Double Blind

3

"Out you get," Clara said to her wife, the Alpha Doctor, and Graham in the seat next to her. She telekinetically opened the door and waited for them to leave, having just pulled up on the outskirts of the cemetery where the allegedly zombie-sighting had been reported.

"So cold," said the Doctor, shaking her head. The other five were all gathered in the back of the van, which Rose wasn't remotely happy about because the place had a distinct aura of sex. There was no surface in there she was willing to touch. Graham got out of the van while Clara and the Doctor continued their trademark bickering. Rose rolled her eyes, annoyed, and reached over to open the side doors to the vintage camper.

"Shouldn't we do something? They're getting a bit mean," said Ryan, glancing at them.

"Nah," said Sally.

"They're always like that," said Rose, then she whispered, "They get off on it."

"I heard that," Clara snapped from the front seat. Rose ignored her and climbed out into the warm, night air, Ryan following because nobody wanted to be around Clara and Thirteen when they were flirt-fighting. It was ironic that they almost never had actual arguments, though Ryan's judgment was correct; they could certainly be quite mean. "Go on, get out of my sight. I have better things I could be looking at."

"Like what? Your own reflection?" asked the Doctor, making to leave. Rose waited outside for her, but just when it seemed she was finally going to leave she hesitated. "Just one more thing to say to you."

"What?" asked Clara. The Doctor returned to kiss her. Clearly on purpose, Sally made a conspicuous and very loud coughing noise. Clara stopped kissing the Doctor to glare at her.

"Just got something in my throat," she said.

"Homophobe," Clara accused.

"I didn't do anything," Sally lied. She had, and Rose thought it was quite funny. Clara turned her attention back to the Doctor, all of their insults now gone out of the window.

"Don't get eaten by any zombies, alright?"

"I'll try," she said, smiling. She kissed Clara once more and then finally left her in peace, joining Rose, Ryan and Graham outside. "Have fun in the morgue, wifey!" she called after closing the door. Clara waved out of the window and then started the van again, driving off with Sally, Yaz and the Other Doctor in the back. Rose had to admit, the divisions in the group were mostly her own fault because she didn't want to go anywhere with Sally (and cemeteries had one too many religious symbols for a vampire to visit, ironically.) Neither Graham nor Ryan had wanted to visit a police morgue, and the Alpha Doctor was very eager about the possibility of zombies.

"I hope you two aren't giving Mattie warped ideas about what relationships are meant to be like," Rose remarked as the van drove off, the Doctor waving the other four away.

"What's the point of a having a significant other if you can't make fun of each other?" she asked, then held up her left hand, "The ring gives me that privilege. What's your excuse?"

Rose shrugged, "It's funny." The Doctor shook her head.

"Whatever. Anyway. Graveyard. Zombies aren't gonna catch themselves," the Doctor indicated the large, gothic archways at the entrance to Brighton and Preston Cemetery. Salmon-coloured, intricately-carved terracotta with iron bars. There was a cottage sitting just behind it, but none of the lights were on. "D'you think anyone's home? This is when the vampire's useful, she'd be able to smell them."

"Yeah, she is bloody creepy," said Rose, "Just go knock on the door, like a normal person."

"A normal person hanging around a graveyard at this time of night?" the Doctor asked incredulously.

"It's worth a shot," said Graham, "Maybe there is someone living there, they could be the one who called the plod, and now they're hiding from the zombie. If they're anything like those corpses we saw in Lancashire, I'd be boarding up the windows."

"Typical," said the Doctor, "Y'know, I remember a time when dead people stayed dead…" she sighed, "What the hell. What've I got to lose?" She walked up to the front door of the cottage, which had a signpost nearby explaining it was called the Lodge and was a historically important, listed building, and knocked loudly. She pressed her ear to the door to listen for signs of life, the other three hovering behind her. "I think I heard something. I'll tell them we're cops."

"Because that's believable," muttered Rose, the Doctor pushing open the letterbox with her fingers and crouching down to look inside.

"Is there anybody in there? This is the police!" she shouted, "We got an emergency call."

"Maybe you should've done a different accent?" Ryan suggested, "Might confuse them."

"What? You think Americans can't emigrate? Not that I actually identify with being deemed 'an American', but y'know, I guess that's the way it goes. Esse est percipi."

"You're wearing trainers with the American flag on them," Ryan pointed out.

"And?" The door opened behind her before he could answer, and the Doctor automatically pulled out her psychic paper to present it to a very scared looking woman who looked to be in her forties, "Hi there, ma'am, I'm DS Oswald and this is my partner, uh, DC Tyler," she indicated Rose, "We got a call about… well, it's strange, to tell you the truth-"

"You're here about the zombie?" she asked.

"Was it you who called?" She nodded. "Great. Could you-"

"But – you're late," she said.

"Excuse me?"

"The police already came and took him."

"Well, that's funny," she said, faltering as she was caught in a lie, "We're the police."

"You don't really look like police."

"Detectives," Rose said, "Plain clothes. And you've just got to ignore the weird accent. Look, it's a Friday, and the full moon was last night; always brings the crazies out."

"Mm," the Doctor nodded, "It's hectic out there tonight. What can we say? Spend your whole night waiting for a cop, and then a dozen come along at once. Why don't you just tell us what you told the other guys, save us tracking them down when we get back to the station?"

"They didn't look like police either," she said.

"What'd they look like?" the Doctor asked, crossing her arms.

"Who are they?" she nodded at Ryan and Graham.

"There's nobody else there," Rose told her, her eyes flickering with a few strands of gold for a second. The woman in the door blinked, staring right at Ryan and Graham, then frowned.

"Of course. How silly of me… They were wearing black, they looked a bit like… SWAT team, maybe. Or… soldiers? I don't really know."

"Can I ask," Rose began, "What makes you think it was a zombie you saw and not just a drunk, or something? Halloween's next month, after all. Could be fancy dress."

"No," she said, "His eye was missing."

"People have missing parts," said the Doctor, "My sister-in-law only has one leg."

"You don't understand, he came right up here, he knocked on the door, just like you did, and I opened the door, and he was – he was filthy, and rotting, I saw his intestines, and a gaping wound in his face. I shut the door and I called the police."

"What did he want? Did he attack you?" the Doctor asked.

"Well, no, he didn't do that, he was asking for help."

"And you called the cops?"

"They are help – who was I supposed to call? Paramedics? Put him back in his grave?" she asked, "He was dead. And then he wasn't. And those men showed up, they grabbed him, and took him to a vehicle."

"Did you see it?"

"Not really, it's dark, and I'm not very good with cars."

"Was it a police car? Did you see the license plate?" the Doctor asked, "It's just, between you and I, I'm not sure those guys were cops." They couldn't be the police, because Helix had intercepted the phone call and stopped it getting to the police at all. So who were they, and what interest did they have in a 'zombie'?

"No," she said stiffly.

"Do you know who he was?" Rose began, "The zombie. If his grave is in here, and you live here."

"No. Can I go back inside? I'm packing to leave. I'm not being in a cemetery if there's a zombie outbreak. Anything can happen these days – after those trees, with these Manifests everywhere."

"Wait, you're gonna move? You mean… this house is gonna be, like, for sale? Just wondering – this building's super old, so you'd think it'd be pricey, but does it being a cemetery decrease the value?" the Doctor asked. The woman from the Lodge glared at her, then slammed the door in her face. "Can you believe that?"

"Why are you house hunting?" Rose asked.

"I'm not – but Clara would love to live in a creepy house like this," she said.

"I don't think Clara would want to move to a graveyard, actually," said Rose, pulling her away from the door by her elbow, "Come on."

"How did you do that? Make her not see us?" Ryan asked when they'd left the woman to her business, trying to flee a zombie outbreak the Doctor wasn't too convinced was actually happening. She suspected whatever happened was an isolated incident.

"Control the universe, mate," Rose explained, "People don't see things I don't want them to see."

"What's the plan, then? Who do we reckon took our zombie?" Graham asked, looking between them.

"Not sure," said the Doctor, feeling around in her pockets to try and find her sonic screwdriver, "But people don't just come back to life. There's always something to animate them. Whether it's vampirism, nanogenes, electricity, regeneration energy… but… well…" But she lost her train of thought, getting distracted when she found her sonic and began scanning the air around them.

"Is that your sonic screwdriver?" Ryan asked, intrigued, "It's smaller than our Doctor's. And hers is yellow." Hers was white and purple, but Clara had kept hold of the Eleventh Doctor's sonic all these years, though it hadn't ever really worked the same since spending two weeks underwater when the Doctor regenerated. Then again, neither had she.

"Strange… I'm getting some sort of signal. Didn't think I'd actually pick anything up, but there's something out here transmitting…" She held the screwdriver out like a dowsing rod until getting a bead on where they should be going, then headed out, making her way through the graves to find the source. "I'll tell you what's bugging me – she said he was still rotten, and he knocked on her door. So he's conscience, capable of rational thought, but he's falling apart."

"Maybe he's… healing?" Rose suggested, "When Esther came back to life, she was basically a zombie, I've heard her talk about it. All her fingernails fell off."

"That's true," said the Doctor thoughtfully, eyes fixed on where the sonic was pointing. "Doesn't happen with vampires. Means Sally's vampire theory might be bogus, which sucks because vampires are a pretty solid explanation."

"What does happen when someone turns into a vampire?" Ryan asked.

"Well, hm… It's like a regeneration – do you know regenerations?"

"A little, not much," said Graham.

"Well, they feel like you're burning from the inside-out, but it's quick. Vampires are genetically pretty similar to us – Time Lords, I mean. And they're just as good at healing, but they transform… slowly. And all the burning, the energy? Stays inside. It's like having a seizure that lasts for days, and the screaming… if somebody was buried out here and transforming into a vampire, you'd know, you'd be able to hear a mile away. And speaking of Esther, she's not supposed to exist, she's the result of an experiment with alien technology gone wrong. If there was Zuar technology out here, we would've detected it. And there haven't been any lightning storms recently."

"Maybe it's an alien?" Rose suggested, "There must be other aliens that can come back to life? He might not have been completely dead. Just resilient. Or like Jack?"

"Like Jack? Jack only exists because you brought him back to life with your damn superpowers," the Doctor snapped, "Or is this your way of telling me you've been going around resurrecting people?"

"You can do that? Bring people back to life?" Ryan stared at Rose.

"Again, not sure you're getting the bit about me literally controlling the universe. Life, death, time, space, all at my disposal. Although, I don't actually mess with it, because… with great power, comes great responsibility. Said… who was it said that? Was it like, Churchill, or something?"

"It's what Uncle Ben says to Spider-Man," said the Doctor, pausing, holding the sonic up to her ear. She frowned. "Weird. It says we're right on top of – whoa!" She dropped out of sight. It took them a moment to realise she'd fallen right into an open grave.

"Doctor!?" Rose exclaimed, "Are you okay!?" They all went to crouch by the graveside. It was only then that Ryan really realised how short this Doctor was, when she was all the way down there picking herself up from the mud.

"Eurgh," she complained, "Now my jeans are dirty… typical…"

"Do cemeteries do this? Just leave graves open?" Rose asked.

"Not in my experience," said Graham, "Grave robbers, maybe."

"I'm willing to bet that this is where our zombie came from. Probably did that classic fist-through-the-dirt entrance, dug his way out," she said, "What's the name on the headstone?"

"Dexter Willard," said Rose, "Born 2040, died a few days ago. Birthday's in December, makes him twenty-three. Doesn't say on here how he died, or anything." The Doctor paused for a moment, thinking, then crouched down to search through the dirt with her hands. She didn't need to search for long. "Ah-ha!" She picked an object out of the muck, which had all caved in on the coffin below when Dexter Willard forced his way back into the land of the living. "It's an eyeball," she announced after wiping it on the sleeve of her pleather jacket.

"Sorry, did you say eyeball?" asked Graham.

"Yep," she held it up and it stared right at them. "Fake. But not glass. Metal, plastic. Weird. Cybernetic eyes aren't anywhere close to existing yet. Not that it really looks like a cybernetic one either, doesn't have anywhere to attach the nerves, it's just… round. And it's transmitting data."

"What kind of data?" Ryan asked.

"Vitals information, I think," she said, sonicking it, "Now that I'm holding it, it's detecting me. Two heartbeats, fifty-degree body temperature. Stick in someone's eye socket and I'm sure it's more than capable of letting you know if they've come back from the dead. Which explains how our boys in black knew exactly where to look…" She sonicked it again. "There. Turned it off."

"So it's like someone knew he was going to come back to life. Why bother burying him at all?"

"Yeah," the Doctor nodded, "That's what I'd like to know…"

The metallic sound of a late-night radio show echoed through the empty morgue, Stanley the medical examiner listening to the broadcast on his computer while he ate egg foo yung from the nearest (and coincidentally most unpleasant) takeaway. It was covered in salt and he ripped greasy, soggy pieces of it off with his fingers. The time neared midnight, but he was only halfway through his shift; he wasn't going to get any respite until five in the morning, stuck on the insufferable nightshift for his sins of not having a family to get home to – unlike the day crew. For whatever reason, though, poor Stanley was nearing on forty and was still chronically single and alone. It was this he thought about, bitterly, as he listened to a talk show about the best ways to attract women.

With no bodies appearing for almost an hour, it was almost at a point where Stanley was thinking of going out into Brighton and murdering somebody himself, just to have something to do, and was sure he knew more than enough about forensics to cover up the crime – he was a doctor, after all. But the backdoors of the mortuary crashed open and he nearly dropped his cardboard container of Chinese takeaway on the floor in alarm. Nobody had paged ahead to say there was a body being brought in, and he was alarmed to see a woman he did not recognise wheeling a body bag on a stretcher.

"Got a live one for you!" the buoyant, blonde woman announced loudly, speaking in a strong, northern accent. Stanley carefully left his egg foo yung where it wouldn't come to any ill-harm and got up from his desk. "Although, not live, obviously, since it's a cadaver."

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Me? I'm new," she said, "On transfer while the usual bloke – oh, what's his name?"

"Vince?"

"Yes," she nodded, "Vince. While he's away."

"He didn't tell me he was going away."

"Came up suddenly," she said, "Family stuff."

"Vince doesn't have any family," said Stanley.

"Well, no, that's the thing, he found out he does, a long-lost daughter."

"But he's infertile, has been since he had that accident when he was thirteen."

"Just made it even more urgent," the woman continued to quickly rebuff him, "Basically a miracle. Or she could be scamming him, who's to say? The point is, I'm here to deliver a body. Murdered. Nasty MO."

"Oh, really?" asked Stanley suspiciously, eyeing the zipped-up, black bag. The woman nodded. He did not believe that she was any kind of medical worker who was supposed to be there. He wiped his greasy hands on the bloody pockets of his lab coat but kept a safe distance.

"What're you listening to?" she asked him, beaming.

"What?"

"Sounds like pick-up techniques," she said. Horrified, he realised he hadn't had a chance to mute the computer. He lunged back for the keyboard and managed to close the browser during a bit on negging he'd actually been meaning to take notes on. "Have you tried being friendly and approachable?"

"Look, I don't believe you're meant to be here," he said firmly.

"Why not!?" she exclaimed, "Because I'm not as fun as Vince? Is that it?" He stared at her. "I've got ID!" She drew a battered, leather wallet out of her pocket, and presented him with an ID that identified her as a coroner who worked at some hospital just outside of Huddersfield normally. "I'm just on loan. But, it's your morgue, I wouldn't want to step on anyone's toes when it comes to the autopsy. This is a body that needs a good autopsy-ing."

"What?" he frowned at her.

"That's your job, isn't it? This is a murder victim," she said, "Barely been dead half an hour! Personally, I'm shocked. Never thought I'd see a crime this violent in Brighton, of all the places. I'm supposed to be on holiday, can you believe it!?" He didn't say anything. "What's your name?"

"Stan."

"Great name, Stan. Always liked it. Seen any nasty murders, recently? I was thinking of moving here, putting in a transfer to come to the police morgue – and especially if our Vince ends up moving to Manchester with his long-lost daughter – but if there have been any more even remotely violent incidents, I'll have to go somewhere else." Stan did not want this woman joining him in the morgue, he didn't care how qualified she was.

"There was one earlier tonight, actually," he said, "Just a few hours ago. A man was gutted, had his innards pulled out with industrial tools, got dumped on a lay-by north of Hove."

"Anything weird about him?" she asked.

"Apart from him being killed with specialised instruments you'd normally find in a butcher's?"

"What did he die of? Specifically?"

"Uh…"

"Is the body still here?"

"Well, yes, it needs to be held while they carry on the investigation. The next of kin haven't even been notified." She nodded, crossing her arms in thought. "Maybe you should go, leave this one with me."

"Wonder if it's the same MO…" she mused, "Here, take a look," she reached over to unzip the body bag, not even putting on a pair of gloves. To Stanley's shock, the body she revealed did not look gruesome at all. He found himself presented with an ethereally beautiful corpse, with long, dark blonde hair but an unmistakable hue of death.

"I thought you said it was violent?"

"Well, maybe I was exaggerating. Don't get as many murders in the village I work in," she said, Stanley inching closer, "In Skelmanthorpe."

"Doesn't sound like a real place."

"Funny, that," she said, smiling at him, "What do you make of this corpse, then?"

"Uh… doesn't look fresh, looks like it's been dead for… hmm… I can't really say," he touched the arm of the dead women to check the temperature, "Did you say she was killed in the last half hour?"

"That's what they tell me. The witnesses. To the crime. Which definitely happened."

"This body looks like it's in a state of arrested decomposition like it's been dead for much longer, but something's stopping it from-"

It was the biggest fright that Stanley had ever suffered in his life. He was not a fan of horror or scares in any form, which many people said was ironic given his profession, but in his line of work, dead bodies did not have a tendency to move. They also did not have a tendency to suddenly snap bolt-upright with black eyes and long teeth and shout, "BOO!" in his face. He screamed himself, his eyes rolled back into his head, and within a matter of seconds he had collapsed in a faint on the floor, completely unconscious.

Sally Sparrow and the new, alternate Doctor glanced over the side of the fold-out trolley they'd found outside at the ME.

"I think you scared him," said the Doctor.

"I cannot believe that worked," Sally shook her head, wiping the greasy fingerprints from her upper-arm where Stanley the creep had touched her.

"Why not? You're a convincing dead body."

"And you're not a convincing coroner," Sally said, unzipping the rest of the body bag they'd also found (alright, maybe they'd had Clara use her 'Phantom' powers to steal some equipment from the corner's transport van parked outside) and getting down from the gurney. "'Skelmanthorpe'? What kind of ridiculous name is that?"

"It's a real place! You're the one who said 'boo'."

"What do you expect me to say!?"

"That you're going to drain him of blood?"

"Well, I'm not," she said. Following the commotion, Clara and Yaz entered through the same back-door the two of them had just come through, the entrance specifically for fresh corpses – or, not-so-fresh corpses, in Sally's case.

"You can drain me of blood if you like?" offered Clara.

"Thanks, but I'm fine for now," said Sally dryly.

"You have a wife," Yaz reminded Clara, which amused Sally, who was more than used to Clara's flirting by now and fully aware that nothing in the universe would get Clara to betray the Doctor.

"I know," said Clara, shrugging, "She won't mind. Ooh, did he have Chinese?" Clara's attention, which had been absorbed by Sally just moments ago, now instantly switched as she made a beeline for Stanley the ME's half-eaten, damp container of egg foo yung.

"You're not gonna eat that, are you?" asked Yaz in horror.

"Well, he's not going to, is he?" said Clara, eating the thick omelette with her hands just like Stanley had been doing, "This is great," she said with her mouth full.

"You don't even know where his hands have been, his coat's covered in blood," Yaz pointed out, "That can't be hygienic. There might be bits of dead people in there." Clara was utterly indifferent.

"Back to business!" the Doctor announced while Clara continued to eat unconscious Stanley's dinner, "He said the body from the murder earlier tonight is still here, we just need to find it." Yaz was still staring at Clara.

"Do you want a bit?" Clara offered.

"I do not," she said, affronted.

"You'll get used to her," Sally advised Yaz.

"Don't know the name of this murder victim, do you?" the Doctor asked Sally.

"No, not sure he's been formally identified. Whatshisface said they haven't notified the next of kin," she indicated Stanley on the floor.

"I'll check the computer," said Clara. The keyboard was disgusting, shining with grease from Stanley's fingers. Again, though, Clara didn't care.

"And you married her," Yaz said quietly to the Doctor, indicating Clara.

"Shocking, isn't it?" Sally remarked, "She's also a poet if you can believe it, and she has two master's degrees."

"Really?" Yaz, plainly, could not believe it. She couldn't lie, though; the enigma of the Doctor's wife was confounding her. Now that she'd gotten over the initial hurdle of the very idea that the Doctor would get married to anybody, she was finally trying to understand Clara herself. Clara who, on the one hand, was a smoker, chronically flirted with everybody around her, and was eating somebody else's lukewarm, leftover omelette with her fingers; but on the other hand, had stepped in to defend a girl she'd never met to a corrupt police officer, taking a nasty blow to the head, and who apparently wrote poetry, played the piano, and was highly educated.

"This guy has so much porn open," Clara interrupted to say, "Like, more porn than I've got open most of the time." Yaz found herself even more confused – why did she have lots of porn open?

"Might've been watching it while he eats that omelette," Sally said. Clara either did not hear this or did not care in the slightest. "He was listening to a podcast about negging."

Clara laughed, "Negging doesn't even work."

"And what would you advise?" Sally asked, examining the morgue freezer doors for any sign of who was being kept inside. But the exteriors only had codes written on them which didn't mean anything to anyone except Stanley. "Get them drunk and manipulate their low self-esteem?"

"…No," said Clara unconvincingly, "Don't start this, you sound like Vastra. And the last time I saw her she called me a womaniser, but, like, in a negative way."

"Is there a positive way to be called a womaniser?" asked Sally.

"You should be nicer to me; I'm one of the few people who actually likes hanging out with you and doesn't view it as a chore."

"I'm just trying to help Yaz get a handle on what sort of person you are," said Sally, "You're clearly confusing her by being simultaneously endearing and repugnant."

"'Endearing'? I'm swooning," she said, focusing on the computer. Then she brought something up and laughed, "Come look at this." They left their examination of the morgue to go see what Clara had found. It was the morgue CCTV camera a few minutes ago, the Doctor wheeling in the body bag. After some soundless conversation, the body bag tore itself open and Stanley fainted at the sight of thin air. Sally scoffed.

"Very funny," she said.

"You really don't show up on camera!?" Yaz exclaimed, "Sorry – I don't understand how this vampire thing works. How can you not show up on camera?"

"Oswin says it's because light doesn't reflect off them, it goes through them," Clara said, "Which is apparently uncomfortable, and means they have terrible eyesight and are sort of hard to see. Have you noticed you have to squint a bit to get a look at her?" Now that Yaz thought about it, it did often seem like Sally Sparrow existed just on the periphery of her line of sight. "And she doesn't have a shadow." Yaz hadn't noticed that at all but now saw in the harsh lights of the morgue that Sally Sparrow was not casting a shadow at all.

"Who's Oswin, again?" Yaz asked, unsure if she'd ever had an explanation of that name. They talked about so many people between each other, and she didn't know any of them. Clara was still messing around with the footage on the computer.

"My sister, to whom I shall now send this video before I erase it," said Clara.

"And what is she? A vampire expert?"

"A genius," said Clara, "The genius, she's the smartest person in human history. But she doesn't really leave the TARDIS."

"Enough about how much you fancy yourself," said Sally, "Did you find out which body we're looking for?"

"Oh – the John Doe in freezer number five, I think," Clara said, "He's the only John Doe they've still got here, and you said he hadn't been identified. There's only two other bodies in here right now, and they're both women. Three if we count you." Upon hearing this, the Doctor, Yaz in tow, made a beeline for the freezer, while Sally loitered next to Clara and watched her delete the footage of them.

"So we're not telling her about Ravenwood?" Sally asked very quietly.

"No," Clara hissed, "That's a secret. For her own protection, because of some stupid prophecy in their universe."

"Well, if you want my advice, stop talking about vampires plural," Sally advised.

"Here we go!" the Doctor said loudly, pulling open the freezer door. A cloud of cold air floated out of it as she wheeled out the slab, upon which lay a messy, mangled body. Sally and Clara left the computer to join them.

It certainly had been a violent crime, deep gashes made across his guts and chest, his face frozen in an expression of horror. He had nasty scratches around one of his eye sockets and his right leg was broken in multiple places. There was no doubt about it being a murder. "So, Stanley said he was murdered with tools you'd find in a butcher's shop."

"Serial killing butcher," said Clara, fumbling in her pockets for a moment, leaving the container of egg foo yung floating telekinetically in the air in front of her. She pulled out her pack of cigarettes.

"What are you doing? You can't smoke in here," said Sally.

"Why not?"

"Because it's a morgue!"

"Yes, and? Everybody here is already dead."

"There's no ventilation, we'll all have to smell it," Sally continued to argue with her, "It stinks. You stink, right now." Clara rolled her eyes.

"Christ, fine… if you're going to be a buzzkill…" Sally shook her head as Clara plucked the container out of the air again. Yaz and the Doctor exchanged a look; they were both glad that she hadn't lit a cigarette in there, because Sally was right, the ventilation really wasn't great.

Once she was satisfied Clara was going to behave, Sally leant down closer to the body to get a good look at the injuries. "This wasn't vampires," she ruled, "No teeth marks, and the wounds are too deep – they'd bleed too much."

"Is there such a thing as too much blood when you're a vampire?" asked Yaz sceptically.

"Killing someone like this for food is about equivalent to if every time you had a meal you threw half of it on the ground for no reason," said Sally, which made sense, in all fairness. And none of his wounds did look like bite marks. "Vampires would want as much blood as possible from a victim, and this isn't the way to get that."

"What about the other MOs? Are they similar?" the Doctor asked.

"I don't really know, they're violent murders that never get investigated by the police, like somebody's covering them up," she said. Hearing that, Yaz took the papers from the plastic folder stuck to the front of the freezer door. In there was the medical report. She skimmed the information, the Doctor leaning over her shoulder to read. Clara, unfazed by the dead body, just kept eating, while Sally pored over the corpse looking for any missed detail.

"The medical report says this was an accidental death," said Yaz.

"How weird," said the Doctor, "And I'll bet our Stan's no mastermind. How much of the CCTV did you erase?"

"Only the bit where Sally goes ghost," said Clara.

"'Goes ghost'?" asked Yaz.

"Sorry, it's my wife," said Clara, "She watches a lot of cartoons, usually when I'm trying to sleep." Yaz shook her head and returned to the medical report.

"What's the time of death?" the Doctor asked.

"About eight o'clock today, the same time we ran into each other," said Yaz.

"Can you look at the cameras again?" she asked Clara, "See if anybody paid Stan a visit about the time this body arrived, maybe persuaded him to write something else on the autopsy report."

"I suppose," said Clara, walking off, "Though, there's every possibility that he's a shit coroner. Couldn't tell a vampire when he saw one." He was still passed out on the floor nearby.

"Is there a toxicology report in there?" Sally asked Yaz, who flipped through the pages.

"Uh… yeah, blood work all came back clean, nothing out of the ordinary." For some reason, Sally was perplexed by this, and stood up straight, crossing her arms and thinking.

"There's a void in the footage," said Clara, "Identical to the one I just made when I deleted that bit of you and Sally just now. Somebody else has been messing with the cameras."

"So there was somebody here," said the Doctor, "Someone really is covering these murders up, they must have shown up and asked Stan to lie on this death certificate. But if somebody's doing that, how did you find out the crimes in London were also murders, with the same MO?"

"I told you, Esther's computer," said Sally, going back towards Clara, "They're reported as murders by the police dispatchers, but then they just vanish, no reported murders outside of the 999 calls and first responders. First responders who don't have any statements on record, either."

"Maybe we should've talked to Stan a bit more," said the Doctor, eyeing Stan as he lay in a heap on the floor. Sally stepped around him and crouched down next to Clara so that she could access a small fridge under the desk. This fridge had a biohazard sign on its door and contained about half a dozen blood vials. She pulled out the tray and examined the labels on them until finding the one belonging to John Doe in the fifth freezer.

"They're going to notice if you steal their blood samples," Clara warned her.

"What are you doing with the blood?" Yaz asked. Sally bit down on the cork plugging the vial and pulled it out with her teeth, "Wait – you're not gonna drink it are-? And you did drink it. Actual, human blood." Sally coughed.

"Again – you seem to keep forgetting about the vampire thing," she said, but she didn't look happy about what she'd just drank, "And he's not a human, he's a Manifest. Blood tastes different. Shit…" She paused and put a hand to her head, making a pained expression.

"Are you okay!?" Clara asked urgently. She didn't reply. "Sally!?"

"Yeah, sorry," she said eventually, "Got brain freeze."

"Oh, for-"

"What!? It's cold, it's been in a fridge. Look, if he's a Manifest, that would show up in the blood work, so either he's lying again or the blood hasn't been tested at all, because they'd put that on the medical report. Manifests are supposed to be clearly identifiable; they even have different driver's licenses."

"And they don't have basic human rights," Clara muttered. Yaz believed that, after seeing a girl get attacked for being a Manifest by a police officer earlier, and then an entire illegal bar dedicated to serving ostracised, Manifest patrons.

"So now a Manifest has been violently murdered, and it's being covered up," said Yaz, "What if the other victims were Manifests, too?"

"Hold on…" the Doctor interrupted, squinting at the body. She reached into her coat and removed her sonic screwdriver, which took both Sally and Clara by surprise.

"What is that?" Clara asked in shock.

"It's just… sonic screwdriver," said the Doctor unsurely, "You have sonic screwdrivers in this universe, don't you?" Clara mirrored her and also took a screwdriver out of her pocket, only Clara's was silver and gold and looked like a green-lighted claw when extended.

"Yeah, only they usually don't look like big, yellow dildos," said Clara. The Doctor was aghast, but Yaz snickered – it sort of did look like that.

"Yaz!" the Doctor protested. "Don't make fun of my screwdriver! I love my screwdriver!"

"I bet you do," said Clara, "Looks very adequate when it comes to screwing."

"You are unbelievable," the Doctor snapped at her, "And why do you have that old thing?"

Clara paused before answering, "Reminds me of my husband. I kept it. My wife has a new one, it's white with a purple light, looks a bit like Jenny's. Anyway, I have a lot of dildos, and most of them look like that." She put her own screwdriver away.

"Are you done now?"

"I suppose."

"Good. Stay over there."

"You sound like my wife when you tell me off," Clara quipped, which only annoyed the Doctor even more, though Clara had obviously said it on purpose. The Doctor very self-consciously went about scanning the dead body on the slab.

"What's the verdict? Is he gonna make it?" Sally asked. The Doctor ignored her and then held the screwdriver up to her ear, listening to it.

"Can't be right…" she muttered. She leant over the body to look at his face, and then – to Yaz's displeasure – reached over and pulled open one of his eyelids. The eye that had the scratches around it. "These scratches look post-mortem, very little blood. And this eye, it's… it's…"

"No, Doctor, don't do-" But Yaz's warning was futile. Of course, the Doctor did dig her fingers into the corpse's eye socket to pull out his actual eyeball. She'd seen a lot of things during her time as a trainee PC but had yet to see somebody pull an eye out of a skull.

"Wait, but that's-" Clara began.

"Definitely not a human eye," said the Doctor, "It's a device of some kind." She turned it over, realising it was only half-painted to look like an eye. "Someone took out his eye and stuck this in there after he was dead. My money's on Stan the man." Again, she scanned it with the screwdriver, the other three waiting intently to see what she could find out.

"Well?" Yaz prompted, "What is it? What's it for?"

"It's sending out a signal. It's some sort of vitals monitor, as best as I can tell. Why would you want to monitor the vitals of a dead person, though? Unless you thought he wasn't gonna stay dead."

"He smells dead," said Sally, "It would make sense if it was vampires attacking and turning people, but there's no way this is them. If he was changing…"

"What?" asked Yaz, "What happens when you change?"

"I just remember pain," she said.

"It's not very nice," Clara added quietly, "Lots of screaming and writhing. Lasts a few days. You should probably turn it off, god knows what kind of information it might start sending about you; dead body's suddenly grown another heart and been set on fire."

"Fair point," she said, sonicking it. "So the question is, who changed those records, and why are they apparently waiting for a dead body to come back to life?"