''Why though?'' said the Doctor, racking his brain for an answer. ''Something is here, cloaking itself as a hotel just before its destruction. Something disguised as something much bigger, with faulty, sense-altering mechanics, a bullet train elevator, a shape-shifter and vicious alien dogs, but why? What does it all mean?''
They were back in the hotel room. It was late in the afternoon. The Doctor was pacing frantically around the place while Amy was resting on the bed, closing her eyes and concentrating so she could feel the bed for what it really was: the sort of liquid metal she saw on the upper floor. She seemed to be enjoying herself.
''This is weird,'' she said, dragging out the last word. ''Nothing about this place makes sense.''
''It makes sense, it just doesn't seem to have a purpose,'' said the Doctor. ''Not yet anyway. Not until we find out.''
''So how do we find out?'' asked Amy casually. The Doctor stopped pacing and turned to Amy.
''We ask.''
...
Alison was no longer at the service desk. A replacement was doing her duties, answering calls and dealing with guest enquiries. The young blonde administrator was instead several stories above the lobby, impatiently dialling a number on a cell phone over and over again and looking around, listening out for a response above the crowd. She was looking for Anton. On what must have been the fiftieth call, Alison heard a ringing tone coming from a cupboard nearby. Her eagerness to find him turned to reluctance to open the door, knowing that what she would find inside would probably not be what she hoped for.
She cancelled the call and started making her way, inch by inch, through the teeming hallway and over to the cupboard. Hesitantly, she grabbed the handle and sluggishly opened the door. Upon seeing the horrible sight inside – the crumpled body of a man in a grey suit - she let out a whimper and slammed the door shut. A few tears slid down her face.
Several guests noticed but did not stop to ask what was wrong. All but two of the people in the hallway walked over to Alison to find out what ailed her. Amy and the Doctor had just entered the floor from the staircase and had heard the door bang shut.
''Are you okay?'' asked Amy tentatively. The service desk attendant burst into tears and threw her arms around Amy's neck. Amy did not hesitate to comfort her while the Doctor watched curiously before shifting his eyes to the cupboard door.
He walked around the embracing women and cautiously opened it. When he saw the limp body he leaned down to check the nametag: Anton Stead. He softly closed the door again, bowed his head and closed his eyes in lament. Within seconds, though, his eyelids shot open in fearful realisation.
''It happens tonight,'' he muttered under his breath.
...
Amy and the Doctor had taken Alison to their hotel room. Once again, the Doctor was pacing up and down at the foot of the bed, but this time it was Alison laying on it. She was sitting on the edge, shaking; every now and then drinking from a mug of coffee, or at least thinking she was. Amy was leaning against the door watching the Doctor wander about in front of her. He stopped striding up and down and shimmied over to where Amy was standing.
''How do you know it's tonight?'' asked Amy, sceptical of the Doctor's assumption.
''I don't, I have a hunch,'' said the Doctor, ''but I seem to be good at hunches.''
''Alright then, Notre Dame,'' mocked Amy, ''spill the magic beans.''
''Are you trying to set a record for how many things you can reference in one sentence?'' the Doctor asked peculiarly. Amy shifted her eyes awkwardly.
''… Maybe,'' she said. The Doctor rolled his own eyes and went back to his train of thought.
''The recording that played for us,'' he said. ''I think that happened on the same day as the one we're trapped in. The Reaper doesn't like wasting time and he's already killed
Anton. And unless this place is run by an entire empire of Stead offspring, that just leaves his brother Simon.''
''The Reaper?'' said Amy, snickering. ''You're actually going to go along with his name? The one he called himself in third-person, no less.''
''Well I'm not going to keep calling him the thing in the cloak, and the Smokey Bandit doesn't seem threatening enough,'' jested the Doctor. Amy chortled.
''But we saw Simon last night,'' she said. ''Well, tonight. Well, both, but whatever. Point is, Doctor, if he was alive at night, and he dies the same night, then that means he would have been killed very shortly after we met him. Unless the Simon we saw was already dead; just a copy!''
''No, his voice was his own,'' said the Doctor, ''if he was taken over by the Reaper he would have had a much deeper voice.''
Amy looked disappointed at the debunking of her theory.
''I think you're right about us seeing the last moments of Simon, though. Mainly because it would prove my theory,'' the Doctor added pompously.
''Of course,'' sighed Amy. ''Well anyway, how are we going to-''
''Raxillion,'' interposed the Doctor.
''Bless you,'' said Amy sarcastically.
''In the recording,'' the Doctor continued, ''he mentioned that he had Raxillion. I remember now; they're the dogs. I should have realised before. That's what those hellhounds are. They're called the Raxillion.''
''So, they're called Raxillion,'' said Amy apathetically, ''what of it?''
''It's of importance,'' the Doctor retorted. ''It tells us more about the Reaper.''
''Alright, so what's the deal with these Raxi-…thingies?'' she inquired.
''The Raxillion come from a planet in another dimension. A dimension I ended up in once when the TARDIS flew off course. I heard stories of a nameless planet; one of the few in the known universes,'' explained the Doctor.
''Why?'' asked Amy. ''Why wasn't it named?''
''Because it died,'' stated the Doctor. ''Consumed by a supernova not long after it was discovered, hundreds of years in the future. It's just referred to as Delta-five-hundred; the code number of the salvage mission of the crew who found it. They managed to transmit one final message before they got caught in the supernova themselves, warning the other salvage teams about a cargo ship that blasted away from the planet just before the supernova hit, almost like it knew it was coming. The interstellar police found it and arrested it.''
''Arrested? An entire ship?'' said Amy, smiling.
''Well, I say arrested. Their definition was attack-the-ship-and-capture-anything-on-board.' They found hundreds of the dogs, which they eventually took for themselves and named the Raxillion, but no pilot. Their first mistake was completely abandoning their police-craft so they could all join in on the assault. They had to embarrassingly report back to the station that the pilot escaped with some of the hounds and commandeered their own vehicle. All while they watched through the hole they made in the cargo ship!''
Amy's smile widened, and the Doctor grinned with her. Uncontrollably, they both snorted with laughter but silenced themselves when they noticed Alison watching them, puzzled by their cheeriness. They huddled closer so the Doctor could finish his story.
''Anyway,'' he went on, ''the police-craft, under new management, escaped into a black hole and nobody has heard from it since.''
''So you think it came here?'' Amy assumed. ''You think this is a space ship?''
''It came here, yes, but a police ship isn't this big. There's something else going on for there to be a building this size here, and tonight we're going to find out why.''
''How are we going to do that?''
''Well we know where the Reaper, or at least the phony memory of him, is going to be tonight. The same place he was when that recording played for us for whatever reaso-''
The Doctor cut himself off when he remembered that Alison was in the room, inaudibly crying. A strange thought occurred to him. He sat down next to her and spoke to her tenderly.
''How did you know Anton,'' he asked. ''Was he a friend?''
''H-he was m-my b-brother,'' Alison sobbed. The Doctor hopped to his feet in distress and walked back to the door, placing his arm against it and setting his forehead on top. Amy looked bewildered and sped back over to Alison to console her again. She wrapped an arm around her shoulder and then shot a frown at the Doctor. He turned his back to the door, looked Amy in the eyes and spoke one word: 'Stead.'