A/N I down own DW or the BBC.

P.S. Yeah, so umm, sorry about the wait. Long story short, I was out of town and my flight home got cancelled, leaving me halfway across the country without my computer. Oops.

Book of the Update: An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

Chapter 24

Amy blinked her eyes open and looked around, her head still foggy, and Rose began to pound on the glass from the other side, trying to get her attention.

"Amy!" she yelled, not caring if anyone else heard. "Amy, get out of there!"

The room must've been soundproof, because Amy didn't appear to hear Rose at all. She jumped up and looked around, her eyes finally landing on four television screens with big buttons beneath them. Despite Rose banging on the glass, telling her not to touch anything, Amy pressed the red play button on the screen and sat back down in the chair she'd woken up in, her back to Rose.

An older man with a beard appeared on all four of the screens. It looked like he was giving a news report or something. Rose couldn't hear what he was saying, but Amy sat up straighter, looking intrigued.

"Amy! Amy, what's going on?" Rose cried, even though she knew the girl couldn't hear her.

The man on the screen finished talking and gave the camera a sad sort of smile before the screen switched to a new image. A terrible, terrible new image. Rose's heart broke watching the video and her hand crept up to her mouth in silent shock.

"I have to tell the Doctor," she whispered to herself, "I've got to." It would break his heart, but she couldn't just keep something like that from him. No, she had to tell him. She had to tell him now.

With a final glance back at Amy, who was reaching out her hand towards one of the buttons, Rose stepped away from the glass and turned around, only to walk straight into someone's chest. She squeaked and muttered an 'excuse me' with an innocent smile, and tried to step around the man, only to be stopped by a strong hand gripping her bicep, roughly keeping her still. The man raised his other hand and the gem on his ring slid aside, a thick grey gas swirling out of the opening.

"What's that? What're you doing?! You don't understand, I can help! I know someone who can help you, if you'd just let me….if you'd just let me…." Her eyelids were getting heavier and her mouth wasn't really cooperating well. "I just…..need the…Doctor…." She said slowly, her tongue thick and heavy, and then everything went black.

DOCTOR WHO

"You don't remember anything?" Donna asked her quietly while the Doctor was scanning the screens with his screwdriver.

Amy shrugged. "No. Last thing I remember is watching a video of myself, telling me to get us all out of here. I was crying," she said the last part in a voice so low it was almost a whisper. "And I don't know why."

"It's alright," Donna told her, "We'll figure it out. Where's Rose?" she asked, noticing that the blonde was nowhere to be seen.

Ay shrugged, but it was the Doctor who answered, "Oh, she's wandered off again. I'm sure she's fine."

Donna looked incredulous. "Sure she's fine? You're not even a little worried?"

"Donna," he said, looking her right in the eye, "Rose is an adult who is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. That thought is the only thing keeping me from going absolutely mad worrying about her, so I'd appreciate if you could accept that as well so that I could keep my head for the moment. Please and thank you," he snapped before turning back to the screens, leaving a shocked Donna standing behind him.

"Kay. Right then," she said, exchanging a look with Amy.

"Ah!" the Doctor exclaimed, and they jumped and looked over at him. "Basic memory wipe; probably took away twenty minutes, twenty four at most."

"But why would I choose to forget?"

"Because everyone does," Mandy told her, from behind them, "Everyone chooses the forget button."

The Doctor walks over and leans down to her. "Did you?"

"I'm…not eligible to vote yet. I'm 12. Any time after you're 16, you're allowed to see the film and make your choice. And then once every five years."

"Once every five years? Everyone chooses to forget once every five years?" Donna cried, shocked.

"Democracy in action," the Doctor mumbled before spinning around and walking over to the screens, tapping them and pressing buttons. Nothing happened.

"How do you not know about this? Are you all Scottish?" Mandy asked, apparently not noticing that the Doctor and Donna did not have Scottish accents.

"Oh, I'm way worse than Scottish," the Doctor said, "I can't even see the movie; won't play for me."

"It played for me," Amy said, looking confused and a bit suspicious.

"Well, the difference being, the computer doesn't accept me as human."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not. Donna, would you come here for a moment?" Donna walked over and the Doctor grabbed her arms and gently steered her to stand directly in front of the screens. "Now, if you'd just-"

"Hold on just a minute!" Amy interrupted, walking over to them. "You're saying you're an alien?" the Doctor nodded, and she raised her eyebrows. "You look human."

"No," he said, frowning, "You look Time Lord. We came first."

"So there are other Time Lords, yeah?" Amy asked, ignoring Donna vigorously shaking her head and mouthing 'stop' to her.

The Doctor's hands froze on the knob he had been turning. "No," he said quietly. "There were, but there aren't….just me now. Long story. There was a bad day, bad stuff happened," he admitted, his hand grabbing Donna's behind him for support, though he appeared as though he didn't need it. "And you know what? I'd love to forget it all. But I don't, and I never will. 'Cause this is what I do, every time, every day, every second – this." He balled his free hand into a fist and rocked back on his heels. "We're bringing down the government."

He slammed his fist onto the protest button.

DOCTOR WHO

Rose drifted into consciousness, yawning, and tried to sit up and stretch her arms, but there was something tying her arms to her sides. Her eyes shot open as everything came slamming back to her. Starship UK. Amy. Tentacle. Doctor, Donna. Video. Star whale. Star whale!

She looked around, but didn't see anyone. "Hello?" she called tentatively, and there was a beeping noise behind her.

"Hello," a sad-sounding voice said from behind her, and she tried to see, but her head wouldn't turn back that far. "I'm really sorry about this, but you seem to have caused a little problem with our system," the voice explained, sounding truly apologetic.

"What? Who are you? What've I done?"

There were footsteps and a man stepped into her range of vision. He was tall and slightly pudgy, with a downturned mouth and square red glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. "You could not forget."

"What?" she asked, bewildered. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You watched the film. You were not able to choose forget or protest, so one of our agents went to retrieve you. When we tried to wipe your memory, however-"

"Wipe my memory? You were tryin' to wipe my memory?" she cried, outraged. "Why?"

He ignored her and continued as if she hadn't spoken. "However, the memory wipe didn't seem to work very well. It didn't do anything at all, actually."

"You tried to wipe my memory," Rose said slowly, as if she were testing out each word.

"Oh my god, woman, aren't we past that yet?" the man asked, exasperated. He walked behind her again and, from the sound, sat down in a chair. "Thought you'd be a bit smarter than this," he said dryly, shuffling through papers.

"Oi! Alright then, I'll bite. Why didn't it work?"

"It appears we have a faulty machine. Apparently, it only works on humans – what a stupid machine," he added with a sigh.

"But I am human," Rose said, scrunching her brow up in confusion.

The man stopped shuffling his papers and Rose imagined he was staring at her right now, eyebrows raised. "No. You're not."

She snorted, "Alright, your machine's faulty then. I was born on earth, my mum's human, dad's human, I'm human."

"I'm sorry," the man said, sounding exasperated, "but you're really not."

DOCTOR WHO

"What the bloody hell am I sittin' in?"

"I really don't think you want to know. We've just gone through a high-speed air cannon. Lousy way to travel," the Doctor said, scanning the air around them.

"Where are we?" Amy asked in horrified shock, picking out slimy chunks of something from her hair and flinging it across the…area.

"Ah…600 feet down, 20 miles laterally, puts us at the heart of the ship. I'd say…" he trailed off, smelling the air. "Lancashire."

Donna stood up on shaky legs and looked around. "Oh, this ain't Lancashire, buddy."

The Doctor ignored her. "So what's this then? A cave? Can't be a cave. But it looks like a cave." He tried to scan the air again with his sonic, but Amy interrupted him.

"It's a rubbish dump! And it's stinkin!"

"Yes! But-" the Doctor said, dropping to his knees in the slush and grabbing a handful, smelling it. "Only food refuse. Organic. Coming through feeding tubes from all over the ship."

"So what is it we're standin' in? S'all squishy and wet," Donna grumbled, picking up her feet and wincing as the goo clung to her shoes like melted cheese. Maybe it was melted cheese.

"But feeding what, though?" The Doctor asked, ignoring her.

Amy looked down at the goo on her arms and hands. "It's sort of rubbery though, feel it, all slimy and-"

There was a loud rumbling noise that shook the entire room. They all froze.

"What," Donna asked quietly, "was that?"

The Doctor's eyes widened and he looked back at them, nervously. "Uhh, it's not a floor. It's a…..so!" he cried, obviously trying to change the subject.

Amy wasn't fooled. "It's a what?"

"Well…..the next word is kind of a scary word. You probably want to take a moment, get yourself in a calm place, go-"

"Doctor, spit it out already!" Donna hollered and he reddened.

"Right. Sorry. It's a….tongue," he said slowly, watching them for reactions.

Amy's face went completely blank. "A tongue," she said in a dead voice.

"A tongue!" he cried enthusiastically. "A great big tongue!"

"I'm standing," Donna said slowly, pointing her fingers at the ground beneath her, "on a tongue?"

"Yes you are! This'll be a great story to tell Wilf sometime. Not your mother, though. Don't think she'd like it too much."

"This is a mouth," Amy said, still in that deadpan voice. "This whole place is a mouth." She turned around, full circle, looking at everything. "We're in a mouth?!"

"Yes, yes, but on the plus side, roomy," the Doctor said, trying to calm them down.

"Doctor," Donna said slowly, "What type of creature has a mouth this big?"

"I've no idea," he said with glee, running around on the squishy tongue. He scanned the dark part behind them, probably the throat, with his sonic, reading something off of the side. "How big is this beastie? It's gorgeous! Blimey, if this is just the mouth, I'd love to see the stomach!" The creature made a rumbling, swishy noise, and he froze where he stood. "No. Not right now."

"The stomach?"

"Doctor, how do we get out?"

"Okay, yeah, right. So, it's being fed by surgically implanted feeding tubes, so the normal entrance is….closed for business," he said, his face falling as he saw the front of the mouth. Teeth were closed tightly, locking them inside the mouth.

"We could try though," Amy said, starting to move forward, but the mouth began to rumble again and the tongue wiggled back and forth.

"STOP! Don't move!" the Doctor commanded, "It's started."

"What? What's started?" Donna cried, trying her best not to move.

"Swallow reflex!" the mouth tongue flopped up and down a bit and they fell over into the gunk, screaming. The Doctor got to his knees and turned his sonic on, the green light pulsing fast.

"What're you doin?"

"I'm vibrating the chemo receptors!"

"Chemo what?!"

"The eject button!" he yelled, sonic screwdriver still pulsing green.

"How does a mouth have an eject button!"

"Think about it!"

"You're not serious," Donna screeched, but it turns out he was. They stood up, looking at the fluid rushing up from the throat.

"Right then! This isn't going to be big on dignity," the Doctor hollered over the noise, adjusting his bowtie with an ecstatic grin. "GERONIMO!"

"AHHHHHH!"

DOCTOR WHO

"What are you gonna do to me now?" Rose asked in a small voice. They'd been silent for quite some time after she'd stopped arguing about her species, and it was making her nervous.

"I've no idea," the man admitted, slapping his papers down on a table. Possibly the floor. "They just put me down here, told me what happened, and said to make sure you didn't run off."

"I can help, you know," she told him, "If you let me go, I can get the Doctor and he can fix it – make it so that poor creature isn't being tortured every moment of its life, I know he can."

The man sighed. "It's a rubbish situation, honestly. If we release the whale, everyone on this ship will die. If we don't, it'll go on in constant pain forever. We can't do anything, really. Either way, someone gets hurt. Rather one than one million, right?"

Rose thought for a moment. "There's got to be some solution," she said, banging her head against the chair behind her. But she thought of none.

They were silent for a while until she spoke again. "I never even asked, what's your name?"

"Matthew. Matthew VanHooris," he said, walking around to shake her hand.

"I'm Rose," she said, awkwardly shaking his hand around the ropes binding her arms.

"Sorry about the ropes. If I take them off, I'd probably lose my job," he said apologetically, smiling nervously at her.

"Yeah," she said tightly, not enjoying just sitting back and doing nothing. But what was there to be done? It was one life against a million – were there really any options?

A television screen in the corner of the room came to life, showing what looked like security footage. But Rose knew those voices. "That's the Doctor!" she cried, "And Donna and Amy! Why are you watching them?" she asked, her eyes narrowed.

Matthew shrugged. "They just stick me down here; tell me to watch for anything unusual. I just report it; I dunno what it all means or why."

"Who do you report it to?"

"Mister Hawthorne, and he acts right on the queen's orders."

"And what exactly are her orders?" Rose asked, wriggling against her bonds. Matthew shrugged and she sighed. "Can't you try to figure them out somehow?"

"How am I supposed to do that?" he asked incredulously and she faltered.

"Um…I dunno, you must have connections or something that would help, yeah?"

He shrugged again. "Only connection I've got is one-way to Hawthorne and a communication device to the janitors."

Rose seized on that bit of information. "Janitors! They must get around; clean up Her Majesty's rooms or something, right?"

He shrugged again, and Rose grit her teeth, her head falling back against the chair. "Don't you want to at least try to help?"

"That's not my job, Rose. My job is to watch the screens and report what I see," he said with finality, turning away from her and walking out of sight again.

She bit her lip to keep from hollering at him, instead watching the Doctor and her friends walk around on the small screen. There had to be something she could do, even trapped down here.

DOCTOR WHO

"Where are we?"

"Overspill pipe. And before you ask, yes, you are covered in sick," the Doctor replied with a grin.

"Oh god, it stinks!" Amy cried, wrinkling her nose.

"Yeah…not the pipe."

Donna looked disgusted. "Can we get out?"

"One door. One door switch. One condition: we forget everything we saw." He pointed to a large white button with 'forget' in big letters across the top. "Look familiar? That's the carrot and….ooh! Here's the stick." He walked past Amy and Donna, stopping right in front of two of those dummy things in the boxes. "There's a creature living in the heart of this ship. What's it doing there?"

There was a clicking noise as the dummies' heads turned around, the backside being a mad, frowny face.

"Oh, come on, that's not going to work on me. Big ole beast below decks and everyone who protests gets shoved down its throat. Is that how it works?"

The head spun again, this time to a really angry face with teeth showing, as if it were growling.

"Stop it!" Donna cried, looking back and forth between the two glass boxes.

The Doctor looked at her and then back at the dummies. "Oh, please do. I'm not leaving, and I'm not forgetting, and what are you fellows gonna do about it? Stick out your tongues? Huh?"

The glass swung open and the dummies stood up from their seats and took a step forward, towards the trio.

Donna shrieked and jumped back. "Doctor?"

His eyes were wide, like he hadn't expected this either, and he just slowly began to back up, Amy and Donna following his lead. Amy gasped and Donna whirled her head around to see what had happened. There was a woman coming right at them with a gun – the same woman who had earlier been the one in the mask.

The woman breezed right by them and shot the two dummies in the chests, making sparks fly. They fell to the ground and the woman blew the smoke from her gun, twirled it, and put it back into her belt.

"You look a lot less like an axe murderer without your mask on," Donna noted, but the woman seemed to ignore her.

She smiled and walked over to Amy, holding out her hand. "You must be Amy. I'm Liz, Liz 10." Amy shook her hand and Liz grimaced, wiping her hand on her shirt. "Ugh. Lovely hair, Amy, shame about the sick." She walked over and put her arm around the little girl from the bench, Mandy. "You know Mandy, yeah? She's very brave."

"How did you find us?" the Doctor demanded and she winked, throwing him a little machine.

"Stuck my gizmo on you. Been listenin' in. Nice moves on the hurl escape," she added, looking back to the still-dripping-with-sick Donna and Amy. "So, what's the big fella doin' here?"

"You're over 16, you voted," Donna said, "You've just picked to forget it."

"No," she said calmly, "Never forgot, never voted. Not technically a British subject."

"Then who and what are you, and how do you know me?" the Doctor asked, running his hands through his sick-covered hair.

Liz smiled. "You're a bit hard to miss, Doctor. Mysterious stranger. M.O. consistent with higher alien intelligence. Hair of an idiot." The Doctor frowned and ran a hand through his hair. "I've been brought up on the stories. My whole family was."

"Your family?"

She opened her mouth to answer, but the dummies behind them started twitching and she turned swiftly, leading them away. "Doesn't take them long to repair. Come on."

She lead them down a side passage that they had failed to notice before. It opened into a big room – or maybe it was just a bigger overspill pipe.

"The Doctor," she began, "old drinking buddy of Henry 12, tea and scones with Liz 2, Vicky was a bit on the fence about you and that Rose girl, weren't she? Knighted and exiled you on the same day."

Donna snorted. Course they would get knighted and then exiled in the same day. Seemed so perfectly them.

"Liz 10?" the Doctor asked in surprise, figuring it out.

"Yeah. Elizabeth the tenth. And DOWN!" she hollered, pulling out her gun and shooting the dummies behind them again. "I'm the bloody queen, mate. Basically, I rule."

She smirked and walked down another passage, leaving them to follow.

"Oh, I like her," Donna said, laughing.

They went through a big heavy metal door and stopped beside a gate with awful claw-like tentacle things slamming into the bars. The Doctor got down on his knees and stuck his head through the bars, ignoring what everyone else was saying. The creature….it was making noises, it-

"Doctor, I saw one of these up top – when Rose and I got separated – there was a hole in the road, like it had burst through, like a root," Amy said, looking at the thing behind the bars.

"Exactly like a root, because it's all one creature, the same one we were inside. It must be growing from inside the mechanisms of the entire ship."

"What, like an infestation?" Liz asked, looking around.

The Doctor didn't reply, still listening through the bars. His face looked sad. Very sad. "Oh. We should never have come here," he breathed, looking at the tentacles.

Donna knelt down beside him and put a hand on his arm. "Is it….is this like the Ood?"

"Yes, Donna," he said in a choked voice, "This is exactly like the Ood."

DOCTOR WHO

The trio onscreen followed the woman down a set of stairs and Matthew frowned, looking a bit confused, and pressed a button on the wall beside him. "Code Yellow. Security room at once, please," he said into the microphone beside the button.

"What's a code yellow?"

"Not likely I'd tell you, if it's got a code name," he said, chuckling, "All I know is that it's got something to do with that woman right there. I've no idea what."

The door opened and a tall, spindly man slipped inside the room and over to the screen, ignoring Matthew and Rose. He watched the footage for a few moments and then leaned over to the microphone and pressed the button. "Winder division one. 10 has migrated to the lower levels. Initiate the protocol." He looked at Matthew and smiled grimly. "God save the queen." And then he was gone, back through the door he came from.

Rose blinked. That had happened fast. "What's the protocol?"

Matthew looked at her, his brows furrowed. "Haven't got the foggiest."

"Didn't sound good."

"No, it didn't," he agreed.

"Still want to stay out of it?" Rose asked, trying to convince him otherwise.

"Yes," he said, though he sounded a bit unsure.

"You don't really know what they're doing. What if you're working for the bad guys and you don't even know it?" Matthew froze and Rose knew that she was finally getting somewhere. "Do you know anything about them at all?"

He looked at her, looked her right in the eye. "You said this Doctor can fix it? Keep everybody safe and the whale?"

Rose faltered. "I….I dunno. But it's something, yeah? Not just sitting down and watching an opportunity to possibly help pass you by?"

Matthew looked at the screen, which showed the Doctor and Donna and Amy and the woman being taken down a lot of stairs by people in black robes. They looked like hostages. Prisoners. Bait.

He looked back at Rose and reached around to untie her bonds. "Let's go."

DOCTOR WHO

It took a good twenty or so minutes for Rose and Matthew to get down to the lowest level – the dungeon.

"…I'll ever do," they heard someone say from a pretty good distance from them.

"That's the Doctor," Rose hissed, pulling Matthew along with her.

"I'm going to pass a massive electrical charge through the starwhale's brain. It should knock out all it's higher functions, essentially leaving it a vegetable. The ship'll still fly but the whale won't feel it," they heard him explain and Rose's jaw fell slack.

"He's going to kill it," she mumbled, "But….but he couldn't. He wouldn't!"

Matthew grabbed her arm and pulled her along, now that she had slowed almost to a stop. "Yeah, well, he's going to, and we've got to stop him. We've got to do something. Come on!" he tightened his grip around her elbow and started running toward the sound of the voices.

He wouldn't…..would he?