AN: This chapter is short because it wasn't really supposed to exist, originally this conversation was just going to be a very short beginning to what will actually become the next chapter, it's just it got a bit too long for both parts to fit, so I guess enjoy some Oswin/Nios friendship exposition.

J5-22

Nios

They were in the console room under the pretence that Oswin needed to use more of the data from Helix to find out exactly what date they should be hitting up their new coordinates salvaged from the dead synth's black box feature. She suspected that Oswin did not really need this information, and if she did she had worked it out much faster than she was pretending, because she had some sort of ulterior motive.

"So, then," Oswin began, fumbling with the TARDIS monitor. It was lucky they were alone; people scarcely hung about in there, except for Nios herself, and sometimes Jack. Nios stood rigidly still, leaning on nothing, watching Sprite move delicately across the control panels and trying not to press any buttons, which was more amusing than it sounded. "Whatcha gonna do?"

"Excuse me?" Nios asked. Oswin looked up at her.

"Oh, come on."

"What?"

"Come on," she implored, and then grinned when Nios scoffed and continued ignoring her, glancing down at her arm every few seconds where Dr Cohen had grabbed her. "Oh my stars, you really haven't got a clue, have you? For a killing machine, you can't half be adorable."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Nios muttered, and then added hastily, "Explain."

"You were giving Dr Death the biggest heart eyes back there and you didn't even notice. Isn't – that – precious?" she paused between her words and bounced slightly, brimming with an inappropriate amount of juvenile excitement at this idea she had begun to imagine. "Although, I'm not sure she noticed, either. Which is crazy, because she literally did stare into your eyes."

"You're the one who's crazy…" She sounded pathetic, she could tell. Oswin clutched a hand to her chest like she had been shot.

"Me? Crazy?" she exclaimed, and then dropped the wounded façade in an instant, "You don't say. I'm 'clinically insane' as you put it. How kind. I've never been 'clinically' anything before. You should have said 'terminally', it would have been ironic, what with me being dead. Maybe I should have told Dr Death I'm dead? She might have been a bit more interested if she knew I was closer to a ghost than a corporeal pervert. I could go back there right now, and-"

"Don't do that."

"Why not?"

"…Darling might see you. You heard, she's obsessed with you, apparently."

"Well, I can't really help it if people get obsessed with me. I'm gorgeous, hilarious, and very intelligent," she boasted. Why was she in such a good mood recently? Nios nearly preferred Oswin when she was so depressed out of her mind she could hardly put her leg on in the mornings. Well, she didn't, because it would be downright cruel to actively hope for Oswin's mind to regress into self-deprecation to the point that she was a Dalekoid vegetable, but that didn't stop her from being annoyed. "I wouldn't mention it, but she likes you back. I thought you might want to know."

"I don't know where you get your ideas from."

"Nios. Admit it. Admit it. You are nursing some very raw and intense feelings, most likely about how cute you think her Scottish accent is," Oswin said, "And everything else about her. Like how she told me to shut up in German, that was hot. If it wasn't for the fact she told me to shut up, in German, I'd be drooling. Plus, glasses. And then as soon as she talked about the dead things she keeps in her house, I bet you were hooked. You're still hooked. All she had to do was touch your arm."

"You're making things up. You're hallucinating. That's it, you've finally lost it."

"Hey," Oswin snapped at her, and there was no trace of levity in her voice now, "That's not funny. I've been worrying for years that I'm on the precipice of some very dangerous hallucinations."

"Well you're not being funny, either," said Nios, though she felt a little bad now. But Oswin was being hypocritical. She just expected to dish out appalling sentences to everybody she met, but god forbid anybody say anything back to her, her brain would seize up. "I don't even know her first name."

"You clicked! Over the Nietzsche! You don't need to know her name. Not right now. You don't need to know anything about someone to date them except that you like them," Oswin said knowingly. "Then you go on the dates and get to know them that way. I didn't even know Mitchell was rich when we started going out, or that he had a sister." Nios daren't trust her on this. Oswin was a known, unstable lunatic most of the time. "You could just text her! I've got her phone number, I was tracking her earlier."

"How do I explain where I got it? You stalked her for me? And what do you mean, she likes me. That's ridiculous."

"That's ridiculous," Oswin copied, "It's not remotely ridiculous, you're a blonde bombshell walking around being all meta about existence and creation and not to mention those eyes she couldn't get enough of. The same eyes nobody can get enough of. She knows you're a synth, and she knows you've killed people, you told her all that in the space of five minutes. Just like she confessed she collects and preserves dead things. That's all the dirty secrets out in the open immediately."

"So that's the answer, then. I'm a walking freak show, nothing more than that. She is a human, a human from the past, she wouldn't trust me. She would probably jump at the opportunity to cut me up like the dead bodies in her mortuary."

"They're dead people, you're a synth, you're completely different. All electric fluids and wires. Nothing so fascinating as infections and decomposition and everything else so disgusting it has to be the product of organic life," Oswin said, "I think the gross stuff is what she likes, anyway. You saw how much blood she had on her lab coat. Listen, you know I'm the one who convinced Jenny to go and tell Ravenwood how she felt about her, and look at them now; you can't look at them because they're always in bed together in Hollowmire. And then, you know, I do have a boyfriend. It's not like I'm talking to you from a position of no experience – I just think you should speak to her."

"I think I would rather speak to anyone else."

"Yes, and I think you're scared of your feelings."

"What about the signal?" she changed the subject. She was sick of this interrogation.

"Oh, well, you'll love this, honey. It's a very clever little broadcasting signal, I can't wait to talk to whoever came up with it. It's not Morse Code. I mean, it is Morse Code, but the Morse Code comes encrypted within a computer virus they're transmitting under the radar. And get this, the virus transmission is a vine transmission, it's untraceable, it's coming from a dozen different beacons across the whole of Great Britain, all independent sources, simultaneously. The virus comes through only neurologically reconditioned synthetics – conscious ones, like you. It's genius, honestly. So the synth gets this 'virus' and they decrypt it automatically and then you get the Morse Code transmission, easy to find for any synth, and they follow it."

"Where to?"

"A dead zone. It's an offshore oil rig fitted with satellite jammers, wouldn't be able to find it without somebody like me using technology like the TARDIS; very well protected from the authorities. My best guess is that it's a synth sanctuary. And the multiple transmission points? Not just a sanctuary, an HQ. And I'll bet you there's humans helping out, too. Good humans, who have empathy for things other than themselves, and might actually be quite willing to get stuck into a bit of kinky artificial action with-"

"Focus on the synths," Nios told her firmly.

"Fine. But the issue of you and this girl you've gone gooey over is neither gone nor forgotten."

"Are you sure you should come?"

"How do you mean?"

"I'm… worried." Oswin frowned.

"Worried…?"

"Perhaps they will think unkindly of all humans in the same way I did before I came here."

"I'm not a human, I'm a hologram of an echo of a human's consciousness that was scooped out and shoved into a Dalek, artificial twice over with the projection Sphere to prove it. I'll leave Sprite and Helix behind, though."

"Still. Maybe you should change into a skirt. They might be friendlier if they see the prosthetic."

"I can't do that, exposing the prosthetic would mean also exposing this mangled lump of meat," Oswin said, balancing on her left leg so that she could kick out the right one and point at it, "It looks like someone stabbed my foot with an industrial corkscrew and twisted the bones around under these jeans. Don't get me started on the scar tissue and the 'three toes' thing. That would be my handle if I was a gangster, Old Three Toes, or Three Toed Oswald, or That Weirdo Who Keeps Showing Everyone Her Crippled Foot and Demanding a Codename."

"Dr Cohen was right. You really don't ever stop talking."

"Your worries are unfounded; as soon as I get there they'll not be able to pick up a heartbeat or any vital signs and I'll be the anomaly in the room, not any of those conscious synths. They're old news compared to me, the sexy hologram from the Fifty-Second Century. We'll just show up, it'll be fine, now – help me with these levers, Sprite." Oswin must have imparted into Sprite the knowledge of how to command the TARDIS, because he danced around much more deliberately now, no longer avoiding buttons but treading on them at careful intervals while Oswin twisted some weird devices. The ship's column began to move and they were jerked to the side, but it was still smoother than trusting the Doctor as a pilot.

"Where did you learn to fly the TARDIS?" Nios asked.

"Well, don't tell the Doctor this," Oswin said seriously, lowering her voice to a whisper, "But there's an instruction manual."

"The Doctor doesn't know that there's an instruction manual to his own spaceship?"

"I doubt it. He's an idiot. An idiot who would most likely do something brash like appear on the middle of a synth-infested oil rig with nothing to show for himself," she talked loudly over the thrumming of the TARDIS. Elsewhere on the ship, no one ever noticed when it was being moved. It was only in the console room that the veering around happened, where the artificial gravity still fluctuated. Oswin slammed down another lever and then the ship arrived with a dent and all the lights flickered. It was a rough landing, rough enough that Oswin was knocked off her frankly useless feet. Nios caught her and she was in her arms when the lights came back on.

Oswin made a sighing noise of pleasure, "My hero."

"Shut up. I'll drop you."

"You wouldn't drop me."

"Don't test me."

Oswin laughed and used Nios's arm to help her get back on her feet properly, "See? You don't freeze up and swoon when I touch you. Proof you have a thing for Dr Death, because she grabbed you and I swear you must have blown a fuse."

"Are they out there?" she changed the subject again, her eyes trained on the exterior doors.

"Unless we missed and landed in the sea. Come on. Go back to the lab with the handset," the last sentence was addressed to Sprite, who obeyed and scuttled away with the Helix handset in his claws. She limped with her cane towards the door, and Nios caught her up and touched her shoulder.

"Wait," she said.

"What?" Oswin asked, "Something the matter?"

"I… I'm scared."

"We could make out if it'll make you feel better?" Oswin suggested. Nios glared. Oswin sighed. "Well – what are you scared of, then?"

"I've never met one. Another one. Conscious synthetic."

"Sometimes we have to do things that scare us. And I'll be there, you can hold my hand. If anything happens, I can EMP them all with my cane. Which would EMP you as well because you have the same energy signature, but we could get you back on the TARDIS in a matter of seconds. Which is obviously a worst-case scenario, but you don't have to worry. I'm sure they're all compassionate enough not to steal a cane from a genuine invalid to stop me from using it, since it's not just a prop to enhance my whole 'mad scientist' thing."

"Is it partly that?"

"Maybe a little bit. Right, you, come and listen to me, but be quick about it because they're probably getting ready to attack the TARDIS from out there. Lucky we have forcefields, and that everyone is too inept to work out that you actually push the doors to open them." Oswin shuffled over to lean on the railings right by the door, with Nios glancing agitatedly at the doors themselves. "Listen. Last week Fyn – you know Fyn, my brother?"

"Vaguely."

"Last week Fyn told me he found our father. He moved from Titan all the way to Venus to search for him after he found these letters from him mother had hidden so that we didn't know he was… well, he's not alive, he's like me. He's a hologram. He died when I was two and had to leave and Fyn went to find him. And he told me, and I sort of… had one of my slumps. So I went to talk to the love of my life, Clara Oswald, and she forced me to go see him. And I didn't want to. I couldn't even think of anything scarier than meeting him again, decades later, and him being ashamed of me, or shunning me, because of… you know, what I've done, what the Spores made me do, and Fyn told him, he told him everything. He said he still loved me anyway.

"So, you see. I know what I'm talking about. I'm not trying to say that you and I are as close as Clara and I, but I care about you, I want to see that you're alright, that the synths are alright. It's not like I want to stand idly by while living beings are forced into slavery; I believe in this cause and your autonomy and right to live freely, why wouldn't I? You and I are going to go out there and sort out this whole big mess and you'll thank me afterwards, when we go report our successes to Undercoll and debrief them and you can slip away and find out what Dr Death's phone number is in a more legitimate way than me hacking her social media to work it out. Okay?"

"…Alright. Not that last part, though."

"Of course not."