Rose was dimly aware of being set down on something soft. She lay there for a few minutes, enjoying the comfort of the surface as well as its warmth, and it was holding her in the most soothing way. She braced her back against that presence, which responded by giving slightly and curving around her.
The response intrigued her rational mind enough that she opened her eyes.
And screamed.
Immediately the tentacles reaching down from the ceiling towards her recoiled.
"Rose calm down." She heard the Doctor's voice behind her, she sat bolt upright on the seat.
"Doctor! You're alive!" she breathed, pure relief and gladness washed over her, she started to turn around, eager to look upon a familiar face, one she could recognise as such.
"No." he danced with her movements to stay behind her. "Don't look at me."
"Why?" she asked, her previous elation negated, "Did you- Did it-"
"No." he answered, "You are under heavy influence of a substance that is changing the way you perceive the reality." He explained.
"What?"
"You've been drugged." He simplified, "If you look at me, I won't look like me. So just concentrate on my voice, alright?"
"Okay."
"Good." He patted her shoulder, "You might want to face the wall, I'm going to try and take off, so I'll be moving in front of you."
"Okay." She acquiesced again, feeling him turn with her as she shifted her position on the seat.
"Brilliant, I'll be back with you in a few minutes." He gave her shoulder a light squeeze and left.
And Rose was left staring at row upon row of eyes.
Some blinked, some stared, most where trained on her. The bright yellow irises shone electrically around pitch black pupils, lighting the space, glaring into her eyes. Tiny tendrils quivered around them where they stood in stead of lashes. Thick ropes of knotted tentacles ran from the base of the wall to something behind her and down below the floor.
She looked down at where she was, and found a pulsing, bloated growth. Tendrils of flesh snaked onto her hands, she snatched them away and hastily jumped off. The sides bulged and sagged shuddered as a long sigh seemed to take it.
"Rose." Cold hands on her shoulder, "Rose you are perfectly safe. Nothing here is going to hurt you."
"But…" Rose could barely voice what passed in her mind, it was like the worst horror movie she'd ever seen. "Doctor, please, I can't do this."
"You have to. I'm sorry."
"Where are we?"
"The TARDIS." He answered, Rose swallowed hard.
"But- it looks so…" she paused, "Awful." She could not come up with a descriptor that encompassed everything she saw and felt.
"The TARDIS has not changed Rose."
"And you?" she asked fearfully.
"And neither have I. But if you look, then I will appear to have changed."
"Please don't." she still remembered that terrible day. She'd thought she lost him, never again... please not again.
"I won't. Just don't look, and everything will be fine."
"Okay." She closed her eyes, shutting out the world.
Rose stood there, holding her eyes tightly shut. She forced herself not to feel the cold tendrils tapping and slithering around her.
"Hang in there Rose." She heard the Doctor encourage as a shiver ran up her spine.
She hung on to his voice like a lifeline, it was the only familiar thing in the hellish nightmare.
Rose startled when something touched her forehead, she flinched, her eyes flew open reflexively.
She gasped and covered her mouth to keep herself from making any more sound.
She was facing a giant, unquestionably living, throat-like structure, reaching all the way into the ceiling where it disappeared in a tangle on hanging flesh, tendons, and throbbing arteries. It shone with bioluminescent blue light inside its translucent skin. It bulged near the floor into a bony cage trapping a mass of veined and breathing flesh, poked through with twisted cartilaginous elements. Little tendrils snaked this way and that, thicker ones curled around the bones and thick tentacles sprung from the base to knot with themselves and those from the wall. They stretched along the floor, twitching and writhing. Rose felt sick.
She followed the paths of each supple line, each gory, boneless limb, and came to the shape that was intertwined with all of the horror surrounding her.
"No." she breathed.
A bright white light died at two eyes shuttered themselves behind heavy lids, the other two stayed open and stared at her with slit pupils. It was that thing again, the creature that claimed to be the Doctor, that stole his voice and tricked her into trusting it.
"Oh dear." It said, realising it had been seen.
"You." Rose stated flatly, her initial fear was being overpowered by anger. How dare this thing trick her thus? How dare it use the Doctor's voice, his mannerisms, his name, in that way? It would pay, she would not go down without a fight, and certainly not without taking it with her.
"Yeah well." It sighed sharply, shoulders and chest inflating liquidly as it did so. "Just give me a minute and I'll get right to you." It turned to the central structure and spread its four long arms onto it, fiddling with the various cartilaginous parts. The tendrils of the console mingled with those of its wrists and forearm, they reached for each other, twitching pathetically when the contact was broken.
The entire room shook with the force of a mighty muscular push, the central column noisily sucked in, breathing the aether outside and glowing brightly with it. Rose redirected her attention towards the pilot of this hellish vessel, its second set of eyes was open again, gleaming a milky bioluminescent white, just like the eyes on the wall were yellow. The thicker tentacles of its back rose to meet those stretching down from the ship, mingling and knotting; the ones below spread around the bony rim of the cage in a hair-raising embrace. Everything around Rose, wherever she looked, was a rolling, writhing, chaotic mass of living and grasping flesh.
"Who are you?" she demanded, now stoic in the face of her own revulsion.
It slowed down, and closed its luminescent eyes, looking at her with the other two.
"You know who I am." It spoke liquidly, the words tumbling off the lips that did not form the words she heard.
She swatted away questing tendrils that had ideas about her ears, they pulled back.
"I do not."
The sound that answered her, pouring out from the creature's mouth surprised her by its beauty. It was a lilting and harmonious melody of vowels, interrupted by sharp guttural stops or long sibilant hisses. Rose's eyes widened, how could a being so terrible speak so beautifully? Or was it precisely the siren's song: meant to charm and seduce and beguile, the honey in the trap.
It took one look at her after speaking and its slit pupilled brown eyes widened and bulged, "Sorry, it might help if I speak English, wouldn't it?"
"What?"
"I was saying you do know me." It paused. "Very well in fact."
"I think I'd remember meeting something that looked like the cast-offs of a fish market." She replied bitingly, intending to insult.
It stood straighter, eyes wider and afire with offense, little tendrils flaring around what passed for its face, stretching the elastic skin like a collar. "Rose Tyler! That is highly insulting." A short pause, "Is that really how you see me?"
"Is there any other way?" she retorted, "Just because you have the Doctor's voice does not mean I trust you. In fact, if you've done anything to hurt him…" she stepped closer to the alien being in front of her, "I swear, you will not live to regret it." She narrowed her eyes and stared her captor down. "You will let me go." She ordered.
There was no response from the nightmarish pilot, "Well, I certainly didn't know that about you."
"You know nothing!" she spat acidly, miffed that her last demand had been blatantly ignored.
"Oh well, I wouldn't say that." It turned away and started walking around the throbbing, caged, heart like mass. "I know that all squares and rectangles, but that not all rectangles are squares. I know that six is a perfect number. I know that a Cisalan king is the lowest status of society. I know-"
"Shut it!" Rose snapped, baffled and confused by the sudden flippancy of her interlocutor's ramble.
It shut up looking slightly offended, then sobered. "But jokes aside..." It stated, "You can't stay like this. You're under heavy psychotropic influence." It made its way back towards her, stepping smoothly over writhing ropes of muscles, "Let me help you."
"Like hell I will."
A few tendrils on the side of its head curled and twitched it what appeared to be frustration, before relaxing as it controlled its temper, "Rose…" it rubbed the space between its upper eyes, "What in Rassilon's name do I have to do to convince you that I am who I say I am?"
That action surprised Rose, but not as much as the use of a single word. A word she had never heard before, a word she was rather certain was a name. And that she had only heard the Doctor use. She ran their encounter over in her head; it was true that this person had not yet tried to hurt her overtly even though they had had more than enough opportunities.
"Okay, say I believe you." She conceded, "Now what?"
All at once, their expression softened, "Now we solve this once and for all!" they smiled broadly, revealing a row of pointed teeth, neatly interlocked into one another, and a set of wicked canines that glinted in the bioluminescence of the column. They moved away from it, their trailing tentacles folding back, rising ones reaching to grab those of the ship. Or was it the ship reaching down to knot with theirs? She couldn't tell: the pilot and the ship were indistinguishable.
"Come on." They beckoned her to follow with an oddly shaped hand; she ignored a tentacle that attempted to take her hand. It gave up and slunk away toward the owner's main body.
They led her through the corridor of veined flesh that pulsed and breathed as she passed. She observed her guide, and noticed he was breathing in time with the ship.
"Here." They said, stopping to pry open a mouth-like opening in the skin of the wall with two strong extra limbs. "Med-bay." They explained.
Rose considered the opening and looked inside, the space beyond it was just as terrifying as the rest. At least it was consistent, she entered.
Her guide followed her in, "Now just give me a minute to start up the system, then we can find out what exactly is causing this." They moved to a bony counter and ran their fingers on the cartilaginous keyboard, tapping the little individual white squares embedded in supple and elastic tendon-like material.
"Okay, lay down on there." They pointed with an unoccupied arm to a flat, squishy growth. Rose had her misgivings about it, "Rose please, whatever it looks like, it's not going to hurt you."
She gave one last distrusting glare at the bed-like outcropping of bloated skin and gingerly sat down on it.
"You have to lie down for the diagnostic to activate."
Rose reluctantly let herself lay down on the firm, organic surface she was on. A few tendrils came questing over her face, gliding over her features. Other ones did the same for the rest of her body. Rose felt trapped and resisted against the urge to struggle with every ounce of her will. When a particularly intent tendril came to rest across her nose and mouth, feeling cold and wet, it was all she could do to bite her cheek and not let out a child-like whimper.
Then, blessedly, they retreated. Rose sat up immediately.
"Okay what have we got?" Rose heard the Doctor's voice ask behind her, as much as she wanted, needed to believe it was him, she could now clearly hear the smooth and silky way the words slipped out, how nimbly the being behind her spoke a language that was not theirs, without a trace of an accent. She knew, she knew, that voice did not flow from the same lips she'd first heard it from.
"Psychotropic spores, airborne, absorbed through the skin. Yes I could've told you that…" they grumbled. "Cancelled out through the lymphatic system by… Oh!"
"What?" Rose asked, fidgeting uncomfortably on the skin of the bench.
"Hold on, won't take more than a minute!" they rushed off to the other end of the med-bay, she watched them rifle through cupboards, holding doors open with two arms as searching with the other pair.
She balked when she saw what they were holding when they came back towards her.
"What?" they asked, fiddling with the unholy contraption.
"You're not using that." Rose eyed the round sucker ringed with minuscule little teeth that was clearly the "business end" of the device.
"I have to, I have no other delivery system for this." They tapped a vial of opaque yellow ichor that had been inserted into the taut skin of the handheld tool. "Unless you want to live in a distorted world forever." A pause, "Well, probably not forever, it'll probably wear off eventually, but judging from your immune response, that may take a while." They gestured to an eye-like screen.
Rose did not respond. They sighed and examined their hellish contraption for themselves.
"What does this look like?" they held it up for her to see. "Come on, describe it."
Rose was a little taken aback. "It's kind of… smallish, skin covering bone. With a little round, toothy sucker thing on the end." She waved vaguely at each part as she described it. Rose did not entirely understand the point of this exercise.
"Now you see, to me, this is a fairly standard hypo-spray." They said, "This is the delivery module, here is the intake valve, and this is a mild dose of codeine to help your brain flush out the hallucinogenic element" He said pointing to each part as he explained.
"Right." Rose responded.
They pulled up a chair shaped outcropping of bone and cartilage, tendons connecting it to the floor stretched as they did so. "How about this?" they pulled out another instrument from between the folds of the loose toga-like cloth they were wearing as a shirt.
"It looks like someone guts. Why would you even have that in there?" Rose pulled a face at the apparent section of intestine that was being held aloft in front of her. Actually some parts of it were more rigid than guts would be and that balloon thing on the end certainly did not belong in any digestive system she knew.
They stared at the thing, "It's a stethoscope, Rose." They said, "You know, the one I always carry around with me?"
"The Doctor always carries a stethoscope."
"I know I do." They paused to think for a moment, "What do I look like?" they sat up on the chair and leaned forward.
"What is the point of this?" Rose complained.
"The point of this is to get you to trust me. So go on, describe." They urged, Rose was perplexed but indulged.
"Where to start…" she wondered to herself, "Okay, you have four eyes, though you seem to keep two of them closed most of the time."
"Which ones?"
"The ones on top." She answered, "But they were open earlier."
"When I was flying?" they asked.
"Yeah."
"Interesting." They nodded.
"They shine too." She added, "Other than that… No ears that I can see, but little… tentacle… things around your head… They move about sometimes." As she said that, the very tendrils she was talking about wiggled in what appeared to be amusement. "Like now." They stiffened and flattened, before relaxing, Rose could not resist a small chuckle. Her interlocutor joined in, smiling. "Your teeth are very intimidating by the way. I don't trust those canines to stay away from my neck."
At that the pilot stiffened for half a moment. And before she knew it, they were back to normal.
Rose decided to ignore the event and continue, "You have…" she counted "Ten limbs."
"Ten?" a few tendrils on their left temple curled upwards.
"Yeah, two legs, four arms, and four tentacles on your back that are at the moment busy fondling those of your ship." She said cheekily, with no response from the other.
They nodded, a couple of tendrils waved up and down.
"Why am I doing this?" Rose asked, feeling rather awkward.
"Because I'm curious mostly." They shrugged, "But one question: Are you scared of me?"
Rose looked at them again, and she found that the oddly shaped face did not revolt her as much as before. "No." she ended up answering.
"Had you been?"
"Yes."
"And there we go." They smiled, "I may not look familiar to you, but doesn't influence my intentions. I want to help Rose. At this point, I don't care whether you believe I am the Doctor or not; as long as you can accept that I do not want to hurt you or anyone else."
Rose thought on the words, "I'm sorry." She apologised. The more she looked into those slit-pupilled brown eyes, the more she saw an ancient kindness in the alien in front of her. A kindness that was almost- familiar. She had entirely missed that, missed the unspoken words in their actions because she was so preoccupied with the nature of the signals, too preoccupied with her own fear and worry for the Doctor.
"It's okay, as long as you realise it." They nodded slowly with a pleased smile stretch on their skin, the little tendrils curling delicately into neat little spirals.
Rose looked around the room, it still looked like the set for a horror movie, but the thick tentacle on the walls and ceiling were not hostile, merely hanging lazily or lovingly intertwined with those of the pilot.
"If I look in a mirror…" Rose mused, "Won't I look different to myself too?"
"No, your mind knows your own body too well. The image will not change." They said, "Not any more than your hand has: look." They picked up her right hand from her thigh and held it for her. She felt the thin tentacles that were based on his wrist wrap around hers.
They were right, her own five digits looked like they had always looked, all the way down to her nail polish. But she found herself looking at the hand holding hers. Gently, she brought her other hand to hold the one under her right.
"You got little pads on your fingers." She stated, noticing them for the first time.
They let her trace the features of their digits with her own. They still had five fingers, but the first two were longer, not by much, but just enough to be noticeable.
"Shall we put an end to this?" they asked
"Yeah." She put their hand down.
Rose looked away as the ship's pilot lifted her sleeve and pressed the device onto her bare forearm. It felt cold on her skin, she felt the coldness of the discharge spread in her veins and dissipate.
She looked back at the strange alien face before her.
"It'll take a short while to act." they informed her.
"Okay." She acquiesced, not looking away. "One more thing… uh… could you- open your eyes? Is that okay?" she felt awkward for asking.
"Sure." They smiled and looked down slightly, such that she was level with their upper eyes.
Rose watched with wonder as the lids of the top pair of eyes pulled apart, revealing the milky white orbs beneath. She now also saw the silvery iris that circled the brightly glowing pupil that was the source of the bioluminescence she'd seen earlier.
"They're beautiful." She whispered.
"Thank you." They said, flattered, the little tendrils slunk nearer their head, fidgeting humbly.
Slowly, they closed, the thick, lash-less lids sliding over and sealing them off like pearls inside an oyster's shell.
The pilot shook their head, a few tendrils shuddering as some effect was dispersed.
"The drug will be acting soon." They said presciently, "You'll be seeing normally in a moment."
Rose nodded, then, as if on cue, something shifted in her vision.
She watched as her new-found friend's face changed before her eyes. The little tendrils folded back and melted into their skull, some clumped, thinned, and split, morphing into a wild mass of brown hair. Rose watched, both mesmerised and horrified as the face became more familiar, more human.
The last to go were the shuttered eyes, which sank back beneath the skin and bone, never to be opened again.
Rose was breathless, what she had witnessed was impossible; something that had looked completely alien had just become deceptively human.
"Doctor." She breathed, she had recognised his face long before he'd become himself again, but now, only now did his name escape her lips.
"Hello!" he greeted her joyfully.
"It was you… Oh my God, it was you all along and…" she stopped, not able to even voice what she had done to her friend. "I'm so sorry."
"Hey Rose, it's alright, you were scared."
"But- you told me. You told me and I didn't believe you." She sobbed
"You trusted me in the end, that's all that counts." He smiled warmly and squeezed her hand, "You've already apologised, and I don't blame you. Sure you were more than a bit rude, but it could have been a lot worse."
Rose looked up at him, at the face she knew and recognised. "Thank you."
"Don't mention it." He pulled her in for a tight hug, Rose buried herself in his embrace, revelling in the feeling of his two arms around her shoulders.
But for a moment, for a fleeting fraction of a second, she could've sworn she'd felt another set of limbs tightly wrapped around her.