Finding Neverland

by RainingCoffee

Mabel was fairly certain she had done nothing to deserve this. All she wanted to do was figure out how she got to the hospital, and to possibly stop running about everywhere. She keeps pulling her stitches and it's really starting to hurt. (This is a jumping around the Doctor's timeline fic. OC/3rd Doctor-13th Doctor)

12. Farther Back (The Ark in Space)

I need to stop making promises. There was a plan to have this chapter out last week, but as you can see that never happened. Rest assured, I have been spending just about all my free time on this chapter. Hopefully the 25,000 words make up for the long wait?

Enjoy!

-RainingCoffee

---

An hour and twenty minutes later, the Doctor walks back into our room and takes a seat on the side of my desk. I finish the sentence I'm writing, before looking up and smiling at what I see. The Doctor is in his signature pinstriped suit, converse feet swinging back and forth.

"It was a pretty accurate hint." He admits.

I stand up, straightening his tie and adjusting it in his shirt. "Looking amazing as always sweetheart."

The Doctor preens, pressing a kiss to my cheek in response. He lingers there, taking a deep breath and then exhaling. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry?" I ask in confusion.

"I remember this outfit." The Doctor explains, tugging on my cardigan. "The next place you jump to is in my past. I remember it, and I want you to know that I'm sorry."

Placing a hand on his cheek, I pull back to look at him. There is guilt in his expression, as well as regret. A flippant comment almost comes off my tongue, but I have a feeling that at the moment it would just make everything worse. "It's alright sweetheart, I'll remember this when it happens okay?"

He rests his forehead against mine. "See you on the other side dear."

I have just enough time to be confused before I'm whipped away.

xxxx

I reappear, thankfully stumbling into a wall so I don't fall down. "Oh, I say!" An unfamiliar man's voice comes from behind me.

A hand is put on my back, and I blink the spots out of my eyes as I smile up at the person. "Thank you, sir."

"Of course, of course, it's no problem at all." The man pauses. "Say, do you realize that you just appeared in the middle of the hallway in a ball of light?"

"Yeah, that tends to happen to me a lot." I tell him, looking around the area. "You wouldn't be able to lead me to the Doctor would you?"

The confusion on his face clears up. "Of course ma'am, right through here." He gestures down the hallway. "I'm Harry Sullivan, and you might be?"

"My name's Mabel. Mabel Falkov." I introduce myself.

Harry nods at me in response, directing the both of us down the hallway. He rounds the corner first, addressing the people inside. "Hello Doctor, I have someone here who was looking for you."

This is a new Doctor for me. The first time I've met this one I mean. The pretty boy had shown me pictures but nothing beat seeing the overlong scarf and curly hair in real life. In fact, he has so much hair that his hat barely fits on his head. He looks as though he was just about to head into the Tardis with a woman, who I'm assuming is his current companion.

The Doctor turns around, and his eyes scan me dispassionately. "I will not fill out those forms, I will not. Tell the Brigadier that it is not going to happen."

"I don't know what forms you are talking about." I respond, my eyebrows coming together in confusion.

"Oh, are you a fan then?" The Doctor dismisses me. "No thanks are necessary, and I don't give out autographs."

I cross my arms over my chest and raise an eyebrow. "I'm becoming less of a fan by the moment."

He waves a hand at me in a distracted manner, turning his attention to Harry. "We're just going on a little trip." He brandishes a bag of sweets. "Would you like a jelly baby?"

Harry takes a sweet, looking back and forth between the Doctor and me. "A little trip? Where, in that

old police box?"

The Doctor snatches the jelly baby back from Harry, testily. "Yes, as a matter of fact, in that old police box."

"Oh, come along now, Doctor. We're both reasonable men. Now, we both know that police boxes don't go careering around all over the place." Harry tries to reason with the Doctor.

"Do we?" The Doctor asks, looking at Harry intensely. The woman behind the Doctor giggles in response.

Harry laughs a bit. "Of course we do. The whole idea's absurd."

"Is it?" He asks Harry, leaning in a bit. "You wouldn't like to step inside a moment? Just to demonstrate that it is all an illusion."

"Well, if you think it'll do any good." Harry responds.

"Oh, yes, it'll make me feel a lot better." The Doctor insists.

"Doctor!" The woman behind him scolds.

Harry looks between the two of us again. "I must confess, I'm rather confused. When you said you were looking for the Doctor, Mabel, I was under the impression you knew him."

The Doctor, who had been in the middle of turning back to the Tardis, freezes.

"Oh, I know him." I murmur, seeing the Doctor's shoulders go up in response to my voice. "It's all very wibbly though, we never meet in the right order."

The Doctor turns back towards me, what I can see of his ears show them to be bright red. He takes his hat off, running a hand through his hair. "You're Mabel? Why didn't you say so at once?" He attempts to scold me.

Now I'm actually starting to get a bit peeved. The Doctor didn't recognize me and somehow that's my fault? "You know, I might have, but you were busy making assumptions."

He deflates, looking like a kicked puppy. I sigh in response, scowling at him. "Alright, Alright. I can't stay mad at you when you do that." The Doctor looks up hesitantly, making sure I'm not still mad. "I have a feeling this is pretty rare though! This is the first time you've met this me, and this is the first time I've met this you."

The Doctor hums in response. "Yes, I do believe so. So, this is a new body for you then?"

Intellectually I was aware that the Doctor told me I was like him but until this moment I didn't realize that meant I would change like he did. It's a very strange realization.

"No." Looking down, I gesture at my body. "This is the original for me."

His mouth drops open, and he gapes at me. "This is your first body?"

Confused at his reaction, I nod. "Yes, this is my first body."

"Oh Mabel." The Doctor murmurs. "I don't think I've ever seen you this young before."

I roll my eyes, more exasperated than upset. "And this is the youngest I've ever seen you. Now that we've gotten past that, can we move on?" My hand reaches out to tug on his scarf. "I think you were just about to show Harry the Tardis."

"Oh yes, go on then." The Doctor directs to Harry.

Harry looks at me, and I nod in response. "Right-o." He steps into the Tardis and there is a moment of silence. "Oh, I say!"

The woman smiles back at us, giddy, before stepping into the Tardis. I've got to admit, hearing someone react to the Tardis for the first time is a treat.

"The youngest you've seen me eh?" The Doctor asks, placing a hand on my back, urging me to enter the Tardis ahead of him. The console room is small and streamlined, I was beginning to find that the farther I jumped back, the more the console room was like this. It would be an easy indicator in the future if the pattern held out.

"Yeah, I've been seeing your later faces. I assume it's been the same for you?" I respond, smiling at him over my shoulder.

"Yes." He replies, looking distracted. "Are we, have we-" The Doctor trails off, looking embarrassed.

I glance over to make sure that Harry and the woman are still distracted. They are, the woman is showing Harry around the console room, before turning towards the Doctor all the way. "What's the matter?"

His eyes skitter over my left shoulder and his ears go bright red again.

"Is this your way of asking if we are together for me?" I ask delicately.

"Yes." The Doctor grumbles, placing a hand over his face. "But I always end up tripping over words when you are around, it's infuriating."

I can't help but laugh, immediately trying to stifle it as the Doctor emerges from under his hand flustered and ready for confrontation. "Sorry, Sorry. It's just that, as long as I've known you, you've never been shy with words like this. It's actually kind of flattering." A man like that Doctor, being brought down by nerves just like anyone else. "You aren't the only one who gets nervous sweetheart." I admit.

The Doctor scans my face, flush fading from his own. "You never answered my question." He murmurs.

"We are together for me, yes. Kissing and handholding are pretty common." He looks down at me, but doesn't react. "If you didn't realize, that was a hint. Unless we aren't together for you yet? In which case, Spoilers."

"Yes, we are together from my point of view." The Doctor says, hand coming up to cup my cheek. There is something sad in his expression that I can't put a name to. "This is going to be much harder than I thought it was going to be."

Before I can respond, the woman calls over. "Doctor, stop flirting and come show Harry how the Tardis works."

My face heats up with the heat of my answering blush. The Doctor laughs in response, his gentle hand on my chin keeping me from moving over towards the console. He starts to lean down, probably intending to kiss me, but I shift uncomfortably. It was one thing to kiss him while his companions were distracted, another thing entirely to kiss him while they were staring at us.

He moves his other hand, which is still holding his hat, bringing it up as a barrier between my face, and the gaze of his two companions. Oh Doctor, always a gentleman. In return, I lean up and kiss him. The kiss is soft, exploratory. This is the first time either of us have kissed the other body. As our kiss continues, the connection snaps into focus. It's far stronger than I'm used to.

The Doctor pulls back, placing his hat back on his head and heading over to the console. I can feel how pleased he is with himself, smug male satisfaction bleeding over. I follow, blush persisting under the woman's knowing glance.

"So you're Mabel?" She asks me. "You said that this was the first time you'd seen this Doctor, so I'm going to assume that you haven't met me yet. I'm Sarah Jane Smith." Sarah introduces herself, holding out a hand for me to shake.

"Hello Sarah Jane Smith." I say, shaking her hand. "It's very nice to meet you."

"Well, I say old chap. How is all of this inside of the police box?" Harry asks.

"It's dimensionally transcendental." The Doctor explains.

Confusion covers Harry's face. I step in, because it doesn't look like the Doctor is going to explain anything else. "Think of it this way. There are two separate dimensions at play. The one outside of the Tardis that we were just in, and the one we stepped into the moment we came through the doors. That allows the Tardis to look like a police box on the outside, while being bigger on the inside."

"I'm fairly certain I was able to understand those words individually, but not as you put them together." Harry admits.

"Well, I think it's best to take her on a short trip to the moon to prove it to you Harry." The Doctor states.

Harry frowns. "To prove what?"

The Doctor doesn't respond, just smiles mischievously and starts the sequence to take us to the moon.

"What does this do?" Harry asks, spinning a dial all the way around.

"No!" The Doctor and I yell at the same time, but we are too late. The Tardis jerks sharply, throwing everyone to the ground. I slam into the Doctor, his arms come around me and stop my trajectory towards the wall.

Several seconds of shaking commence, before the whine of the Tardis's stressed engines start to calm down. She makes the noise of materialization.

There is silence for a second. "Well, if we actually ended up on the moon after that I'd be surprised." I say to break the tension.

It doesn't seem to work. The Doctor immediately sits up, furious expression on his face. "What did you think you were doing?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do anything." Harry insists.

I get up, holding out a hand to help the Doctor up. He takes it, brushing the dust from my shoulders once he's standing again.

Then he stalks over to the monitor, looking over the information. "It seems to be rather dark out there. Go grab an oil lamp, would you Sarah?"

Sarah nods, heading off into the Tardis. The Doctor opens the doors and heads out but I stay inside to keep an eye on Harry. I don't want him to accidently hit another button and leave anyone stranded wherever we are.

"You're a clumsy, ham fisted idiot." The Doctor's raised voice floats back to us inside the Tardis.

"I said I was sorry, didn't I?" Harry responds, finally getting up from his position on the floor.

"What? Come out!" The Doctor says, his voice still irritated. Harry heads towards the doors as well, but he bumps into the wall on his way there. "And don't touch anything." The Doctor demands.

Harry's face is starting to become downtrodden. "I'm only trying to open the door."

I pat Harry on the back, smiling at him. "Don't mind the Doctor, he's a grump."

Sarah Jane comes back out from the back hallway with the oil lamp that the Doctor asked her to find. Harry finally manages to leave the Tardis, and there's a startled. "Oh, I say. We've gone!" as soon as he takes in his surroundings.

Sarah shares a smile with me. "Who's gone?" She raises her voice so Harry can hear her, walking out of the doors herself.

Shaking my head, I head out after them closing the Tardis doors behind me.

"I mean, this isn't. We aren't where we were when. I've gone mad." Harry looks around in bewilderment.

"That's how I felt the first time." Sarah shares, before looking over at the Doctor. "Where are we, Doctor?"

The Doctor glances over. "I've no idea."

"A little trip to the moon, you said, just to prove to Harry" Sarah says pointedly.

"I didn't expect him to start messing about with the helmic regulator." The Doctor grouches. Harry is looking at the Tardis in awe. "Come away from there, Harry."

"You could sell that thing, Doctor." Harry says.

"I could what?" The Doctor asks in a distracted manner.

Harry continues to look around. I suppose this is his version of shock. "Jolly useful in Trafalgar Square. I mean, hundreds of bobbies hiding inside it."

"Harry." Sarah states.

"Eh?" He responds.

Sarah gives him a look. "Stop burbling."

"What?" Harry asks. "Oh, sorry. Shock, I suppose. I must say, I feel very strange."

The Doctor inhales deeply. "Not much oxygen. Still, nothing to worry about." He takes out a yo-yo and starts playing with it.

"Suffocation is nothing to worry about?" Sarah demands, starting to sound upset.

"We can survive for quite a time yet." He informs her.

Sarah doesn't look comforted by that. "While you play with that yo-yo?"

"Just a simply gravity reading, Sarah." The Doctor responds, pocketing the yo-yo again. "Yes, almost certainly we're in some kind of artificial satellite. Now isn't that interesting?"

"Not very." Sarah mutters.

My eyes furrow in confusion. I don't understand why she is being so testy with the Doctor.

"I think it is." The Doctor responds, throwing a look in my direction.

Sarah pouts. "It's dark, it's cold and it's getting very airless."

"All we have to do is get the power back on." The Doctor says, heading over to the other side of the room. "Let's see what's over here."

"Might as well go for a look round, I suppose." Sarah says, looking at the both Harry and me. "Are you coming?"

Harry leans in towards Sarah. "We'd better stick with the Doctor, don't you think?"

The Doctor must have found the light switch, because the lights take that moment to come back on. For the first time we have a good look at where we are at. It's amazing. Looks like some sort of futuristic spaceship someone would have dreamed up in the sixties. Lots of flashy buttons and streamlined consoles.

"Yes!" The Doctor exclaims. "That's better. Incredible."

Sarah blows out the oil lamp in her hands, placing in on the floor. Harry goes over towards the Doctor. "I say. What's all this for?"

"I've never seen anything quite like it." The Doctor admits.

A door slides open next to Sarah and I, and we exchange a look. I shrug in response. I mean, might as well.

"Hey, Doctor." Sarah calls out.

"Definitely built on Earth, but I can't quite place the period." The Doctor is still explaining to Harry.

"Doctor, look at this." I call over.

The Doctor waves a hand back at me, tone distracted. "In a minute, Mabel!"

Well then. I nod my head towards the room and both Sarah and I go in.

This room has more consoles, with more shinny buttons. There is also a half-reclined table in one corner.

There aren't any other exits, so I turn around to go back into the main room where the Doctor and Harry still are. Only there is a slight problem. The door seems to have closed behind us.

"Sarah, we seem to have made a slight error." I murmur softly in an attempt to not startle her.

"Hmm?" She questions, distracted.

Gently, I place a hand on her arm and turn her around so she can see the door.

Sarah's hand flies up to her mouth. "Oh no!"

I nudge the Doctor through the connection. "It might not be that bad just yet Sarah, maybe there is a button or something over here to open the door." Moving over to the console sticking out from the wall, I start pushing buttons.

Nothing happens. In fact, nothing seems to be working at all.

"It's getting hard to breath Mabel!" Sarah exclaims, starting to panic.

"Try to calm down." I tell her. "The more you panic, the quicker we'll burn through our oxygen."

Sending another jolt down the connection, this time with more urgency, I finally get a response. Exasperation. Worry.

Content that the Doctor is at least aware that something is wrong, I start opening up covers on the machinery around me. There is one that contains wires in it, and I try to follow them. My heartrate skyrockets as my own panic starts to increase.

Fingers trailing along the wires, I find several that looks as if they've been sheared. That's…unfortunate. And it also means that without some sort of tool, I'm not going to be able to fix this and get us out of here. A glance over my shoulder shows that Sarah is passed out over near the door.

My vision goes wobbly, and I slump against the open panel as my body grows lightheaded from the lack of oxygen.

Two seconds later, the door that we walked through slides open bringing with it a wave of fresh oxygen. The Doctor and Harry check on Sarah first.

"Crikey, she's cyanosed." Harry says, worry evident in his tone.

"Mind the door." I manage to force out.

The Doctor whirls around and hurries over to my side. Behind him I can see the door close on it's own again.

"I've always hated sliding doors, ever since I caught my nose in one in Pompey Barracks." Harry mutters from across the room.

"Are you alright?" The Doctor asks me, kneeling down and cupping my face.

I lean into the touch, allowing myself a second to enjoy the comfort before I do my best to straighten up. "I'll be better when we get the oxygen back into the room."

He nods, going to stand up but I stop him by reaching out and keeping ahold of his scarf.

"None of the controls are working. I was poking around, trying to find out what was going on and I found this." I jerk my head in the direction of the open panel behind me. "Someone seems to have sheared some of the wires. Fix it and I bet you fix the oxygen."

After the speech, I'm left panting again. Now with four people in the room, the fresh oxygen is being used far faster than it was with just me and Sarah. I try to get up, so I can help or do something, but my head spins with dizziness.

"Stay down Mabel. Conserve your oxygen." The Doctor studies the panel, pulling out the severed wires. "Oxygen valve servo-mechanism. Yellow, black, green." He gets up and goes looking for something.

Across the room, Harry slumps against the wall next to Sarah. "It's all my fault."

"It's my fault Harry." The Doctor reassures him, coming back over to the open panel and pulling out his sonic screwdriver.

"I haven't got enough puff to argue with you." Harry gasps out.

The Doctor turns the sonic screwdriver to the wires in an attempt to repair the severed lines. "Then lie down and conserve the oxygen, while I do what I can."

My vision goes spotty, tunneling in a strange way. Maybe it would be best if I just rested my eyes for a second….

Someone smacks my cheek lightly. I open my eyes, taking in the Doctors beaming face before me. "There you are."

"Did I pas out?" I ask, groggy.

"Yes." The Doctor tilts his head to the side. "I was able to repair the wire that led to the oxygen valve servo mechanism."

He offers me a hand up, steadying me when my legs take a little longer to get with the program. "Harry and Sarah?"

"Harry is fine, Sarah should be coming to soon." The Doctor assures me. "I'm going to repair the rest of the cables. There is something odd going on here. The wires were sheared through, but I don't think it happened with a tool. It's almost as if they were bitten." He frowns, a contemplative look coming to his face.

I pat him on the arm, making his focus return to me. "You fix the cables, I'll go over and check on Harry and Sarah. Knowing how trouble follows us I'm going to assume we'll find out about what's going on sooner or later."

The Doctor rolls his eyes is response. "I never got into any trouble before you came along, so I don't know what you mean by 'us'." He kneels down next to the open panel full of wires and starts putting things in order.

"That is the boldest faced lie I've ever heard come out of your mouth." I say, marveling at the words. The Doctor's shoulders shake, amusement broadcasting to me. Kneeling down next to him for a brief second, I place a kiss to the side of his head. "Sweetheart, I think we both know who invites trouble. And the majority of the time it isn't me."

He smirks at me, then shoos me off to go check on Sarah and Harry. Harry looks fine, as the Doctor had said earlier, but it was concerning to me that Sarah was still unconscious. They've placed her on the reclined table that I noticed earlier.

"How's she doing?" I ask Harry.

Harry smiles at me. "She should be just fine."

I frown, running a finger along the table. "I don't like that she hasn't woken up yet."

"Splendid!" The Doctor exclaims from across the room. "Now let's see if that panel works." He stands up from the panel and goes over to console, pressing a button. The door that had closed, leaving us stuck in here finally opens. He beams over at us. "All systems go, wouldn't you say?"

Sarah makes a noise. "She's coming round." Harry exclaims, bracing her by the shoulders.

"Good." The Doctor says, coming over and standing next to the table.

"Steady. Steady on, old girl. Steady on." Harry cautions Sarah.

"Harry." Sarah says, voice croaky and low.

Harry nods, holding her still. "Yes, I'm here, I'm here."

Slowly, haltingly, Sarah makes her opinion known. "Call me old girl again and I'll spit in your eye."

I hadn't been sure of Sarah at first. She seemed to whine a lot. But that one sentence just cemented her firmly on the 'I like her' side of my feelings. I smirk over at the Doctor. He rolls his eyes at me, but smiles down at Sarah. "Welcome back, Sarah Jane."

"Couldn't breathe." Sarah says, face becoming upset.

"A drop of brandy'd be the thing now." Harry advises.

"There's some in the Tardis." The Doctor offers, gesturing towards the door.

"You'll be as right as ninepence in a minute." Harry tells Sarah. "We're going to get you some brandy, all right?"

Sarah grimaces. "Ugh, I hate brandy."

The boys walk towards the Tardis and I follow after them, like hell am I going to let them get into trouble now. Plus I'm kind of curious as to where this stash of Brandy is. I've never seen any on the Tardis before.

"Doctor, do you think you could possibly persuade her to take some?" Harry says to the Doctor.

The Doctor doesn't respond, pausing at the doorway.

Some sort of infra red light fitting shaped like a saucer comes down from the middle of the ceiling in the room the Tardis is in. "I say, what's that?" Harry asks.

"Get down!" The Doctor yells, pulling both Harry and I behind a desk. There's a noise as though something gets blasted with a gun.

"Crikey. What was that?" Harry asks. For some reason he only has one shoe on.

"What happened to your shoe?" I ask him.

Harry frowns at me. "We just got shot at by something and you're worried about my shoe?"

I'm sent a wave of exasperation from the Doctor. "Be quiet both of you." I try to shift into a better position and the Doctor tugs me down lower. "Keep your head down."

"Okay, okay." I murmur, patting the hand he has on my shirt. "I'll be careful."

The Doctor frowns, rummaging around in his pockets. He pulls out what look to be an antenna. Placing his hat on it, he lifts it up over the cover the desk provides. The machine fires and the Doctor's hat bursts into fire. He pulls it down quickly, beating it against the floor to put it out.

"We seem to be trapped." The Doctor offers, grimacing up at the ceiling.

"What is it?" Harry asks.

"Some sort of automatic guard. I hadn't bargained on this when I repaired the circuits." The Doctor responds.

"Doctor, you said you thought the wires were bitten, not sheared. What if-" I trail off, meeting his eyes with my own.

His brow furrows in contemplation. "Perhaps."

"What about Sarah?" Harry says. "If she comes out-"

"Tell her to stay where she is." The Doctor interrupts him, voice stern.

"Sarah? Sarah, Can you hear me, old girl? Keep away from the door. Do you understand? Keep away from the door!" Harry yells to Sarah in the other room.

Strangely, no one yells anything back. Not a good sign. There's no way that Sarah could have missed all the commotion out here.

The Doctor pokes the end of the antennae up over the desk again. Nothing happens this time. Retracting it, he hums. "Apparently it's not activated by movement unless what moves is organic."

"Hardly helps us, does it? We're organic." Harry grumbles.

"Not down here we're not, Harry." The Doctor points out.

Harry looks confused for a second before it clicks. "Oh, yes. Good piece of logical deduction, Doctor."

I restrain the urge to facepalm.

The Doctor stares at him for a second, then pulls out his screwdriver and starts unbolting the table to the floor. The sarcasm is strong in his voice as he responds. "Thank you."

It takes all of thirty seconds for the bolts to be unscrewed and then we are scooting along the floor with the table as our cover. I'm squished uncomfortably between the Doctor and Harry.

"Where are we going with it?" Harry asks, face far closer to mine than I'm strictly happy with.

"To the far wall." The Doctor replies.

Harry huffs, twisting his end around carefully.

The Doctor cranes his head, watching our progress. "One slip, Harry, and we'll be charcoal. Push on."

"Cheery." I mutter.

"Psst, there it is." The Doctor says, halting us.

"What?" Harry asks.

The Doctor grimaces at us. "The trouble is, we can't reach it from here."

I raise an eyebrow. "The cutoff switch?"

Nodding, the Doctor jerks his chin up at a lever on the wall console. "The auto-guard cut-out. Look, up there, see?" He tilts his head to the side, I can feel the light bulb turn on. "Never mind. Faithful old scarf."

Throwing his scarf up, a laser zaps it before it even gets a chance to reach the lever. The Doctor pats his scarf out with a frown.

"Bad luck. Jolly good try, though." Harry remarks.

"It isn't a game of cricket, Harry." The Doctor scolds.

"Sorry." Harry responds. "Mind you, if I had a cricket ball, I'd jolly soon knock that switch."

Reaching into his pocket, the Doctor immediately pulls out what I would assume is a cricket ball. "Will this do?"

Harry takes it, polishing the ball on his jacket. "Watch this, then." He throws it, but it meets the same fate as the Doctor's scarf. "Organic. Of course."

"Afraid so." The Doctor responds.

"Now what?" Harry asks.

I roll my eyes. "It's that lever, right there?" I verify.

The Doctor narrows his eyes at me. "Yes."

I remove my shoe, taking my sock off and then replacing my shoe afterwards. "Let's hope it can't shoot multiple times in a row." Witty remark gotten out of the way, I chuck my sock towards the other side of the room and lunge for the lever. Successfully reaching the lever and yanking it down, I hear the laser discharge once, but not twice and I count my lucky stars.

At the same time, the Doctor grabs my leg, pulling it out from under me and causing me to hit the ground hard.

I curse in response, pushing my glasses back up into position on my face. "You didn't have to do that! I managed to get the lever in time."

The Doctor doesn't respond. I look up in confusion. His furious face greets me in return and I become aware of the churning ball of emotions that are resonating through the connection.

"What were you thinking?" He demands, eyebrows furrowed.

Pursing my lip, I glare right back at him. "I was thinking that Sarah never responded earlier, and there was no way she didn't hear the commotion that was going on in here. We were taking entirely too much time to disable this security feature so I took care of it."

Harry jerks, eyes going wide in realization. "I say, you're right!" He looks around the edge of the desk, and after a second where nothing happens, scrambles to his feet and runs off towards the side room. "Sarah! Old girl can you hear me?"

"How did you know that would work?" The Doctor asks me.

"I didn't." I admit, making his expression sour even further.

The Doctor cups the side of my face with his hand. "Mabel, you can't do things like that."

"Of course I can. I just did." I say. Ignoring the way his fingers twitch against my skin, I lean back to look at him in the eyes properly. "Can you honestly look at me and say you weren't about to do something similar?"

The Doctor shakes his head, but I can feel him becoming less angry. "That doesn't mean you should be in a hurry to put your life in danger."

I'm about to respond, but Harry comes running back into the room. "Sarah is gone! I can't find her anywhere."

I scramble to my feet with the Doctor's help. Sometimes I really hate it when I'm right. We hurry into the side room, but like Harry stated, Sarah isn't anywhere I can see.

The Doctor does a circuit of the room, before coming to a stop at the table that Sarah had been lying on. He pries the cushion up and reveals a mass of circuitry. "What a fool. Of course!"

"What is it?" Harry asks.

"Why didn't I realize?" The Doctor murmurs, mostly to himself. He rushes over to the console and reads something from the display. "Short range matter transmitter. The strange thing is, it's only for internal relay."

Harry sighs, beginning to get fed up. "Doctor, I haven't the foggiest notion what you're on about."

"Never mind. It just means that Sarah can't be far away. All we've got to do is find her. Come on!" The Doctor says to us, leading the way out of the room.

Harry and I exchange glances, before Harry shrugs and follows after the Doctor. I look over at the table, and then over at the panel that housed the bitten wires. Something odd was going on here, and the other two kept getting distracted. I was worried about Sarah too, but I was going to keep my out for anything else suspicious.

"Mabel!" The Doctor calls from outside the room. "Don't wander off now."

I roll my eyes again. I feel as though once this day is over, I'm going to have the strongest eyes this side of the galaxy. Stepping into the other room, I head for the still open doorway. "How many times do I have to tell you Doctor. I'm not the one who wanders off, it's always you. And then you scold me for doing it as if you weren't the one who actually walked off in the first place."

The Doctor sticks his tongue out at me, waiting till I'm close enough and then putting a hand in the small of my back to direct me down the hallway. "I think we'll try this way first." He says to Harry, heading down the left corridor.

It's actually very pretty here. The corridor we are in has windows showing off the stars, and inky blackness of space.

We walk in silence for a little over a minute. There's a door up ahead that reads 'Area Q.'. As soon as we get close enough, a voice shouts out a warning. "This is a sterile area! Keep out!"

"Just like a hospital." Harry muses after recovering from the shock.

Stepping closer to the door, the Doctor drops his hand from my back. He presses a button which causes the door to slide up. Beaming over at us, the Doctor jerks his head towards the open door.

Harry takes half a step forward and then pauses. "Well, ought we, do you think?"

"Don't be nervous, Harry." The Doctor advises.

Taking a breath, Harry nods, walking forwards. Ahead of us, I catch of quick glimpse of something green out of the corner of my eye. Turning my head to look, it quickly skitters out of view.

Harry abruptly stops.

"What is it Harry?" The Doctor asks.

"I saw something moving." Harry tells the Doctor. I come up next to him, frowning.

The Doctor turns away, distracted. "Nonsense, Harry."

"No. Not nonsense." I state. "I saw it too. Something green. I only caught it out of the corner of my eye. When I turned to look at it properly it skittered away."

Turning to study us, The Doctor raises an eyebrow. "Green, you say?"

Harry walks forward, pointing at the ground. "Green like that."

The Doctor and I follow. Harry is pointing at a trail of what looks to be slime that's on the ground, it's heading into a grate.

"It's like the trail left by a gastropod mollusk." The Doctor murmurs.

"A Slug?" Harry asks.

The Doctor shrugs. "Or a snail."

Scoffing, Harry reaches out and touches the grate. "That size? Impossible. It couldn't have got through this grille."

"Very interesting. A multinucleate organism?" The Doctor muses.

Very interesting indeed. These facts are all adding up. But for now, our focus should stay on what's important. "How about we go find Sarah before we get distracted again. We can explore the slug/snail thing later."

"Right." The Doctor says, standing up. We walk a few more steps down the corridor and come across a junction. "This looks promising."

Everything is bathed in a yellow light. A sign on the wall informs us that you need a badge to enter. Once everyone is inside, the Doctor closes the door behind us and we are left cramped together once again.

Harry shifts. "She's obviously not in here."

"Decontamination chamber." The Doctor explains. "Might make you feel a bit dizzy."

The Doctor appears to be fine and so do I, but Harry cringes. His hand comes up to brace his head. The lights return to normal, no longer yellow, and the other door opens.

The Doctor walk forward, but I stay back with Harry. "You alright?" I ask him.

"Yes, yes. I'll be fine. Don't worry about me." Harry insists, attempting to smile.

Oh Harry. I nod, accepting his words. I know they aren't true but I also know the feeling of wanting others to think that everything is fine.

The room we step into is different from all the other rooms we've been in before. It does have a console, but there is also a bed recessed into the wall behind said console. On the opposite wall there are numbered boxes.

"I think we're getting warm." The Doctor states, walking over to the door that's labeled Animal and Botanic. He looks into the window for a second. "Of course! That explains everything. Do you realize what this is?" The Doctor turns and looks at us, beaming. He also seems to note that Harry still isn't feeling well from the decontamination room. "Aren't you feeling better?"

"No, I'm not." Harry admits.

"Then pull yourself together, man." The Doctor scolds, turning back to the window. "This is fascinating! This is a cryogenic repository."

I walk over to join the Doctor at the window and pinch him in the side.

The Doctor jerks, sending me a look of betrayal. "What was that for?"

Glancing over my shoulder, I lower my voice. "For forgetting that people have limits and can't just power through everything like you can."

The Doctor flicks his eyes over at Harry, furrow starting to form between his eyebrows. Nodding, He sends me his understanding.

"Repository?" Harry asks after the long pause. "For what?"

"Everything. Well, everything they considered worth preserving." The Doctor crosses over to the opposite wall where the boxes are. He hits a button on the wall and a box slides out of the wall. "Look at this."

I pick up a small slide from inside the box, probably about an inch across and an inch wide, and bring it up to look through it. It looks like it's an early 16th century painting. "So cool."

"Microfilm. It's a complete record. Music, history, architecture, literature, engineering." The Doctor explains to Harry. "Incredible. The entire body of human thought and achievement."

"Yes, but what's it all for?" Harry asks.

The Doctor shrugs. "Posterity? I don't know. Why build all this and send it into space?"

I place the slide I'd picked up back into the box and close it up.

Harry frowns down at the ground. "I say, couldn't be some sort of survival kit, could it?"

"Survival?" The Doctor asks, pausing his pacing.

"Yes, you know, the sort of thing they shove in lifeboats and things." Harry elaborates, shrugging.

The Doctor clasps a hand to Harrys shoulder and beams. "You're improving, Harry."

Harry smiles, looking pleased. "Am I really?"

"Yes, your mind is beginning to work. It's entirely due my influence, of course. You mustn't take any credit." The Doctor states, walking back over to the console. "Now, what's missing?"

I roll my eyes. One step forward, two steps back.

"Missing?" Harry asks.

"Yes. If we are to assume that some great cataclysm struck Earth, and that before the end they launched this lifeboat, then the one obvious missing element is man himself." The Doctor explains. "What's happened to the human species, Harry?"

Before Harry get a chance to respond, a door opens up behind us. "Y'know." I murmur to the Doctor. "All these doors opening up and taking us where we need to go is convenient, but I'm really starting to get suspicious about it."

"Yes, I am too." The Doctor responds, heading towards the open doors.

"I say." Harry exclaims, taking a look at the inside of the room that we've walked into. "What a place for a mortuary."

I don't think it's actually a mortuary, but he's not wrong in thinking it looks like one. There are human shaped containers lining the walls, several stacks on top of each other.

"This isn't a mortuary, Harry. Quite the reverse." The Doctor murmurs.

"Reverse?" Harry scoffs, not understanding what the Doctor is trying to say. "I'd hardly call it a nursery."

"Not a nursery, Harry. It's an Ark." I explain, looking around me in awe.

"Cryogenic chamber." The Doctor elaborates. "Old principle, but I've never seen it applied on this scale. Look at them."

"There must be hundreds of them." I say, reaching out and catching the Doctor's hand. He links our fingers together, sending me a burst of affection.

"Well, when you've seen one corpse, you've seen them all." Harry mutters, frowning.

"Corpse?" The Doctor frowns back at Harry. "These people aren't dead, Harry, they're asleep. The entire human race awaiting the trumpet blast."

Harry opens a pod up and peers at the person inside. "Dead as a doorknocker."

Shaking my head, I tug the Doctor into the other room. It has more people lined up along the walls.

"Homo sapiens. What an inventive, invincible species." The Doctor muses. "It's only a few million years since they've crawled up out of the mud and learned to walk. Puny, defenseless bipeds. They've survived flood, famine and plague. They've survived cosmic wars and holocausts, and now here they are amongst the stars, waiting to begin a new life, ready to out sit eternity. They're indomitable. Indomitable!" He flails his arm out, gesturing at the people around us.

Do you ever get those movements where you are 100 percent unequivocally reminded why you've chosen to do something? Looking at the Doctor as he started talking about the human race, as he marveled at what they've accomplished, it reminded me of something. It reminded me why I fell for him in the first place.

The Doctor has a smirk playing along his lips as he glances over to me. "You've got that face on dear."

"What face?" I ask, lips trying to twitch into a smile.

"The face you get when you're thinking about me." He responds, playful.

I raise an eyebrow. "This is my normal face."

Tapping me on the nose with a finger, his smirk gentles into a smile. "I know."

I flush, even though I try my hardest not to. When we were teasing I was just fine, but then he had to go and make it serious.

The Doctor hums, seeming pleased with himself. "It's a rare treat to see you so flustered."

"Yeah, well it's not so rare in the future." I grumble, hunching so that my hair falls in front of my face. "You're always trying to make me blush one way or another."

He laughs, placing a hand on my back and directing me back into the room that Harry was in. "Mabel, I don't think there will be a day where I ever stop trying to make you blush."

"Don't I know that." I respond, huffing. We clear the thin corridor between the rooms to find Harry looking into the eyes of a person in one of the capsules. "What are you doing, Harry?"

"Not a flicker of life." Harry states.

"Suspended animation." The Doctor explains.

"There are no metabolic functions at all." Harry gestures at the person who he'd been examining. "I mean, look at him. Now, even in the deepest coma, the hair and fingernails continue to grow. The epidermis-"

The Doctor cuts him off, closing the cover to the capsule. "Total suspension, Harry." Harry frowns at the Doctor. "You can't survive ten thousand years in a coma." The Doctor explains.

"Ten thousand years?" Harrys asks, off put.

"Fifty thousand years, a hundred thousand. Time is immaterial." The Doctor elaborates. "It's an amazing sight, isn't it? The entire human race in one room. All colors, all creeds. All differences finally forgotten."

Bewildered, Harry gestures at the people in their capsules. "Doctor, are you serious? The entire human race?"

"Well, it's chosen descendants. The operation must have been meticulously planned." The Doctor muses, before turning and walking towards the exit. "Come on."

"Where are we going now?" Harry asks, testy.

The Doctor pauses, turning back to Harry. "First to find Sarah, then we're going to shut down the systems. We're intruders here, you know."

"Just a minute, Doctor." Shaking his head, Harry looks around again. "Are you trying to tell that this is where it's all going to end? In here?"

"Not end, Harry, just a pause." The Doctor responds.

"But there's only a few hundred corpses, er, bodies in here. I mean, what's happened to the rest of humanity? Some global catastrophe?" Harry asks, trying to understand.

"Yes, and they saw it coming, and made provision for it as best they could. Don't forget, it's something for you to be proud of." The Doctor insists.

"As much as I'm enjoying this conversation, I think we have bigger things to worry about right now." I tell them both, pointing at a vent in the corner of the room. It has a trail of green slime coming from it just like we saw in the corridor, it's leading straight to a capsule.

The Doctor and Harry go over and kneel down next to it.

"Oxygen? Radiant heat? But this deep in space? I wonder." The Doctor contemplates. You can practically see his neurons firing as he tries to put the pieces together.

"Perhaps it's some kind of mold." Harry suggests.

"Mold?" I ask.

"And that trail we saw in the corridor." Harry adds.

"And that thing you both saw moving in the corridor." The Doctor chimes in, not buying it.

"Dust." Harry states. "That, er, grille thing was a dust extractor. And then we opened the door after umpteen years and caused a bit of a draft."

"Hmm. Very convincing." The Doctor says, tone saying the opposite. "All the same, I think we'll just check a few of the beds while we're here."

Harry sighs. "And what are we checking for, exactly?"

"Just to make sure that everything's in order." The Doctor says softly, distracted as he starts checking capsules.

"Right-o." Harry murmurs, starting at one side of the room.

I start checking the capsules closer to the door. This whole situation is giving me the hebbie jeebies, and I wouldn't be sad when we found Sarah and got the hell out of here.

"Doctor, Mabel!" Harry calls out, his voice urgent.

I turn and rush over, the Doctor not far behind me. We round the open capsule that Harry is in front of, and I come to a stop, the Doctor pausing before he bumps into me. "Sarah! Oh, Sarah Jane." He murmurs.

"We can't help her now." Harry states, looking upset.

"No. She'll be like that for three thousand years at least." The Doctor agrees. "Even if we had a resuscitation unit, it's doubtful that we could revive her now."

"There must be something we can do." Harry insists, expression becoming determined. "What's would a resuscitation unit look like?"

Keeping an ear out, I start looking around, just as Harry is doing. There are closets that are labeled medical, probably a good idea to start looking through those.

"Very like an oxygen cylinder." The Doctor tells us, still over by Sarah. "You'll recognize it if there is one."

Harry opens one closet, and I open the other. I shriek, it's an involuntary reaction. You would too if a giant 7 foot tall bug falls out of a closet right in front of you.

A second passes, the Doctor materializes behind me and places a hand on my shoulder.

"Sorry, Sorry. It startled me, that's all." I reassure them.

Harry kneels down next to the creature. "Well, it's dead, anyway."

"Very dead." The Doctor confirms. "Almost mummified."

"What is it?" Harry asks.

"That's something we can leave till later. No sign of the resuscitation tank?" The Doctor responds, getting up and rummaging around in the closet.

"No, I didn't find anything, but that was the first place I looked." I say, Harry echoing something similar.

Emerging with an orange box, the Doctor opens it. "Emergency medical kit, wouldn't you say?"

Harry looks at the equipment, picking up something that looks like a ball. "A bit beyond me, I'm afraid."

The Doctor looks frustrated. "There must be something there that would help Sarah, but what?" He closes the medical kit and walks back towards Sarah's open capsule.

"Doctor, look." Harry says, gesturing to a capsule across the room. There are lights on underneath it.

"Of course!" The Doctor exclaims. "They don't need a tank. The resuscitation phase is programmed in."

I walk over and open the cover. There is a woman inside. "I think she's starting to breath."

Harry studies her a couple of seconds. "Yes, I think she is."

"No doubt about it." The Doctor agrees.

"That means there's hope for Sarah." Harry exclaims. "Yes, look, she's moving."

The woman holds out her arms, it looks like she's asking for something.

Harry takes the box off of the Doctor, opening it and offering it to the woman. "Something you want?"

With shaky arms, the woman takes the same ball the Harry had picked up earlier and inserts in into the end of a star-ended spray gun.

"Hey, look, can't I do that for you?" Harry offers. The woman doesn't respond, just continues doing what she is doing. "Independent sort of bird, isn't she."

The woman turns the gun so it's turned towards her chest and injects something. Whatever it is, it causes her whole body to convulse. Harry lunges forward to help her, but the Doctor and I hold him back.

"Leave her, Harry." The Doctor advises.

"Yes, but she's-" Harry starts, looking concerned.

The Doctor cuts him off. "There's nothing you can do. She knows what she's doing."

Body finished with it's convulsions, the women slumps back into the capsule for a second. Then her eyes open and she attempts to step down from the capsule. Like the gentleman he is, the Doctor helps her with a hand on her arm. The woman looks around, but she does so in a way that makes it seem like she's not quite all there.

Turning in a circle, the look of happiness on her face slides away as she seems to finally notice us. "Oh! Explain yourselves."

The Doctor shifts uncomfortably. "Well, there isn't very much to explain. We're just travelers in space like yourself."

"That is not adequate." The woman replies.

"My name's Sullivan." Harry steps forward. "Surgeon Lieutenant Harry Sullivan, actually. And, er, this is the Doctor, and Mabel."

I wave, the woman doesn't look impressed. "You claim to be med-techs?"

"My doctorate is purely honorary, and Harry here is only qualified to work on sailors." The Doctor clarifies.

"My name is Vira." The woman tells us. "I am a first med-tech."

"Well, I'm delighted to hear it." The Doctor says, turning and grabbing a small medical box that's on wheels. He rolls it over to Sarah's capsule. "You see, we happen to be in rather desperate need of medical help."

"This female is a stranger." Vira comments.

"She's a friend of ours. She got caught in the machinery." Harry explains.

Vira appears confused, still looking at Sarah. "She was not among the chosen."

Harry moves to set down the medical kit he's still holding. "Well, she's among the chosen now, isn't she?"

I step in, because it seems as if Harry is going to do is make things worse at this juncture. We need this woman to help us, not get mad and throw us off the space shuttle. "Is there any way we can wake her up?"

"That can be dangerous." Vira tells me, contemplative. "How long since she underwent tissue irradiation?"

"Can't be more than an hour, can it, Doctor?" Harry comments. "We haven't been here more than an hour altogether."

Pulling something that looks like a circlet from a compartment on the box the Doctor wheeled over, Vira places it on Sarah's head. "Receding neural activity."

"Is there anything you can do for her?" Harry asks, concern for Sarah evident in his voice.

Vira removes the circlet, looking at Harry in a strange way. "Is she of value?"

"Of value?" Harry is taken aback. "She's a human being like ourselves! What sort of question's that?"

"The answer to that question is yes." I elaborate, surreptitiously reaching out and delivering a harsh tug to the back of Harry's jacket.

Harry turns to look at me, and I shake my head minutely.

Eyebrow raised, Vira looks at the Doctor and I. "Your comrade is a romantic."

Stepping forward, the Doctor looks uncharacteristically solemn. "Perhaps we both are."

"I will inject a monod block." Vira states, preparing the star-ended spray gun with what I would assume is a monod block.

"Ah, that'll do the trick, eh?" Harry says, words filled with hope.

Vira pauses, turning to Harry in confusion. "Your colony speech has no meaning."

"Er." Harry frowns. "I mean it's bring her round, reverse the process."

Taking Sarah's arm, Vira injects her with the monod block. She turns back to Harry with a placid look on her face. "She will either survive or die. The action of the antiprotonic is not predictable."

"I see." The Doctor muses. "You've changed her body into a battlefield."

"Battlefield?" Vira shakes her head. She prepares a different circlet that she places on Sarah's head, replacing the other one. "I high point in classicals, but you dawn-timers have a language all of your own."

"We do seem to have a small communications problem." The Doctor leans in and murmurs in my ear.

I can't resist shooting him a brief smile in response.

"I wish there was something I could do." Harry's frustration is evident.

"It is done." Vira states. "There is nothing further. As she revives, her electrical field will draw power from the bionosphere." She takes her rolling medical box over to another capsule. Actually she takes it over to the capsule that had been next to the one she had been placed in. "Here is our prime unit." She tells us, opening the capsule door and showing us the man inside. For the first time since she's woken up her voice portrays something other than ambivalence.

Harry takes a few steps closer to Vira. "Prime unit?"

Vira pauses. "Er, our leader, I think you would say. Noah."

"Noah?" Harry laughs. "Oh, I see. As in Noah's Ark, eh?"

"It is a name from mythology." Vira states, turning her gaze from Harry and putting it on Noah. She places the first circlet she had used on Sarah on him. Stroking his face, her voice shows the depth of her affection for the man in front of her. "His real name is Lazar, but we called him Noah as an amusement."

"Er, joke?" Harry offers.

I look at the Doctor, in sort of a 'is this guy for real' kind of way. The Doctor shrugs. He mouths 'his first trip' back at me. Sighing soundlessly, I rock back on my heels.

"Joke?" Vira asks after a, long pause. "Oh, yes. There was not much joke in the last days."

"What happened in the last days, Vira?" The Doctor asks, stepping forward.

Vira frowns at the Doctor. "Your colony has no records, no history? Where are you from?"

"London, actually. England. The Earth." Harry tells her.

"That is not possible." Vira states. "The Earth is dead."

The Doctor tugs on his ear. "I'm afraid you're probably wrong about that."

"The solar flares destroyed all life on Earth." Vira insists.

"Ah. Solar flares. I see." The Doctor murmurs.

Vira tilts her head back, almost cutting the Doctor off she speaks so quickly after he does. "Our scientists calculated it would be five thousand years before the biosphere became viable again."

"Oh, the absolute minimum, I'd say." The Doctor tells her, his voice gentle but firm. "But I'm afraid I've something of a shock for you, Vira."

"Shock?" She asks, looking confused.

"You've overslept by several thousand years. You see, when we came here, we found a massive systems failure." The Doctor explains.

Vira frowns. "The systems have no capacity for failure."

"There's no such thing as an unsinkable ship." I murmur.

"Not by itself." The Doctor adds. "But a long time ago, when you were dormant, you had a visitor. Come, I'll show it to you." He gestures to the medical hallway where the creature had fallen out of the closet.

Vira walks over. I can tell when she catches sight of the creature, because she abruptly pauses. "Is it from space? How did it get here?"

The Doctor kneels next to it again, reaching out to touch one of it's pincers. "I don't know yet. But observe the size of the brain pan. It had a purpose in coming here, and once inside, it severed most of the satellite's control systems, including your alarm clock, so to speak."

Vira looks upset, before she shakes her head and schools her features. "I need to check on the others."

I nod, moving aside so she can do what she needs to do.

"I'll check on Sarah." Harry murmurs, leaving me alone with the Doctor and the mummified bug.

The Doctor sits back on his heels. "Nothing else left to do but wait for Sarah to wake up I suppose."

"Yeah." I murmur, sitting down next to the wall and watching him.

He shifts, moving over so he's sitting next to me. "Why are you staring?"

I shrug. "Maybe I just want to take in your new body. This is the first time I've gotten a chance to after all."

The Doctor studies me. I can feel him poking around the connection, trying to see if I'm telling the truth. I am, so I just raise an eyebrow in response. He flushes, just slightly. I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been watching him so closely.

"I have to say I'm liking the curls." I tell him, pushing my sincerity towards him.

He smiles, finger reaching out and tracing down my nose. "You don't have to flatter an old man."

I lean my head against his shoulder. Exhaustion is pressing down on me. It's been several days since I've been able to sleep and I'm starting to feel the strain. I have to praise my body though, now that my system has been reset I've definitely felt different. There would have been no way I could have gone so long without sleep before, but as it stood, I hadn't even started feeling tired until Christmas. Even now, though the exhaustion is strong, I could probably push it for another day or two.

"It's not flattery if it's true." I murmur. "I have this weird half wave in my hair, and curls have always been something that I wanted to have myself."

The Doctor shifts, reaching out and linking our hands. "You're exhausted."

"Yeah, it's been nothing but jumping from one place to another and I haven't really got a chance to stop yet." I explain. Stifling a yawn, I rub at the moisture welling up in my eyes.

"Still no change." Harry informs us, walking over to where we are sitting on the floor.

"No. For once in my life I feel surplus to requirements." That Doctor comments.

"Doctor?" Vira calls out.

He perks up in response. "What is it?"

Looking worried, Vira checks a panel next to the capsule Noah is in again. "There's a technical fault in the bionosphere."

Pulling me up by our linked hands, The Doctor hurries over to check the panel himself. Several seconds pass, and he hums in response. "I don't think the fault's at this end. It's in the main power supply."

"It must be corrected." Vira insists. "If his heart stops now, there's nothing I can do."

"Don't worry." The Doctor reassures her. "I noticed the Ark has a secondary power supply. Harry, you stay here and keep an eye on things."

"Right-o." Harry answers.

I follow the Doctor as he takes off, ending up back in the little offshoot of a console room where we almost suffocated.

He works quickly, pressing buttons and flipping levers. I'm left I the corner, fidgeting. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"You can turn on the secondary CPU for the auxiliary power unit." The Doctor tells me, distracted as he does his own work.

I move to do that, the only problem is that none of the buttons are labeled. "Yeah, which one is that one?"

The Doctor sighs, reaching over and pressing a large button right in front of me. I can feel his frustration bleed over to me.

A noise starts up, probably the auxiliary power unit kicking in. The Doctor activates an intercom system, which I only know because he starts talking into it. "Harry?"

'I say, that was quick.' Harry's voice comes from the small grill, getting louder as though he's walking closer to the source on his side. "Doctor? Doctor, where are you?"

"In the control room." The Doctor explains. "Have you got the power back on in there?"

'Yes, we have. Everything's ship-shape now.' Harry responds.

"Splendid. The fault seems to be in the main solar stack. I'm just going to take a look." The Doctor informs Harry.

'Right-o.' Harry says, hesitating. 'I say, Doctor, don't be long, will you.'

The Doctor turns to me, annoyance still on his face. "Stay here, it'll be faster if I go by myself."

Still feeling raw from the burst of frustration I felt from him earlier, I just nod in response. The Doctor leaves the room, walking with a purpose.

That was unexpected. I've never had the Doctor push any kind of annoyance or frustration towards me like that before. It really took me off guard. Maybe this had been what the Doctor had apologized about earlier? I really doubt it, which meant that more was to come.

Before I can get any deeper into my introspection, the Doctor comes hurrying in. "We must shut down the main stacks, immediately."

"Okay." I reply, eager to help. "Tell me what I need to press."

The Doctor makes a noise of frustration. "Nevermind, I'll do it myself."

"I can help, I just don't know how to turn it off." I frown at him.

"That's the real issue here. How come you don't know how to work these systems? I know for a fact they teach the basics in the Academy." The Doctor asks me, narrowing his eyes. His hands fly over the controls as he talks.

"I went to school, thank you very much." I reply, taken aback by his assumption. "But they never taught me anything like this."

"Considering I had to take it twice, I'm fairly certain they did." He responds, testily.

"They really didn't." I tell him.

The Doctor shakes his head, muttering something under his breath. Well I'm sure he meant it to be under his breath, but I still heard it anyways. Which meant he probably intended for me to hear it. 'Useless.'

My cheeks flush with a combination of anger and hurt. I surreptitiously close my end of the connection, I have no intention of allowing the Doctor to feel how much that just stung. Opening my mouth to argue, the Doctor cuts me off by talking before I can. "Ah, there you are. Awake at last."

I'm confused, until I hear the shuffle of a step from the doorway. "Move away." A man orders.

"I'm just shutting down the power in the main stack." The Doctor responds, not bothering to turn around.

I turn to look, just in time to see the man raise a gun and point it in the Doctor's direction. I also get a good look at just who it is. It's Noah. "Touch that switch and I'll atomise you."

Taking a step forward, I don't even blink when the gun focuses on me. "Noah, I think there must have been some kind of miscommunication. We aren't here to harm you."

"Earth is ours." Noah proclaims.

I can feel the Doctor step up behind me. "My dear man, if you think for one moment we're laying claim to Earth, you couldn't be more mistaken. We're here to help you."

Noah shakes his head in disbelief. "By deactivating the main solar stack?"

"Precisely." The Doctor confirms. He goes to take a step around me, but I shift minutely so that the gun is still pointed at me. The Doctor is far more valuable in this situation than I am. "There's something trapped in the stack, Noah, but at the rate its absorbing energy it won't be trapped for long. The stack must be shut down. Well, if you'd been down there with me, Noah, you-"

Noah fires his gun, and that's the last thing I hear.

xxxx

Something lightly taps my cheek and I start awake. "Sonova bitch shot me!"

"My word." Harry exclaims. I can hear Sarah giggling in the background.

"The Doctor!" I sit up abruptly, regretting it as a fierce headache starts up between my eyes.

Harry places a hand on my shoulder, helping to brace me as I sway. "Calm down, Calm down. The Doctor is right here, probably hit by the same thing you were hit with."

From next to me the Doctor shoots up. "-hot her!"

"Oh Doctor!" Sarah cries.

"Ah, Sarah, you're back. Splendid. Where's Noah?" The Doctor attempts to get up, but he stumbles. Probably the same band that's dancing inside my head is now dancing in his as well. "Shot me, did he? Cut off in mid sentence, Mabel!"

"Calm down Doctor." Sarah attempts to reason with him

The Doctor doesn't listen, whirling around. The tension leaves his body as I come into view. I reach out a hand and he uses it to pull me up, immediately putting his arms around me in a hug. "I thought that it was an actual vaporization gun at first. When he fired-" His words are low, for my ears only.

My frustration at him fades away. He sounds so upset at the thought of me being hurt, of me being dead, that I don't have the heart to stay mad at him. "I'm fine, no harm done. Except this pounding headache."

His body slowly stiffens. "You." The Doctor demands. "You will never put yourself in front of a gun for me again."

"And in that, we will have to agree to disagree." I state, pulling back and adjusting his scarf. He's scowling bloody murder but I don't pay him any mind. "You were more important in that situation than I was, so I acted accordingly."

The Doctor shakes his head, then brings his hand up to his temple in response.

"Are you all right, Doctor?" Sarah asks, hovering at his elbow.

"What?" The Doctor asks, looking down at her. "Blinding headache, that's all. I hate stun guns." He shoots me a look that clearly states he's unhappy with my response, and that we will probably be having words later. To the room at large, he asks a question. "Noah. Where is he?"

"We overheard him on the intercom thing saying something about checking the solar stacks." Harry offers.

"What?" The Doctor demands. "The idiot. Quick, there might be still time." He heads towards the door, even though he's still very obviously in pain.

Harry pauses. "Are you both sure you're alright?"

"Never mind about us, Harry, there's a man in danger." The Doctor scolds, finally stepping from the room. Sarah follows him, but Harry stays with me.

"You heard him, Harry." I gesture towards the door, making my way towards it.

Harry follows me, stubborn. "I'm not leaving you alone."

I laugh, even though it causes a spike of pain. "It's just a headache. I won't die from it." I peek at him from the corner of my eye. "Thanks though."

"I'm just doing what any gentleman would do." Harry replies. "No thanks are necessary."

How very British. I bite back a smile.

It doesn't take us long to catch up with the Doctor and Sarah, they haven't gotten very far down the corridor. Also, it seems as though no one else has been sent to detain us. Which is strange. If the way Noah approached us was any indication, then we were very much not welcome here.

"Strange how they've given us the run of the ship." Harry comments. "Why doesn't Vira try and stop us?"

"Not her function, Harry." The Doctor replies.

Harry's face screws up in confusion. "How do you mean?"

"By the thirtieth century, human society was highly compartmentalized." The Doctor explains. "Vira is a med-tech, and I suspect we're an executive problem."

Harry probably would have responded, but Noah takes that moment to step out in front of us.

"Right, Doctor. But not a difficult on. You can easily be eliminated." Noah postures.

"Unlike the thing you saw in the solar stack, eh, Noah?" The Doctor states more than asks, his tone is knowing.

Noah raises an eyebrow. "I saw a pathetic attempt at sabotage. The observation port is damaged."

The Doctor sighs. "Then it's escaped. We're too late."

"What's escaped?" Sarah asks.

"Turn about." Noah orders, gesturing with his gun. "We will return to the cryogenic section."

"You're absolutely right." The Doctor states. "There's no time to lose. Come on."

So we turn around, and head back towards the cryogenic room. Once we get there, Noah puts us into a corner and seems to dismiss us. The Doctor starts pacing, eyes flickering rapidly from the grate, to the capsules, to the people. It's clear he's coming up with a plan.

In the meantime, Vira is in the process of waking another person up. It's another male.

He gasps, looking down and seeing Vira. "Vira."

"Welcome.' Vira tells him, a small smile on her face.

"Welcome, Libri" Noah states, stepping towards him.

Libri's face immediately contorts in fear. "Keep back. Keep back!"

Noah pauses, looking to Vira in confusion. "What's the matter with him?"

"Keep back!" Libri yells again.

"Is it his mind?" Noah continues to question Vira.

Vira looks bewildered. "No, his reactions were normal. Libri"

Libri shakes his head. "Keep away!"

"This is Noah. You remember Commander Noah?" Vira asks, voice gentle.

Libri takes a couple of deep breaths. The panic slowly recedes from his face. "I'm sorry. I saw something standing there."

"What was it you saw, Libri?" The Doctor asks, leaning forward in interest.

"Silence!" Noah demands. "You're here to answer questions, not ask them."

"It was horrible." Libri murmurs. "A shape. I'm sorry. I'm all right now."

"Temporary neuro-ocular confusion." Vira states, with all the assertion of a person who has no idea what just happened.

"The process is much too slow. They're not going to make it." The Doctor states.

"No further warnings." Noah informs us.

"Yes, you'd shoot too, wouldn't you." Harry says with contempt. "Nice fellow."

"Libri, keep these three under guard." Noah tells Libri, handing him the gun. "Kill them if they give any trouble."

"Yes sir." Libri responds, swinging the gun around to point at us.

"Noah, where are you going?" Vira asks.

Noah had been in the process of walking out, but he pauses at her voice. "The system must be shut down."

Vira frowns. "What?"

"The revivification must be stopped." Noah responds.

I exchange a look with the Doctor. This is getting strange.

"Why?" Vira asks. "I don't understand."

"It is an order." Noah states, standing up straighter. "I am the commander."

"But the first phase isn't completed, and we need the technical crew, Noah, to operate the station." Vira tries to reason with him.

Noah seems to struggle with himself. His face becomes pained. "Yes. No! No, the plan is changed. Hear me, hear me, the plan is changed."

Vira frowns, starting to look upset. "Noah, what is it? Is it something to do with Dune?"

"Dune?" Noah asks, face calming.

"Technician Dune. I reported him missing." Vira elaborates.

"But I'm here." Noah states. "I am Dune."

Vira pauses, taken aback. "What?"

"The system must be shut down. No more aliens!" Noah shouts, rushing from the room.

"Noah, come back!" Vira calls after him, but he doesn't listen.

"He must be stopped." The Doctor insists, body tensed like he is about to run after Noah, gun be damned.

"Something has happened to his mind." Vira rationalizes. "There was a power fault during his revival."

The Doctor frowns at Libri. "Get after him, man."

Libri hesitates. "No, no, he gave me an order."

"Don't be an imbecile." The Doctor scolds. "Tell him, Vira."

Vira shakes her head. "There is no procedure for stopping the revivification program. It could be damaging, Libri."

"But he is our commander." Libri states, as though that's all the matters.

I shake my head in response. "I'm not entirely sure he is anymore."

"What?" Libri frowns.

The Doctor picks up the string of the conversation. "When you first saw him, you had a subconscious impression, you said, of something horrible. That wasn't Noah, was it?"

Libri hesitates, lowering his head in shame. "No."

"Believe me, he must be stopped." The Doctor insists again.

Libri looks over at Vira. She nods in response, and Libri leaves the room to go after Noah.

Looking at us, Vira raises an eyebrow. "It's not advisable for you to try and escape."

"You take some convincing that we're on your side, don't you." The Doctor muses. "Now, what's all this about a missing technician?"

"Pallet three. I found it empty." Vira explains.

"Noah thinks that we're to blame." Sarah chimes in.

Harry shrugs, not looking concerned. "Chap's jumped ship, that's all. Happens all the time."

"Oh, come on." Sarah scolds him. "A space satellite's a bit different from a ship, Harry."

"You know, Sarah, I bet you there's the equivalent of a dinghy missing." Harry comments. I swear they are about two seconds away from sticking their tongues out at each other.

The Doctor shakes his head, stepping closer to the capsule that Vira indicated. He takes out the antenna from earlier and uses it to pick up some sort of green goop from the bottom of the capsule. "It's not quite empty."

Vira takes a closer look, expression disgusted. "Oh, what's that?"

"Membrane." The Doctor murmurs.

"Membrane?" Sarah asks.

The Doctor nods. "Part of the eggshell."

Nauseous, I close my eyes for a second. "I read a book like this a long time ago. People were cryogenically frozen. They drifted for god knows how long. By the time someone actually woke up, most of the people had been killed. It was these worms. They burrowed into the flesh and ate the people who were sleeping, alive."

Sarah gasps, hand flying up to her mouth. Harry and Vira both look disgusted as well. Only the Doctor looks unaffected.

"Not quite worms this time, but something similar I would think." He comments, turning and gesturing at the creature that had fallen out of the closet. "The egg tube was empty."

Vira frowns. "That thing?"

"The progenitor. The queen colonizer." The Doctor murmurs.

"I don't understand." Sarah says with frustration.

The Doctor pauses, thinking. "Ever heard of the Eumenes?"

"Eumenes? One of our frigates." Harry offers.

"It's a genus of wasps that paralyses caterpillars and lays its eggs in their bodies." The Doctor continues, ignoring Harry's contribution. "When the larvae emerge, they have a ready made food supply. Strange how the same life patterns reoccur throughout the universe."

Harry grimaces, taking a step back. "Doctor, are you saying that that slug thing?"

"Ciliated larvae, Harry. Dune was power systems technician, I imagine." The Doctor says, solemn.

Vira narrows her eyes at him. "Yes, but how did you know?"

The Doctor fixes his eyes on Vira. "It, or they, went straight to the solar stack."

"You mean Dune's knowledge-" Vira cuts herself off.

"Has been thoroughly digested, I'm afraid." The Doctor continues, frowning.

"Don't make jokes like that, Doctor." Sarah scolds, grimacing.

He swings his head over to Sarah. There is no hint of a smile on his face. "When I say I'm afraid, Sarah, I'm not making jokes."

Vira goes back over to the capsules, checking her equipment. Harry and Sarah start talking quietly beside us. I brush my shoulder against the Doctor's arm, getting his attention. "Do you think the process is reversible?"

The Doctor frowns, looking down at me and lowering his voice. "I highly doubt it."

"Yeah, I figured." I murmur, feeling a pang of disappointment. "Poor Vira."

"What?" His eyes flicker over to Vira and then back to me. "She hasn't been acting strangely."

I shake my head. "I mean because of Noah."

"I don't understand." The Doctor admits, curving his body closer to mine. He has such a huge presence this go around. It's strange to me that, just with his body alone, he can close off a space in such a way that I feel like we are the only two people in the world.

"You are probably the cleverest man I've ever met, but you didn't notice that they were together?" I tease, lips curling up into a smile. Shifting, I allow myself to lean into the area of protection his body has created between us.

He frowns, eyes flickering as he thinks. "I don't remember seeing anything to indicate they were together?"

I purse my lips, trying to find a way to explain it. "It was in the way Vira talked about Noah. She was professional right up until she opened his capsule, and then her voice changed. And he obviously cares for her too. He didn't listen to what anyone said until Vira tried to reason with him. He still ran off, but you could see him fight it for just a second." Nodding out at the capsules themselves, I continue. "Also, there are the capsules. In sets of two, with a man and woman respectively. Vira and Noah shared a capsule pair."

Turning my attention back to the Doctor, I'm taken aback at the look of fond affection on his face. "In moments like this, you shine like the sun." He murmurs.

Sending him a strange look, I shake my head. "It's just an observation."

The Doctor goes to reply, but at that moment a woman starts talking over an intercom system. "Hello, Space Station Nerva. This is the Earth High Minister." So a recorded message then, a pep talk to the people on the station. Vira pauses in her work, stepping out into the middle of the room with a sad look on her face.

"The fact that you are hearing my voice in a message recorded thousands of years before the day in which you are now living, is a sure sign that our great undertaking, the salvation of the human race, has been rewarded with success." The High Minister says, voice resonating through the room.

"You have slept longer than the recorded history of mankind, and you stand now at the dawn of a new age. You will return to an Earth purified by flame, a world that we cannot guess at. If it be arid, you must make it flourish. If it be stony, you must make it fertile. The challenge is vast, the task enormous, but let nothing daunt you." I have to give it to the High Minister, she certainly knew how to work a crowd. Even I was getting pumped up.

"Sounds like a sort of pre-match pep talk." Harry comments, looking up at the ceiling.

"Remember, citizen volunteers, that you are the proud standard bearers of our entire race." The High Minister continues. "Of the millions that walk the world today, you are the chosen survivors. You have been entrusted with a sacred duty, to see that human culture, human knowledge, human love and faith, shall never perish from the universe. Guard what we have given you with all your strength. And now, across the chasm of the years, I send you the prayers and hopes of the entire world. God speed you to a safe landing."

Vira lowers her head, returning to her equipment check.

"Well, I bet that did your female chauvinist heart a power of good." Harry turns to Sarah with a smile.

Sarah looks confused. "Why?"

Harry shrugs, smile persisting. "Well, I mean, fancy a member of the fair sex being top of the totem pole."

"Oh Harry." I murmur. "And here I was just starting to like you."

Rolling my eyes at the idiocy of men in the 70's, I go over and stand by the Doctor. He flicks his eyes over to me, a smirk on his lips. "Don't you start either." I mutter at him.

"I would never." The Doctor tells me, faking affront. "One doesn't live as long as I do and not know who's really on top of the totem pole."

I bump his shoulder with mine, linking our hands together. "That being?"

"Those who are capable of it. Doesn't matter if they are man or woman or gender-neutral." He elaborates, squeezing my hand.

"Such a sweet talker." I say to him, affection arching through me. "Be careful Doctor. Keep saying things like that and you'll be beating off the ladies with a stick."

The Doctor looks down at me, fondness etched into his features. "I'd rather imagine that you'd be beating them off with a stick for me."

"Shush." Grumbling, I look away with embarrassment.

"Vira! Vira!" Noah's voice sounds over the intercom system, his breathing is labored.

"Noah!" Vira breaths, rushing into the room with the intercom interface. We follow closely behind her. "Yes, Commander?"

"Vira, hear me." Noah begins. "This is an order. Expedite revivification. Commence main phase now."

Vira shakes her head, even though Noah can't see it. "But Noah, the safety checks-"

Noah cuts her off. "Ignore safety checks! We, you, are in great danger. Get our, your people to the Earth before-" His voice trails off, sounding agonized.

"Noah?" Vira prompts.

"Before the Wirrn. Vira, take command. Now hear me. You take command!" Noah orders.

"What has happened?" Vira asks, voice impressively steady. If the Doctor was in the same position I don't think I'd be able to do the same. "Commander, are you there?"

There is more labored breathing filtering over to us from his side. "The Wirrn are here. They will-" Noah pauses. "We shall absorb the humans. The Earth shall be ours."

"Noah!" Vira calls out. "Noah!"

It sounds as if Noah bites back a scream. "Vira. Vira, there's no time. They're in my mind, getting stronger. Libri is dead. You will all die. Must save our people. You must!"

Vira turns around and looks at us. Her face looks lost.

"The chap sounds in a bad way." Harry comments, obviously unused to upset females.

"What did he mean, they're in his mind?" Vira demands, expression evening out.

"Absorb?" The Doctor muses, swinging around and looking straight at me. "We shall absorb the humans? Endoparasitism?"

"They bounce ideas off each other because they are generally the only one's who understand what it is the other one is talking about." I hear Sarah explain to someone behind me.

"I don't know." I admit, frowning at my own lack of knowledge. I don't even know what endoparasitism is.

Shaking his head, the Doctor continues as if no one had said anything. "If the Wirrn can do that, we've no chance at all. Complete physical absorption."

"Of us?" Vira asks.

"They'll literally eat us alive. Vira, I must talk with Noah. You'd better come with me. He trusts you." The Doctor gestures towards the door.

Vira shakes her head. "My duty is to supervise the revivification."

"No. Noah has passed the command to you." The Doctor corrected. "Your duties have been widened."

Face going cold, Vira stares at the Doctor for several moments. "What is your intention?"

"To find out exactly what it is we're facing. And only Noah knows that." The Doctor states, staring back at her and letting her see how serious he is.

"But I cannot leave until the last of our technical section have awakened." Vira argues with him.

I smirk at Harry. "Harry can handle that for you, can't you, Harry?"

Harry looks as if someone has smacked him over the head with a baseball. "Well, I-"

The Doctor cuts him off, continuing in the same vein as me. "Well, you've watched Vira. You know the procedure."

"Yes, I-" Harry starts, trailing off.

Vira sighs, stepping forward and handing Harry the device in her hand. "One gramme of scropholine when the neural register enters the red zone."

Harry looks down at the device. "Right."

"And the injection must be right over the pectoralis major." Vira continues.

"Ah, yes, now that I do understand." Harry perks up, looking more confident.

Vira turns to follow the Doctor and I, who at this point are waiting at the door for her.

Sarah looks at Harry. "Good luck!"

"And Sarah, you stay and help Harry." The Doctor advises, face unchanging with the resulting slump to Sarah's shoulders.

I understand her disappointment, but the Doctor is right to tell her to stay behind. A creature that can eat you alive? Best to keep the more breakable humans behind doors.

The Doctor, Vira and I leave the cryogenic section and head along the corridor. Waving his hand along a panel next to the door, the Doctor waits for it to open. Only, on the other side of it is Noah. Well, what's left of Noah. Half of his body is covered in some sort of green goop, and he's hunched over like it's difficult to walk.

"Keep back! Don't touch me!" Noah orders.

Vira steps forward, disregarding Noah's orders. "Noah."

Noah brings up his gun, causing Vira to pause. "Keep back, I said!"

"Noah, tell us one thing. How much time do we have?" The Doctor asks urgently.

"Time?" Noah responds, eyes going distant.

The Doctor nods. "Before the Wirrn reach their adult form?"

"It feels near, very near." Noah whispers. His face is still oddly blank. "The tearing free and then the great blackness rushing through." The hand holding the gun spasms, and the gun falls to the floor. In the distraction that causes, Noah turns around and rushes off.

Vira stays facing away from us, and her voice is quiet when she speaks. "Noah and I were pair-bonded for the new life."

I lean forward, placing a soft hand on Vira's shoulder. "We should probably get back."

She nods, walking back in the direction of the Cryogenic chamber. I watch her go, feeling absolutely terrible about the situation. The Doctor comes up behind me, placing a hand on my back and softly exerting pressure to get me to move.

Reluctantly, I start to follow Vira, and if I happen to lean a little heavier on the Doctor's palm than I might normally have, well that's between him and me.

We round the corner just in time to see Sarah walk over to the original creature that fell out of the closet. "Look." She tells two people that I haven't seen before. Probably woken up by Harry. They don't look pleased to see it. "Oh, it's okay. It's dead."

The Doctor rushes past me and kneels down by the creature. Wirrn, I suppose they are called. "But unfortunately, its larvae are still very much alive."

"Vira!" One on the new men call out, looking pleased to see her.

"Vira, it's gone wrong!" The other one says in dismay.

"Welcome, Lycett, Rogin. You feel well?" Vira asks, tone even. I admire her professionalism.

Lycett nods. "Yes, Commander."

The Doctor gestures for Harry to help him and they drag the Wirrn into the center of the room.

Harry drops his end, wiping his hands on his pants. "What are we going to do with it?"

"How much anatomy do you remember, Harry?" The Doctor asks.

"Quite a lot, I think, but you need a blooming entomologist for this thing." Harry shakes his head.

The Doctor shifts, looking at Harry in the eyes. "We need to find its weaknesses and we need to find them quickly." Harry sighs, but kneels down next to the Doctor.

"Can we help?" Vira asks.

"Not at the moment, thank you." The Doctor replies.

Vira nods, turning to her fellow shipmates. "Then we will commence the main phase. Lycett, Rogin." They walk off towards the records room, the one that help all the microfilm.

My brows furrowed. Main phase? They are going to wake everyone up right now? I follow them, frowning. "Vira, I don't think this is the best idea."

"Noah said we should expedite the revivification program and get our people to work." Vira states. She looks determined.

"It was good that he said that, it meant he was able to fight against the Wirrn and their programming. It was also an incredibly bad idea." I explain, trying to get her to understand. "We are dealing with creatures that can absorb people alive. You saw what it did to Noah-"

Vira interrupts me. "We have to try!"

I shake my head. "These creatures can absorb people alive. Stop the revivification and let the Doctor do his thing. If we fail, if it doesn't work, then your people will die in their sleep. If you wake them up, and we still fail? They will experience the same thing Noah is going through right now."

There is a subtle shift of air from behind me, then the Doctor is brushing up against my shoulder. "Mabel is right, Vira."

Vira looks at the Doctor with wet eyes. "You have an alternative plan?"

"Between the larval and imago forms, there must be a pupal stage. Now, the Wirrn will be dormant and defenseless. If we can find their weaknesses?" The Doctor leans in, eyes going wide in supplication.

"We might destroy them?" Vira confirms.

The Doctor nods. "Yes."

"Very well." Vira look over at her two shipmates, who look more than happy to not be doing what they are doing. "Stand down."

The Doctor breaths out in relief. I only notice because he's right behind me. "Good."

"There's a power flutter in section four, Commander." A man, I think his name was Lycett, informs Vira. He's bent over one of the console stations.

"What does that indicate?" Vira asks, focusing her attention on him.

Lycett turns and looks back at Vira. "Some external fault. Shall I check the stacks?"

"No!" The Doctor rejects the idea. "The larvae have taken over the infrastructure. They seem to need solar radiation." Then he turns on his heels and walks back towards Harry and the Wirrn corpse. Vira follows him.

"We should have stayed on Earth, Lycett." The other man who was woken up, Rogin, says. "I liked the Earth. I like heat."

I raise a hand to muffle my resulting laugh. Lycett meets my eyes with his own, looking faintly embarrassed.

"Sorry about him." Lycett apologizes. "He gets a little overenthusiastic sometimes."

"Honestly, I don't blame him." I respond, waving off his apology. They both look uncomfortable now, so I excuse myself and go out to where people are dissecting the Wirrn. It's like I'm in biology class all over again.

"Curious lung structure, Doctor. Look at it." Harry quietly enthuses, studying the structure in front of him.

"Yes, fascinating. A superb adaptation." The Doctor agrees, kneeling down so he can get a better look.

Sarah leans over. "What is it?"

"Obviously the creature's lungs recycle the wastes, almost certainly by enzymes." The Doctor explains. "Quite wonderful. Carbon dioxide back to oxygen."

"You mean the way plants make oxygen?" Sarah asks.

"Exactly right. It must live in space, probably just occasionally visiting a planetary atmosphere for food and oxygen, the way a whale rises from the ocean." The Doctor hypothesizes. He shifts back into his heels.

"Judging by the size of his mandibles, this chap doesn't live on plankton." Harry muses.

The Doctor looks over at him. "No."

"Noah spoke of a great blackness rushing in." Vira says, looking contemplative. "He meant space, but how did he know?"

"He now has the race memory of a Wirrn." The Doctor explains. He has been fiddling around the Wirrn's eyes, and now he pulls one straight off. "Symbiotic atavism to be precise. I'm going to need your help now, Vira." Jumping up, the Doctor heads into the records room. I follow, feeling as if this man is about to do something incredibly dangerous and it'll be up to me to stop him. "Do you have any spare extension leads, Rogin?"

"Yes" Rogan says. "But what do you want-"

The Doctor interrupts. "Hurry, man. Fetch them." Rogin hurries off, probably to go fetch the leads.

"What are you going to do, Doctor?" Vira asks.

"A little experiment. Circuit display, Lycett." The Doctor pointedly looks at the other technician. Lycett presses a button and the display turns on.

Vira looks confused. "It's forbidden to alter those circuits."

"I need the neural cortex amplifier." The Doctor aims a mischievous smile up at Vira. "Not for long, don't worry." He attaches the lead that Rogin came back with to the eye and then attaches that to the monitor.

I move to stand next to him, crossing my arms.

The Doctor ignores me. "Right, switch on the video circuit, Lycett. It'll take a little time to warm up." He finally releases the eye, wiping his hands.

"Doctor, what are you trying to do, exactly?" Harry asks.

"Sometimes latent neural impressions can be revived." The Doctor explains.

Harry face scrunches in disbelief. "Really?"

The Doctor nods. "Yes."

"I've never heard of that." Harry counters.

"Advanced technology." The Doctor replies, focusing on the screen. "Gypsies used to believe that the eye retained its last image after death. Not so far out." The image on the monitor is staticky, nothing coming through. "No, it's not going to work. Switch off, Lycett."

"Now what?" Sarah asks.

"It should work. The coil isn't giving a strong enough stimulus." The Doctor frowns, thinking. "I'll have to link in my own cerebral cortex. That's the only thing."

"That is highly dangerous." Vira protests at once.

"Also stupid." I add.

"I know." The Doctor responds. "Two more leads, Rogin."

Vira takes a step forward. "The power could burn out a living brain!"

"I agree. An ordinary brain. But mine is exceptional." The Doctor smirks.

"This isn't a contest." I scold him.

"I cannot permit it. The shock might kill you." Vira tells him. Oh Vira, you never forbid the Doctor to do something, he'll only take that as a challenge.

"I think not." The Doctor responds. "Unless, of course, the experiment was interrupted. That could be dangerous."

Sarah looks worried. "Do you have to do it, Doctor?"

"Yes, why take the risk?" Harry continues in the same vein.

"If I can find out what it was that killed that creature, we might have a chance of fighting the Wirrn. That's our only hope." The Doctor insists, looking at Harry in the eyes, then focusing on Sarah.

"Yes, but do you have to be the one-" Sarah asks, but the Doctor cuts her off.

"It's not just our existence that's at stake, Sarah. It's the entire human race." He explains, sending a brilliant smile in her direction. "It may be irrational of me, but human beings are quite my favorite species."

The Doctor brings the leads up to attach to his forehead, but I stop him. "You said only you could do it, why?"

His brow crinkles, like he's trying to figure out why I'm asking. "My processing power is different than a human's. Like I said, I'll be fine as long as no one interrupts the experiment."

I still have my side of the connection blocked, I never reopened it from earlier. This ensures the Doctor doesn't feel my satisfaction at his answer.

"Then it doesn't have to be you." I point out. His face shifts, already forming a negation, but I bulldoze through it. "No. Based on your explanation, I should have no problem doing the same thing."

The Doctor's eyes flicker behind me, and he lowers his voice until it's almost a whisper. Those behind me certainly won't be able to hear it. "It's more dangerous than that."

Lowering my voice to the same pitch, I reply. "I am well aware of that, I'm not stupid. But right now, you are the smartest person in this room. If something were to happen, I want you to be able to do everything in your power to save these people and that won't happen if something goes wrong with the experiment." Raising my voice to a normal level. "I'll be doing it in your place."

He looks frustrated, but there really isn't anything he can do in this situation. I have him trapped by his own words. The Doctor stands up, and I sit in his place. He takes the leads from me and gently attaches them to each side of my temple.

"Before I turn it on. I want you to open up." The Doctor murmurs.

I'm confused, but then it clicks. "I'd really rather not."

His jaw twitches, frustration evident in his body language. "Mabel, I'll be able to monitor you through it. Pull you out if something bad happens."

I frown, but he's right. I really don't want to get stuck being a vegetable or something like that. Hesitantly, I open my side of the connection. His emotions burst into my minds. Frustration. Worry. Affection.

"Ready?" The Doctor asks me.

I nod, look at him straight in the eyes. "Always ready."

The Doctor flicks his eyes over to Lycett. "Switch on, Lycett."

Lycett must do so, because the next thing I'm aware of is pain. My whole body tenses, and my mouth opens in a wordless scream.

I'm vaguely aware of the Doctor frantically patting my cheek and calling my name. With what feels like a gargantuan effort, I consciously relax my muscles. My face falls into a grimace, rather than a scream and my body hunches forward. I'm unable to make myself do anything other than that.

Than it comes. The Wirrn's impressions. It saw the space shuttle, boarded it. The guard, the one that we ran into earlier. It shot the Wirrn. The Wirrn was dying, but it was stubborn. It bit the cables, turning off the security system and then with it's last strength it crawled all the way here. It infected a person, then it died. Then there was nothing.

Nothing continued to happen until there was a knock on the door. The knock became a pounding, and the pounding became a battering ram. My consciousness tilted and clicked. I became aware of the Doctor's forehead pressed against mine. His voice a constant in my ears. "Ah there we are, welcome back Mabel."

"Ow fuck." I close my eyes, the pounding in my head getting worse. Wait. "Is that noise in my head?"

The Doctor shifts, moving back. There is the sound of running footsteps. I open my eyes in time to see Harry and Rogin enter the room with guns. They point them at the door and fire at a Wirrn larvae. It backs up in response at first, but powers through. Part of the membrane comes off and shows a reddish underbelly.

"Aim lower!" I yell to be heard over the sound of their guns firing.

The Wirrn falls back and retreats. Harry and Rogin follow it, then retreat as well and close the door to block off that avenue of approach.

"It's gone back through the grille." Rogin informs us.

Harry rushes over to Sarah. "That was a close one. You all right, Sarah?"

Sarah nods. "Yes."

"Doctor?" Harry asks.

The Doctor is frowning. "Why, Why have they gone over to the attack?"

"They want to destroy us." Vira insists.

I shake my head. "If they wanted to do that, all they have to do is wait. In their adult form they would be a thousand times deadlier. Those guns in your hands would have little to no effect."

"How many of them will there be?" Sarah asks, voice hushed.

"A hundred, at least." I wipe my hands down my clammy face.

"A hundred?" Harry echoes. "We won't stand a chance. How can we fight a hundred of those?"

The Doctor is still next to me. I lean into him slightly. "Electricity. Electricity can hurt them."

"The auto-guard." The Doctor murmurs. "Half a million volts."

"Exactly." My head pounds in time with my heartbeat.

"But we found the queen in the cupboard." Harry argues.

I focus on Harry. "The Wirrn was incredibly stubborn. It was dying and it knew it, but it wouldn't stop until it did what it set out to do."

The Doctor hums. "Yes. Rogin, is there any way we can electrify the infrastructure?"

"Not from here, Doctor." Rogin replies. "We'd have to run cables from the control center."

"Control center?" The Doctor jumps up and heads for the door. "Right, let's go!"

"You can't go that way, Doctor." Harry stops him.

"Noah's waiting out there." Rogin elaborates. "Put one foot inside the transom and you'll be dead."

"Yes, I was forgetting Noah's extra mobility." The Doctor spins around, I can feel his mind whirling.

"We're trapped." Vira states.

"No." The Doctor shakes his head. "The Wirrn are using Dune's knowledge of the Ark. Perhaps there's something he didn't know."

Rogin looks doubtful. "Dune was first tech. He knew it all."

Vira elaborates. "He helped design the systems."

"Nobody knows it all." The Doctor starts to smile. "Perhaps he's forgotten that these transmats are reversible?"

Rogin chuckles. "Oh ho, that's clever."

"Isn't it?" The Doctor asks, his smile becoming less comforting and more like the sight of sharks teeth. "And as you appreciate it, Rogin, you can go first. I'll give you a hand. Come on."

Rogin's face falls. He climbs up into the transmat container and lays down. "Oh well, I never liked it here anyway."

The Doctor smiles, pressing the buttons necessary to reverse the process. Rogin disappears, presumably to the other transmat bed. "You next, Harry."

Harry climbs up, the sight of him with one shoe no longer seems funny. Everything is going downhill now. The Doctor presses the correct button and Harry fades away.

I gesture at Sarah, helping her up into the bed. Just as the Doctor presses the button to send her off, all the lights dim.

"That was a power drain." The Doctor murmurs, pressing the button for the intercom. "Hello, control center?"

'Hello, Doctor.' Rogin responds. "We've got a power failure.'

"It's general, then. Do you have a fault reading?" The Doctor asks.

There is a pause. 'Section four. That's the secondary stack. There's no power coming from there at all-' Rogin's voice fades away as the power drain worsens.

"All power systems are self repairing." Vira states. It's like she still doesn't understand that the Wirrn are sabotaging the system.

The Doctor hums. "Malicious damage excluded."

"Oh well, obviously I am not going anywhere." Sarah states, sitting up. "Help me, Doctor." He reaches up and lifts her off the top platform, placing her gently on the ground.

Vira looks around, an expression of resignation crossing her face. "The oxygen pumps have stopped."

"Makes sense." I murmur. Everyone turns to me. "In this stage they don't need oxygen. Easy way to kill us."

"Well, suffocation is not the most unpleasant death." Vira states, a half smile on her face. I think this is the first time I've heard her try to crack a joke. Of course it's gallows humor.

"What?" The Doctor demands, turning towards Vira. "We're not finished yet." He gestures to Vira and Sarah. "You two stay here."

"Where are you two going?" Sarah asks.

"The infrastructure. If they've entered the pupal stage, they'll be dormant." The Doctor explains, opening a panel next to the door and manually pumping it so the door opens.

Vira takes a step towards us. "You're forgetting Noah."

"No, I'm not." The Doctor states. "I think his job's done now. He'll be metamorphosing too." With that, he pulls me down the hallway with him.

I let him pull me, still a little disoriented by what happened earlier. My wrist is in his grip, so I shift it until he loosens enough for me to move. I don't pull away, I just link my hand with his. The presence of him in my mind is a balm to my inflamed synapses.

The Doctor stays silent as we walk, so I follow his lead. He has a flashlight at least, so we aren't wandering around in the dark. We enter a room with catwalks and the Doctor heads towards two pupal membrane sacks. They are huge.

He reaches out to touch one, but I pull him back. There's no telling what touching it with his bare hands would do. The Doctor nods, heading over to a panel with a lever on it, dropping my hand so he can turn it.

Softly, there comes a noise from behind us. The scritch scratch noise of something walking along the floor. The Doctor must feel my apprehension because he immediately turns around and focuses on something behind me. I spin around as well. It's a fully grown Wirrn, and it's blocking the only way out.

The Doctor pushes me behind him, but a second later it proves to be unnecessary. There's gun fire and the Wirrn convulses in pain.

"Run!" Sarah cries out. It seems that Vira and her have come to rescue us. Just in time too.

The Doctor and I dart past the Wirrn, and the four of us start to make our way out of the room.

"Stay, Vira. Stay." The Wirrn speaks, making us pause. "Abandon the Ark, Vira. Take the transport ship. Leave now. If you stay, you are doomed."

I close my eyes for a few seconds in compassion. This isn't going to be a pretty conversation. Especially now that Noah seems to have been completely converted into one of them.

"That would be desertion." Vira manages to get out.

"Then you must die, all of you. When the Wirrn emerge, you will be hunted down and destroyed, as you destroyed us." Noah says.

I exchange a look with the Doctor.

"We've never destroyed." Sarah exclaims, but cuts herself off mid sentence. "What does he mean?"

"Long ago, long ago humans came to the old lands." Noah explains, painting a clearer picture of the situation. "For a thousand years the Wirrn fought them, but you humans destroyed the breeding colonies. The Wirrn were driven from Andromeda."

So this was a mission of revenge, just as surely as it was a mission of procreation. My stomach sinks to the floor. So much for trying to negotiate.

"Andromeda?" Vira asks, sitting down on the steps to the catwalk. She seems stunned. "So our star pioneers succeeded?"

"Since then we have drifted through space, searching for a new habitat. The Ark is ours. It must be ours." Noah insists, pinchers clicking.

"But the Wirrn live in space." I say, holding my head. Anytime I try to pull knowledge from what I saw when connected to the eye it sends a burst of pain across my sore mental pathways. "You wouldn't need this station."

"You know nothing." Noah hisses. "We live in space, but our breeding colonies are terrestrial."

"But you could leave the Ark and go on. There's plenty of room in the galaxy for us all." The Doctor suggests. If only it were that easy.

"In the old lands, senseless herbivores, cattle, were the hosts for our hatchlings. Now we shall use the humans in the cryogenic chamber. We shall be informed with all human knowledge. In one generation, the Wirrn will become an advanced technological species. We shall have power!" Noah, or more specifically in this sense, the Wirrn exclaims.

Vira shakes her head. "That proposition is genetically impossible."

Noah's front feelers wiggle about. "I already have all Dune's knowledge. High energy physics, quantum mechanics. Every ramate in the next hatching of Wirrn will possess the sum of your race's learning. That is why you must die."

One of the pupae starts to split it's membrane sack in the back corner.

"Time to leave." The Doctor insists, voice urgent. We hurry along the corridor.

I can hear Noah speak one last time from behind us. "Leave the Ark, Vira, or die with the rest of your race."

Vira hurries out of the room, face averted towards the floor. I do her the courtesy of pretending not to see the moisture welling up in her eyes.

Instead of heading back to the cryogenic room, the Doctor leads us towards the control room. It's not hard to find, it's the only room that has the lights on.

The Doctor heads in first, pausing at the doorway. I'm next, just in time to see Harry and Rogin lowering their weapons.

"Doctor! Mabel! Sarah!" Harry exclaims. "It's taken you long enough to get here. I was worried stiff."

"We bumped into Noah." The Doctor says in explanation. Sarah and Vira file in the room after us.

Rogin sighs. "Again?"

"Yes." The Doctor states, pacing over and taking a seat on the transmat table. "Quite chatty this time. Garrulous, even."

"You've got the power on." Vira comments, looking pleased.

"No, Commander, I'm using photon energy." Rogin responds. "There's just enough to run the lights."

Harry has an impatient look on his face. "Well, what did Noah say?"

"Vamoose or stick around and get killed." Sarah tells him, leaning back against the wall.

"I'm ready to go." Harry states, looking over at the Doctor and me. "Doctor?"

The Doctor ignores the question, digging around in his pocket. He pulls out a package, opening it to reveal sweets. "Anyone for a jelly baby?"

I shrug. Might as well. Taking one from the bag, I'm pleasantly surprised by the flavor that bursts over my tongue.

Harry sends me an incredulous look. "Well, look, why don't we all just pile into the Tardis?"

"No?" The Doctor asks.

"Tardis?" Vira echoes.

"Yes." Harry says, gesturing to the Tardis in the next room. "A sort of spaceship thing in there. Plenty of room for all of us."

"Vira has no intention of leaving here, have you, Vira?" The Doctor looks up at her from his position sitting on the table.

Vira shakes her head. "I can't."

"Of course you can't." The Doctor replies. "So neither can we."

"Ah well, that settles us." Sarah sighs.

"Besides" The Doctor says, eating a jelly baby himself. "We can't let the Wirrn eat through the cryogenic sleepers as though they were a lot of-"

"Jelly babies?" Harry cuts the Doctor off, tone sarcastic.

Ignoring the sarcasm, the Doctor nods. "Exactly. Let them be turned into a lot of surrogate humans? It's the most immoral suggestion I've heard for a century."

"How can we stop them?" Rogin asks, looking fed up with the whole conversation.

"High voltage power. If we can somehow send enough electrical power through the bulkheads of the cryogenic chamber-" The Doctor begins.

Sarah cuts him off. "Like an electric fence?"

"Yes." The Doctor confirms. "The Wirrn would never dare to cross it. The only problem is we don't have any electrical power and they control its sources, the solar stacks."

"Well, we can forget that idea then, can't we." Harry sighs in disappointment.

"Doctor." Sarah tries to get his attention.

"Unless we can lure them out of the infrastructure." The Doctor muses, ignoring Sarah.

Sarah tugs on the Doctors arm. "No, wait a minute."

"How can we do that?" Vira asks, also ignoring Sarah.

"Bait. Human bait!" The Doctor exclaims. "If one of us could distract them for a few moments, I might be able to get down there and turn the power on."

"Doctor, will you listen?" Sarah insists, starting to look frustrated.

"Sarah, we're trying to make a plan." He scolds her.

That's quite enough of that. Reaching out, I yank on his scarf and pull him around to face Sarah. "Mabel?" Comes his bewildered reply, hands coming up to brace mine on the scarf.

Ignoring him, I focus on Sarah. "Now, what were you trying to say?"

She sends me a grateful smile. "I was just wondering about the transport ship that Noah mentioned."

"What about it?" I ask, confused.

"Well, surely it has its own power system, doesn't it?" Sarah states, completing the leap of logic that no one else has thought of.

The Doctor abruptly stands up, realization on his face. My hand slips from his scarf now that he seems to actually be listening.

"Four granovox turbines!" Rogin exclaims. "That ship can generate twice the power of the Ark."

"How can we reach it?" The Doctor asks.

Vira brings up the Ark's schematic on monitor in front of us. "Here's the connecting ramp. It's less than a hundred meters from this control room."

"The only trouble is, how do we run a cable from the ship to the cryogenic chamber?" Rogin asks, rhetorical. "If it's in the open, they'll cut it."

The Doctor hums. "Aren't there conduits?"

"Yes, but they're only about this wide." Rogin places his hands about a foot and a half apart. "We'd need a mechanical cable runner."

Sarah rocks forward on her heels. "Why can't I take that cable through? Well, I'm about that wide."

"It's hardly a job for you, Sarah." Harry protests.

Rogin eyes her shoulders. "I reckon she might just squeeze through, Doctor."

The Doctor hesitates, looking over at me. I nod. It's her choice.

He turns to Sarah, beaming smile on his face. "Good girl, Sarah. Come on, we'd better hurry. The Wirrn are going to start moving any moment. You five go to the transport ship and I'll start wiring up the cryogenic chamber."

I want to go with him, but I know I'll be more of a hinderance than a help. I wouldn't know the first thing about how to wire something up. Mechanics was my specialty, not electronics. And, well, this Doctor doesn't seem to be willing to teach me through it like some of the other Doctor's I've jumped to.

We part ways, the Doctor sending me a look of confusion as we do so. I guess he thought I was going to argue with him. No thanks, had enough of being called useless for one day.

With a quick pit stop for a connecting wire, we quickly make our way down to the shuttle. Vira opens the access hatch first. She peers around the darkness, gun up and dangerous.

Vira jerks her head to encourage us to come out. Harry and Rogin pile into the room, dropping the heavy cable of wires gently to the ground. I close the door behind us, taking care to do so as softly as possible.

"This is the transport ship." Rogin gestures to the exhaust ports above our heads before opening a small hatch in the side of the wall. "And here's the conduit. We'll connect one end up here, and you'll have to drag the other end through." He looks over at Sarah. "Do you think you can manage it?"

Sarah nods "I'll have to." Rogin clasps her on the shoulder in response.

Vira makes eye contact with Sarah. "Good luck."

Rogin opens a hatch on the bottom of the spaceship and presses a button. This causes a ladder to drop down, our access to the space shuttle. Rogin goes up, but the rest of us stay down here.

Harry peers into the darkened conduit that Sarah has to crawl through doubtfully. "It seems very narrow, Sarah." He turns his attention to Vira. "Does that lead straight to the cryogenic chamber?"

"No." Vira shakes her head. "There are many junctions."

"How's she going to find her way in the dark and everything?" Harry asks?

Vira gazes at him, calm in the face of his worry. "We'll give her a two-way radio from the ship." Nodding at Sarah, she continues. "We have a plan of the conduits. We can guide you."

"All right, Commander." Rogin's raised voice comes from inside the ship. Vira climbs up into the shuttle to speak with him.

Once she's out of earshot, I look over at Sarah. She's visibly nervous, biting her lip and fiddling with the hem of the shirt she's wearing. "You don't have to do this, y'know. We can find another way."

"And when the extra time it takes to find the alternate solution gets another person killed?" Sarah raises an eyebrow. Her posture is strong now, no sign of fidgeting. "No, I am going to do this."

I raise my hands in surrender, a smile teasing the corners of my lips. "Okay, You're doing this."

Rogin comes back down the ladder with a headset. Sarah goes over to him, listening intently as he explains how to use it. Harry comes up beside me, an interesting look on his face. "You did that on purpose."

"Sarah doesn't seem like the kind of person who wants, or needs, someone to pat her on the head and tell her it's going to be okay." I murmur, voice low. "The best way to motivate her? Tell her she doesn't have to do the thing."

Harry shakes his head, impressed, before he walks over to help Sarah put on her improvised harness.

It really isn't a harness, just a piece of rope looped around her body that's attached to the electrical wire. Simple, but it'll do the job. Harry lift her up into the conduit hole and off she goes. Rogin heads back up into the shuttle while Harry and I feed the extra wire into the hole as needed. I'm honestly impressed that Sarah can fit through it in the first place. It's a very tiny hole.

There's a pause where Sarah stops. Harry frowns into the darkness. "How are you doing, old girl?"

"How do you think I'm doing, twit?" Sarah's frustrated voice comes from inside the hole.

"I'm sorry, I thought you were stuck." Harry mutters, adjusting his feet. I bite back a smile.

Several minutes pass in silence. Sighing, Harry looks over at me. "We've fed the line as much as possible right now. It's time to go inside."

I hesitate, biting my lip. "I'm worried Harry."

"I know Mabel." Harry says, placing a hand on my shoulder. "But there's nothing left for us to do here. It's in their hands now."

Reluctantly, I let him direct me inside the spaceship.

"Understood." Sarah's voice comes from the speaker system. Vira turns and nods at us, then goes back to watching the monitor in front of her.

"Now, it's the second opening you come to on your left." Rogin relays to Sarah. "You understand?"

"Yes." Sarah replies, sounding strained. "Rogin, is it much further?"

Rogin shakes his head even though she can't see it. "No, about another fifteen meters. You're almost there."

"Oh, I hope so." Sarah says, lowering her voice. I don't think she means for us to hear the next bit. "Don't think I can go on much longer."

"Yes, you can." Vira encourages.

"Come along, Sarah." Harry chimes in. "Stick at it."

"That's the trouble." Sarah mutters, embarrassment coloring her tone. "I keep getting stuck!"

"Marvelous thing about old Sarah. Terrific sense of humor." Harry laughs uncomfortably. I facepalm. These people are ridiculous.

Several minutes pass. There is no news from Sarah. I start fidgeting with the hem of my shirt. There hasn't been a burst of any concerning emotions coming from the Doctor, but that doesn't mean nothing has happened.

"Oh, hello, Rogin?" Sarah's voice startles us, making most of us jump.

Rogin fumbles with the controls, before finding the right button. "Yes, Sarah. Have you reached the cryogenic room yet?"

"The Doctor's connecting the cable now." Sarah responds, sending a wave of visible relief around us.

"Beautiful. Let me know when to switch the power through." Rogin reminds her, leaning back in his chair.

It doesn't even take a full minute before we hear the Doctor's harried voice come over the speakers. "Are you ready, man?"

"Yes." Rogin responds at once.

"Switch on now!" The Doctor yells.

Rogin is frantically pressing keys, even as he offhandedly gives an affirmative. There is several seconds of radio silence.

Vira leans forward. "Hello, Doctor? Are you all right down there?"

There is a pause, as though he's double checking. "For the moment."

"You lack confidence?" Vira asks, looking concerned.

"The Wirrn don't give up that easily." Comes the Doctor's reply. "They need the Ark. How is it your end?"

"Nothing on this end." I say.

"Good. Let's hope it stays that way." He responds, cutting the transmission.

Unfortunately, not even two minutes later, Harry abruptly leans forward. "I say, Rogin, I don't want to be an alarmist, but I think I saw something moving."

Rogin checks the monitors himself. "You're right. They're coming up the funnel." He looks over at Vira. "Commander."

"Start starboard four." Vira commands.

"Starboard four running." Rogin reports after pressing a couple of buttons.

Vira looks over at him. "Negative thrust out."

Rogin presses another button. "Negative thrust out."

"Full boost." Vira instructs Rogin.

"Full boost." Rogin echoes, pulling a lever. "And check."

On the monitor you can see exhaust smoke overtaking the Wirrn that can be seen on the screen. Rogin leaves it on for a couple of seconds then, as per Vira's instructions, starts reversing everything he just did.

The monitor clears of the exhaust, showing that the Wirrn were no longer down by the ladder.

"I bet that singed their whiskers for them." Harry states, looking pleased.

Rogin also looks satisfied. "They won't try that again."

"I wonder if Noah-" Vira starts, cutting herself off before finishing the sentence.

"Noah?" Rogin asks.

Vira shakes her head. "Not important."

The monitor crackles with an incoming transmission. It's the Doctor. "Are you all right over there?"

Harry leans forward. "Ahoy there, Doctor. Yes, we're fine, thanks."

"We heard a rocket engine." The Doctor states, worry lurking in his tone.

"Oh, just a warning blast." Harry brushed the Doctor off. "How are things with you?"

There's a pause. The Doctor reaches out to me mentally, I try to respond but it feels as if I'm reaching out through molasses. Must be how far away we are from each other right now. Whatever the Doctor was looking for, he must have found because his presence recedes right after my clumsy attempt at reaching back. "All right at the moment."

"Good." Harry responds, oblivious to the byplay that just happened.

"Keep in touch." The Doctor orders, once again cutting the communications.

I really am getting tired of him doing that. Honestly? At this moment, I just wanted this whole situation to be resolved so I could take a nap.

The universe must have heard me, because at that moment the monitor picked up movement on the outside of the Ark.

"They're coming in through the reversion vents!" Vira cries, looking distressed.

"Look at them." Rogin states. "There's a whole army of them out there."

Vira presses the button for communication. "Doctor, the Wirrn have space walked round the Ark and have broken into our cargo hold."

The radio crackles. "How many of them are there, Vira?"

"We cannot say, but it looks as though the entire swarm is attacking." She responds, keeping a close eye on the monitors.

"How long will it take them to reach your control deck?" The Doctor asks.

"A few minutes only." Vira informs the Doctor, a grim look on her face. "The interior bulkheads have a low stress factor."

"Tell Rogin to cut the power." The Doctor responds after a pause. "We're coming out."

Rogin presses a button. "Power off, Doctor."

"Good. Set the controls on automatic take off and evacuate the ship. Hurry!" The Doctor orders.

Rogin looks over at Vira. She nods back. "We'll do as you say Doctor."

Vira retreats down the ladder, and I pull Harry along with me as it looks as if he'd just stay where he was if left unattended.

The Doctor is there by the time we reach the bottom. "Into the Ark, fast as you can! You too, Sarah! Harry, you go with the girls."

Harry takes Sarah and they go off into the Ark. The ship above us starts to ramp up in terms of noise. The engines sound as if they are overheating. Rogin quickly makes his way down the ladder, closing it behind him.

"Rogin, help me with the synestic locks." The Doctor orders, pulling something out of the support strut closest to him.

Rogin runs over to one, sending a brief humorless smile over to the Doctor. "I thought that was your idea."

Harry hurries back out. "What are you going to do, Doctor?"

The Doctor spares him a brief look. "Just look after Sarah, Harry."

Harry huffs, but takes off back inside. The Doctor doesn't look at me, but I can feel his swirling emotions. "You won't leave even if I ask you to, will you?"

"No, cause I have a feeling that you're about to do something stupid." I reply, following him as he completes that lock and moves on to the next one.

Rogin rushes over, now finished with his own lock and places his hands on top of the Doctor's.

"Just leave this to us." The Doctor tells him.

"You know what'll happen when you cut that lock?" Rogin asks.

"There's no point in both of us being killed by the blast." The Doctor argues. "Get into the Ark, man."

Rogin smiles. "You don't want trouble with the space technician's union, Doctor."

The Doctor frowns in confusion. "What?"

Fist flying out faster than the Doctor can react, Rogin knocks the Doctor out. "That's my job."

I catch the Doctor before he can hit the ground, looking up at Rogin.

"Am I'm going to need to knock you out too?" He asks me.

"No." I reply. "I don't think that'd be necessary."

Rogin gestures to an almost hidden hatch. "That'll keep you safe."

Throwing the Doctor over my shoulder, I pause before I head over to the hatch. "Are you sure about this?"

He smirks. "No. But it's my choice regardless. Now hurry!"

I get over to the hatch as fast as I can with the weight of the Doctor on my shoulders. The door is just closing behind us when the explosion resonates across the platform. Setting the Doctor against the wall, I let myself collapse into a sitting position.

Moisture wells in my eyes for the brave man who's now very dead outside.

The Doctor jerks awake, cursing.

"It's to late." I murmur, leaning my head back against the hatch. "Rogin is dead."

Sighing heavily, the Doctor settles back against the wall himself. "Humans."

For the first time, I truly understand the emotion behind the way he says it. I'm proud, upset, and sad all rolled into one.

We stay there for another few seconds before the Doctor stands up. He holds out a hand, helping me to my feet.

Quietly, both of us in a solemn mood, we make our way back to the main control room.

"Come on, Sarah." We hear Harry say to Sarah. "They'd have wanted you to be brave."

"Being brave is overrated sometimes." I say as we round the corner.

Vira spins around. "Mabel! Doctor!" She then seems to notice the missing person. "Where's Rogin?"

"Rogin's dead." The Doctor says.

"Oh!" Sarah comes over to the Doctor and tugs on his arm. "You're okay."

The Doctor attempts a smile, but gives up on it fairly quickly. "Yes, we're all safe now, Sarah, thanks to Rogin's bravery. And perhaps something else."

"Something else?" Vira asks. She's learned quickly to not ignore any of the Doctor's cryptic comments.

"Yes, some vestige of human spirit." The Doctor responds. "Was Noah on our side and one step ahead of us at the end?"

Vira's eyes well up with tears. "You mean by leading the swarm into the shuttle?"

The console beeps, indicating an incoming transmission. There is a video feed of the shuttle taking off into space.

Vira accepts the transmission. "Space Station Nerva."

"Goodbye, Vira." Noah's voice echoes in the room. Seconds later, the screen shows the shuttle exploding.

"The shuttle's blow up!" Sarah exclaims.

I lean into the Doctor's side, feeling him leaning back against me.

"He must have known that that would happen." Vira states. "Noah deliberately neglected to set the rocket stabilizers."

"More than a vestige of human spirit. It can all begin now, Vira. Mankind is safe." The Doctor tells her.

Vira takes a couple of step away from us, shaking her head. There's a three second pause and then she turns back to us, her professional mask intact. "I must get my people back to Earth. Now that I've lost the transport ship, I shall have to rely on the matter transmitter."

"Yes." The Doctor sounds tired now as well.

"It'll be a long operation. It can only convey three people at a time." Vira muses, staring at the transmat.

"Yes, it could if it was functioning properly." The Doctor says. "The signal's faulty. Probably the diode receptors. I'll just beam down and check them."

"To Earth?" Sarah asks.

The Doctor nods. "Yes, that's where the trouble is. Here, fetch me a coat from the Tardis, will you? You never know what the solar flares have done to the weather." He gives Sarah the Tardis key so she can get inside for the coat and she rushes off.

"It isn't anything serious?" Vira asks, looking concerned.

"What?" The Doctor jerks in surprise. "Probably no more than a spot of corrosion. Whatever it is, it shouldn't take long to fix, and it'll give me a chance to see if the planet is fully viable again. What's keeping them? Sarah!"

Her voice can vaguely be heard from the depths of the Tardis. "Coming!"

Sarah and Harry enter, both wearing coats themselves. Actually, Sarah has an entirely different outfit on now. "Here's your coat."

The Doctor thanks her and puts his own coat on, then steps into one of the transmat alcoves. Harry and Sarah step into the other two next to his. The Doctor pauses. "I don't remember inviting you two."

"Er, no, you didn't." Sarah replies. "But here we are."

"Well, the Brigadier did tell me to stick with you, Doctor, and orders is orders." Harry rationalizes. Yeah like that's the real reason you're now following him around like a puppy.

There's a look of fond exasperation on the Doctor's face as he turns back to me. "I hope you don't mind being left."

"Nah." I smile, rocking back and forth on my feet. "I'm exhausted, haven't slept in a while. A shower and a nap sounds fantastic right now."

The Doctor steps forward, out of his alcove, and comes up to me. The kiss is perfunctory, but the mental caress is anything but. Not only does it soothe my aching mental connections, it also soothes the part of me that had been worried about him while he wasn't by my side.

The kiss finishes, and the Doctor heads back into his alcove, triggering the transmat mechanism and sending the three of them off on another adventure.

"What an extraordinary man." Vira says, looking into the space he last was.

"Yeah. That's that Doctor for you." I say, shifting back on my heels. Making my excuses, I finally manage to escape of into the Tardis. She burbles as I enter the doors, a welcome. "Hey old girl." I say, trailing my fingers along the console.

The Tardis lights dim, lights by the baseboard brightening to create a path for me to follow. I laugh tiredly. Even she's telling me I need sleep.

Sure enough, the end of the path leads me to our shared room. As soon as I'm inside, I strip my grimy clothes off, throwing them in the laundry chute as I walk by. A new outfit consisting of comfy leggings and an oversized t-shirt is all I can bring myself to scrounge up in the closet. One long shower later, I'm dressed and sitting at my desk, filling in my journal.

This was a rough one. So many people died, and brave Rogin. I underline his name twice. The man who choose to die to save all of these people. Hero of the human race.

I easily could have let myself wallow all night, but the Doctor chooses that moment to walk in through the door himself. He also looks exhausted.

"Alright, sweetheart?" I murmur into the silence.

The Doctor sighs, taking off his coat and unwinding his scarf. "As well as I could be, I suppose."

I hum in commiseration from across the room. The Doctor flops down on the bed, limbs spread haphazardly in every direction.

He opens his mouth and starts speaking but it's in a language that I've never heard before. My brows furrow in confusion. "What?"

The Doctor repeats it, but I'm still incredibly confused. "I'm sorry hun, I can't understand you."

Siting up abruptly, he says something else with an alarmed look on his face. The look of confusion on my face must have convinced him I really wasn't understanding him because he switches to English. "You really don't understand the language I was using?"

"No." I respond, bewildered. "Should I?"

His side of the connection closes with a snap that resonates through me. I resist the urge to wince, no wonder the Doctor always hated it when I did that.

The Doctor shifts, getting to his feet. His expression turns cold and hard. "You know, I'm starting to think that you really aren't Mabel."

"Doctor, what are you talking about. Of course, I'm Mabel." I tell him, taken about by the insinuation.

"No, I don't think you are." He says. "It would make sense though. I was confused about you not knowing the systems, you should have learned it by now. But there is no real way to know with how confusing our timelines are in relation to each other. You could claim ignorance and I would believe you. Maybe you just hadn't learned it yet? In reality, it was never really Mabel to begin with."

I shake my head. "What are you even saying? Doctor, you're not making sense."

The Doctor ignores that. "What are you here for? Information on me? Your copy must be good for the Tardis to even let you on, she's very fond of Mabel."

"I am Mabel!" I say, frustrated with the whole conversation.

"No." The Doctor shakes his head. "You are just a pale imitation of her. Even our bond is just a fraction of what it should be. What? Couldn't replicate it all the way?"

The Doctor advances on me. I eye him, my frustration falling aside in place of apprehension. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

The Doctor takes the last few steps, grabbing my forearms. "Who are you really?" I've never heard him like this before. At least not towards me. His rage is cold in its intensity.

"I'm Mabel!" I attempt to reason with him, gently shifting my arms in his grip. He tightens his hands instead, and I wince as the sensation becomes painful. "Doctor, you're hurting me."

"Oh, I'm hurting you am I?" The Doctor gives me a shake. "Where is my bondmate? My Wife? You better pray that wherever she is right now, she hasn't been hurt or I think you'll find I won't be as nice as I am right now."

"Nice?" I spit, trying to mask my growing fear. "This is nice. Being a brute is being nice?"

"This is the only chance you get, speak." He says, there is a note of finality in his voice.

I laugh bitterly. "I am speaking, you just aren't listening to me."

The Doctor let's go of one hand and swiftly brings it to my forehead. "Time's up." I can feel his intrusion, for the first time unwelcome, on two fronts. One, inside my head, and the other as the connection rebels against the force he's using.

Seeing my chance, I throw my side of the connection open as wide as I can make it. Throwing my turbulent emotions against the barrier in his own mind only buys me a moment, but a moment is all I need. The Doctor has left himself wide open, so I bring up my free hand and sock him right in the nose.

It's a shitty punch, the Doctor is far too tall for me to be able to make full contact, but I put a lot of force behind it. Enough to get him to rock back and release my other hand at least.

As soon as I'm free, I put the bed between us. The Doctor sways, hand coming to his nose. His eyes are unfocused. "Mabel?"

"Oh, now you've decided that I'm Mabel." I hiss, furious.

"Oh, Mabel. I'm so sorry." He swallows heavily. "I didn't-"

I cut him off. "I don't particularly want to hear your excuses right now Doctor."

It doesn't look as though the Doctor will be trying to grab me again, so I lean up against the wall. With each pump of my heart, I can feel the bruises, caused by his fingertips, forming on my skin. My hand throbs periodically, a shitty punch indeed.

"All day you've been taking shots at me, even before you decided that I wasn't Mabel." I say, breaking the silence that had descended between us. "From calling me useless, to questioning what I learned in school. Well I'm sorry, but 21st century curriculum doesn't seem to have a course on how to handle equipment on a spaceship thousands of years into the future!"

Breathing heavily, I attempt to get my temper under control. The Doctor takes a step in my direction and I immediately put a hand up for him to stop, straightening up from my lean against the wall.

"Mabel you're hurt." The Doctor says, sounding agonized. "I hurt you, please let me help."

I bring my eyes up to him. He looks as upset as he sounds. There is a thin trail of blood coming from his nose. I had closed my side of the connection directly after I rebounded it on him, so I have no idea what state of mind he's in right now.

"No." I murmur. "I need to go think." So that's what I do. I turn my back to the Doctor and walk out the door. I can hear his rapid footsteps, but the Tardis helps me out by slamming the door and disappearing the doorknob.

I direct my thanks to the wall next to me, trailing my fingers along it as I walk. There is no destination in mind, just aimless wandering. I walk for hours. Eventually, the Tardis intervenes. She puts me in a looped hallway with only one door. Our door.

It's still missing the doorknob, and that thought causes a ghost of a smile to come to my face. Knowing how particularly stubborn the Tardis is, I resign myself to my fate and sit down against the wall beside the door.

I can hear the shifting of movement from inside, as though the Doctor is right on the other side as well. "Mabel?" His voice sounds wrecked.

"Yes Doctor, I'm here." I reply, too tired to be anything other than numb anymore.

"I thought you left." The Doctor tells me.

I shake my head, even though he can't see it. "I didn't jump, if that's what you mean. Not that it would have mattered. I always seem to jump back to you anyways."

He sighs. "Can I come out now? Please."

Looking up at the ceiling, I nod. There isn't a noise or anything to prove that the doorknob was back, but the next thing I know the Doctor is gingerly opening the door so I guess the Tardis unflattened it. He takes a seat next to me. I can feel his eyes burning on the side of my face.

"You're a lot younger than you look aren't you?" The Doctor asks me.

I feel a spark of anger rising up through my body, one that I quickly crush. Now isn't the time for human sensibilities. "I don't know how old you thought I was in the first place, Doctor." My voice comes out sounding tired.

He slowly scoots an inch closer to me. "You said first body. I would have said a little over two, maybe three hundred years old."

"Have I explained my weird circumstances to you yet?" I ask, instead of answering his question.

"Some of it, yes. Not everything." The Doctor replies.

I lean further back, peering at him from the corner of my eye. He notices me looking and places a hand on the floor next to mine, palm up. It's an offer. One that I'm not quite sure I should accept just yet. So, for now, I ignore it.

"You explained this to me. Told me that one day you and I will go and figure this out." I start, wondering the best way to phrase everything. "I've told you I was raised on Earth?"

The Doctor nods. "Yes, but you haven't told me much else than that. You always said Spoilers."

Spoilers. My mouth twists into a frown. I was really starting to hate that word. Why would I ensure that this very scenario happened? Even as I ask myself the question I already know the answer. Because it already happened to me and so now I must ensure it happens. Being responsible sucks. "Apparently I was left there when I was newly born. I got adopted by a perfectly nice family, but I was undeniably alien to them. My body temperature was different, and my intelligence was much higher than any normal human baby would have."

He closes his eyes, as if he's trying to ward off the words that are about to come out of my mouth.

"So, as a child who wanted nothing more for her parents to accept her and not be frightened, I subconsciously adjusted my physiology to something that was far closer to human norms." I continue. Now that I've started I'm going to finish it. "A few other things happened too, but the main point is that I put a lot of stress on my body while doing so."

He swallows, face going pale. "You aren't even a hundred yet, are you?"

Looking down, I see that his hand is still lying there. I know he didn't mean to hurt me. That this was just a huge communication error. But… Slowly, with great significance, I place my hand in his. A look accompanies this, one that I hope conveys that though I'm willing to talk about it, I'm not willing to let it all be swept under the rug. "You're right. I'm 38."

He starts to pull away, but I tighten my hold on his hand. "I'm so sorry Mabel." The Doctor murmurs, placing his other hand over his face to hide his eyes. "Sorry I called you useless. Sorry about everything. I had no right to jump to conclusions like that. I know our circumstances are wibbly, but I let my frustration rule me anyways."

I wait until he peeks out from under his fingers at me, before smiling wryly. "You weren't wrong though, Doctor. I am useless as I am."

"Nol!" He immediately denies. "There are so many other things that you can help with, just because you don't have the technical knowledge just yet doesn't mean that you are useless."

"And there we are." I respond. "I hope you can see the hypocrisy in what you just said."

The Doctor winces. His whole frame seems to melt, even his hair manages to be despondent.

"I know I'm useless as I am. But, if you explain things I can pick them up pretty fast." I lean in as though I'm sharing a secret with him. "And there's always books to round out my knowledge when you aren't there."

Not that I've been able to do a whole lot about that lately. Hopefully I get a chunk of time where I don't jump for a while.

"I'll do better. I promise." The Doctor murmurs, scooting over the rest of the way. Our bodies are now touching from shoulder to hip. As much as I enjoy the feeling of him being next to me, the way it positions our hands is another story.

His sharp eyes catch my resulting wince, of course they do, and he immediately repositions. Bringing my hand up to his eyes for a better look, something infinitely sad flickers over his face. "I forced you to do this."

Once again, I roll my eyes at him. "One, you didn't force me to do anything. It was my decision to do what I did. And two." Reaching over, I gently turn his head so I can see the damage. A feeling of regret fills me as his bruised nose and eye come into view. "Oh sweetheart. I'm so sorry."

The Doctor's mouth gapes open. "How can you apologize to me? You never would have hit me if I hadn't tried to force myself into your mind."

"I could have reacted in a way that wasn't violent." I mutter. Always, always with my temper. It seemed to be on a hair trigger lately and I had no idea why.

"Mabel. You tried to talk at first, but I physically restrained you." He swallows. "By law, Earth law or Gallifreyan, you were well within your rights to do whatever you needed to get me to let you go."

I can see that he isn't going to back down from this line of thinking. But quite frankly, I didn't want to talk about it anymore. I just wanted to get an ice pack for my hand and cuddle, then sleep for about 4 days or so.

"Do you regret forcefully restraining me, as well as trying to enter my mind with the intention of doing harm?" I ask him.

"Of course I do!" He immediately responds.

"Then I forgive you." The Doctor opens his mouth, but I hold up my non-occupied hand. "You've never given me any indication that you would ever hurt me in that way before, and I understand that the only reason you did is because you thought I had somehow harmed myself."

My nose crinkles up. "Well not harm myself. I was supposed to have been an imposter who harmed the person you thought was your wife. Who was in actuality me- I'm just going to stop now, cause even reciting the whole situation is making my head spin."

The Doctor's shoulders start shaking. I glance over quickly, he was laughing like I had hoped I would cause.

"You impossible woman." He says, exasperated. His eyes raise up to meet mine and they are fond indeed. "I hurt you and you try to cheer me up."

"We hurt each other, you impossible man." I reply, fed up. "Now let's both promise to try our best to do better, and then go cuddle. We're both exhausted."

The Doctor laughs, scooping me up before I quite know what is happening and carrying me into our room. He sits down gently on the bed, then lays down, positioning me to lay down on top of him.

I breath in, the scent of him calming something deep inside of me. It loosens a knot of tension that I hadn't realized was there. "So, bondmate and wife huh?"

He sighs, hand coming up to stroke at my hair. "Spoilers."

"Y'know, I'm really starting to dislike that word." I mutter into his chest.

"I'm not all that fond of it either." The Doctor replies.

I hum. My body relaxing even more on top of his. He shifts, pressing a kiss to my forehead. Then he starts speaking. It's the same language as earlier. The Tardis still isn't translating it, but I don't mind. I drift off, the sound lulling me into sleep.

xxxx

Sometime later, two hours and twenty three minutes to be exact, I wake up. I'm still tired, so I'm not exactly sure of the reason. That is, I'm not sure until I shift and look down at my legs. I'm jumping.

Gently, I maneuver my way off the Doctor. Then, hoping my luck will hold out, I hurry over to the desk. I quickly write him a note, managing to stick it on the pillow next to his face before I'm whisked off.

xxxx

"Hey, I'm jumping but I didn't have the heart to wake you up. See you next time sweetheart."

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Bekka G – Thank you for the support!