This is totally making me think of Doctor Who again…lol…

Chapter Six

"Doctor. Doctor!" Girl called out to no reply. The Doctor had really meant it when he said he wanted to be left alone. He had sequestered himself in rooms she had yet to discover—his lab being much larger than she had first realized.

She was left with no answers yet again, and it worried more than bothered her. The man in dark armor had literally chilled the air with his presence. He couldn't be anything other than dangerous. Who was he? What was his agenda? And if the Doctor was working for him, just who was she working for? Didn't he have a name?

She'd spent two days looking for the Doctor—when she hadn't been sleeping or nursing wounds—and today she was certain she'd found him hammering away at something metal behind closed doors. She banged on the doors loudly.

"Who are you working for!" she shouted.

"Go away!" he yelled back.

"I can help you!" she baited.

"You're better staying out of my way!"

"Then give me something to do!"

There was a pause for a few minutes, and then a piece of parchment was slipped beneath the door. Girl picked it up and stared at it.

"You can't be serious," she muttered. "Why are you wasting both of our time!" she shouted again. "I could be helping you do something useful!"

There was another pause and suddenly the door slid open and the doctor's nose poked out. Girl took a quick step backwards.

"Just take that list and get out," he hissed, slamming the door shut again.

She stomped her foot and sighed. This was going nowhere. The list contained more creatures that he wanted her to capture, and with it, her spirits slumped.

"What good is this nonsense, if he's not even going to bother with them?" she wondered aloud.

She knew that everything of value was hidden behind locked doors, and that the Doctor was tying up a lot of power for his new project. Clearly the armored man was frustrated by the Doctor's animal collection, and she had no idea what that was for, either. Test subjects for what? The idea of going into the tower again had been happily dwelling as far from the front of her thoughts as possible for the past two days. After the last venture when she became something else, she'd determined that it had to have been a mistake. There was no way she could have become a mirror image of the creature that had pursued and almost killed her. Maybe it was her memory playing strange tricks on her again.

She looked at the list again, trying to make sense of the Doctor's scrawling hand. There were detailed descriptions of what each creature was, and what he wanted of them:

Snakeskin

Tail of Coeurl

Eye of Lamia

Humor of Basilisk

"What in the world is humor of Basilisk?" she muttered again.

She sighed and looked at her arms where the scratches from the cat-hunt were still healing. What she wouldn't give for some decent armor…If she was going to be forced back into the tower corridors, this time, she decided to prepare in advance before she started blundering off into unknown territory. It would be much easier now that the Doctor wasn't hounding her every step. She needed supplies. Bandages for herself, firstly, and she reasoned that cages would probably also be intelligent, and if she was going to be collecting fluids—containers. The problem was, she had just spent two days looking for the Doctor in his own lab, how long was it going to take her to hunt down phials, cages, and nets? The whole scope of the place was, in fact, quite astounding.

She stuffed the list into the belt in her trousers and set off looking for the Doctor's supplies. She'd crossed two rooms when she realized that it would probably be in her best interests to find food before anything else while the Doctor was preoccupied. Her meager collection of food was already almost gone, and she couldn't rely on him to remember to feed her. She found his food stores quickly enough, and lifted what she could. There was a little bread, cheese, and a few unripe fruits, that she hid in compartments fitted into the walls of the room where she normally slept, making sure that should the Doctor see fit to abandon her completely, she would have enough supplies to survive for a time.

After she had seen to that, she ventured further into the lab, passing machines and metal constructs. The mechanicals that the Doctor had refused to let her see, she now peered in upon with sly satisfaction. What she saw, though, left her more confused than before. Some of the machines looked almost like people, and parts were strewn about the floors and tables that bore a striking resemblance to arms and legs. She cringed and shut doors almost as quickly as she opened them, and kept on going. Gears and tools were scattered about tables and shelves and as she continued, she noticed metal equipment being replaced by glass jars. Things were floating in liquid—tissues, strange plants, and were those…eyes? Girl tried not to retch. What was he doing with these? Nevertheless, she was getting closer. He had to have more glass jars somewhere…

While she searched the lab, she kept in mind that if she found any of the Doctor's notes, she would do well to read as many of them as possible. She still wanted to find signs of a flying device or a means to escape if she could. Someone was bringing food to the tower, and it had to be arriving somehow. To her chagrin, she didn't find evidence of notes or a flying device. The Doctor might keep a messy house, but his notes were nowhere to be found, and she feared they might be stored entirely in his head.

She continued walking and entered another room. The lights were turned off, but it was warm and stuffy. She could hear metal rattling and clicks on tile. She felt uneasy and made an effort to find the switch that turned on the lights. She found the panel in the dark, and in sequence, lights filled the room, illuminating rows upon rows of cages. Only a few of them were occupied, one of them by the cat she'd captured earlier. It paced back and forth and growled at her. There were a few other creatures also, deformed, menacing things that tried to bite their ways through the bars. These weren't normal creatures, they were monsters. What were they all doing here? She decided she'd seen enough of these oddities and shut off the lights. Knowing, at least, where she could find cages.

She closed the door and quickly walked through the room with glass phials and jars again. She searched under tables, and pulled out drawers, looking for more phials, jars, and stoppers. She searched half of the room, but most of the jars were already filled. Dismayed, she yanked open a cabinet near the wall that she was expecting to contain nothing, and to her surprise, she found it was full of everything she needed, including several sacks of a strong woven material. She opened one of the sacks and stuffed it with phials, and cork stoppers. When she couldn't carry any more, she shut the cabinet and made the long return to her room, setting everything in order in a corner. She hoped the Doctor wouldn't mind that half of his items were missing, but it was he who'd told her to go out and collect things from the creatures in the tower.

Still…creature collecting was not what she wanted to be doing. It was the machines, the mechanicals, that she wanted to learn about. She wanted to know what was so important that the Doctor now devoted all his time to tinkering. Somehow she had to convince him to trust her. She needed to know the function of the machines in this place. It was a constant nagging thought, that there was something she needed to do wherever she had come from. There was something important that she had been in the middle of, and someone or something had stopped her from completing it. She'd been dreaming about it lately, but none of it made sense, and she woke every morning feeling that she needed to tell someone something. Being trapped in this place was beginning to drive her mad. It had been months already, and she hadn't been able to get more than maybe five levels down the tower in all that time.

Inexperience. Ignorance. Time. They were all against her. She was never getting home at this rate…

And yet…the Doctor's Master wanted him to complete a project, and if she could find out what the project was, she might be able to use that as leverage. The question was, how? She would have to do her best to convince him that she was a useful lab assistant and just maybe he would allow her to work on more important things, things that brought her closer to leaving the tower.

Until then, she was in a difficult situation. Without the Doctor, she had no means of escape; without his knowledge and his tolerance, she couldn't learn to escape on her own. She would need to become fiercely independent, able to survive among the monsters. She would have to become a creature of violence to achieve the necessary ends. Someone was waiting for her, she was sure of it. She had to go back some way or another. Not to mention, that every day more that she spent here, raised more questions about herself that she couldn't answer. Just what had happened to her the day she'd transformed herself into the mirror image of the feline monster that had pursued her? Was it some form of madness? Had it been some form of magic? If it was magic, how had she cast it? Could she do it again?

She lay back on her cold metal slab, staring up at the strange crystalline lights. At least tomorrow she had something to do. She sighed, turned over, and attempted to sleep, noting with loathing that she still hadn't gotten the promised blanket she'd asked for several weeks ago.

"Useless old man," she mumbled to herself, squinting her eyes shut.

……………………………..

The following day began with a bang. And not a small bang, but an explosion that shook the lab, and knocked Girl off of her slab. She hit the floor with an oomph and sat up, rubbing her head.

Wracked with confusion, she stumbled through the dark, and went looking for the Doctor. All the lights in the lab were flickering on and off, and smoke was billowing along the ceiling. She ran toward the room where she had last seen him, and found the door blasted ajar. The Doctor was cursing at the top of his lungs, and Girl saw him rushing back and forth across the room between sparks of light.

"What happened?" she asked, bewildered by the extent of the destruction.

"Stay back!" the Doctor howled. "There are still livewires on the loose!"

Girl surveyed more of the wreckage and noticed long metallic cables glimmering in the arcing room. She looked at the Doctor's rumpled form and furrowed her brow.

"You're bleeding!" she pointed out.

"What?" he asked, dabbing his head, and then observed, "Oh, right," as if it was nothing but a pesky fly.

"You should sit down," she suggested, still having no idea what he was doing.

"I'll sit when this is all taken care of," he whined.

The Doctor had just begun turning valves when a fire erupted from another corner of the cavernous room. The Doctor cursed again, and began kicking things while fire began to spread down the length of the room.

Girl watched the fire with a sense of rage she couldn't quite explain. And then she did something that felt as natural as breathing. She began to move her hands—forming shapes, forming symbols, aligning the movement with the flow of her thoughts. She made a final sign and released a tidal wave of water that rose halfway to the ceiling and crashed down upon the flames like a bucket doused over a small candle flame.

The fire was extinguished, but the Doctor was now staring at her like she was the latest specimen in his collection.

Girl didn't even know what had happened necessarily, her focus was so entirely wrapped up in the flames, that it took the Doctor shaking her, to realize what she'd done.

"What was that?" The Doctor insisted, hopping around her with wide eyes.

"I have no idea…" she murmured, staring at the dripping floor.

"That…that was magic!" the Doctor was saying, dancing on the tips of his toes. "You might not be useless to me after all!"

Girl broke out of her reverie and stared at him sharply. "First of all, what happened?"

"I calibrated the turbines incorrectly, the gears got stuck, and accidentally overloaded the skystone…"

"The what did what to the what?" Girl asked in frustration.

"Too much pressure," he continued. "Have to make sure to allow for more movement among the individual parts…"

"Is this the project that the Master wanted you to complete?"

"Oh yes, but I'll have to start over again. I wish the notes I had weren't secondhand from the engineer in Baron…I'd be able to make a working prototype much faster…"

Girl cast him another sideways glance. "Prototype of what, exactly?"

"That…I can't tell you."

"We're both stuck here, what difference does it make?"

He stuck up his nose and haughtily replied, "I never said you could stay, remember?"

She frowned at him anew. "This thing you've been working on…it's enormous."

The Doctor looked smug, and then began to chew on his bottom lip, obviously conflicted between duty and his divulgent nature. "There are plans in order," he began with a shrewd eye cast in her direction. "I didn't want to bother you with the unnecessarily distressing news."

"What news?"

"Baron is planning an attack on Eblan, your home country."

"An attack…on Eblan?"

"Yes," the Doctor continued. "I was in charge of building things that would protect this island."

"Why wouldn't you tell me this?"

"Because if you knew, you'd want to rush my work. I don't do my best work when rushed."

"So you sent me to finish your side projects to give yourself peace and quiet?"

"Exaactly," the Doctor drawled out.

Girl took the opportunity to make another proposition. "Obviously, doing this by yourself is going nowhere. Tell me exactly what to do and I will do it."

"I can't get you involved, this is too personal for you, and women are historically emotional and unbalanced."

Girl raised a brow and glared. "Emotional and unbalanced? Have you taken a good look at this room lately? Have you looked at yourself lately?"

"You'll do exactly as I say?"

"Exactly."

"Can you do magic like that again?"

"I have no idea."

The Doctor's expression darkened with disappointment. "Shame, shame," he pouted. "Do you at least know what a wrench is?"

"If you point it out to me, I do."

The Doctor set his mouth in a thin line.

"Help me clear this room," he said.

"Very well," she answered, walking past him and avoiding puddles of water and more of the arcing cables.

With her back to the Doctor, she allowed herself a private smile. She was finally getting through to him in a roundabout way…

The Doctor, with his back to her, also had a smile on his lips. She's taken the bait, he thought with malicious glee, then turned and saw her reaching for a piece of equipment.

"Don't touch that!" he screeched, racing toward her on spindly legs, and earning a reproachful look.

Yes, he assured himself, staring at the fierce looking dark haired girl. She'll make an excellent test subject.

…………..………

A/N: Long time coming…I'll try to have more going on in the next chapter, which I have NO idea when I'll have posted. I have practically no time anymore, guys…I'm working myself to death in the hopes that I'll have enough money to survive the next school year *sigh* Such is life, I suppose…so, don't expect too many updates. I'll do what I can in the last month of break that I have, but no guarantees…

Thanks again for reading!

~myth