You've got me caught in a place,
Panic for a minute, got my brain in a daze,
I wish you weren't in it.

There are so many ways to lose your attention.
You can break everything, but so what?
I can take anything.

- Little Dreams, Ellie Goulding (2010).

Glenda Hopkins skittered out of sight but couldn't bring herself to entirely run away without making sure that the Doctor, himself, found a way to either escape, diffuse the situation, or a way to continue onwards with his original goal of finding and deactivating the weapon. But she needn't have worried, as he had found a way to do two of the above. Using the sonic, he opened another doorway and stepped through, quick to close it behind himself. His actions were too quick for anyone else to follow after him except for one of the actually eyeless Eyeless.

Alsa let out a shriek of anger and Gilly took this as her que to leave before it was noticed that she was still present. There would be no Doctor to help her this time if she was caught. She gingerly felt her way back through the dark corridor, the Doctor's words echoing through her head, 'Just as much of a chance of setting everything off if you go back…' But she made the return trip to the outside of the Fortress unscathed. Gilly had to consider the possibility that he might have lied in order to ensure that Alsa stayed with them so the stocky girl couldn't ambush them later.

The sun in the green sky blinded Gilly the moment she stumbled out of the Fortress through the narrow opening she and the Doctor had created earlier. She froze the instant her eyesight cleared and she spotted four more Eyeless who appeared to be standing guard in front of the entrance. I am not a threat, the albino chanted in her mind, hoping that the singular phrase would be enough to grant her a safe passage if she repeated it often enough.

We know. Stand with the others and you will not be harmed, the Eyeless replied. Gilly was unable to tell if a single individual answered her or they all did. Regardless, she was escorted away from the entrance of the Fortress and would not be able to return to it again as long as the glass men were guarding it as zealously as they were. Jeffip noticed her first and seemed to be alarmed that she was the only one to emerge, cautious approaching her while warily eying her decidedly deadly escort.

Before he could even open his mouth to ask, the ex-mortician solemnly answered him, "They're alive, both of them. I got sent back out so I couldn't be used as a hostage. The Doctor is continuing his mission, and Alsa has decided to join the Eyeless. We are alone."

"She wouldn't," a boy protested. "Not Alsa."

"Yeah, you're lyin'," another sneered.

"Believe what you want," Gilly told them flatly. "But it doesn't change a thing. Until the Doctor does what he set out to do, we are alone. Unless Alsa has a change of heart, she won't be coming back. We can't fight the Eyeless, so the best we can do is not provoke them." A flash of light caught her eyes and she frowned. "What is that?" There were three alien space ships, easily miles away. Between each ship, the air was filled, white against the green sky. They could have been unnatural storm clouds with a bright ray of sunlight peeking out underneath them. She answered her own question, "Their ships, that's what I saw, what they showed me…"

"One of the Eyeless, it had Jall's eyes," Dela murmured quietly, looking ill. Gilly grimaced, uncertain of what to say. Greg, her co-worker, had always been the one to deal with the grieving family members, not her.

Greg… How long had it been since she last seen him? Nearly seventeen days, if she didn't count her time with the Doctor. She wondered if he missed her as much as she suddenly missed him in that moment, that piece of normality in the life that was never quite normal for her. Especially now.

What are you looking at? An Eyeless demanded, making Gilly turn around in shock. The Eyeless appeared to facing Jeffip in an almost hostile manner, a complete change from the species usual indifferent and calm demeanor.

"I meant no offense," the older man demurred, taking to looking at his feet.

Gilly exchanged baffled glances with Dela when it pressed the issue, You like looking at people?

"Why is it doing that? It's like it's drunk," the blonde noted, and she was right. The entire body posture was different as well, more of a swagger and a lot more aggressive than before. It regarded all of them, the action conveying an angry annoyance.

We consulted our colleague and have determined that the presence of such a weapon changes our plans. We have decided on a strategy of violent conflict resolution. Do not attempt to leave the area, as we have further use for you all. For some reason she couldn't explain, Gilly felt enraged by this instead of the horror that she normally would have. Jeffip and Dela reacted much the same way, all of them looking furious and wanting sorely to take their anger out on something. Jeffip shoved the Eyeless and Dela gave him a scolding on how he should be more careful to not provoke it.

"The Doctor warned us, you know that already," Jeffip grounded out curtly, only to get no response from the glass man. He tried again, "You would attack the Fortress?"

The assault will begin shortly. Take cover and do not resist us, or you will face the consequences.

Fladon — the blacksmith from before that Gilly had chewed out — and the two little boys from before heard the warning as well and were making their way to the same engine blocks that Gilly and the Doctor hid behind earlier. However, they remained far enough out of range that they were not affected by the same artificial rage that was consuming the other three and the Eyeless. For whatever reason, the albino wanted to slap Dela who was standing next to her, which was strange because the blonde had done nothing against her. Dela, meanwhile, looked three seconds away from strangling Gilly, again for seemingly no reason at all.

What none of them were aware of was that Alsa had traded in some of her anger to the Eyeless with Jall's eyes, in exchange for more knowledge. Because the Eyeless were a hive mind, the rage infected the rest of the nearby Eyeless, which had, in turn, infected the human and the two Acropolians. Fladon and Dela's two sons — Cozzan and Morren — remained out of range and, therefore, unaffected.

"I can't allow it," Jeffip spat. "I will do everything in my power to stop you."

The old man's words, being taken as an ample enough provocation, made the Eyeless turn to him and raise its arm. Gilly's eyes widened in alarm, her anger dissolving into horror as she recognized the very same action that would have taken her own life had the Doctor not interfered. "Jeffip, get back, now!"

He turned to her, still infected by the artificial anger of the Eyeless. "Young lady, I —"

With a flash as bright as the sun, Jeffip was hit and staggered forward a step before stumbling over. Smoke poured from his mouth and nostrils as he tried to pull himself up, tried to cough, but, instead, all he did was die. A weapon which literally burns out the neurons, the Doctor's voice echoed through Gilly's mind as she watched Jeffip's body fully collapse onto the ground, her veins ice cold. Dela's anger had disappeared as well the moment the leader of the settlement was killed in front of her, she was in shock.

Gilly froze, the long second ticking by as she stared at the body. Another grave, she noted before shivering, despite the warmth the sun provided. Even now, after all her years as a mortician, even though dealing with death was a common subject in her family with her father's job as coroner, even though she took a lot after her mother in the way of being hard to shake or unsettle, Glenda Hopkins turned into a statue as Jeffip collapsed, dead, at her feet. Her job, while it dealt with the deceased, did not include being witness to the actual cause of death. This was the second death she had bared spectator to in the last two days.

The sensation of the cold numbness that had consumed her when in the presence of the ghost returned. She wasn't thinking. She wasn't feeling. She existed. That was all.

The Eyeless told them once more to join the other humans and Gilly finally had some direction on what to do next. Calmly, much too calmly for how she should have been, the albino took it upon herself to grab ahold of Dela's arm. She led the other woman behind the engine blocks with the others — before the Eyeless that cut down Jeffip would think them to be resisting as well — and sat down.

They waited, quiet and shocked into mindless compliance.

Dela replayed the death over and over in her mind, grieving and trying to think about how anyone could possibly survive a situation such as this. Gilly's thoughts, however, were muted in comparison, disjointed and all avoided what she had played witness to. Her inner thoughts revolved around what they were waiting for, what 'violent conflict resolution' could possibly mean, which would be many things, but she had a feeling that it might involve more death lasers.

Death lasers.

Has this what her life had been reduced to? Expecting such a thing as deadly laser beams to be a legitimate threat? Gilly realized on an intellectual level that she was merely adapting to the new situation her life choices had placed her in, but on an emotional level, dulled though it be at the moment, it repelled her. Just like the normalcy the idea of Greg provided, so did the previous concept of deadly lasers only being a part of movies and high security establishments that were far removed from her home situation, right on the border between Wisconsin and Michigan where the woods and the Great Lakes were her neighbors. Such was what her life had become. Glenda's shallow and absent train of thought was abruptly cut short with the very attack that she had earlier disdained.

First, it was the light, a light so bright that it grew and swelled, burning itself into her mind even though her eyes were now clenched shut… Even though everything was dark but for the afterimages left behind. Still, Glenda could feel the sheer heat and memories of a lecture back in the secondary school, followed by the disturbing pictures and a documentary that followed.

'In August 1945, during the final stage of the Second World War, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The two bombings, which killed at least 129,000 people, were the first of nuclear weapons for warfare in history, which was only followed up by the last one in March 2029 in the infamous Second Cold War which as we all know ended in a tragic misunderstanding…'

'…roughly half of the deaths in each city occurred on the first day. During the following months, large numbers died from the effect of burns, radiation sickness, and other injuries, compounded by illness and malnutrition. As you can see here, here, and here…'

'You know how you see the bright sun that's going down on a very hot day? Bright red — orange red. That's what it was like. After we heard a big noise like a "BOONG!" "BOONG!" Like that. That was the sound… everything started falling down; all the buildings started flying around all over the place. Then something wet started coming down, like rain. I guess that's what they call black rain. In my child's mind, I thought it was oil… And we kept running. And fire was coming out right behind us, you know.'

And then came the sound.

There was a sense of terror, unlike anything that Gilly had even experienced, primal and wild. It coated her and soaked through even the blanket of numbness that she surrounded herself in. In order to cope, the ex-mortician attempted and failed to block out the world around her. The ground vibrated beneath her, like it was a giant creature, growling and rumbling underneath her. Gilly was scared that the sound and light would tear her to shreds, that no one would survive this, being this close to ground zero in the blast zone of the Eyeless ships.

Terrified but alive, Gilly waited for this hell — for what else could it be? — to end. She could picture what was happening in her mind ever so clearly. Just like those circles in the center of each glass man's palm blasting out flashes of light, so were those little suns under each of those ships only on a much grander scale. The huge pulse and flash of energy slamming into the Fortress, making its walls crumble. The Doctor, she realized, concern over his welfare becoming a tether to hang onto in her groundless state. Oh, God, he's still in there.

But there was nothing that she could possibly do to help him, not now and probably not even then when she was with him. The young woman could only wait and worry as the light and overwhelming sound died down before ending. Her ears ringing in the sudden quiet, Gilly opened her eyes, and saw nothing but a dark blackness and swimming afterimages. She was blind.

The thick steel door slammed down in front of the Doctor, almost taking his toes along with it. Toes that he was very attached to in both senses of the word. Symbols set into the heavy metal door explained that it would remained deadbolt sealed for precisely sixty seconds. Sensors scanned a whirled about him, the Fortress completing a full bioscan of the Doctor, which he honestly wasn't entirely alarmed about. For one thing, it meant he was getting closer to the weapon's chamber. And for another, he was much more concerned about the glass man who had been chasing after him through the traps of jets of poison gas, plastic fire straps meant to snare a person's chest like a boa constrictor, electric beams, and various other nasty surprises.

The Doctor had only managed to get this far thanks to Alsa's comm which he had filched earlier when he took her torch and set it to display all the internal defenses of the Fortress with his rather superb hacking skills. He had also spotted the three Eyeless ships — assuming that was exactly what they were and not, say, a fifth party that he would have to deal with — outside when he had first eluded Alsa and her merry band of glass men a little over thirty minutes ago.

He paused in his thoughts. Had it really been that long already? Oh, he hoped Glenda had gotten away unlike his usual companions who would always wander off and get into trouble. The Doctor waited anxiously for the door to open as he continuously checked behind him, on the watch for the single pursuing Eyeless. He had to get this done and faster before the Eyeless reached the weapon. No, he scolded himself, he had to be faster than that, before they even tried. Because once they started trying to take what they wanted by force, well, that would set the Fortress off and make both his and Glenda's life that much more difficult.

Not to mention the mystery of the ghosts. The Doctor had ran into one earlier, it had seemed almost sentient compared to the first one he had encountered. It had used Alsa's comm to communicate with him. It seemed to believe that the attack have just happened fifteen minutes ago and not the fifteen years it had really been. Further investigation and conversing revealed the ghost's identity to be Gyll, Dela's lover long dead. This posed a conundrum, there was the possibility that Gyll or others were alive but there was the all too real possibility that it had been a trap. The Doctor had settled to promising the ghost that he would come back for both him and Dela as soon the matter of the weapon was sorted out.

That encounter with the ghost was what truly rattled the Doctor. Despite what he may have told Glenda and the Acropolitians earlier to somewhat reassure them with a logical explanation, the Time Lord wasn't quite sure that it was so logical anymore. It didn't make sense, at least not to him, why the ghost were the one of the automatic defenses of the Fortress. If it was a defense for the Fortress, then there should be a mechanical, perfect logic involved.

The Doctor wasn't sure which of the two options worried him the most: that this was a game part of the Fortress was playing with him and he didn't know the rules… Or that really was the ghost of Gyll.

It was Gyll being a ghost that bothered the Doctor, even though it implied plenty of trouble as it usually did concerning ghosts. It was the fact that there were any ghosts in the first place. The main function of the weapon, what it did was utterly obliterate its target and leave no evidence of the act behind. But ghosts? Ghost were traces. Ghosts were evidence. If those were actual ghosts, wouldn't that mean the weapon had not just missed them, but also affected them?

No, the Doctor didn't like this. He didn't like thinking too hard about the weapon and why it did what it did. He was here to get it, destroy it, and leave, regardless of the Acropolitians wanted. Neither he or Glenda could stay, they had interfered long enough. There weren't supposed to be any survivors, no interruptions or backtracking. The Time Lord could have taken Glenda to ancient Greece by now. She would've loved it so much better than the ruins left behind in her time. There was even less than what was left at the early 2000's.

Well, he supposed it would do for an apology.

The Doctor checked down at the comm to see that it had went dark. Muttering to him, he gave it a good shake. It plan of the Fortress reappeared, but as it did so, the floor shook. That was strange, did he really just…? The Doctor rattled the comm again. The floor shook once more. "Am I doing that?" He asked queried, utterly baffled as to how that could be. He was about to wave the comm back and forth again, when he noticed something on the screen. The little Eyeless ships were labeled in red, targets. "Oh."

So it hadn't been him, it had been the Eyeless starting their attack. He had failed his earlier objective, hadn't been fast enough. Cursing for the second time that day, the Doctor knew he had to get to that weapon first above all else. There was a click and the deadbolt slid back. The minute was up. The slowly began to rise and there was still no sign of his pursuer… Until the Doctor chanced a glance behind himself.

He barely had time to register what it was — something the size of a man, glinting, barely visible, and lunging straight towards him — and his reflexive, panicky dodge just barely did the trick in escaping its grasp. Thoughtlessly, the Doctor lurched to the door only to rebound against it as it only partially open. "You lot need to stop the attack!" He shouted before ducking under another swipe. "It's only going to provoke the Fortress and wake it up!"

The glass man didn't care. It wasn't heeding the Doctor's well placed warning. The Time Lord's mind scrambled to gather what it knew about its opponent. It functioned on what it saw as logic, likely a hive consciousness, a scavenger, and it was telepathic — it herded him two paces away from the almost fully open door, very not good — meaning it was dependent on reading its opponent's mind. How fortunate for the Doctor as he feint right before darting to the left and passing through the door.

It slammed down behind him, keeping the Eyeless on the other side to be bioscanned. The Doctor had one minute. Breathe in. Breathe out. The Doctor coached himself before he hurried onwards, following the directions that the comm gave him. Flitting down corridors and dashing around corners, eager to put as much distance between himself and the Eyeless as he could muster, the Doctor finally entered the inner vault.

It was a vast space — bigger than even the redone Roman colosseum from the New Roman Empire — and very nearly pitch black. Despite his earlier boasting of superior Time Lord physiology, the Doctor was sorely wishing for the torch he had handed Glenda earlier, for even he was having a difficult time making out what could later become important details. He may have been about halfway up, but he couldn't be for sure, only knowing that he was on a narrow metallic walkway. Something he deduced by the sound of his footsteps, the surface of the railing, and the tang of metal on his tongue. Not to mention that it only made sense for the garish and unsightly metal Fortress to be made of the same material inside and out — even though the conflicting flavors of various metal elements hinted otherwise.

The Doctor could just about make out the vague outlines of what could only be other walkways and long, noodle-like power cables. He supposed that they were numerous, scattered around far above and below him. The only thing that interested the Time Lord was the indistinct and looming feature in front of him, for the most part hidden in the gloom. The shaking had stopped and the Fortress was quiet —

The Doctor froze, as well he should, for the Fortress was utterly silent.

In general, the whole planet had been quiet and the wall of the Fortress had provided even further soundproofing, even against the silence itself. However, as it was made of metal and there was no other noise to act as a buffer, everything sound made in the Fortress was exponentially amplified. Every move, every step, every breath the Doctor took, echoed. But it wasn't the literal lack of sound that alarmed the Doctor — for it could never be that simple — but the presence of the Fortress was a noise all its own. An oppressive strength that was as tangible as a wave, no, a flood of sound to him. There had always been a weight to this place and now, inexplicably, it was gone.

No, 'gone' was not the right word for this particular sensation niggling and bothering one of the Doctor's many time senses. Rather, it was like the Fortress was holding its breath, anticipating a signal. All the potential that the Doctor had sensed merely pooling around the structure had been suddenly gathered up, like the water receding from the shore just before a tsunami. The Doctor knew, he just knew, what tidal waves could be expected given the right stimulus. A shiver of pure dread coursed through him.

Klaxons and sirens howled and whined piercingly throughout the structure without any indication or warning, making the Doctor's hearts seize before racing overtime. For three terrible seconds, the Time Lord assumed that he was the source of all the fuss — as per usual — and prepared himself accordingly, tense and ready to flee at the soonest indication of a threat to his person. But for once, he wasn't at the center of focus, and the Doctor remembered quite suddenly the Eyeless ships which had been attacking outside until recently. Why pay attention to the tiny cobble mouse when there was a charging carnivorous maw coming straight towards you?

The Fortress hummed and throbbed, its interior lighting up in a soft orange-white glow that revealed the entire cavernous room, a three-sided pyramid. It was much larger than the Doctor had previously estimated, easily being the height of twenty leaning Tower of Pisa's stacked on top of each other. All of them straight, of course. Now revealed to him was not the unsightly black metal that he had been expecting, but the same plethora of metals that he had been tasting constantly.

There were great galleries, staging platforms, empty hanger bays, and docking cradles, all were set in several metallic layers with rainbow steps of metal. The colors ledged in gold, silver, copper, iron, steel, bronze, and more besides, all interconnected with tunnels and walkways and all at some point leading to the very structure that the Doctor had barely been able to make out earlier. The very core of the Fortress itself, it was a grey column that went from the floor to the ceiling, easily thirty meters thick. A virtual building within a building.

Taking all of this in, from far below to impossibly high, the Doctor felt a rare sensation of vertigo and took a moment to collect himself, fixing his gaze on the dark grey column. Somewhere in its very heart rested the weapon, so impossibly far away. The Doctor supposed that this was what Frodo felt like as he gazed at the peak of Mount Doom from its foot. The weapon's chamber — located ten stories above him — had a single, long walkway leading to it. A walkway that the Doctor would bet was the most heavily defended route in the entire place. However, the comm said there was a lift that lead straight up to the chamber itself.

The Doctor suspected nothing and if Gilly was with him, she would have scolded him for his foolishness in not noticing such an obvious trap. Either way, the Time Lord was too distracted by all the stimulus around him to consider the possibility of a set up. Furthermore, he was far too relieved to see that the Eyeless ships had the strategy computers full attention, information that was, once again, provided by the comm. As of yet, there was no sign that the internal defenses had been escalated or primed. The Doctor was only a mere cobble mouse.

"Bless you," the Doctor gushed only to choke when a glass arm wrapped around his throat.

Gilly had stopped panicking at this point, succumbing once again to the numbness as it losing her head wouldn't help anyone, least of all her. Dela — once she knew that the albino's eyes were flash blinded — took it upon herself to be Gilly's guide. According to the other woman, the glass men's attack had dealt no visible damage to the Fortress. Fladon insisted that they all should make their escape while the going was good, while the Eyeless were suitably distracted.

For a long moment, the Fortress did nothing. It sat there as impassive as always before adjusting its turrets and firing, the familiar sound of the death lasers making Gilly reflexively duck away from the sound. There were the sounds of eleven of the Fortress's death lasers, one minor explosion, a second major explosion, the sound of something big hitting the water, and six of the Eyeless weapons firing before there was, once again, deadening silence.

A small question to Dela later and Gilly had the brief overview of what had happened. The first three shots had been testing ones before seven simultaneous ones punched through the hull of an Eyeless ship. This was where the minor explosion had taken place. The ship had listed to one side but had managed to right itself, drifting out of range so as to avoid taking more damage. The Fortress had fired one more time, hitting another ship on the right and making the tiny sun under it plummet to the water below, the Eyeless ship close behind. Here the major explosion occurred, large enough to leave a giant crater and the shockwave enough to topple a few nearby buildings. The remaining Eyeless ship had retaliated by blasting away all the turrets on that side of the Fortress.

"As long as they stay put," Gilly murmured emptily. "They should be safe without the turrets."

"Are they done fighting?" Morren asked quietly to her left.

"Until the Eyeless decide to attack again, but right now, they're probably too busy licking their wounds."

Cozzan snorted. "They don't have any mouths."

"It's a turn of phrase," she sighed. "But it doesn't matter. I'm crippled without my eyesight, Jeffip's dead, the Doctor's hopefully still alive in the Fortress, and Alsa's compromised… Did I forget anything?"

Fladon shook his head before he realized that the ex-mortician couldn't see him. Clearing his throat awkwardly, he vocalized, "No, but that doesn't answer what we're going to do with it." The 'it' he was referring to being Jeffip's body.

"We leave it, of course. The settlement's too far away and our chances of escaping successfully are that much lower if we're weighed down with a corpse." She paused a moment before adding frankly, "The same applies to me. I'm blind, possibly permanently unless my retina gets it act together sometime soon. I will be as much of a handicap to you as Jeffip, the only difference being that I'm alive."

Dela had made a sound of protest over Gilly calling herself a burden but before she could make her opinion known, there was a thunderous crack. "What was that?" She asked instead.

"It came from that direction," Gilly said, pointing her thumb over her shoulder and unknowingly at the Fortress. By this point, now that it was relatively safe, the other humans who had been scattered around the Factory joined the small group of five.

"It reminds me of ice breaking," Fladon observed. "Think that the Eyeless attack might have weakened the Fortress's foundations?"

Gar sneered, making Gilly jerk in surprise from his voice suddenly appearing next to her, "Without even cracking the windows?" Having seen many buildings in the city collapse over the course of his time in the city, he was something of an expert in weakened foundations.

Another, much louder, crack and groan resounded around them. Undoubtedly, it belonged to the Fortress.

A/N: So, yes, angst galore. I am hoping that this was satisfactory whumpage (whumping? whumpery?) for you, Ashena-Iulik. It may not be our "sponge whump" but it is whump nonetheless. And I'm sure you will be quite pleased to hear that more awaits in the next chapter for you.

A little less humor and a little more suffering, but hopefully the quality has remained consistent.

Also, before you ask any questions, no, Gilly's lack of sight isn't permanent, only flash blindness. While most people's eyes are somewhat protected by the pigment in their iris, you have to remember that Gilly has none. Just like Leena back in the episode 'The Horror of Fang Rock' she has temporarily lost her eyesight from retina overload. But while Leena's eye color changed slightly from the bleaching of her retinal pigment, Gilly's will remain the same.

And, no, her glasses didn't help. With something that bright, there's very little that a miniscule, in comparison, bit of shade will do to protect.

Also, just so you know and have a little background, the only reason that the Eyeless are on that planet, is because they detected the Doctor's TARDIS, something they refer to as a 'hypercube'. So, basically, it's all the Doctor's fault that this is happening. They didn't even know about the weapon until Alsa let the knowledge of its existence slip.

Either way, I'm hoping to conclude this arc within the next chapter so we can move onto the next arc after a short interlude. There we will learn a bit more about Gilly and hopefully have some comedic relief.

Once again, a shout out to emptyvoices, my beta who I turned out to have not misplaced like I originally suspected.

Just a question, how many of you American readers are from Michigan or Wisconsin?

And as always, reviews are much appreciated. Constructed criticism, prose praising, or flaming fulmination are all acceptable terms of reviewing, although any alliteration appointed to it is optional (challenge: see how much you can do in a row while making grammatical sense!).