The Doctor was getting frustrated. He smacked his sonic and tried to unlock the cuffs. It started to make its noise but then just sputtered out.
"Damn!" he yelled as the door burst open and a man holding a leash, with a very large black dog on it, stepped out.
"Doctor what's going on" Sherlock finally said. "Why is this man barking?"
"That's just it Sherly, it's not a man. Just a copy. It's all one creature. One creature, disguised as two. Clever old multiform. A bit of a rush job though. Got the voice a bit muddled, did you?" The barking stopped and the man/creature just stared at him. "Where'd you get the pattern from? You'd need a psychic link, a life feed, how'd you fix that?"
Sherlock wasn't called Sherly by anyone. Well, except for his older brother Mycroft. A scowl was painted across his face. The man started growling again. Then he opened his mouth, large pointy teeth, like the ones from the eel creature earlier, filled his mouth.
"Stay away, apparently we're safe. She called for back up." He patted Amy's shoe.
"I didn't send for back up." She whispered at him.
"..I know that was a clever lie to save our lives," he looked annoyed, "Okay, yeah, no back up."
The man stopped growling.
"And that's why we're safe. Alone we're not a threat to you. If we had back up then you'd have to kill us."
A voice boomed from outside. Seemingly coming from the sky.
"ATTENTION PRISONER ZERO. THE HUMAN RESIDENCE IS SURROUNDED. ATTENTION PRISONER ZERO. THE HUMAN RESIDENCE IS SURROUNDED."
"What was that?" Sherlock and Amy said in unison.
"Well that would be back up. Okay one more time. We DO have back up and that's definitely why we're safe."
"PRISONER ZERO WILL VACATE THE HUMAN RESIDENCE OR THE HUMAN RESIDENCE WILL BE INCINERATED."
"Well, safe apart from, you know, incineration." The Doctor added to his previous statement.
Sherlock didn't understand this man's loose definition of safe. He never cared much for safety himself though. Safety was boring. The creature wandered into one of the rooms to look out the window and the Doctor fussed with his sonic, trying again to unlock the handcuff.
"Oh for god's sake." Sherlock said and knelt down, pulling the lock picks out of his pocket. In seconds the handcuffs were off and the Doctor hugged him. Sherlock stood there awkwardly as Amy laughed at him. They all took off down the stairs and out of the house.
They ran into the middle of town. The Atraxi's message was coming from everywhere; radios, televisions, mp3 players. The Doctor had estimated that they had 20 minutes until the incineration. Everyone had come out of their homes to get a look at the giant, snowflake shaped, eyeball ship in the sky.
Suddenly the sky started to get dark. When the shadow passed the sun was left looking quite strange. The aliens had sealed off the planet in a forcefield. Camera phones were out. So very like humans to want to record the possible end of days to upload on Youtube. Even Sherlock pulled out his phone and snapped a couple of pictures.
"Amelia do you know that man over there?" Sherlock pointed across the field as the Doctor was in the processes of what looked like injuring himself by thinking too hard.
"The nurse? That's Rory. He's a... friend. Why?"
"Well everyone is pointing their phones up at the sky and this man, Rory, is documenting... the man and his dog from your house."
"Good point!" The Doctor chimed in and ran across the field and nicked Rory's phone from his hands and fiddled with it.
"Why are you photographing a man and his dog when the sun is going out?" Sherlock began his questioning of Rory. "Of course you know that this man shouldn't be here, where is he supposed to be? Well, you're obviously a nurse, and from the state of clean your clothes are in you've got to work with people who can't make all that much of a mess. What kind of people don't make messes but are wandering around in fields?"
"Amy, is this who I think...?" Rory asked ignoring Sherlock and staring at The Doctor, not sure he wanted the answer. "Th.. The.. The Raggedy Doctor?"
"Raggedy?" The Doctor looked sort of offended.
"Hello, nurse, man and the dog. Why? Tell me now."
"The man he - well he - he can't be there. He's -"
"In a hospital, in a coma." Both The Doctor and Rory finished the sentence in unison.
The Doctor turned to Sherlock, "See the multiform needed a live but dormant mind."
Sherlock was going to respond but was cut off by barking. They all turned and the man and dog were barking at them.
"Prisoner Zero." The Doctor addressed him.
"There's a Prisoner Zero too?" Rory was just baffled by the entire day.
Above the city Atraxi ships were scanning areas looking for non-terrestrial technology. The Doctor pulled out his screwdriver and held down the button. Technology all around started malfunctioning, streetlamps exploding, alarms going off, and cars driving off on their own. As he was trying to get the ships' attention his screwdriver exploded itself and dropped to the ground in front of him. While he was on the ground trying to will it back to life the ships flew away in the opposite direction.
"Uh, Doctor the ship is gone.. also Prisoner Zero just kind of melted into the drain.." said Sherlock.
"Of course it did. Ok what do I do, no TARDIS, no screwdriver, in 20 minutes..."
"So that thing lived in my house for 12 years... and I had no idea?" Amy broke in.
"They live for millenias, 12 years is just a pit stop."
"How can he be real..? It's just a game we would play when we were kids... You made me dress up as him!"
While they were all discussing the problem Sherlock was at work trying to figure out how to fix it. With Rory's phone still in his hand he began to look through his pictures. He found 8 pictures resembling the one of the man and dog. More coma patients. Why a dog? A dog in a coma?
"Okay, there are 8 coma patients so 8 different looks for Prisoner Zero. But why a dog?"
"The man, he dreams about the dog then Prisoner Zero gets the image of the dog."
The Doctor ran off towards a house he had burst into earlier to check the Atraxi's message transmissions. He lept up the stairs and burst into the first room he saw.
"Laptop gimme!" He snatched the man's, another friend of Amelia's, laptop away from him and put it on his lap. As soon as he saw the screen he wanted to throw the computer down.
"Get a girlfriend Jeff..." and he got rid of the trash on the screen.
Jeff coughed awkwardly and his grandmother came into the room, "What are you doing?"
"Sun's gone wibbly, so right now, somewhere out there, there's gonna be a big old video conference call. All the experts in the world, panicking at once, and d'you know what they need? Me. Ah, and here they all are. All the big boys. NASA, Jodrell Bank, Tokyo Space Center, Patrick Moore."
"You can't hack in on a call like that!" Jeff replied
"Can't I?" and the Doctor swiftly typed on the computer. Six boxes popped up with all the important people. The Doctor flashed his psychic paper in front of the webcam and he's let into the call. He explains to all of them his plan.
"I am writing a computer virus, very clever, super fast, and a tiny bit alive, but don't let on. And why am I writing it on a phone? Never mind. You'll find out. Okay, I'm sending this to all your computers. Get everyone who works for you sending this everywhere. Email, text, FaceBook, Bebo, Twitter, radar dish. Whatever you've got. It's a reset command, that's all, it resets counters, it gets in the wi-fi and resets every counter it can find. Clocks, calendars, anything with a chip will default at zero at exactly the same time. But yeah, I could be lying, why should you trust me? I'll let my best man explain,"
He looked over to Jeff who was just staring amazed at the screen and whispered, "You're my best man. Listen to me. In ten minutes, you're gonna be a legend. In ten minutes, everyone on that screen is gonna be offering you any job you want. But first, you have to be magnificent. You have to make them trust you and get them working. This is it, Jeff, right here, right now. This is when you fly. Today's the day you save the world"
"Why.. me?"
"Because, we're in your bedroom. Now go go go!" and The Doctor ran out of the room. After a second he popped his head back in and said, "Oh, and delete your internet history."