(a/n): Thank you so much for reading! More rambling after the chapter. ^_^
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A solid thirty seconds had passed without any motion from the four (well, five) of them, before the Doctor stepped forward and crouched at the body. Clara fought off a wave of nausea as he found some latex gloves from his pocket and began examining it. She'd seen worse than this many times before, but it was never pleasant.
More as an excuse to tear her gaze away than anything else, she turned to the man behind her, still staring open-mouthed. "You were at the front desk when we came here, is this your place?" she asked, striving to sound confident. He nodded mutely in response. "What's your name?"
"Tim. Tim Hannah," he whispered, not looking away from the carcass.
"Is anyone else staying here right now?" Another nod. "Go and get them, see if they're alright. Bring them to the main entrance. Then, see if you can get some lights on around here." She nudged the woman next to her. "You go with him."
Tim, having regained some colour, gently tugged the woman away, and they slowly made their way down the corridor. Clara watched until they turned out of sight, then looked back to the Doctor, trying to avoid focusing on the body.
"Aliens, then?" was her next question, although she felt the answer was fairly obvious.
"Either that, or someone's got a very quiet bazooka," he replied curtly. "Could you hold my torch?" Clara picked it up from where he'd set it down and shone it at his hands. After all this time, it was still surreal seeing him being an actual doctor.
"Can you tell what happened to them? Or anything about them?"
"Lower half of the skeleton's not in that bad a shape, so judging from that, they were probably a woman, but that's about it. Blood spatter indicates whatever it was hit her from over there," he said, nodding to his left. Clara flashed the torch in that direction, ignoring his momentary protest at having taken his source of light, and illuminated a doorway she hadn't noticed before. Through it was a bedroom, and on the floor lay a grey metal tube, with green flashing lights running down the side.
"Doctor?" she pushed hesitantly. Looking over, he took off his gloves and dropped them, entering the room and picking up the tube. "Is... that what did it?"
Before he could answer, the bedroom and corridor lit up, and they shielded their eyes at the sudden change. Tim must have gotten the lights on. Shrugging, Clara switched off the torch and shoved it into her leather jacket pocket. There was a cough from behind her, and they looked to see Tim, studiously avoiding looking at them. "Everyone's in the main hall except one."
"A woman?" the Doctor asked, poking his head out of the door.
"...yes. Hayward. Er, Diane Hayward, Officer Hayward. She was spending the night," he explained haltingly. He brought a hand to his head.
"She's not going to be coming, then," the Doctor said. Clara elbowed him and stepped towards Tim.
"I'm really sorry," she murmured in what she hoped was a consoling tone. "Let's go and see everyone, then."
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Including the time travellers, nine people were present in the hall. After Tim had introduced everyone, he and Clara had explained what had happened to Diane as best they could. Everyone bar those who found the body was in various states of shock.
"But... how could that happen? What could do that to someone?" asked Frank Bennett shakily. He was around the Doctor's physical age, with his wife Mabel clinging to him tightly.
At this, the Doctor stepped forward. "That would be this," he stated, swinging the grey tube from the bedroom in the air.
"And what is 'that,' then?" snapped Alan Rodriguez, a young man who seemingly hadn't been able to keep still in the entire time Clara had seen him.
"It's a Quadroflex demolition cannon." At the blank faces surrounding him, the Doctor continued. "Basically, let's see, if I refocus the energy, I should be able to..." He pointed it at a bottle placed on the reception desk, and a thin beam of light lanced out of the tube, instantaneously drilling a small hole in the bottle, letting the water slowly trickle out onto the carpet.
"So.. a ray gun, then?" Clara inquired.
"No, it's-"
"Can you work out where the aliens were from based on the ray gun, then? I mean, I'm assuming it's the same ones we were following?" she continued. The Doctor glared at her.
"The Quadroflex demolition cannon," he emphasised heavily, and Clara stifled a grin, "is one of the most generic construction tools on this side of the galaxy. It'd be like trying to work out someone's nationality based on a Biro in their pocket."
"Er, sorry, still other people here, you know," came a voice from the stairs. Having apparently recovered from being the one to find Diane's body, Nora al-Sayed stepped forwards with her arms folded. "Other people who'd like to know why you're talking about aliens." True to what she said, everyone else looked just as bewildered. That was probably for the best, Clara reflected. From personal experience, confused people were far easier to deal with than frightened people. Less likely to lash out.
"Well, who else has ray g-Quadroflex demolition cannons? Council workers?" the Doctor snarked. "Yes, there are aliens here, and what we need to do is find them and talk to them. See what's going on." Clara thought for a moment they were going to accept that, but then a loud outburst came from the other side of the room.
"Talk to them?!" cried Alan, whose eyes seemed to be bugging out of their sockets. "They killed Diane! They're going to kill us too!"
"We don't know why they did it," Clara interjected quickly, trying to salvage the situation. "For all we know, they could have been scared, been confronted by a strange creature, panicked and tried to defend themselves. They might even be basically friendly!" she added hastily, to a scoff from Alan.
"She's right. There are plenty of friendly aliens, aren't there, Clara?" the Doctor proclaimed, giving her a big, toothy grin.
"Some of them are okay. When they're not shredding to Jimi Hendrix at three in the morning," she retorted. The Doctor looked put out, but he didn't have time to respond.
"No, no, no, no, no," a quiet voice rambled. They all looked around for the source, to see Frank holding his head in his hands.
"Are... you alright?" Tim queried hesitantly.
"I've got to go, we've got to go, we can't be here anymore!" the older man suddenly shouted. Grabbing Mabel's hand, he burst out of the front door. Clara pursued them, but they were surprisingly fast.
"No, wait!" she yelled fruitlessly behind them. "We should stay together!" Inwardly, she groaned. This was more evidence of what she meant by confused people being easier to deal with than frightened people. The latter were always more inclined to do stupid things.
By the time she caught up to them, they were in the car park, staring at an old Ford. "The tyres are slashed," Mabel whispered, barely audible.
"What?" Clara took a look at the other cars, and sure enough, there wasn't a single inflated tyre around. When she got back to the couple, Frank was visibly shaking, his frantic breath incredibly loud in the otherwise-silent night. The teacher took his hand, and he jumped slightly.
"It's okay, it's okay," she tried to reassure him in as soothing a tone as she could muster. "Come on, let's get back to the Doctor and the others."
When they got back, no-one looked particularly happy. "Cars are out of commission," Clara informed them curtly. "Tyres are slashed."
"So much for them being friendly, then," Alan muttered. She thought she detected a hint of smugness in his tone, but she wasn't sure.
"Can we call for help?" asked Nora.
"I don't think so," Tim responded despondently. "No mobile signal here, and the landline was down when I tried to use it earlier. I thought it was just on the blink, but maybe it's been cut or something."
"Okay... so... murderous alien on the loose. Well, at least it's thick, whatever it is," said the Doctor cheerily. Everyone stared at him.
"Excuse me?" Jason Ha asked blankly. Clara jumped slightly at that; the teenager, sitting next to his friend Albert Valentine, had been completely silent the whole time, and she'd honestly forgotten they were there.
"The Quadroflex demolition cannon is a construction tool," the Time Lord explained, waving his hands for emphasis. "Using it to kill someone's like attacking someone with a pneumatic drill; you could technically to it, but it'd be woefully ill-advised. Plus, the power was turned up too high; if it had missed, it would have blown a hole in the wall."
"How... how do you know all of this?" Alan demanded angrily. "Who the hell are you, anyway?"
"Glad you asked." The Doctor whipped the psychic paper out of his pocket and triumphantly displayed it to him. "Here's our identification."
"'UNIT Science Division, head of extraterrestrial liaisons?'" he read aloud. "So, what, you're the Men in Black?"
"We're in charge, is what we are. What we're going to do is stay here. We're stuck here for the time being, anyway. Keep together, don't let anyone out of your sight," the Doctor warned. "Safety in numbers."
"Er, Doctor, could I talk to you for a minute?" Clara asked him. He nodded, and stood there expectantly. There was a pause.
"Oh, come here," she sighed, grabbing him by his sleeve and tugging him over to a corner, letting the unhappy congregation start muttering on the other side of the hall. "We do have a spaceship, you know. Can't we just get everyone home via the TARDIS? We can use us as bait if we need to."
"She'll still be calibrating. Won't be ready for a few hours yet," her friend murmured. "Even if we could, there's two problems there. We may need their help to find the ship, once everyone's safe. And what if the alien's a shape changer?" he pointed. Clara looked down.
"I'd thought of that, I was just... hoping I was wrong," she sighed ruefully. Before they could theorise further, though, someone coughed beside them. Turning, they saw Mabel looking at them hopefully.
"I'm sorry, but you said you were from UNIT?" she quizzed, more confidently than Clara had yet seen her. The younger woman smiled.
"That's right, why do you ask?"
"Because-"
And then all of the lights went out.
Immediately, people started to panic. That was only exacerbated when someone (Alan, she thought, but she couldn't be sure) cried out "Something's got my leg!" That turned the panic into full scale uproar, and whilst she was still fumbling in her pocket to get the torch out and working, she could hear people stampeding out of the room.
"No, no! Stay together!" a familiar Scottish brogue bellowed, but by the time she'd gotten the torch on, she couldn't even see him. The foyer was completely empty but for her and Mabel, who was clinging to her sleeve.
A scream, just as chilling as the last one, rang through the air. The older woman was stuck to her so tightly she was starting to get pins and needles in her arm. She edged forwards cautiously.
"Doctor?" Suddenly, something grabbed her other arm. She cried out, stumbling away and dragging Mabel with her.
"Shut up, you idiot! It's me!" a voice hissed. Clara flashed the torch in its direction, illuminating the irritated face of Nora. "We should see if everyone else is alright."
Clara nodded, realised neither of her companions could likely see her and said "You're right." A little more confidently with two people by her, she walked to the doorway to the right of the stairs. They kept going for a minute, nervously calling out "Hello?" or people's names, when Clara spotted something in her torchbeam. She stopped abruptly, the other two women crashing into her back.
"Oh... no..." she whispered.
"What is it?" Frustrated, Nora craned her head around her to see what had brought them to a halt. "What... the hell?"
Propped up on the wall, with a small round hole where one of its eyes should have been, was an unmistakable red, rubbery shape.
"It's a Zygon," Clara breathed.
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(a/n): Woo! Second chapter!
I'm only this far through, and I've already learnt a valuable lesson about fanfic writing; 'i know how it will begin and end and i have a vague outline of the rest so everything will be fine' is not a sufficient plan. I meant to have this out last night, but a combination of a stressful week and having to rewatch snippets of "The Magician's Apprentice" and the Zygon two-parter to remember whether UNIT was reasonably public at this point delayed this a bit, so this is a little rushed. Speaking of which, this would take place at some point between said two-parter and "Sleep No More."
I know this chapter's a little slow, I just wanted to finish laying some foundations. Like I said, this is a little rushed, so your input and critique is even more invaluable! I'd like to thank those who read, followed, favourited and reviewed the last chapter, especially the latter, they were a great help. I would have responded to the reviews, but I was too shy... :p
So, again, your criticism is super-important, and I'd love to know where I went wrong so I can improve. Thanks for reading, and 'til the next time!