When he bothered to get back up, Seb had gone. Not even a word to David before he'd popped out to... wherever one went in an apocalypse. Everything was unlocked, though, and David wandered through empty halls lit only by the glow of empty tanks waiting to be filled. A few, like the one in his office, already had a skeleton in it, but most of those who had reserved the other ninety tanks were still alive. Or they used to be. Either way, they likely weren't going to be using them any time soon. He shivered and made a mental note to not try and access the afterlife. Disintegration, razor blades, deaths upon deaths so soon - he didn't want to hear what that sounded like.

"Seb?" he tried, listening to the rushing quiet. David leaned over one of the railings and called, louder, "Missy?" Of the two, he hoped Missy replied.

Neither did. David tried going out to the cathedral proper where Missy liked to linger, but those doors remained barred, which left David awkwardly standing outside of her office. He had never been in there. Interviews, walk-throughs, day-to-day work always took place in the room that had become his own, shared office. But that was the only place she could be. There was no way Missy had gone out into the city after they'd gotten done heralding the end times. She was quirky, not crazy.

David knocked. When that garnered no reply, he tried the button. It slid open silently. "Missy?" he whispered into the dark. The only light was from the watery glow of the tanks and faint orange of the fake sconces outside. He fumbled at the door frame for a light switch, but met only smooth wall.

David called one more time, a little stronger and steadier, before letting himself in to find a light. He shouldn't, really, but with nothing outside, the only direction to go was forward.

The door slid shut, plunging him into darkness.

It took only a second to verify there was not, in fact, a single switch or button to be found nearby, so David had little choice but to grope blindly forward into the room itself.

Of all the things he expected to trip over - chairs, tables, tools, maybe a potted plant - a cat was not one of them. David only knew it was a cat due to its hellish yowl, followed by claws scaling his side. He pitched forward, hit a surface full of nobs and bumps, knocked just the right one to flick on some under-lights, and fell down a short set of stairs, braining himself on a banister that had no right being in someone's office.

David scrambled immediately to his feet to see what he'd damaged outside of his own face. His assessment was quickly derailed when he noticed the room proper. This wasn't an office. In fact, he didn't quite know what it was.

In the middle of the room was a hexagon-shaped console from which the faint light emanated, catching up in a central column of glass and inner workings David couldn't begin to understand the purpose of. He crept forward, mindful of the cat (though it seemed to have vanished) in the gloom. Aside from the column, everything else looked like a round office, bookshelves on the walls, a few tables with decorative baubles on them, a lounge chair with a small side table and lamp. Praying it worked like normal lamps, David reached up for a chain and clicked it on.

Nothing exploded, and now able to see a bit more, he returned to the column, which was far more interesting than a reading nook with World Domination, by Emile Keller, and an empty cup of tea. Nothing that looked like it might be words was in English, or Chinese, or any language he might have at least recognized. Just swirls and circles, like the parts of a clock. He traced a few lines engraved into the metal as though that would unlock their meaning.

David circled the column, unsure where to even start, at least until he came to a monitor on a swivel arm. Nothing about it was any stranger than the rest of the console, but the pictures tucked along its edge were worth investigating, especially as one was himself, working at one of 3W's computers. Another was a man with wild gray hair and severe features. And a third, and a fourth. Sometimes there was a girl with him, but the focus was always the same.

A different day with a different man, she'd said before uncorking the champagne. David had to assume this was that different man, and felt guilty. It never seemed like Missy had a - boyfriend? husband? person? - a person in her life, and while David knew she'd never really been available for many reasons, fancying someone who had a someone felt like he'd crossed a line.

And also she might be an alien? That would take some processing. This was way beyond anything he'd ever seen, and he felt fairly secure in his knowledge of current technology.

Unwilling to start pressing buttons the purpose of which eluded him, David settled for falling back to the incongruous stairwell and the doorway beyond. While she seemed quite settled in this main room - he'd call it the console room for now - there turned out to be entire halls beyond it to be explored.

The cat joined him again at about the third room, after seeing one that seemed naught but a whitish void and one with clothes neatly arranged, mostly for men and almost entirely black, spanning fashions from every era and realm of fiction. Missy's man didn't seem to ever change his wardrobe, so David had to wonder if this was all Missy's own. Clothes didn't tell him anything except that she had a predilection for cross-dressing and morbid colors, so he'd quickly abandoned it for the next room.

A laboratory. This was more like it. The cat twining between his shins almost sent him toppling into a table, but David was wise to its existence now and nudged it away. Looking very indignant, the cat sat in the middle of the room and proceeded to judge him harshly with golden yellow eyes as he nosed about the tables. A workbench housed tools, some half-gutted project of data disks, crystals, and wires, and a journal that had both English and that circular script (which now certainly was a language) scattered throughout. It was most definitely Missy's handwriting.

The cat broke from its judgement as soon as he settled down to investigate and hoped up to sprawl across the paperwork. David had owned cats ever since he was little, so he'd put up with worse and easily figured out a way to read around the short, black fur and kneading claws. "I haven't forgiven you for tripping me," David informed it as he massaged its chin with his knuckles. His forehead still smarted from that, but the pain had been easy to ignore in all the excitement. Now that he was thinking about it, though, he rubbed at the probable bruise as he puzzled over the documents.

Definitely an alien, David decided. Missy was an alien. He rolled that around in his mind for a bit.

"Missy's an alien." The cat raised its head to blink lazily at him, then resumed its half-stupor. "You're probably an alien, too, aren't you? I guess I'm glad there are cats in space."

Then David realized he was petting an alien cat in an alien ship with his alien boss currently unaccounted for. He had to get out of here.

Standing so suddenly that he startled the cat away, David reshuffled the papers into what he hoped was their original order and retreated to the console room. Still quiet. He regarded the door that led out into the mausoleum, then the console itself. Though he was loathe to throw himself into random button-mashing, that looked to be the only option left. With one last longing look at the door, as though by will alone he could open it, David turned his full attention to the console.

The cat was already there. It never broke eye-contact as it carefully and deliberately placed a paw on a small switch, one exactly like a myriad others on the console. He approached warily, flicked the suggested switch, and heard the door open with a pneumatic hiss.

"Um. Thanks? Thanks, cat."

David didn't question the cat as it bounded after him, made no attempt to trip him over the balcony just beyond (which would have resulted less in a bruise and more in every bone shattered from that fall), and dashed away to wherever its scheming needed it. He turned around to regard the door as it closed behind him. Just a normal door, no way that entire area - and he'd only seen four rooms out of what looked to be infinite doors - fit into the mausoleum, which itself somehow fit into St Paul's Cathedral. There'd always been something up here, everything a little too advanced, but he'd chalked that up to what money could buy. Now David had a very different theory.

"I hope you're not planning on going in there, poppet," Missy said. David yelped and nearly took himself over the bannister scrambling backwards.

"Missy!" was all he could think to say as she caught his arm in her own and pulled him to safer ground. Her fingers tangled in David's. She really was cool-skinned, like a reptile. David shivered.

"Yes, Missy. Have you been keeping yourself entertained?"

"I - You - What happened to you?" David's fumbling for an answer that wasn't 'oh my god, you're an alien' was interrupted by the realization that what he'd initially taken to be shadows cast by the tanks were in fact bruises.

Missy let go and touched her face, as though she didn't realize they existed until just now. "Do you like them?" she asked, as though talking about a pair of earrings. "I don't think I like them. And I could say the same for you though, poppet. What happened to your forehead?" Missy reached up to prod the injury, and her strange body temperature was welcome on the hot swell. David blushed. Just being an alien didn't mean she was a bad alien, right? She certainly wasn't one of those Toclafane things. Maybe her lack of care about the butchered humans wasn't malicious, but just her not understanding.

"I fell." He wanted to ask, just to hear it from her mouth, but refrained.

"Heads are such fragile things. We should get you tended to, dearie," Missy said, completely unaware. "Come, come." She tugged him along back to his office and pulled out a cold compress from the mini-fridge in the back room. Missy set him in a chair and pressed it to his forehead, then set about cleaning up the small mess they'd made while chattering about some book she'd read recently. Likely World Domination. He hoped it wasn't a literal title, in hindsight.

David watched Missy bustling about, throwing away cups and disappearing occasionally to get paper towel or a cleaner. Everything in here was normal, the hum of lights and chill of the air conditioning unit. Like the world outside didn't exist. She wasn't bothering with her own injuries, and David didn't feel brave enough to broach the subject again. Someone had hurt her, an idea that settled uneasily in his stomach and answered the question of whether he liked them with an emphatic no.

"What's got you so sullen?" Missy asked, hands on her hips.

"Just. Everything." There was no way he could explain. David wasn't any good with words, even if he knew what was safe to talk about and what wasn't.

"You're still on about the invasion?" He let out a sigh, mentally thanking her for supplying an excuse. "Naught to be done about it now. You should move on."

David looked down at his hands and didn't comment.