Chapter 9
The TARDIS was made up of practically infinite space, in a more or less separate relative dimension from the world around it. Over the last seven centuries, knocking about in this thing, the Doctor had picked up many a human and humanoid companion, and most of them had never even touched nor thought about ninety-eight per cent of the TARDIS' interior.
The thing was, humanoid companions were easy to keep track of. They spoke for themselves, expressed uncertainty and fear, and were sensible enough not to wander too far into unknown territory without at least a compass. The hard part, the part he often forgot about, was the fact that he had also picked up numerous other types of creatures in his travels. This usually happened by accident, or anyway, not of his own accord, except in rare cases. They were not always so easy to keep track of, couldn't usually speak for themselves, and as a rule, were not averse to trying to explore the great vessel.
So, in the moment just before stepping out of the TARDIS, he thought of a fluffy grey cat that Rose had brought aboard three years ago when they were visiting Greece. It was a stray, and she'd felt sorry for it, and had convinced the Doctor to let her keep it, mostly by batting her eyelashes and sticking out that formidable bottom lip of hers. She named it Grigio, but the cat had promptly got lost in the labyrinth, and then Rose had promptly got lost somewhere a lot less accessible. He had no idea whether the cat was still alive or not. He had been hoping that it would find some stray mice to entertain and feed itself. Although, today, he was not so sure.
He also thought of Arthur, the horse he himself had allowed on-board when they were dealing with clockwork robots in 18th century France. Rose hadn't wanted the horse on-board with them, but Arthur, like Grigio, had wandered off and got lost in the inner-reaches as well, and there wasn't much they'd been able to do about it. He had heard Arthur's whinny a time or two since then, so he assumed that the horse was around someplace... perhaps he'd found the stables and pasture and was having a great old time of it.
He sighed, and mentally apologised to all the living, fleshy things on-board. He didn't know who to pray to, but he said a silent meditation, and a "godspeed" to any non-humanoid companions that he might leave in the line of fire of the Vashta Nerada.
"It's either this, or risk the Earth," he whispered, willing the TARDIS to hear him and pass along the message.
Hodgins, Cam, Booth and Brennan stood on the forensic platform with their various props and materials, waiting for the Doctor to return. When he did, they had not expected it to be this way.
Well, Cam, Booth and Brennan had not expected it. Hodgins had.
He watched with a gigantic smile as a blue Police Box materialized right out of thin air, there, where they do their ugly work of identifying weapons, poisons, times-of-death and killers. He couldn't help but laugh out loud and shout "Oh, yes!" as the TARDIS' gears crescendoed and echoed against the high ceilings and wide spaces, then ground down to a halt.
"Oh my God! What the hell is that?" Angela shouted over the walkie-talkie at Booth's belt. She had clearly seen the materialization on the screen she was watching from the surveillance room. In the background, Sweets could be heard half-shouting, half-cackling.
The Doctor opened the door and stepped out.
"The TARDIS!" cried Hodgins. "That's the coolest thing I've ever seen, and I've seen some cool things!"
"How did you do that? This is supposed to be a secure facility!" Cam asked the Doctor, her face contorted in confusion and a kind of feigned anger.
The Doctor rolled his eyes, feeling that she had entirely missed the point, and he ploughed past her, gathering up some of the body armor currently piled on the floor.
"Are these custom-sized for agents?" he asked, inspecting one of the special nylon suits.
"Not really," said Booth. "There's small, medium and large for men, and small, medium and large for women."
"What have we got here?" asked the Doctor.
"Two large men's, one medium men's, and one medium woman's. Plus arm and leg pads, and helmets."
"Okay, well, Dr. Saroyan, you take the women's gear. Dr. Brennan, Dr. Hodgins..."
"Want to do rock-paper-scissors for who gets the medium men's?" Hodgins asked Brennan, walking up close to her and standing to his full height, which was still not quite equal to her height.
"No, you can have it," she said. "I'll be fine in a large men's suit."
"Whatever," the Doctor shrugged. "Whichever one of you takes it, it's going to be ill-fitting."
"Why don't you take it?" asked Hodgins. "You're the right height. I can make do without."
"No," the Doctor insisted.
"I'm just a human scientist," Hodgins said. "You're a Time Lord! If you die, then the universe is..."
"No," the Doctor insisted again. "I'm not discussing it."
Hodgins held up his arms, as if to demonstrate that he was disarmed.
Over the next few minutes, everyone except the Doctor put on an FBI-issue black armored bodysuit, thick with nylon and canvas and a fiberglass core. Booth got into his in just a few minutes, then was obliged to help everyone else who was unaccustomed to the process.
For his part, the Doctor tried to tighten Brennan's gear with the sonic screwdriver, with limited success. He also tried to manipulate the suits' meshes in order to make it harder on the carnivorous little monsters, but this was with no success. The space suits of River Song's crew were made for adjusting the mesh; these were not. The FBI were sophisticated, but they weren't fifty-first century space travellers.
"Now what?" asked Cam, looking down at her black suit and shrugging.
"Now, we board the TARDIS," said the Doctor. "Bring your props."
"We're all going in there?" Brennan asked, pointing at the phone box. "With the materials we've collected? Just the gurney alone will not match the dimensions of..."
"Dr. B.," Hodgins interrupted, putting one hand on her shoulder. "To geekily quote Nike, just do it."
Hodgins himself was the first to enter the TARDIS, with a large stoppered beaker of hallucinogenic fluid in his hand. And though he had had some idea of what to expect, the sheer impact stopped him in his tracks just inside the door.
"Wow!" he breathed. "I knew it was going to be... but... oh, wow!"
His eyes slid around the gold-colored console room with its lit-up roundels dappling the walls, and its totally otherworldly control panels. He breathed in and out slowly, his face glossed over with wonder.
"Er, Dr. Hodgins, is there any way you could... you know, move?" asked Cam from behind him.
Absently, Dr. Hodgins stepped to the side and allowed Cam to pass. She was pulling a gurney, covered by a white sheet. On top of the white sheet, there was a set of large syringes and narrow tubes. On the shelf underneath were three very large coolers, the size of army foot-lockers.
At the other end of the gurney, Booth pushed, helping her to guide the laden-down thing into the interior space.
Surprisingly, neither Booth nor Cam said a word. They simply pushed the wheeled mechanism up the ramp to the console platform, to make room for anyone who would enter behind them.
Lastly, Brennan entered the TARDIS, clutching a plastic drawer full of bones. Like Hodgins, she stopped in her tracks. Her mouth dropped open like a mailbox flap. The Doctor came in after her and shut the door.
"All right, Dr. Brennan?" he asked with a bit of a smirk.
"This isn't possible," she declared.
"As you like, love, but I think you're missing one really important fact," the Doctor said.
"What?" she asked.
"Well," he started, suddenly sounding uncomfortable, not really sure what he would say. "Look around. Because... well, just look."
"This is totally incongruous, and defies the laws of physics," she told him, annoyed, now turning to face him.
"Wrong," said Hodgins. "It defies the laws of physics as you know them."
"The interior space of your vehicle is far superior in volume to that of the exterior!" she shouted at the Doctor.
"Right," he nodded calmly. "Most people just say it's bigger on the inside, but I guess you're not most people, are you? And why are you so irritated?"
"She's got a point, though," Cam piped up. "How the hell does this thing work?"
"No time for that now," the Doctor decided, jogging up the ramp. He undid the handbrake on the console. Then he turned toward Booth. "What about you? Any choice words?"
Booth smiled. "I wouldn't know where to start, my friend!" This was followed by a laugh.
This made the Doctor chuckle. He put a hand on Booth's shoulder, momentarily squeezing. It was a gesture of, I know how you feel, mate.
"The Time Lord works in mysterious ways, eh, Booth?" Hodgins asked, still standing near the door with Brennan.
"Amen," Booth agreed.
"What's this bag doing here?" asked Brennan, seemingly out of nowhere. "It's FBI-issue, but I didn't see Booth come aboard with it." She was motioning to a black duffel bag by the door, bearing the yellow seal of the Bureau.
"It belongs to Dr. Sweets," said the Doctor. "I'm going to need something to wear, and he's more or less my size."
Brennan nodded, frowning. The Doctor assumed she was accepting the duffel bag scenario, yet still having trouble with the "incongruous" interior of the TARDIS. He couldn't really say he blamed her.
Before moving the strange vessel out of the Medico-Legal lab, the Doctor figured it would be good to do the "wet" work, just in case they found they needed any other equipment from their offices. Booth moved the three huge coolers out from under the gurney, and Cam uncovered and prepped the body of the suicide victim for arterial embalming.
Meanwhile, Hodgins fussed one more time over the viscosity of the mushroom and hemp oil solution, having once more added a bit of saline, just to make the process slightly quicker.
Then, careful not to let any of the solution touch her skin, in an eerily silent TARDIS, as the whole crew watched, Cam pulled a syringe full from the beaker, then injected the jugular vein. She put the syringe aside, and began to massage the area, attempting to spread the solution throughout the body. She took her time and repeated the process throughout the body, ensuring to the best of her ability that the body's circulatory system was now filled with an hallucinogenic compound.
Dr. Brennan questioned her method a few times, to which Cam promptly replied, "I'm a pathologist, not a mortician. If you think you can do a better job, then be my guest."
The Doctor put his hand on Cam's shoulder and simply whispered, "You're doing fine."
Brennan huffed away, back down the ramp, calling for Booth's help. She opened the plastic drawer and said, "We're going to have to assemble this skeleton in a hurry, and we can't just lay them out like we usually do. I'll need your help to organize all two-hundred-and-six bones, in order to facilitate a rapid assembly."
"Just tell me what to do," he said, shrugging.
When the suicide victim's body was as full of the solution as Cam could make it, and the bones of the Eastern European murder victim were organized into meticulously-named piles, it was time.
The Doctor moved the TARDIS to the middle of the lobby, just inside the front entrance of the museum.
He and Booth walked ceremoniously down the ramp together, while the other three hung back and watched.
"Are you sure you don't want me to do that, Booth?" asked Hodgins.
"I'm sure, Hodgins," Booth replied. "It's just a look-out job. Anyway, you're the squint, I'm the action-hero, remember? If one of us is going to get eaten by a big dark monster, it's going to be me."
"That's absurd," said Brennan, attempting to sound cynical, and not succeeding.
"And yet," Booth said.
"Well, at least let us come and watch!" Hodgins begged.
"No," the Doctor asserted, shutting him down. "You three, you stay inside the TARDIS. There is no need to go out there unless and until absolutely necessary. It is too dangerous, have you got that?"
"Oh yeah, no problem here," Cam answered with an awkward smile.
The Doctor got promises from Brennan and Hodgins as well. Then Cam wished them good luck, and the Doctor and Booth stepped out of the TARDIS, shutting the door behind them.
Booth switched on his flashlight and said, "I've got your back."
Together, they crept toward the front doors, the Doctor moving carefully forward, Booth moving back-to-back with him, casting his flashlight around, as though it were a gun. He scanned the periphery for out-of-place shadows.
"I haven't seen any activity in there, Booth, so you should be good," said Angela over the walkie talkie.
"Thanks," said Booth, distracted. "But I still think I'll do my best to cut my losses."
When they reached the glass doors, the Doctor peered out into an unnaturally dark courtyard. His hearts beat faster at this stage, and he gulped.
"How are we outside the front entrance?" he asked over the walkie.
"You have a little space," said Angela. "I think they've moved forward, but it's so slow, it's hard to tell."
"How much space are we talking about? Two kilometers, three inches, what?"
"I'm going to guess about thirty feet," she told him. "You'll be fine, just... you know, no sprinting."
"Thank you, Angela."
The Doctor very carefully opened one of the doors and stepped out into the cool air of a Washington D.C. autumn night. He faced the giant, malevolent shadow with a scowl. He hoped he looked a lot less terrified than he felt.