Chapter five
"Jack! Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!"
The Doctor bolted awake, his hand clamping across his stomachs as he struggled to keep breathing.
It had been quite a while since he'd truly feared to open his eyes.
Wait. What was he saying? Time Lord Victorious! Hawaii! Good er… Angry, Mad and oh so very Cross Queen Bess! Baby!
Right then. Time to get off his bum.
So he squirmed against his bonds, for bonds they were, all four walls of some kind of box. At least that's what it felt like. No place for acrobatics, with a baby on the way. So he took a breath, relaxed his muscles, and explored.
Then a point of grey pain with an ugly red core burned through some ignored muscle in his lower left thigh. Blinking back tears as he searched the screaming sinew for the source of the injury.
"Oh that's just brilliant,' he murmured, reaching down between the ceiling of the strange box he was in and his own thin body, feeling with his fingers for the hole in his leg.
He crawled his fingers down like a spider, one touch, two touches, three long touches… a fourth… oh it hurt to stretch the skin, but there was no healing it till he got whatever it was out of him. No sirree and Bob's yer Uncle.
A few more squirms and twists against his knee –lord but he needed to learn yoga again in this body!- a bit of twinge along his waist, just a twinge, and finally he found the impinging source of his current angst.
His fingers wrapped, smooth and fluid, around the narrow, tapering object. It spiraled at an angle, turning and turning at even sides until it formed… a slinky?
No no no. What was a slinky doing in a box? A Doctor and baby-sized box?
Bah! Couldn't be a slinky! Unless… oh dear. Was he being kidnapped and shipped to the North Pole again inside a box of bits and bobs? It wasn't even Christmas! Speaking of Christmas… why was he stuck upside down in a box? Was the box upside down? Was it on its side? He would much rather be on his side in Jack's bed, eating breakfast. But no! Jack had to go and get possessed by two annoyingly creepy Geisha Amphibiforms most likely on vacation from Krop Torr!
Oh dear. On the other hand, it was probably just a spring, sticking out from their nice warm bed.
But then it must be the bed that he was trapped under! Or rather, behind.
Well that little insight could have saved several minutes worth of relatively deep thought.
In a small, comic fury, the Doctor opened his eyes only long enough to set his good foot on the back of the hide a bed. Then he pushed, kicking fiercely with all the supersolian strength his undamaged leg would allow.
The offending pulled out, drawing a thick red stringy strip of him across the room when it at last freed itself of his thigh; he gritted his teeth. No sound, no crying, no sobbing, no screaming. No yelp of pain. The Trinomians would hear him. So he used the agony of the wound he'd just suffered to catalog the facts of the situation, ticking off points to the rhythm of the throb in his leg, mouthing his squeals and squeaks of discomfort only when the shadows were again past the door.
"Trinomians… known traffickers of tech; collectors of artifacts known to be dangerous. They're… -oh lord that hurts- obviously using a divide and conquer scheme, else Jack and I would still be enjoying breakfast in bed. Aherm. Ouch. Still hurts. Although, if I was human, I suspect I would be laid out and bleeding by now. Guess I should -ow ow ow ow- count my blessings. Aha ha ha."
At last the shadows stopped crossing over the doorstep, and the Doctor decided to stand up and have a look outside.
"No sense in lingering in a transdimensional nexus generator when you can go outside looking for your boyfriend and really muck things up!"
With a pat on his stomach solely for Junior's benefit, he hobbled for the door, a grin on his face which had nothing to do with his sex life.
After all, he'd never let it be said that he had no spring in his step.