AN: Updates are sparse right now because a) daily updates get really tiring and it's one of the reasons I decided to end this thing as fun as it can be, and b) because I've been trying to write the next Spook Watch chapter in the background. I'm not doing a Halloween storyline in 5TC this year because I did Dying to Live (chapter 785) last year and it was huge and took me all of October, but I am gonna try and get a Spook Watch storyline out across October.

What Lies Below

Eleven

"So, like, hypothetically, if a girl were to text you saying, 'I'm effing Cordelia, King Lur can suck it,' except she doesn't put 'effing', she puts the actual word, and she spells it with two Js instead of a U, what would that mean?" Jenny asked somewhat uneasily, holding her mobile phone right up to her eyes and squinting at it. She turned it sideways for a second and cocked her head, as though that may give her more insight, "And then she sends emojis of a heart and a crown." She was supposed to be leading them through the Comet's creepy, blood-soaked corridors, and now she was distracted. A little bitterly, he thought to himself, so your phone IS working? But he didn't say that to her. She'd probably had her phone turned off for the very obvious reason of avoiding him and everybody else on the TARDIS. This 'Anobine Cartax' thing he had never heard of was, allegedly, on the exterior deck. The most inconvenient place for it to possibly be. According to Iveanne, that was where the crew had put it after bringing it on board, and that was where it had stayed. Not that he trusted Iveanne, she seemed to have a few screws loose, and rather an odd obsession with his daughter.

"She said what?" Amy, perplexed, asked Jenny, stooping down and squinting over her shoulder at her phone. No doubt Eleven wasn't allowed to pry and ask about what Ravenwood was texting. He was quite sure it wasn't his place to be doing that. He still eavesdropped, though, even though eavesdropping was a little trickier with his helmet off. Upon hearing the air was safe for Time Lords to breathe, he and Jenny had both taken off their helmets. Amy wasn't so lucky, but she didn't seem all that fussed, considering she was being prevented from turning into one of those zombified beasts. "Well what that means is she's very drunk and talking about Shakespeare. Can vampires get drunk?"

"If she's under the impression she's a Shakespearian character, I daresay they can," Eleven commented, and the pair of them looked at him like he was imposing, "What? The two of you are right there – am I supposed to be wearing earmuffs now? Headphones? Perhaps one of those things will kill me from behind." Amy rolled her eyes, but Jenny didn't say anything. The Doctor kept a careful eye out. Jenny said they had to cut through the crew quarters to get to the top deck – lucky for them that the forcefields were still intact. Not lucky for them that the crew had turned into monsters, and that they were going to the place where the crew used to live. It seemed like exactly the sort of place the monsters would be.

Jenny's phone went again, and Amy read the message out, frowning, "'I'm in a mermaid.' What does that mean?" Jenny didn't have an answer. It went again, and this message apparently said (when Amy read it), "'Hanging out with Sal.'"

"Oh," Jenny realised what was going on, "She's gone to the pub with Sally Sparrow. Well. That's not going to end well. I hope she doesn't kill anybody…" Jenny proceeded to put her phone completely on do not disturb mode.

"Shouldn't you do something?" Amy asked her, "If she's liable to start killing people?"

"She might not. I'll text Esther. She's the only sensible one. The other two are an absolute nightmare," Jenny said, getting her phone back out of one of the handy compartments attached to the belts of the spacesuits so that she could tell Esther Drummond not to let Ravenwood murder anybody. He thought it rather odd that Ravenwood and Sally were going out somewhere together, in light of the things he heard of his own wife when she was around Sally Sparrow.

"What is it like to go out with a vampire?" Amy asked her.

"Uh…" Jenny didn't seem like she wanted to answer. Eleven didn't seem like he wanted to exist. Not there, in that hallway, having to listen to this, at any rate.

"Oh, come on, tell me something. Take my mind off how astonishingly creepy this whole spaceship of yours is – I'm already having to pretend somebody tried to do a very bad scarlet paintjob in the corridors and that it isn't blood everywhere." A fair point, there was a great deal of blood. And spooky noises; rattling in the walls, under the floor, distant, animalistic, grunting sounds. It was far more unpleasant than yesterday's luxury ocean liner, even if there had been a war on.

"I mean, she… it gets a bit weird sleeping in a cellar…" Jenny said awkwardly.

"A cellar? Like, a crypt?"

"She really hates when people call it a crypt. It's not like she can be in direct sunlight, and it's the only room in the house that doesn't have any windows."

"What happens when she goes in direct sunlight?"

"She gets migraines."

"Is that it?"

"Can we have enough of the questions now? I'm not big into sharing the most intimate details of my personal life just because you think my girlfriend has a very interesting gimmick about her, Amy," Jenny snapped.

"Alright, calm down."

"I'm perfectly calm," she muttered. There was a clanging noise at the end of the corridor they were going down, and the trio froze. It was very cold – the Doctor wondered if the heating was perhaps broken. He could see his breath in front of his eyes. In the light of their mounted torches they saw something roll along the floor, a metal canister, most likely a fire extinguisher. But the ship hadn't rocked, so what had knocked it over? Glancing up and sideways, he saw nothing on the ceilings or the walls that gave any indication.

"Creepy," Amy breathed.

"If you hadn't pointed out how creepy that was, we could have all just forgotten it ever happened and pretended it wasn't creepy at all," Jenny whispered back, "Maybe the wind blew it over?"

"There isn't any wind! We're on a spaceship!"

"Oh, alright, Amelia, I didn't know optimism was a crime," she snapped.

"Don't call me Amelia, Jen," Amy retaliated.

The Doctor cleared his throat, "Is it at all, perhaps, possible that there aren't any more of those things? How many people are there supposed to be on this ship?"

"Twenty?" Jenny said uncertainly, after she cast one final glare in Amy's direction, "That was when I was here. So there's still a possible seventeen when you take away me, Iveanne, and the one I already shot. But it's probably less because of all the, uh, body parts…"

"So there's anywhere between zero and seventeen of them?" Amy asked.

"Yes, but the good news is, I have more than seventeen spikes to shoot them with," Jenny assured her.

"But one shot doesn't kill them."

"Yeah. Try not to think about that part. This way, then," Jenny said, nodding ahead, down the corridor where that canister had just mysteriously fallen over.

"What do you mean, 'that way?' We can't go that way," Amy hissed, "I don't understand why we can't just, you know, leave. We could just take crazy ex-girlfriend back there onto the TARDIS and leave this ship and the cursed artefact out here."

"And what? Make it somebody else's problem? We can't do that," Jenny said.

"But these idiots refused to take your advice to begin with and came looking for it."

"What are you saying, they deserved it? Of course they don't deserve it, nobody deserves this. And anyway, I put this crew together, and I lost control of it, and they were my responsibility. I don't like people dying on my watch, and this? This is worse than dying. At the very least they should all be put out of their misery," she said, "This Cartax, or whatever it is, needs to be destroyed."

"I'm sure that you could go back to the TARDIS?" Eleven suggested to her, sounding more hopeful than he intended. There were a few reasons he hadn't told Amy she couldn't come out earlier that morning. Firstly, because she was saying she had to get away from Rory, because she was sick of Rory going on and on and on and on about all the things he overheard – namely, the Doctor's own late-night conversations and 'intimate moments' with his wife. Secondly, because Jenny hadn't told her she couldn't come, and he supposed if Jenny didn't mind, or if Jenny wanted some sort of buffer, he would need to respect that. Thirdly because of even more guilt on the Doctor's part; Amy had made some callous remark about how he 'doesn't have time for his friends anymore,' and 'only cares about his wife.' Emotionally blackmailing him. Never mind the fact that it was his daughter he was spending time with, not his wife, and that caring about his wife wasn't a crime in the remotest sense. Again, no doubt it all went back to Rory giving a running commentary of Eleven's sex life, and her being sick of it. Eleven was sick of it, too. Rory, that was. Not his sex life. Wasn't sick of that.

"No thanks," Amy said coolly, "Somebody has to stop you two from tearing each other's throats out. After all, I'm not that eager to see Thirteen again." Now you've done it, Eleven thought.

"If you could not talk about Thirteen, that would be really great," she said to Amy, "Because, you know, she's kind of my mum, and I kind of really miss her? A lot? So it would be nice if you didn't make her a punchline in your latest sarcastic comment. Amelia."

"What's say we forget all about the fire extinguisher and head on through?" the Doctor suggested, taking point as the pair of them glared at one another (and Amy was worried about Jenny and him tearing each other's throats out?) It looked very odd given the drastic height difference. "The two of you are being ghastly – and, for the record, I agree with Jenny, and you should too. We can't very well leave this what-do-you-call-it here so that all of this happens again."

He proceeded to just walk on ahead and stick his own hand through the hologramatic door lock, rather than Jenny being the one to do it. He was inclined to agree with Amy, however, when he saw what awaited them in the crew quarters. It was just a thin corridor with doors on either side, but it was covered in blood and mess, more so than they had seen anywhere on the Comet so far. That wasn't all, though, there was another of those things, those flesh-coloured atrocities, but this one was lying, motionless, on the floor.

"Do you think it's dead?" Amy whispered. Then she nudged Eleven in the back, "Scan it?"

"No. What if it isn't dead? And it wakes up because of the noise?" he turned to address Jenny, "Maybe you should shoot it?"

"I can't shoot it, I need to conserve ammunition. If that thing is dead, it'd be a waste," she said.

"Maybe it's worth the risk," Amy said.

"Hold on, I have an idea," Eleven told them, backing away, out into the hallway again, where he went and retrieved that canister from where it had been knocked over. He picked it up and carried it into the crew quarters (it was quite heavy, whatever it was supposed to contain), and then he lobbed it right at that thing lying on the floor. The canister hit the creature right in the back, but it didn't move at all, and the canister clattered and rolled away. "I suppose maybe it is safe to-"

There was an enormous crash as a whole panel of the ceiling was forced to the floor, landing right on top of the creature they had been studying and giving way for another creature to drop down from above. It made a strangled, roaring noise and came right at them with its blade-like bone-arms, and Amy audibly screamed and grabbed the Doctor's arm. He didn't have a clue what to do. Lucky for them, Jenny did. She swung that huge gun around and it impacted right with the side of the creature's head, the force sending it into the wall on their right. Then, with impossible reflexes, she shot the thing twice in both of its elbows, leaving it still alive, but pinned to the wall. It still flailed and hissed at them.

"Where the hell did you learn to shoot like that?" Amy asked Jenny.

"I didn't," she said, "I just can. I mean, I am a genetically engineered, alien supersoldier. I never miss. Anyway, it takes a lot to frighten a girl who used to wrestle alligators in Louisiana."

"You used to what?" Eleven asked.

"Well it wasn't for sport, it was for food," she told him. Hadn't she mentioned something about living in a swamp the other day? When she had yelled? "I actually – I had a pet one, called Fluffy." Jenny smiled to herself a little with nostalgia for this pet alligator of hers, which looked very out of place given the spitting monster stuck to the wall right next to them. Her expression saddened, "Then Viola told me I couldn't bring it in the house." He wondered who Viola was – not another old girlfriend?

"Doctor," Amy said, "What's that on the doors?" He followed Amy's gaze and saw what she saw. It hadn't been blood on the walls – well, no, there was still a lot of blood on the walls as well, but what they were looking at was red paint. A large, red X. Almost all of the doors had Xs on them. "Didn't they do that during the plague?"

"Yes, for people who were infected," the Doctor said, then he turned to speak to Jenny, "If Iveanne hasn't caught this 'curse,' that means she's been locked up in her cabin for weeks, at least, so she can't really have had a clue what was going on out here. I doubt the crew would be all that fond of her given her cowardice."

"Meaning what?" she asked.

"Meaning that the crew must have realised this isn't a curse, it's definitely some sort of virus, or disease," he said, "And for them to be painting Xs on doors means they knew it was a virus, they knew it was contagious, and they didn't know how to cure it…"

Jenny thought about this for a second, then said, "Kolway's room is around here, I think it's at the end of the hall." Amy had her eyes fixed on the beast hanging off the wall. She then added, "Kolway's the ship's doctor. Was the doctor. Probably dead now. He might have notes on his terminal."

"Isn't there another way around?" Amy asked.

"Yes," Jenny answered her, "Probably full of more of those things that aren't quite as dead-looking as that one on the floor." In this instance, Jenny was fearless. She didn't have a clue what was going on, and one of her hands didn't work, and the was faced with the grief for about twenty people, but she was still soldiering on through all of this. The Doctor admired her.

Jenny was the first one to pass the still creature on the floor, and it didn't move at all when she did, which led Amy and Eleven to believe it was safe. He tiptoed, Amy still holding onto his other arm, over its bony limbs, and it didn't move a muscle. He hoped they weren't going to get anymore 'surprises' from above…

Jenny went to open the last door on the left of the long corridor, the room belonging to this Kolway, and it wasn't a pretty sight.

"Oh, no…" she breathed upon seeing a body on the bed. And not a virus-ridden body, a human one. A dead, human one.

"Is that Kolway?" Eleven asked her, and she nodded. Kolway's body had a gun in one hand – presumably it was a suicide to avoid turning into one of those things. "Maybe it's for the best. Better than being a monster."

"What would be for the best would be if they had all listened to me to begin with," she muttered, "Then this wouldn't have happened." Seemingly annoyed – possibly to disguise her upset – Jenny walked over to a computer terminal in the corner, the door sliding closed behind them. She sonicked it and the screen lit up.

"Do you remember when we met those pirates?" Amy asked him.

"Oh, yes, with the mermaid and the secret spaceship," he reminisced a little, "And Rory died, didn't he? Again. Always dying, that one. Dies more than my wife. This is far worse than that, though, at least the supposed-mermaid turned out to be benign in the end. I doubt these things are anything but malevolent."

"He does have notes," Jenny interrupted, "About this virus." She was scrolling and reading very quickly. "Apparently it spread through contact, starting with… the people who retrieved the Anobine Cartax. If it is the Anobine Cartax. So this really is all Iveanne's fault. Kolway started calling it the 'Anobine Infection.'"

"That'd be catchy if it wasn't so bloody terrifying," Amy grumbled. There was a rattling noise in the hallway outside, the door now shut and leaving them in the late Kolway's dark bedroom. They all glanced at each other and Jenny, finding out what they needed to, left the terminal alone in order to open the door again, lifting that gun up and looking down the sights.

The creature that had been a crumpled mess on the floor was gone – the sound had been it pushing the ceiling panel off of itself. He assumed it had gone back into the hole where the other one had come from, the other one which was now hanging limply on the wall.

Amy commented, "So these things really like to play dead, then… they're just as bad as you two."

AN: Like I said, superheroes next, then more Future Clarteen after that, the latter of which will be incredibly light and funny, in contrasted to how bleak this one's become.