!" Chopra corrected. "They're failing!"
Danni held onto one of the benches tightly as she tried to make her way over from the door to the Doctor and Jack, who were deeper in the room. She couldn't help but wish that she'd stayed with them and let the humans lock the door for themselves. She was always getting separated. She needed to be less concerned about the people around her.
"Nagata! That thing, the schematic," the Doctor commanded, trying to fight against shaking to get to Danni. He held out his hand. "Give it to me!"
"Who the hell do you think you are?" Nagata replied.
"Me? I'm in charge."
"You have no authority!" she exclaimed.
"No," the Doctor agreed, "but I'm in charge." Nagata still didn't look willing to hand over the thing on her head that showed her where they were going. "I can bypass the main systems and reboot the grav-shields!"
"Listen to him!" Jack shouted over. "He does actually know what he's talking about!"
Nagata paused a moment longer, wondering what she should do, before realising there really wasn't much of a choice. They were going to go down and crash into the planet if someone didn't do something, so if this was their chance she had to take it. She let go of the bench she'd been holding onto to take her helmet off and they both fell to the floor as she handed it over.
"Are you okay?" Danni called over. She let go of her own anchor and stumbled into the wall. "Because we really don't need any more injuries right now!"
"I'm fine, my Pet," he said back as he turned the helmet over, looking at how it was all connected.
"Doc!" Jack shouted. "You're gonna have to pick up the pace! We're—"
"Don't say it, please don't say it," Rassmussen begged.
"Gonna crash straight into Neptune!" Jack finished. Rassmussen shook his head.
"Oh, Gods! Oh, Gods! Oh, Gods!"
"Hang on!" the Doctor called back. It was simple to see how the projector was connected to the helmet, and where the projector was getting its data from. He just needed to hack in, pretty sharpish, and give the grav-shields a boost.
Danni screamed as the window on the door was smashed open, a large dusty arm coming straight through from the other side. The roaring that accompanied was loud as the Sleep Dust creature was able to throw the door open like it had never been locked in the first place.
She pressed herself into the corner of the room as the creature walked into the room and right up to a cowering Rassmussen, towering over him.
"No, no, please help me!" the man cried as the Doctor fought with the helmet to find where the grav-shield's controls were located. The others fought to try and be of some help, but the force from falling caused even 474 to lose their balance and fall to the floor.
Rassmussen screamed as he was picked up and shoved into the open hole the dust creature had created on what was supposed to be a head.
"Doctor!" Danni shouted from behind him. "What do we do?!"
The Doctor turned his head, watching her behind the creature. She looked terrified, understandably so, and he hurried his work. Just a little longer and the grav-shields would be back online.
"Hold on!" he shouted back. "The G-force is increasing the closer we get to the planet!"
That much was obvious by the way that Danni felt like she was going to be crushed into the wall. Everyone was groaning under the pressure, but she stared in amazement as the creature began to crumble, dust flying off it as if it was stood in the wind.
There were three beeps from the helmet and the G-force began to settle again. "We're back online!" he shouted. "Grav-shields fixed! We're rising!" He scrambled off the floor as Jack motioned for Nagata to run behind him. "Go!"
"Move!" Jack shouted, ushering them all to the back of the room where another door was waiting for them. The G-force has caused the creature to crumble slightly, but now they'd settled again it was resuming its attack. They had to get away from them, and fast. "Now!"
He quickly opened the door, rushing in first. He was hit by the cold immediately but didn't pay it much attention. "Come on!"
"Chopra! 474! Come on!" Nagata cried as her two soldiers ran the opposite direction and out of the door just to get away from the creature.
Danni watched the sleep dust monster quickly rebuild itself in front of her. She had to get around it to get to the door, but with a roar it was fit for fighting. The Doctor stood in the other doorway, looking over with a panicked look. She glanced behind her. That doorway was still open. If she ran away from it, chances were it would follow. But she had more room to run, to hide, and a better chance of surviving for the immediate future.
Across the room was her dad and her husband. The Doctor had frozen, staring at her, almost pleading with her to be safe, to be somehow able to run over to him without being eaten like Rassmussen. But she knew she couldn't do it. She wanted to – of course she wanted to. Nothing made her feel safer than holding the Doctor's hand.
She reached into her pocket, closing her hand around the handle of her gun. She couldn't hold his hand. She wasn't safe. She met the Doctor's wide eyes with her own, hoping that he understood, pleading with him to understand, but she turned and ran out into the hallway.
She had no idea which way 474 and Chopra had gone, but her aim wasn't to find them. She wished 474 all the luck in the world, but her feelings for Chopra were less than amicable and she didn't waste her time trying to follow. She turned left, running away from the way that had come in the first place. Her first aim was to get to somewhere safe, then she would work out a plan from there.
She absolutely hated how her footsteps seemed to echo against the metal even more now she was on her own. She hated how the emergency lighting gave everything an evil red glow that just made everything much sinister. The roar from behind her suggested that, actually, the creature hadn't followed her but had stayed with the Doctor and Jack, which was actually less reassuring than if it had followed her.
Another roar from where she was heading caused her to stop. She pressed herself into one of the metal pillars that joined the walls together, bathing herself in shadows as she thought to catch her breath. She wasn't even sure if there was anything coming towards her, but she didn't want to take that chance without at least some sort of plan in mind.
She closed her eyes for a moment, forcing herself to take a few deep breaths. The best plans were always simple plans. When she had been on the run, her plan had always been to… well… run. She never stayed still, she never nested anywhere, she made her noise for the universe to hear and stayed just long enough to know no one was coming for her. Making noise was definitely not something she wanted to do right now, but her main objective was still the same; to get back to the Doctor and to get home.
The Doctor, at that particular moment, was probably the more foolish of the two options, even if that was the option she wanted to take. So, her only real option was to get to the TARDIS. Which was back the way she had come. Through the monsters, past Morpheus and its rather hungry sleep pods. As always, her route home was the most dangerous one, and she really was stupid enough to take it, armed only with her gun, a sonic screwdriver, and a tube of hand sanitiser.
She placed her hand out on the wall, fingers splayed. Sometimes life had just been simpler when she had been trapped in that bedroom. When she was just left alone, at least she was safe and not in the realm of absolutely bonkers monsters.
"Koschei!" she called out. "If—If this is you, I get it. I've done something to piss you off. You can explain that to me later. Fancy opening a door, now?" Nothing happened. "Koschei? Are you there?"
She ran her hand up and down the wall in an arch motion but found nothing but an uneven surface. No door handle, no exit route. "Of course not," she muttered. "This could only be my actual life."
She pulled out her gun, held it at the ready, took one more deep breath then headed back the way she came.
~0~0~0~
The Doctor watched, helpless, as Danni turned and fled out the door and into the hallway. He would have given anything to follow, but the creature's attention was on him and he knew he had to keep it that way. "Oi, big man!" he shouted and the creature roared again. "Come and get me!"
He slammed the door shut. His hearts were pounding and he was still terrified, but for now at least he had a moment to think. He needed to work out what to do, and quick, so that he could get back out and to his wife.
He leant against the cold door, partly to listen to the thing outside and partly to calm himself down. He had thought, for a moment, she was going to be foolish enough to try and run to him. Then she'd turned out to be foolish enough to run away on her own. He realised that, actually, she really hadn't had any unfoolish options laid out in front of her. She'd done the clever thing and run away, but it didn't make her any safer, it just delayed the danger longer.
It didn't make him feel any more reassured, either, because he now couldn't do anything to help her. No, that wasn't true. He needed to work out what was happening. That was where his strength was. Her strength was surviving. She'd proven that time and time again, she could do it one more time. The way he helped that was to either stop the creatures completely, or hold them off enough to get everyone, including Danielle, as far away as possible.
"Where's Danni?" Jack asked lowly. The Doctor looked over at met the eyes of a worried, angry parent and knew the answer wasn't going to please him. "Where is my daughter?"
Nagata, who was frantically pacing as worried over her own team, looked up at him in surprise. "Hang on a minute. Your daughter?" she asked.
"She ran the other way," the Doctor replied almost dismissively.
"She ran… You left her out there?!" he exclaimed. "With that… that thing?"
The Doctor chuckled darkly. "Oh, trust me, that thing is still very much with us," he retorted. "She'll be fine."
Jack walked towards him, ready to throttle him, then walked away to try and stop himself from hurting the Doctor. What was angering him the most was the Danni hadn't even wanted to leave the TARDIS. They'd both coaxed her out, teasing and tempting her and now she was the one on her own, yet again, fighting against a monster in a situation she had expressly not wanted to be in.
Jack wanted someone to blame, though, who wasn't himself. He would never have willingly put Danni in danger, so that meant his anger was going to be shot straight at the Doctor. So, he turned around and strode back over, grabbing the Doctor and shoving him up against the door.
"You just let her run off!" he accused the Time Lord.
The Doctor reached up, using his arms to break Jack's grip on him. "If she had come this way she would have died," the Doctor snapped back. "She's safer out there."
"Safer?" Jack exclaimed. "She's going to get eaten, or worse turned into one of those bloody things and you think she's safe?! You left her…"
The Doctor's eyes flashed. He'd had enough. He took blame when he deserved it, but this was not the time to be pointing fingers.
"Are you lot always going on about how capable she is?" he snapped back. "Always telling her that she's too dependent on me, that I made her too dependent on me? That I don't let her show how she can handle herself? Isn't that what you were telling her when she left me? Do you remember that, Harkness? But it's not so easy on the other side, is it?" He pointed to the door. "She's more than capable of looking after herself. I know she is, she's been doing it since she was thrown back into this universe. I never said she couldn't. All I've done is not want her to do it alone."
He took a deep breath. "I believe in her with everything I have," he told Jack, who was battling with feeling chastised and furious. He just wanted someone to blame, the Doctor understood that. "I believe with both my hearts that she will make it back to the TARDIS, on her own, because I know that she can take on the universe and survive it. She proved it enough times for us to accept it, hasn't she?"
He turned around, away from Jack, ending their little argument because he knew Jack wasn't like his other companions, or like Nagata who was desperately trying to contact her soldiers. Jack was old enough and smart enough to listen to him. His emotions were high, but then again the Doctor didn't feel like he was particularly calm or collected, either. He looked out of the window in the door but saw nothing but darkness.
"Alright, alright," Jack started, still pacing, still trying to get his nerves under control. The Doctor was right. Danni would be fine. They would all be fine. They just needed to keep level heads. His need to take his frustration out on the nearest person wasn't going to get them anywhere. It wasn't going to get them back to Danni. "What do we do?"
The Doctor glanced over his shoulder, taking a quick look around before looking out the window again. "Where are we?"
"Some form of cold storage. Most likely to keep specimens in," Jack replied, taking a look around himself. There was a transparent hanging separating the two areas of the room with what looked like bags hanging from the ceiling behind it. "Although, I think we've made our way into the kitchen."
Nagata looked between the two in disbelief. One minute they were bickering like children over Danni, the next they were assessing the place like they were taking stock. "We need to go after them," she stated firmly. "Chopra and 474 are out there as well."
The Doctor shot her a look. "Don't be ridiculous."
"They're under my command. I owe it to them," she retorted.
"To die?" he countered. "They wouldn't thank you for that." He turned back to the window, looking out. It was why he wasn't chasing after Danni right now. Dying before he could save them wasn't smart, nor a gracious thing to do. He didn't want to die needlessly. She might have been scared, but she was alive and he intended on keeping as many people that way as he could. Including himself.
All of this because some human thought it was going to be more profitable to keep people awake. "Glamis hath murdered sleep, therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more," he recited to himself.
"What?" Nagata snapped.
"Shakespeare," Jack replied. "Macbeth, I think." The Doctor nodded. "Danni really likes him. I never saw the appeal, myself."
"He really knew his stuff," the Doctor defended. "They all did. The Ancients. The poets. All those sad songs. All those lullabies." He shook his head. That was his sentimentality getting to him again. "Sleep is essential to every sentient being in the universe. But to humans." He looked at them both disdainfully. "Greedy, filthy, stupid humans—" Jack rolled his eyes. Rose had warned him all those years ago that he liked to insult species when he was stressed. He'd laughed at the time. Now he was just used to it. "-It's an inconvenience to be bartered away. Well, now we know the truth. Sleep isn't just a function. It's blessed. Every night we dive deep into that inky pool, deep into the arms of Morpheus. Every morning, we wake up and wipe the sleep from our eyes, and that keeps us safe. Safe from the monsters inside."
"Yes, very poetic," Jack drawled. "That still doesn't help us now, does it? We're trapped in here and they're all out there waiting to eat us. Got any plans, Doc, cause we're sitting ducks here."
There was a thud behind them and both the Jack and Nagata spun around, guns at the ready. However, there was nothing there and they both slowly lowered them once again.
"Let's work with what we've got," the Doctor declared, pulling out his sunglasses. "Let's work from the start."
~0~0~0~
"You know, I used to think you were quite clever," Danni muttered to herself as she headed back down the hallway. She'd gone past where the Doctor and Jack were hidden and could hear the distant roars of the creatures somewhere deep in the room. "I used to think that, apart from some questionable life choices, you could have been bloody brilliant."
She was keeping an eye out for anything she could recognise. A wall hanging, a logo, a pill of dust that she really hoped was just bad housekeeping. There were signs of their footprints in some of the dust on the floor. She wasn't sure if she owned enough sanitiser to ever be clean again.
"Once upon a time, some might have even said you had potential for something great," she continued once she felt safe to. "Some would have heralded you as a saviour. Now look at you. Walking through the dark to hide in a spaceship."
Her gun was held tightly in her hand, aimed perfectly as she had learnt over the last few years. Jack had offered to show her once or twice before she was taken. There had been times she'd wished she'd been smart enough to take him up on that offer. She'd learnt, though, and she was quite an adept shooter.
"For example, speaking out loud really isn't the best idea when you're trying to be quiet," she muttered to herself. "Especially about how stupid you are. Honestly, you have to wonder how you've survived this long."
She paused, listening, trying to see if she could hear anything coming her way. Her hearts pounded heavily and, once again, she was incredibly tempted to turn and try and make her way through the monsters and to her husband. She still would rather have died with him than on her own.
"'Well, my Pet, we know who's fault that is'," she continued, putting on an exaggerated Scottish accent as she started to walk again. She was pretty sure there was a left turn coming up that would take her back to the lab she'd been put to sleep in. "'It's that silly old Doctor.'"
She lowered her voice. "The Doctor didn't make me stupid. I didn't make me stupid. I've just always been stupid. You can't blame that on him as well."
"'Well, I can't go around having a stupid pet, can I?'" she asked herself, once again mocking the woman who she was having a fake conversation with. She turned the left corner and pretended that she recognised where she was going, instead of admitting all the hallways looked the same. "'I'm going to train the stupid out of you.'"
Danni stopped again, looking up at the ceiling. "Well, look how that turned out!" she crowed smugly. "You have a hundred years and I'm still an idiot!"
She shook her head to herself. "This is what the email was for, remember? Don't tell the universe, tell Gmail."
There was some, rather twisted, part of her that was proud of how she'd managed to say such an idiot in the face of Missy trying to change her. It was if she had managed to keep hold of a personality that had been deemed 'incorrect' by the woman who had taken it upon herself to change her.
Of course, that was all a load of crap. The old Danni, the one Missy had taken and even the hidden regeneration after it, would have gone after the Doctor, monsters be damned. She would have slid under its legs or taken the long way around the room to get to her husband. She would have always taken the more dangerous path if it had meant that they could face the danger together. The 'new' Danni wasn't like that. She thought more, she tried to be less emotional, and she was infinitely less trusting of everyone around her.
She had reason for that, though. At least that was something she could trace back to a definite cause.
She heard the rumbling before she saw the creature. She paused in her tracks, gun raised, aiming directly at its head as it came into view. "You-You stay right there, got it?" she warned. "Otherwise you and me are going to have a problem, and you don't want that, do you sweetie?"
The creature roared loudly, speeding up and she turned and starting running back the way she came. "Always flirting with the wrong people, Fielding," she scolded herself. "First Time Lords, now dust monsters. That's how you get yourself into these messes!"
~0~0~0~
"Sorry, Doc, I've got to ask; what's with the sunglasses?"
The Doctor held Nagata's helmet in one hand whilst he pressed his finger against the button at the hinge on the glasses. "What's wrong with them?" he asked.
"I just remember how defensive you got over the screwdriver," Jack replied. "And how objectively against any remotely fashionable you are."
The Doctor lifted his head, raising his sunglasses up to look at Jack. "The sunglasses are cool," he retorted. "I think so, Danni thinks so, Nagata thinks so—"
"Um…" Nagata started.
"-Looks like you're in the minority here," the Doctor continued. "Plus, they're hands free. Much more useful. Look."
He dropped the glasses back down onto his nose before facing the wall. A quick buzz of the sunglasses and a projection of himself, Danni and Jack appeared. There was no sound, but none of them were looking in the direction of the camera. Jack recognised it as when they had first come across the soldiers. None of the trio were looking in the right direction, but he knew he'd noticed them by that point.
"What are you doing?" Nagata asked.
"I've hacked into your helmet cams," the Doctor explained.
The woman looked confused. "What?"
"Reviewing the footage." He buzzed his sunglasses again and it changed to when they had been fighting against the failing grav-shields. "There's something not right here."
"We don't have helmet cams."
The Doctor didn't notice what she said, but Jack did. As the Doctor continued to watch the footage of the dust creature devour Rassmussen, Jack turned to her.
"You don't have helmet cams?" he repeated. She shook her head. "I thought that was standard practice."
"Cuts, pet," she reminded him. "We're lucky to have guns."
"Then where's the footage from?" Jack looked to the Doctor, who still wasn't paying attention to them. He watched the creature gobble up Rassmussen, but kept an eye on his wife behind them. She didn't have a hope of getting past the creature. She had done to right thing by running away. "Doc?"
"Why did it kill Rassmussen like that?" he asked in reply.
"They kill people. That's what monsters do," Jack snapped. "What about the footage?"
The Doctor removed his glasses, ending the replay of events. "But that's a direct attack. That's not how they operate. Dust grows. Consumes the host."
Jack knew how the Doctor's mind worked. He knew that if he was focused on something then there was a good chance it was important. Danni was much the same, and he'd found that his own instinct had only improved on that front over time. The problem was that the focusing could stop him seeing something vitally important in that moment.
"So? Maybe this is their next step? Or maybe they were just really hungry and focused on the skinny, weak, easy-to-catch member of the herd. Doc…"
"Maybe. There's something going on here. Something we're not getting."
Jack just stared for a moment before nodding. "You're right, there is something you're not getting," he agreed. The Doctor's brows furrowed as he finally started listening to the ex-Time Agent. He motioned to Nagata. "Tell him."
Nagata just looked confused. She'd only signed up to be in the army. This seemed beyond her paygrade. "Tell him what?"
"What you just said," Jack prompted. She was still confused for a moment before she turned back to the Doctor.
"I said we don't have helmet cams," she repeated.
Jack looked at the Doctor. "Then where did that footage come from?" he asked. "Because that was definitely from her perspective."
The Doctor looked taken aback by the information, almost horrified, which Jack felt was finally an appropriate reaction to that piece of information. He turned to Jack, the cogs in his head turning, before his brows furrowed and he leant in a little closer. "Woah, Doc, wrong Harkness," Jack told him, leaning backwards.
The Doctor didn't quite understand his words, but he moved back anyway. It was quite striking how much Danni did now look like her father. He knew that regenerations could be influenced by the experiences of the ones before it. However, he was more concerned at that moment by Jack's observation.
It was as if the footage had not only been from Nagata's perspective, but from her eyelevel. It didn't make any sense. None of this made any sense.
They all jumped as the banging on the wall intensified, and Jack turned to the Doctor. "We've got to decide a plan," he said. "We can't stay in here, we're gonna freeze. We need to let them in."
The Doctor almost demanded to know what he was talking about, before his eyes lit up in comprehension. "We need to let them in," he agreed.
"What?" Nagata asked.
The Doctor turned to her. "We let them in." He began nudging the woman towards the hanging bags at the back of the room. "If we stay, we freeze and we definitely die. If we let them in we might be able to get past them and we only might die. There's no other option."
He moved over to one of the other bags. "Get in the bag," he instructed them both. They quickly followed his lead, proving that he was very much in charge. With a buzz of his sunglasses, the door opened and the trio watched as the creatures stumbled in, all limbs and loud noises.
The Doctor watched, silently studying them as he hoped that Danni was having a better time than they were.
~0~0~0~
Sorry about the missed week, and that this one isn't particularly fantastic. I hope you liked Danni's little moment to herself, though :)
I also hope notifications are working again because I've been told they haven't been lately.
Reviews :)
Quinnmarie - I'm glad too. She's going to be making a bit more of an effort, but I'm sure she'll keep a lot to herself for a while. You're not missing much by not remembering the episode. It's one of my least favourites but fit better at this point in the story than in its actual place in the episode run :)
serenitysaiyan - Same, the episode had so much potential and was a bit rubbish. I'm just using it for more Jack, because he is the best XD
Ruby Slippers - Thanks :)
bored411 - I do like Jack and Danni a lot. I wish I could work it in more XD
AGBreads - Thanks sweetie!
Michael Thomas1 - Thanks for reading! I'm sure that it's crossed everyone's mind at some point, but Danni would never willingly go after Missy. I'm sure Jack would like a round or two with her if he got the chance, though XD