20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Oswin

Awakening with Nios's face hanging over her was perhaps not the worst thing that could have potentially come out of their situation. Her and her enchanting eyes pulled Oswin far away from the question of what on Titan was going on. Unfortunately, though, Nios was not looming for any reason more special than trying to work out how to switch Oswin's Sphere back on, an activity not nearly as sensual as Oswin would imagine were she left to her daydreams. No, it was more general maintenance than steamy, illicit encounter. A shame.

"I thought you were broken," Nios said.

"Only heartbroken that you're not into me," Oswin immediately responded. Nios ignored her.

She was holding the Sphere, and she didn't look like she knew what to do with it. Oswin herself was legless and cane-less. If she didn't find her aids soon, she wouldn't be able to move about anywhere. Her right leg didn't support her weight at all anymore; if she so much as tried to balance on it, it would feel like the bones were shattering all over again. Not that she was going to do anything about that. Clara had been spewing Dickensian epigrams at her last night: "I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it." That was how Clara was justifying what the pair of them were doing with their matching scars. Oswin didn't have an awful lot of feelings about these quotes Clara enjoyed reciting but, like everything else she read or heard or saw, they were memorised now. Another curse of her IQ.

She may not have a lot of worldly experience, but she would be damned if she couldn't identify a laboratory when she saw one. Most certainly not when they were being held in one, a very morgue-ish kind of place with large slab-like tables covered in mechanical instruments. Some of them very familiar.

"That's my leg!" she exclaimed, pointing at the table, "Shit – where are we? Is my stick up there? Will one of you pass me my stuff?" She looked around pleadingly at the four other faces. All of them were there, wherever there was, reunited and confused. There were no windows, and the room looked quite industrial to her, and very dark. From the mess on the tables the Ninth Doctor was the one to take pity on her and fetch her things, him fishing out his own sonic screwdriver from the messes, too.

"This reminds me of the dingy squat Rose and I picked your boyfriend up in," Nine remarked when he handed her back her heavy prosthetic limb. Who had brought them down there, to that room, and left them alone? And what, exactly, had happened aboard the Vinsomer? To the Vinsomer? Because they definitely weren't anywhere near it now. "He just sat in van Statten's private, underground museum all day cataloguing space junk he thought was valuable."

"Yeah, he's told me," Oswin said, attaching her leg with some difficulty, her just stuck there in the corner of the room jam-packed with miscellaneous gizmos. "I think it's cute."

"What happened? Why were we knocked out?" Nios asked whomever wanted to answer her first. Oswin hadn't a clue – the last thing she remembered was a big, pale light coming up out of the ocean around them, and then all the electronics dying.

"There was a tractor beam," Nine answered, "It came out of the water."

"A tractor beam? Like on a spaceship? You're kidding?" Oswin asked.

"It made a whirlpool, and everything on the whole yacht malfunctioned," Mickey continued, "Whatever it was, it knocked us out, too, after we got sucked down into the sea."

"Wait – Mitchell's yacht has been sucked up by a whirlpool!?" Oswin exclaimed in horror, "Oh my god – he's gonna kill me… he'll be so upset…" She was mortified. But then, if none of them were damaged or broken, then was there any chance the Vinsomer was still okay, too? She wasn't all that fussed about Adam Mitchell's extravagant purchases, but the last thing she wanted was to be lumped in with everybody else responsible for destroying his property and damaging his goodwill.

She tried to struggle to her feet but couldn't find a grip on the wall. Only once Nios came to help her could she actually manage to stand again.

"Could have sworn you could walk properly two days ago."

"Yeah, well, things change in two days," Oswin mumbled. She didn't want to talk about it, least of all in this weird setting, their tiny, dank room with no windows and just one solitary lightbulb hanging from above. And not an ordinary lightbulb, either; the light coming from it was faintly blue, and it was square. A pretty funky lightbulb if you asked her, and it didn't do a good job of illuminating the room at all. Out of courtesy she activated the light that shone out of her Sphere, accidentally blinding River in the process and having to apologise.

"I think we are on a spaceship," Nine said when he handed Oswin her cane, which she grabbed to examine and make sure it wasn't damaged. "That thing's quite heavy for an ordinary walking stick. Since when did you need one, anyway?" Repeating Nios's earlier question. She supposed he must not have been listening to her avoid it five seconds ago. That or he was just especially nosey, but she figured he had just been distracted.

"It's not an ordinary walking stick, that's why. It's a very sensitive piece of equipment. Has… devices in it," she said. As if, if she needed a cane, she wouldn't stuff it full of fancy tricks and innovative technologies. It was sort of like she had her own sonic screwdriver, but it was way better in every regard. Obviously.

"Do you think we can leave? I'm not the biggest fan of laboratories. I've had my fair share of being experimented on," Nios said nervously, unimpressed by their surroundings. Oswin was relieved to discover her cane was quite alright, along with her Sphere, which was always getting broken and messed with. She really ought to get herself some protection against electrical interference. Even being around Esther Drummond she sometimes found herself flickering – though, it was a fifty-fifty shot whether that was because Esther was electric or because Oswin's attraction to Esther was electric.

"What is all of this, though?" River said, growing distracted by everything lying about, "Look, this is a HAM radio from decades ago, and there's a hairdryer."

"Hairdryer – your boyfriend had an alien hairdryer in his 'collection,'" Nine said to Oswin.

"What's with this whole thing of referring to Mitchell as 'my boyfriend' all the time?" Oswin asked, "He's got a name."

"I've never referred to Adam Mitchell as my boyfriend," Nine said innocently, then he smiled because he was proud of his own joke. Oswin dropped the subject and spied a PlayStation 2 among the bits and bobs. "It's junk, all of it, but Earth junk." Leaning against one wall were the propellers from an old-style aeroplane – though Oswin never claimed to be an expert in aviation. It was a load of old crap, and now they'd joined the trash-heap.

"Why sit at the bottom of the sea and collect this stuff? It's worthless," River mused.

"Hey! PlayStation 2s are not worthless," Mickey argued.

"They're definitely worthless," Nine told him.

"Okay, so, this is the alien equivalent of my better half, right?" Oswin began, "But we were all dragged here, too. What does that make us? Curiosities? Commodities?"

"I'm sick of people thinking I'm their possession – can't we go?" Nios was pleading a little now, sick of them lingering. The Doctor was holding one of those ancient brick mobile phones people apparently used to carry around in bags, but when she said that he dropped it on the floor and its shell cracked and it broke.

"Yes," he answered, taking his screwdriver back out and going over to the door partially hidden by the piles of electronics sitting everywhere, sonicking it so that the large valve keeping it shut span on its own. The door clicked from within, reminding Oswin of a submarine, and Nine pushed it open.

"It's not very sleek, for a spaceship," Oswin commented.

"Functionality is more important than aesthetics," he quipped.

"Disagree. They're both equally important. What's the point of innovation if innovation isn't attractive? Take Nios, for example," Oswin said, limping after them as the quintet left their sheltered laboratory. Nios disliked being taken for example. "People wouldn't be half as interested in synths if they didn't have any skin, if they were just creepy, robot skeletons."

"Then why does everyone like C-3P0 so much?" Mickey countered.

"That's beyond me," Oswin said, "Gold plating is tacky."

"Where did you get such a keen-eye in fashion from?" River said, "You certainly can't have inherited it from Clara."

"That has to be one of the last great mysteries of the universe."

"Why are these walls so black?" Nios interrupted, "And funny-looking." The other fours' eyes were drawn to what she was looking at. It was a pretty standard corridor, the walls sort of slanted to the right a little, the one on the left curving around quite thoroughly until it met the top-right corner above them and ran along like that. Doors on the right, strange blackness on the left. But along with this odd darkness, there were panels across it. Large panels of mismatched metal, fastened in an amateur fashion across the dark. "Are those tiny lights on it?"

"No, those lights are outside," the Doctor said with an air of realisation, "This is a window. Look at this metal, too, the number on it." It was quite a high-up panel, and he stood on his tiptoes to point it out to the group. It was gunmetal grey and bore, in fading white paint, the number 117, and was an odd shape. "It's the rudder of one of the planes from Flight-19. The patrol who went missing in the Bermuda Triangle in 1945."

"1945?" Mickey asked, "So this thing has been down here for over seventy years?"

"What are the lights, though?" Nios persisted. As she said that one of the 'lights' came swimming across in front of them, and it was not a light at all, but rather some terrifying sea-monster.

"Eurgh! What the hell is that thing!?" Oswin exclaimed, nearly tripping and falling backwards. River looked at her funny.

"It's only a jellyfish," she said, "Haven't you ever seen a jellyfish?"

"Yeah, that's the one thing Saturn has plenty of, jellyfish," she said sarcastically.

"They're all jellyfish, bioluminescent ones," Nine said. Oswin thought anything with that many arms was probably from the depths of hell rather than the depths of the ocean. Though she sometimes thought they were the same thing.

"I hate the sea," she complained, "Hate it, hate it, hate it."

"These panels are leaking," Nios said, eyeing large puddles pooling on the floor of the dark, cold corridor, "What if one of them broke? I'm not very waterproof."

"I'll be fine," Mickey said, and all four of them turned to glare at him. "I mean, I'd… I'd swim up and get help. Coast guard, or something."

"And I'm sure the coast guard will be very helpful to us down here, with their state of the art mini-subs and high-pressure emergency diving rigs," River commented. Mickey shuffled where he stood sheepishly.

"This thing isn't made to be underwater," Nine said.

"So why is it underwater?" Nios asked, "And why has it been underwater for so long pulling down ships and planes?" If anybody did have an answer for her, they didn't get a chance to use it. There was the loud, mechanical sound of another door opening in their same hallway on the edge of the ship. Then voices, or rather, one very excited voice, floated in.

"-til the Rybek sees this haul. The things I found on that vessel – they're positively beautiful! And I can't for the life of me figure why the pulse knocked two of them out, they must be hybrids, like you two. Only better. And that funny-looking ball, too… Ingenious things, really – that's why I had more of you lumps drag those men out with them, see if they can't enlighten me," this voice said. Whoever they were talking to wasn't replying, and she wondered if they were just talking to themselves. She could definitely hear more than one set of footsteps, though, so either this person – or alien – had a whole bunch of legs (bragging, much?) or they really did have silent company. These extra footsteps sounded different, though. They sounded… metal.

The crew did not have to wonder for long who was coming down the corridor, all of them too intrigued to cut and run. Besides, it was really an even shot whether they were friendly or hostile. And River Song was probably armed, as she always was. Even Nios on her own was pretty formidable. Not quite as formidable as what approached them, however.

It was three 'people.' One of them was an alien, clearly, an alien whose skin had the same pale, glowing qualities as the jellyfish swimming along outside. He was a little blue, with large, milky eyes, (three of them) like he was at least partially blind. He was the one who was talking, though as soon as he saw them he stopped immediately. Oswin thought she spied him having seven fingers on both hands. He, the owner of the lab within which they had awoken, was not the main attraction, however.

"Cybermen," Nine said quietly when he saw them, then he repeated himself, shouting, "Cybermen!" Two of them, grey and gold, on either side of this extra-terrestrial spectre of the deep, marching along like they were his personal entourage.

"Oh, no," the alien breathed, "I underestimated them. Quick – subdue them!" he ordered the Cybermen. At long range, Cybermen (these ones, at least) were not all that much of a threat. Most definitely not when they were battered and rusty-looking, practically relics of the horror stories she'd heard growing up on Horizon about them. Not that Oswin had ever, personally, run into Cybermen herself. But what were they doing in an alien spaceship at the bottom of the sea, of all places?

"Run!" Nine exclaimed.

"I'm not really with it on the whole 'running' thing right now, you know!" Oswin argued, as they all turned to go back the way they came.

"Well – then – gah," the Doctor struggled to think of what to do as the clanking metal men approached, under orders of their kind of weak-looking 'leader.' Why were they doing what he said? What hold did he have over them? Surely they could kill him in an instant if they wanted?

"Oh, give me that," River snatched Nine's screwdriver and made for the nearest door, sonicking it so that it opened in the same old-fashioned way as the one out of the lab, then Nios half-pushed and half-carried (kind of?) Oswin through it, Mickey and Nine last. The Cybermen hadn't moved more than a few feet in all that time, like their joints didn't work right. River pulled the door closed and sealed it behind them with her sonic, leaving them, for now, out of the Cybermens' reach. Those Cybermen, at least.

"Uh-oh," Mickey said, "I think we might have misjudged…"

"Oh, shit…" Oswin breathed. When they looked away from the door and paid their new surroundings some note, she could hardly even tell what the room was. All she knew was that it was large, and full of Cybermen.