5 Time Lords, 13 Companions, Can Anything Else Go Wrong?

by CJ-1021

The third and final instalment in the trilogy of 3D9C and 4D12C / Adventures through spacetime are balanced with the domestic lives of the usual cast of mismatched characters while they thwart intergalactic, cross-temporal, supernatural adversaries; everything ranging from killer space-squids to cults to parasitic toilet worms to invisible aliens and much more.

141. The Case of the Split Brain

AN: I'm BACK only a week after I said I would be initially - pretty successful considering I moved literally a week ago today. I will be doing my best to get back to regular updates now this gigantic chapter is completed, which is the longest Closwin storyline to-date (excluding the Clone Killer one which was more to do with the Spooks than the Twins), hence why it took so long to write it. Should be good banter though!

DAY 155

The Case of the Split Brain

Clara & Oswin

There was a stench in the air, like seawater and battery acid, which was so pungent it forced its way into every molecule on the desolate planetoid. It was a grey lump floating through space on the edge of the Goldilocks Zone, right on the edge of the Goldilocks Zone, toeing the line between being habitable and completely inhospitable very delicately. It had a thin atmosphere and toxic water, and yet this big rock was called home by more than a few societal outsiders. It was almost always dark and there were frequent, deadly storms which kicked up a dangerous fog from the dust settling across the rocks, eroded by solar winds not kept out by the wafer-thin ozone layer. Most of the atmosphere was maintained by rusty and faltering generators strategically placed around the only settlement, and there was one, large and glowing the same shade of blue as a gas lamp, situated right outside a window rippled with condensation from the rime of the toxic waters.

"In a way, I do like it here," said Clara Oswald, sitting at a small and crooked wooden table, leaning on it with her elbows and looking out of the window at the atmospheric condenser. It was one of those places on the fringe of any large enough galactic empire, and attracted all kinds of species all running their own errands and liable to shoot anybody who asked them what they were up to. The only conversations were murmured ones between people already acquainted. Oswin sat with her fake leg stretched out underneath the table, Sprite on her shoulder, her cane leaning carefully against the side of her chair. Weird as they both were, nobody looked twice at them.

"Why do you like it here?" Oswin asked her. She did not like it. A place like that was the opposite of the stable, artificial atmospheres she was used to. It was half-artificial and she didn't think much of these condensers, already working out a way to do the same thing much more efficiently, and wondering if anybody there would appreciate some detailed schematics if she found a big enough piece of paper to draw them on. Clara shrugged and then picked up what she was eating and took a bite out of it, which was when Oswin saw something slide out of the bottom of the food and dangle there in the air. "What are you eating?"

"It's like calamari, but in a sandwich. You know, squid." Oswin cringed when she heard the word 'squid.' She hated squid. Ever since the incident with Squidzilla. And now Clara was eating it, and there was a fried tentacle hanging out of the bottom of an unusually-coloured bread roll; the bread was slightly grey and it made Oswin worried on Clara's behalf. Along with that, this meal of her sister's was absolutely drenched in pale mayonnaise, from the sachets she carried everywhere with her. Just in case of a mayonnaise-related emergency, which Clara managed to find spookily often.

"But it's not squid," said Oswin, "You're just eating the tentacles of some random probably-mutant alien creature."

"Honestly, I don't care. It doesn't taste half-bad. Just salty and a bit stringy." Oswin felt sick hearing that. Salty and a bit stringy.

"Almost sounds like you're describing semen…" she grumbled. Clara didn't comment on that. As disgusting as it was, she was clearly enjoying what she was feasting upon. She had something in a carved, stone stein as well, some drink which was not water because the water on what was colloquially called 'the Island' was poisonous. It was some form of alcohol, very watered down but the only available drink which was sterile. While thinking further on her plans for new-and-improved atmospheric generators, she also wondered if anyone would appreciate some easy-to-build water purification rig. Water purifiers were no challenge at all to build. Along with that was an ashtray with a fresh Marlboro stub of Clara's in it, smouldering away and stinking.

The only other thing on the table with them was the Echoculum Oswin had built Clara for her birthday, sitting there and glowing pink. Pink, according to Oswin, meant that somewhere an Echo was in trouble, but not immediate danger. It had begun going haywire earlier that morning, waking Clara up because of her connection to it, and they had come out to try and get to the bottom of what was the matter with whichever Echo it was picking up on. But there had been more than a few teething problems, ones which unnerved Oswin because it hadn't had any issues like this before, and the only thing they had been able to determine was the date of the turmoil and that it was coming from somewhere on the Island. They didn't know anything about the Echo or a more precise location, so they had come to the only settlement – a tiny and rickety, wooden village which smelled even worse than the rest of the planet because it was home to a lot of organic waste they were unable to properly dispose of – with the hope of investigating further. Then Clara had decided she was hungry.

Oswin kept picking up the Echoculum and examining it, but it only unfurled itself for Clara. It used her blood to work, and Clara's blood was very unique, thanks mostly to the corrupted strain of the Manifest virus running through her and the side-effects of being on the TARDIS for so long. Even Ravenwood wouldn't be able to activate it, nor any other Clechoes. Oswin nudged it with her thumb and watched it wobble on its spherical base. Still pink. Sprite crawled across onto her other shoulder, unnerved by the Echoculum. Under the table, Clara kicked Oswin's fake leg.

"Don't do that," Oswin said.

"Just wanted your attention."

"You've got it, you don't have to kick my leg, it's a sensitive piece of technology," she said.

"Why are you so down in the dumps?" Clara asked.

"I'm not."

"You are – you haven't complained half as much as you normally do about having to leave your boyfriend on his own," said Clara. Oswin sighed.

"He's busy today," she said, "Ellie got in trouble at school again, he had to go deal with it." Now she let her own eyes trail to the window and at the glowing condenser outside. It was like staying in a bedroom with a neon sign right outside.

"Come on, Os," Clara entreated, "We haven't spent any time together for ages. Not since all that stuff with Liam Kent, and that was hardly a good day. I've missed you, you're my favourite daughter. And my best friend."

"It's nothing, honestly," she said. Clara said nothing, just raised her eyebrows at Oswin, waiting expectantly for her to cave and explain her feelings. But Oswin wasn't going to cave. She wasn't going to give Clara the satisfaction of getting inside her head just by emphasising how much she valued her. She wasn't going to tell Clara a damned thing about what she was thinking, out of pure stubbornness. The pause between them continued. "Alright, fine," Oswin gave up, "It's just… you know… I miss Nios and Jenny."

"Miss them? Where have they gone?"

"Into the arms of beautiful women," Oswin sighed wistfully. "Well, Nios has. I don't know about Jenny - I think this new girlfriend of hers might be a bit vain." Clara glared at her, then took another bite out of her grim sandwich which Oswin thought was a crime against nature, "It's just that thing where your friends get into relationships and you don't see them anymore."

"Since when did Nios like girls?"

"Well she asked one on a date a few days ago. And then went on the date." Clara's jaw dropped, which was a horrible sight because her mouth was still full of partially chewed tentacles. She paused for a while to finish eating and swallow.

"She what!?" Clara exclaimed eventually when she had emptied her mouth, "She-!? Why didn't you-!? Oh my god! I didn't know she was gay, I thought you were just making it up."

"I was making it up, until I saw how she reacted around this doctor we met. Anyway, what do you care? Would you have tried to shag her if you knew?"

"No," said Clara, then paused and rethought, "I mean – sure, if I was single. But I'm not single. So, no. I just like to know."

"She has major vibes. Your gaydar needs retuning."

"Well – tell me about the doctor."

"The Doctor? He's your husband. I'm surprised you don't know that." Clara kicked her again. "I told you to stop doing that!"

"Be serious."

"I'm always serious."

"Seriously annoying."

"I know you are, but what am I?" Oswin replied smarmily. Clara didn't dignify that with a response, and waited for Oswin to get back to the matter at hand, having yet another bite of her sandwich. She was about halfway through it now, but it was quite large. They were still managing to talk quietly enough that they didn't catch the attention of any of the other residents in this bizarre café-cum-restaurant-cum-bar. It was the only social space in the entire, bleak settlement. "You've never been to Undercoll, have you?" Clara shook her head. The only member of Undercoll Clara had ever met was James Elliott, and probably only with an underlying note of jealousy as she wondered what it was James Elliott had that she didn't when it came to attracting the attention of one Sally Sparrow. Answer: a penis. And a less-obnoxious attitude, in general. But these were truths Clara didn't want to accept. "Nios fancies their pathologist, Dr Cohen."

"Dr Cohen – sexy already."

"You don't know the half of it, Clary – she's also Scottish."

"Really?"

"And she's like, a medical genius. Plus, she hates me," Oswin beamed when she said that, "Like, really, doesn't like me, isn't impressed by me at all. It's very refreshing – I think people should tell me to shut up more often."

"People tell you to shut up all the time; I've already told you to shut up about a dozen times today."

"Yeah, but someone I respect."

"Oh, thanks."

"Someone who says it with conviction."

"Uh-huh."

"And in a Scottish accent."

"There it is."

"It's delicious."

"I'm not saying I'd disagree if I heard it," Clara said, "Anything else you know about her?"

"She's autistic and everyone calls her 'Dr Death' and they went on a date to a medical museum," Oswin said, "I think she sounds like a wet dream. These medical professionals, honestly – it's the thing which always made Flek so alluring. And you can't say that the fact she's a doctor isn't the hottest thing about Martha Jones – and she's a girl who can set things on fire with her mind. Anyway, I like Cohen, and more than that I like that she seems to be making Nios quite happy so far. Happier than I've ever seen her, at any rate. And while it may sadden me that my own brilliant charms never made Nios smile so much-"

"You haven't got any charms."

"Shut up, Clara. Like I was saying. While it may sadden me, I'm still glad that Nios has found love. Even if it is a very weird kind of love with a girl who keeps dead organic specimens in jars of formaldehyde in her flat, or so I hear."

"Huh. Cute. But – Jenny's always on the TARDIS. You miss her too?" Clara asked, watching Oswin carefully. Oswin deliberated for some time, long enough that Clara decided to say something else. "I see her all the time when she comes looking for her father."

"She… told me something she made me promise not to tell you…" Oswin began, feeling guilty already. Clara took a sip from whatever was in her stein, which made her flinch. Then she took another sip. Oswin hoped it wasn't too strong, but Clara actually had a relatively high tolerance for alcohol. And she only got nastily drunk when she had tequila. Luckily, there was no tequila in sight. "I'll tell you if you promise not to say anything to the Doctor. And I mean that, Clara. If you don't promise you don't get to know."

"I promise," said Clara. Oswin didn't know if she trusted her. Clara might just tell the Doctor without even realising it was supposed to be a secret – god knew that Oswin would do the same thing where Adam Mitchell was concerned. She told him everything and she didn't think twice. She often did the same with Clara. "What's going on?"

"Well – you know – sometimes she texts me when Ravenwood is asleep at odd hours of the morning," said Oswin, "And she was telling me she… she's thinking about maybe leaving the TARDIS to go live in the village. To be closer to Other You. But you can't tell the Doctor – she'll tell him when she decides and in her own way, alright? She'd kill me if he found out about this from anyone but her."

"…I sort of wish you hadn't told me now. I don't like keeping things from him."

"You're perfectly capable of keeping things from him – just look at how much time you spent drooling over Thirteen," Oswin pointed out. Clara didn't like people bringing up Thirteen though, even Oswin. She didn't even like thinking about Thirteen herself. "And you're not keeping things, really. She'll tell him when she's ready. Don't let him hear it second-hand."

"That's why you're in a mood, then? Because Jenny might be going? It is quite upsetting; I love staring at Jenny. I'd hate if I couldn't stare at her anymore."

"You can't just stare at women."

"She reminds me of her mother."

"Eurgh, don't be creepy," Oswin shook her head, "How much of that appalling sandwich have you got left, then? We are supposed to be doing something. It's one of your useless Echoes who's gotten themselves into trouble. I'm not the one who made a million time-clones of myself."

"There aren't a million of them – and be nicer, won't you? You don't have to get so jealous."

"I do not get jealous," Oswin scoffed unconvincingly.

"You're totally jealous. You want my attention all to yourself."

"If I wanted your undivided attention that badly I need only go talk to myself in a mirror."

"You never know, you might like this one," Clara said.

"I don't like any of them…" Oswin muttered, shifting her weight in her chair. Sprite jumped down from her shoulder onto the table, freaking Clara out, but he was only going to examine the Echoculum further. Oswin watched him carefully.

"I thought you liked Cara?"

"Cara? I never even knew her when she was alive, I've only seen her corpse," said Oswin, "You're getting them mixed up now. Next thing you'll be getting me and the Vict-whore-ian confused, or worse, me and Eyeball. I hate her."

"Why? What did she ever do to you?"

"It's what she did to Flek," Oswin said quietly.

"Flek? What – you mean marrying her?" And Oswin realised that she had not had the opportunity to update Clara on the finer points of Eyeball's love-life. She had been too busy pre-emptively getting sad about Jenny leaving, or trying to cheer Flek up about everything that had happened. And actually, she had spent quite a lot of the previous day doing nothing in particular with Adam Mitchell, but he had taken up a lot of her focus.

"No, I mean dumping her," said Oswin.

"Wait, what?"

"Eyeball left. She broke Flek's engagement ring, stole a Remnant shuttle, and ran away from Eslilia," Oswin said "I found out the day before last. Flek's really-"

"Say," their conversation was completely interrupted by a burly lizard-looking guy with very dark green scales and four arms, wearing what looked like a fabric captain's hat only with some strange symbols on it neither of them recognised. Sprite scuttled back up Oswin's arm to hide behind her shoulder, while she herself took hold of her cane to make sure it didn't fall into the wrong hands. Clara, however, wasn't in the remotest sense perturbed. She instead smiled politely. "Do I know you from somewhere?" He looked between both of them with six beady, red eyes.

"I don't know, do you?" Clara asked, "If you've seen us around, we'll be very interested to hear about it." He crossed his arms, all four of them, casting a huge shadow over the Twins and their table, like he was waiting for an explanation. Clara took it upon herself to give him one. "We're part of a series of clones," she lied, "We don't know how many of us there are, or who we're clones of, but we heard that there might be one of us on this rock somewhere."

"Why would someone manufacturing clones let any of them get away?" he questioned.

"We're botched," said Clara, then she rolled up her sleeve and revealed the patches of scar tissue and old blisters packed together and ruining the skin on her left arm, making it unusually patterned and shiny. Oswin easily continued the lie, by rapping the bottom of her cane on her leg.

"And I've got a prosthetic here," she said, "One fake leg, one mangled leg. We're faulty. No-one wants faulty clones. You wouldn't happen to know where we might find our dear sister, would you, by any chance?"

"I haven't seen anyone with a face like yours around these parts. What gives you the impression there's someone on the Island?" Now other people were beginning to take notice of this colourful exchange. Oswin couldn't tell if they were welcome or not. Mostly everybody there was a drifter as well, very few people actually stayed on the Island for long. Clara nodded at the Echoculum to indicate it.

"Rudimentary DNA tracker," she said, "Very basic." 'I'm offended,' Oswin thought to her, which took Clara gloriously by surprise. They so rarely used the mind-patch to communicate anymore, instead opting for the more conventional forms of communication like texts, or even talking face to face like cavemen. "Can't pinpoint anything. Any help you can give us would be much appreciated."

"I might know something," he said, scrutinising them both. "If you do something for me in return." 'He's totally gonna ask for sexual favours.' Clara kicked Oswin again, and went on smiling at the sailor-lizard.

"What can we do you for?" she said.

"I heard what you were speaking of," he said, "Matters of the heart." Then he rested his gigantic hands, just two of them, on the table and leant down to speak in a low voice, his reptilian face grizzled and covered in scars with a very potent smell coming from his breath. "What do you get a woman?"

"…Excuse me?" Clara asked.

"To let her know your true feelings."

"Finger her," said Oswin immediately.

"You shut up!" Clara ordered her.

"That's what I do," then she held up her right hand, holding her ring finger down with her thumb while the other three fingers stood tall, and said knowingly, "You want two in the pink and one in the stink," she winked at the reptile.

"I said shut up. No one wants to hear anything you have to say."

"Girls do. When I finger them."

"You haven't touched a girl for years."

"Erm, excuse you! I've touched myself plenty," Oswin declared, like this were something to brag about. Clara shook her head as her sister sat there smugly.

"Maybe, um… get her some flowers?" Clara said, "Or just tell her."

"Tell her?" the lizard was perplexed.

"Just tell her you like her."

"I need a gift," he said. He was very firm that he needed a gift to woo this mystery woman, and Clara was going to do her best to think of what this gift could be. She was a romantic at heart, and couldn't resist helping people find love.

"Not flowers?"

"There are no flowers on the island."

"You could… make some? If you make some out of, like, paper or something, they won't die, they'll be around forever," she said.

"Or you could get her a rock, there's plenty of rocks around here," Oswin piped up again. Clara scowled at her. "What? I wouldn't say no to a really cool rock, personally. Or something cute. My boyfriend loves cute things, like animals. I hate them myself."

"What use is a boyfriend?"

"He's got a point, Os," said Clara.

"Oi!" Oswin protested, "You've got a husband."

"But I've slept with tons of women. You've slept with, like, two. You could get her a drink?" Clara suggested to the lizard, "A nice bottle of wine always goes down well. Or cocktails. What kind of things does she like?"

"Murder," said the lizard. Clara was startled.

"Right then. Well. Maybe… I don't want to suggest that you should murder someone for her-" He hit one of his hands on the table triumphantly and then grinned very broadly, revealing at least three rows of razor-sharp, shark-like, pink-stained teeth. Clara really hoped he hadn't just decided to murder them. He wouldn't get very far. She'd already defeated one giant humanoid lizard, she was sure she could manage another one.

"I will get her something cute," he said, "A trophy. I will bring her the bleeding head of an Ungler."

"Fantastic," Clara smiled very uneasily, "So glad we could help." She did not ask about the sentience of an 'Ungler', if it was simple wildlife or another advanced species this sailor had a problem with. She didn't want to know.

"What can you tell us about the clone?" Oswin implored.

"A ship crashed a ways to the west in recent days," he explained, "Looked to be in bad shape. There's been talk of people going to salvage, those kind wouldn't spare a creature the likes of you on their hunt. If I were you, I'd make haste. Many thanks for your advice; if you ever need help, you've a friend on this Island now." He nodded at them and then lumbered away with heavy footsteps. He reminded Oswin of Killer Croc.

"Actually," Clara called after him, and he turned slowly to look at them again, "You don't have a lamp we could borrow?"

And just like that, they were dispatched into the bleak landscape of the Island, after their friendly pirate-sounding lizard man had given them an old and rusty electric crank lantern. It was very dark outside and hard to see, stuck in a permanent night cycle because the Island didn't have a normal rotation pattern. Along with that, gaseous deposits and geysers littering the surface meant it was covered in bad-smelling and icy cold mist, which was already playing havoc with Clara's hair and she was wishing she hadn't tried to do anything to it that morning. She had wasted an entire ten minutes straightening it – and for what? Nothing. At least she had brought a coat.

"Maybe we should go back and abandon the Clecho," Oswin said, "It's nasty out here." It was, the entire 'Island' was covered in piteous liquid deposits which resembled lakes but were full of dark-coloured and dirty chemicals being ejected from whatever lay beneath the rocky surface. "This terrain is very hard to walk on."

"Shouldn't have blown yourself up then, should you?"

"No. The next time I try to kill myself I'll be sure to do it properly," said Oswin dryly.

"Sweetheart, that's not funny."

"You brought it up," Oswin pointed out. And Clara had brought it up. She sighed and let go of the lantern she had been carrying, leaving it to float in the air beside them. Sprite watched this with amazement, and Clara quirked an eyebrow at the little mechanical centipede as she searched her coat pockets for a cigarette, her third one of the day.

"I'm running low…" she grumbled.

"Perfect opportunity to quit," said Oswin. Then with a wave of her arm – which was purely for show – she brought up her vivid green holographic displays, showing Clara a myriad of complex graphs she hadn't a cat in hell's chance of understanding, "I'd advise against you smoking here. The air content is already so appalling and there's quite a dangerous amount of solar radiation." Clara looked Oswin dead in the eyes, and then lit her cigarette anyway. "I don't know why you have to be like this…"

"I could literally say the same thing to you. Anyway. I'll heal."

"Don't get cocky with the healing, cutie," Oswin said, dismissing the graphs and adjusting her grip on her cane while Sprite still clung to her shoulder, "You get too reliant on it and you'll get very reckless and start running into danger."

"As opposed to limping into danger? Like you?" Clara retorted, blowing a stream of smoke at Oswin. Oswin stuck her tongue out. "Mature." Then Oswin reached over and flicked Clara's ear. "Ow! What was that for!?"

"You're being annoying. You're literally the most annoying person, like ever." Clara rubbed her ear and glared.

"You're being naughty today."

"Don't you like me when I'm naughty?" Oswin said sultrily, giving Clara a very exaggerated and deliberate wink. Clara set off walking again, but made sure to elbow Oswin sharply in her stomach when she walked past. "Nice. And I'm the immature one."

"You never finished telling me about Eyeball and Flek, anyway."

"No, I got distracted by Lizard Daddy back there. Do you think he can shoot blood out of his eyes? I hear some lizards do that. It would really turn me on."

"You are disgusting."

"And I'm all yours. Isn't that precious?" It was Oswin's cane, which had a built-in compass along with a few dozen other gadgets she had yet to reveal, which was keeping them heading west. They were going west and trying to use the Echoculum as a kind of radar, but it wasn't working too well. The next course of action would be to try and pick up any distress beacons, and failing that maybe a metal detector would be the best course of action. If it was a crashed spaceship they were looking for.

"What happened, though?" Clara asked seriously.

"Oh. It was sort of my fault."

"Your fault? What did you do…?"

"Uh, existed. More or less. Look, it turns out that Flek was only going out with Eyeball because she reminded her of me. And that's not my self-esteem talking-"

"Your vanity."

"Your hypocrisy," Oswin snapped, getting her to be quiet. "Anyway, I never liked Eyeball. Or Ressy. And now what? She's broken Flek's heart? Nobody should get away with that."

"I feel like you did a very similar thing, did you not?"

"Hey, there were very valid reasons why I broke up with Flek, but… look, Flek needs to find a new girlfriend who agrees with all of her ideological principles. Fundamentally, she's a good person. Too good. Like Mitchell. And she's living on Eslilia with a whole group of people who believe in her and look up to her and respect her – but she's drawn to these ones who are bad for her. Me included. Not that I'm a bad girlfriend. Or maybe I am – but I try my best. Even if Adam is… you know."

"I don't know," Clara said, "What is he?"

"Lacking in confidence. Not very self-assured. He doesn't even like me seeing him naked – which is cute, but it does worry me. I don't like the idea of him beating himself up so much about something as arbitrary as body image – but we were talking about Flek," Oswin said, getting side-tracked when Adam Mitchell was brought up, though she had brought him up herself. "I love Flek, I care about her a lot, and I want her to be happy. Not that I'm in love with her, I'm not anymore. But you can't just flick a switch and make all of your feelings for somebody evaporate, and being stuck in an imaginary spaceship on your own for a year isn't the best environment to try and get over a serious relationship."

"You clearly have managed to get over it, since you've moved on now and you have Adam," Clara said.

"Yeah, but Flek's on a staggered timeline to me, she's over a decade older now when we used to be almost the same age. Even Fyn is older than me – do you know how weird that is? Your baby brother suddenly being in his thirties when you're permanently frozen at twenty-six?"

"As weird as your stepdaughter falling in love with a version of you from a different universe?" Clara suggested. Oswin laughed.

"So you do find it weird."

"Well – no – not exactly – it just seems odd."

"Are 'odd' and 'weird' not synonyms?"

"Not in this context," said Clara, watching the ground beneath them carefully as she walked. She was keeping a very watchful gaze on Oswin and this rocky, uneven terrain; Oswin had a hard enough time walking on the flat corridors of the TARDIS, let alone on some desolate and foggy asteroid covered in lakes made of acid. "It's just that – it was always you she was infatuated with."

"Who?" Oswin asked. She, too, had been watching her steps carefully, and during the pause had lost track of the conversation. Clara was still smoking, but regretting it.

"Jenny. For a bit, she was kind of obsessed with you," said Clara.

"No, no. It wasn't like that. It's… complicated."

"Excuse me? Do you have something going on with her?" Clara inquired wryly.

"No!" Oswin protested, "Nothing."

"Because there's a rumour going round that Nios caught you making out in your lab."

"There's what? Who told you that?"

"Martha."

"Martha? How did she hear about it? This is ridiculous, it's not even true. She was soldering circuitry for Sprite and I was leaning over her because I didn't want her and her gammy thumb to mess it up," Oswin said.

"Well, I didn't believe it," said Clara, "If I believed it I would have come to talk to you about it."

"Look, the thing with Jenny is just… you know. There's a mutual… attraction. What do you want me to say? The girl is dreamy."

"Oh, that I can't deny, she's out of this world. Literally."

"Why did you bring this up, again?"

"Because she always had a thing for you, and then suddenly she fell in love with me. I find it odd because actual Me-me barely spoke to her," Clara said, "And then she's off doing all these romantic things. Where did it spring from?"

"Sex, I assume," said Oswin, "I totally have a theory it's just because you look like me, though."

"I'm the original here."

"Yeah, yeah. Other You is the next best thing to yours truly. We're physically identical, except she has two legs and those sexy fangs. Just as morbid and traumatised – has a whole slew of weird, repressed memories, too. I think it's our collective wit and charm Jenny fell for. And," Oswin said, then she paused and pointed at her own face, "Dimples." They were stopped now, out in the middle of nowhere, with the dark sky above and only the bleak light of the lamp Clara was still floating along with them. Clara was looking at her. "Do you want something?"

"I've missed you."

"How romantic – I'm swooning. Is this the part where you get down on one knee and ask me to marry you? I'd do it myself, but I've only got the one knee to start with, and as much as I love going down on girls my leg doesn't really bend in the right way anymore," Oswin said. Clara shook her head.

"Do you have to ruin everything?"

"Yes. You just said you've missed me, do you take it back?"

"I wish I took it back," Clara muttered, beginning to walk again, "How far away do you think this crash site is? It's so hard to see anything out here. Maybe we should have got the TARDIS to scan."

"It's a very small asteroid," said Oswin, "And we won't get lost, we've got a compass, and I'm tracking our movements with the Sphere. We could scour and map the whole Island if it came down to it." Oswin might complain immensely about having to do anything to aid the Echoes, but she was still doing everything she could, which made Clara happy.

"Alright, good. I'm worried."

"Don't be; the Echoculum is still pink," Oswin said, "So, like I said, there's no immediate danger. And it's a small rock."

"Tell me something – do you ever miss the Dream?"

"That joint acid trip of ours? Do I miss it? Which bits of it might I miss? The part where I broke my ankle and literally still had to limp around on it for the rest of the day? Which – I might add – was actually more painful than the pain I was in after I woke up from the bomb detonation that took my leg off to begin with." Oswin did have a bad habit of rambling, Clara noted. She wondered if she shared it; she had never noticed. "Do you miss it?" Clara shrugged. "I think you need to revaluate things, to be quite honest. Have you forgotten how traumatic the stuff in that asylum was?" she became unusually sombre and serious, "How you have a new nightmare now?"

"That nightmare comes from the Frir," said Clara, referring to the bad taste that was her dream where she found Oswin dead in the electroshock therapy chair of Happy Views Hospital, with Clara's name scratched into her forearm to indicate that Oswin's murder had all been her fault. "And some of it was alright."

"I thought the whole thing was awful."

"But good came from it."

"Like what?"

"Like us, getting close to each other."

"Close to each other? Do you hear yourself sometimes? And you wonder why people think we're having an illicit love affair. 'Close to each other' – unbelievable," Oswin shook her head.

"But, really, I love you-"

"Ew, gross, you're making it worse."

"Not in a creepy way, shut up. You know that I care about you more than anybody else, the Doctor included, and I just think that if it wasn't for the Dream that wouldn't have happened. And I wouldn't care about my Echoes, just like Ravenwood doesn't care about hers. And that's why I maybe think the Dream was a good thing. I got my sister out of it." Oswin didn't say anything, she was looking down at the ground. "Oswin?" Clara asked, "I'm really not trying to sound incest-y about-"

"Stop going on about incest, will you? Shh," Oswin ordered her, then Clara realised she had not been looking at the ground, she had been looking at her cane, a light on top of which had begun to blink green at rather long intervals. When Clara focused, she could her it bleeping as well.

"What's that?"

"It's picking up a distress signal," Oswin said, "Likely from a downed spaceship. Within a hundred-metre radius."

"Are you lying?"

"I – what? Of course I'm not lying! Why on Titan would I lie!?"

"I don't know – because you think it's funny?"

"It isn't funny, though."

"How am I supposed to know what you think is funny?"

"Because we're the same person."

"But you're deranged."

"People are right with what they say about us."

"About the incest?"

"Not about the bloody incest! Stop mentioning incest! Eurgh! About how they struggle to believe that we can actually get anything done when we're together."

"Oh. Done about what?"

"About the distress signal. Pay attention, woman. I'm not scanning the area for the good of my health, you know. It's this way. Keep your eye out for a big spaceship, would you?" Oswin ordered her, limping away again. Sprite crawled down the side of her body and onto the ground, scurrying a few feet in front of them. Clara assumed he was following the signal as well. Her cigarette was burned down about halfway and it was icy cold out there; she hoped it was warmer on the spaceship. The only source of warmth was the lantern in her hand, but it wasn't enough to keep her fingers from freezing.

"So, you hate those kittens, then?" Clara asked, watching Sprite.

"That's a random question."

"Is it all animals?"

"Animals spread pathogens and disease and are unhygienic. They're unintelligent and you have to clean up after them. Where's the appeal?"

"Funny."

"What?"

"You like babies," Clara said, "I remember you talking about your nephew, and how you raised some of your brothers. They're unintelligent and you have to clean up after them."

"They're little people!" Oswin protested, "They're all tiny and you get to watch them grow. Like flowers. But I don't like flowers. I like babies because they don't know I'm clever."

"Why do you care if people know you're clever? You boast about it constantly," Clara said.

"Babies just want, you know, affection or milk or to go to sleep or something. They don't expect you to be astounding all the time or to do all these things. And they take up loads of your attention," Oswin said. Clara had never seen this side of her sister before, but quite liked listening to her talk as they followed Sprite along.

"Os," she began, "When you were still alive – did you want kids?"

"I never had time to think about having kids," Oswin said, "Had my brothers, then the war, it was all sort of going on at once. I never spoke to Flek about it, just like I never spoke to Flek about marrying her. Things are different when there's a war on, you know."

"No war on now," said Clara, studying her cigarette to try and work out exactly how much she had left of it. Hopefully it would last until they reached this spaceship. Oswin smiled.

"So what? I'm a hologram and my boyfriend can't get it up because he's frozen."

"You could still get married. How long have you been together now?"

"One-hundred-and-five days," Oswin said, "Three-and-a-half months. Nowhere near long enough to think about getting married." Clara nudged her in the shoulder with her elbow. "What?"

"Do you think about getting married?"

"To Mitchell?" Oswin questioned.

"Obviously to him. Or – if you were still alive, might you want kids?"

"Marriage? And children? With-?" and then she laughed very uneasily in a way Clara was very familiar with. It was the way Clara laughed when somebody asked her an awkward question she didn't know how to answer. Or when Sally Sparrow talked to her, in which case she also didn't know how to answer because she often forgot how to do everything around Sally Sparrow. Sprite came to Oswin's rescue by beeping and indicating by pointing with his entire body the way a gundog might.

The Twins looked in the direction Sprite pointed and saw something dark looming out of the Island's dense and salty fog. It really did remind Clara of rime from the sea, and was queerly familiar to her and her seaside origins. It was a crashed spaceship alright, Clara had seen enough of them to know for sure.

"This is totally like Alien," said Oswin.

"You'd better hope it's nothing like Alien. I remember the last time anything remotely to do with Alien happened."

"You weren't even there."

"I can visualise Jenny getting ripped open and having her eyes gouged out without having to see it, thank you very much," Clara said, beginning to approach the big ship, which didn't have very many defining features. She didn't recognise where it was from, but she hadn't expected to. She didn't even know what year it was, after all.

"You visualise Jenny a lot, then?"

"Who doesn't?" she said, "Now then, my sweet-"

"Ew." They were stood at the very edge of the wreckage, and Clara flicked her cigarette butt down into the gorge around it, the crater it had created when it crashed. The air still smelt of fuel and fire. It must have crashed relatively recently; the last few days.

"-Do you need any help to get down there?"

"Help how?" she asked, "Are you going to carry me over the threshold? Darling, people will surely talk." Clara hit her arm. "…Yes, help would be nice, actually…" Clara held out her arm for Oswin to take and she did, and they began a very careful and precarious descent towards the hulking mass of the downed ship.

"What kind of ship is it, anyway?" Clara asked, watching their feet. Sprite still walked just in front of them, guiding them down the easiest path he could find. He really was quite useful; he was growing on Clara.

"It's a short-range shuttle," Oswin said, "For quickly getting to planet surface's, can't manage for long in outer space on their own. Probably why it crashed."

"So why would someone be flying it out here? You said this system is more or less desolate."

"It is, there aren't any planets in the Goldilocks Zone here at all, just the Island and that's barely habitable." Oswin wobbled and nearly tripped, Clara having to steady her. Stopping Oswin from falling over was probably the only useful thing she ever did with her telekinesis; which was quite ridiculous considering it was so powerful. Well, that and making their lantern float alongside them because she wanted both hands free to help her inept sister. "It could have been commandeered and used as a makeshift escape vessel, but it could also have been taken out by some idiot kids for a joy-ride and now they're paid the-" she stumbled again and swore when she was forced to briefly put weight on her crippled leg, before Clara held her up again. "Look at us, we're useless."

"We're doing fine, I'll keep you safe. Promise."

"A very easy promise to keep being as I'm already dead."

"Doesn't eliminate any of the sincerity, sweetheart." They didn't talk much more as they traversed the sheer slope made of jutting rock and melted shards of metal from the wreckage. It took an entire five minutes to walk a comparably small distance and reach the edge of this ship, but as it was Clara didn't think she could see any doors. Oswin tapped her in the shin with her cane. "What?"

"Hole over there," Oswin nodded, and Sprite went on a head to plot another awkward course until they reached a gaping hole in the side of the ship which was so dark Clara hadn't spotted it on her own. "That's weird," Oswin said when they were close to it.

"Big hole in a crashed spaceship?"

"Look at the edges," she said, "The metal is curving outwards."

"So?"

"So it was broken from the inside, and it doesn't look like there are any fuel tanks here that could have exploded," Oswin said, "I wonder what got out."

"Hmm… well, whatever it is, we're going in," said Clara, and then she lifted Oswin up to half-carry her into the person-sized hole, despite her protests. Inside, everything was dark and wonky, the ship crashed on an angle. It looked to her like they were walking along the walls. Oswin struggled to push Clara's hands away as Sprite crawled up onto her arm again. Clara raised her lamp to get a look around, and Oswin activated the light on her Sphere, but there was little of note. "Have you really never thought about you and Adam getting married?" Oswin didn't know what to say. She didn't want to lie to Clara, but she didn't want to talk about her relationship, either.

"Isn't this something I should really talk to him about?" she said.

"I'm interested, I like knowing what's going on with you. And I like Adam."

"Maybe you should marry him, then," Oswin muttered as they began to creep through the corridors. "I have thought about kids. About how… if we were normal, you know, I think we'd be good parents. Or he would be, I don't know about me… but honestly, this is personal. And we've never talked about it. I love you, but if this is something I'm going to talk about I should really be talking to Mitchell first. Besides, I've got my computers. And I still feel like I'm babysitting Nios sometimes. And you, when you get lonely and force us to spend time together."

"I like spending time with you."

"Because you're a narcissist, we know. Anyway, I think we should be going-" there was a buzzing sound and then a click which Clara recognised as a tannoy system being tapped into and activated. At first glance it didn't look like the ship had much power at all, but maybe it was just struggling by on backups.

"You have to go left," said a voice. Not just any voice, Clara's voice (and Oswin's). "I'm desperate to see with my own two eyes that you two are what you look and sound like."

"You can see us?" Clara called into thin air, unable to see any cameras or speakers. But given the shadows and the gloom, that didn't surprise her.

"Of course I can see you, the ship still has enough power to emit a distress beacon. I'm a genius – do you really think I wouldn't know how to access the cameras? I'm holed up in the cockpit with the auxiliary generators maintaining a lockdown, in case of attack," the voice of the Clecho told them. Clara turned to look at Oswin with a smirk.

"What?" asked Oswin, but Oswin knew what. Clara said nothing. "Shut up." Clara laughed at her.

"Is this the Dalek Asylum or what?"

"You weren't even there!" she protested.

"My husband tells me things! And so do you. I know what happened. This is what happened."

"Probably not, there's probably not going to be any weird twist like they're actually a Dalek. Or maybe this one will be a Cyberman, who knows?" Oswin said coldly.

"And here you thought you were unique."

"I am unique!"

"You're getting jealous already, I can feel it. Upset that your style is being cramped."

"Okay, I am the smartest girl in the universe, Clara. My style cannot be cramped. It's uncrampable. I'm so hard to cramp that I'm practically menopausal."

"Left, she said?" Clara asked, knowing full-well that left was what she had said. Oswin scowled and limped behind her with Sprite lurking on her shoulder. At least Sprite would never replace her with some other isolated genius girl stuck on a random planetoid. She could rely on him. He wasn't two-faced, like Clara. "Does the Echoculum go green for jealousy?"

"The Echoculum doesn't detect jealousy," Oswin muttered. "Anyway, maybe I'll start quizzing you on your relationship."

"Which aspect of my relationship?"

"I don't know. How big is his dick?"

"I wish you would stop asking me that – I'm not going to tell you. It's an invasion of his privacy."

"I'll tell you what's an invasion – he's seen me naked," said Oswin, "He's slept with me, like, a thousand times. He has licked-"

"Shut up! No he hasn't. And by that logic, I should have a right to know all the most intimate details about what your boyfriend has in his pants."

"You'd love to know."

"But I know better than to ask. Now behave yourself, I'm trying to come up with the best way to make this Echo my new best friend – I'm getting a bit tired of the one I have at the moment." Before Oswin could think of something incredibly smart, witty, and hilarious to say in response to that jibe, Clara stumbled right across the door for the cockpit. She knocked on this door. "Could you let us in?"

"Of course I could," said the disembodied Clecho voice, "I'm a genius." Oswin was beginning to feel quite stung. What if this girl was exactly like her, but an undamaged her who had both her legs? Wasn't mentally problematic? And then – god forbid – what if she met Adam Mitchell? Oswin was suddenly overcome with a fear that some doppelganger was going to swoop in and steal her boyfriend from underneath her. Ravenwood had already done it once by wrapping Jenny around her finger.

But Oswin's fears that they might stumble across some wholesome and perfect version of herself turned out to be completely unrealised. The doors opened automatically after the lockdown was lifted, and they tiptoed carefully into the room. It was messy, very messy, significantly messier than how Oswin had kept her daydream-cockpit on the SS Alaska. There was no hammock, either, and no mountain of ceramic dishes overflowing with burned soufflés. And, as far as she could tell, there was no Echo.

"Uh… did you say you were in here?" Clara called.

"I'm over here," said the voice, "On the floor, behind… something."

"Something?" Oswin asked.

"I don't know what it is."

"Can't you move it?"

"Not really," she said, and they followed the sound until they saw what looked like a medical gurney, big and silver with leather straps on it. It unnerved Oswin to note that these leather straps looked as though they had been ripped apart. Straps torn, the hull of the ship punched through – what were they dealing with? Clara went over to the gurney and tried to pick it up after placing her lamp on the ground, but when her eyes strayed to whatever was behind it she gasped and dropped the thing.

"What is it?" Oswin asked, limping closer. But admittedly it was even trickier for her to get around because there was so much junk strewn about the place. Plus, it was incredibly dark, with only rock and dirt visible through the front windows. Clara looked at Oswin wordlessly, then back at whatever she had found. She leant down again and this time reached to pick up something else, something which looked quite heavy. Then she held it aloft in the light of the Sphere and Oswin was just as shocked as she had been.

"It's our head in a jar," said Clara. And it was. A head in a jar.

"Hello to you, too," said the head in the jar, the head of the Clecho no less. Clara gawked at it like it was the weirdest thing she had ever seen. Maybe it was the weirdest thing she had ever seen – Oswin thought it might be the weirdest thing she had ever seen, after all. It was a very large jar full of faintly blue liquid, with wires connecting to the nerves and veins in the severed neck, keeping it alive. This was a jar specifically designed for keeping decapitated heads conscious and living, a very advanced medical device generally used for transplants.

"Wow," said Clara, "I had no idea Futurama was so accurate to life. What was that you were saying about there being no twist?"

"I'm just surprised you have an Echo with fewer limbs than me," she commented, no longer feeling quite so insignificant. Clara carried the Head over to the pilot's chair and then set it down, which annoyed Oswin because there was only the one chair empty of crap and she had rather been angling to sit in it. Her leg was aching.

"An Echo? What's this 'Echo' thing mean?"

"I thought you were a genius?" Oswin quipped, "Can't be that clever if you got your head cut off. Where's the rest of you?"

"It's a long story," the Head said.

"What's your name?" Clara asked.

"I'm Professor Ouro- I mean, I'm, err, Princess Claranna."

"You're who?" Oswin questioned.

"Princess Claranna."

"Sounded like you said 'Professor' for a moment."

"No, I'm just… well-read," said the Head.

"What are you a princess of?" Clara asked, then she said to her sister as a side-note, "Do you know Esther told me she dug up that I have an Echo who's a Pharaoh?"

"If you try to tell me that you think we're related to Cleopatra I'm going to kick you in the face."

"Hey!"

"Although, given Cleopatra's famous sexual promiscuity, I wouldn't be surprised."

"…And she was famous for being beautiful."

"Did you not hear the bit where I said I'd kick you in the face?"

"And how would you kick me in the face, my dear?" Clara challenged her. After Oswin could not think of a way to kick Clara in the face, she instead hit her very hard in the ankle with her stick. "Oi!"

"Excuse me?" the Head interrupted them, "Do you mind telling me who you are and why you look exactly like Princess Claranna?" A pause. "By which I mean me, obviously. I often talk about myself in the third person, to… keep things interesting."

"Right…" said Oswin unsurely.

"It's complicated," said Clara.

"Nothing is too complicated for my extraordinary genius."

"How were you operating the comms when you're just a head in a jar?"

"Someone left them on and the microphone fell on the floor," she explained, "I can just about see the security feeds from down here." Not as clever as she seemed then, thought Oswin smugly. 'I heard that,' Clara interjected. 'You stay out of my head, woman.' 'Sorry, you just think so loudly when you're being conceited.' Oswin glared at her. "Who are you?"

"I'm Clara, this is Oswin. I… made you."

"Made me?"

"I went through this sort of… rift, in time, only not a rift, a bit different – but I had to go through it to save somebody's life, and in doing so I created these… splinters, of myself. Echoes. Oswin's one of them, so are you," she said, "I appreciate that this is probably a shock, knowing that you exist because of somebody else's-"

"It doesn't really bother me," said the Head.

"It… doesn't? It usually bothers people."

"Pfft, maybe I'm just better than the rest of them. I'm not interested in any of that, it just sounds confusing. I've got bigger problems, in case you haven't noticed."

"Problems like what?" Clara persisted.

"Like the fact I haven't got a body?" the Head said sarcastically.

"Oh. So that's, like, a new thing?"

"Excuse me, are you actually a princess?" Oswin interjected.

"No, not technically, just some snooty little rich girl. An heiress to a large fortune. Very large. Over a quadrillion credits in inheritance has just descended to me because my grandfather died incredibly recently."

"You don't sound particularly cut up about it," Oswin commented.

"Oswin! She's probably in shock. I'd be in shock if somebody cut my head off."

"Yes, shock, exactly," said the Head. Something felt funny about this head business, though. And not just because Oswin was jealous – because she definitely wasn't remotely jealous. At all. Even with her very limited mobility she was still doing miles better than the Head of Princess Claranna. "The thing is, somebody stole my body. Or rather, my body stole itself."

"That's quite the identity crisis you've got going on," Oswin said, "How did that happen?"

"I lost my head a few years ago in a freak accident – entire body lost. It was when I came into the money that I decided to hire somebody to… help me. Only, it's just not a very accepted area of science, so I had to… outsource."

"Uh-huh."

"Long story short, the scientist I paid is dead in the corner over there," the Head said, trying to indicate with her eyes what she was seeing. Clara and Oswin both looked over and saw a pair of legs sticking out from underneath more piles of junk. "Something went wrong when he tried to wake the body and it attacked him and knocked me to the floor before running off. Now it's out there somewhere, lost and confused, and I'm in here and there's nobody to fly the ship away."

"I don't mean to disappoint you, but I don't think you have much chance of flying this ship anywhere," Oswin said, "It's a wreck."

"Shows what you know. It would be very easy to fix, if I had a body."

"So… you want us to go and find it?" Clara said.

"Yes, please."

"And then what? Perform major transplant surgery on something so strong it punched a hole in a solid metal spaceship hull?" Oswin questioned her. Clara was at a loss for what to say.

"There was some mix up with the calculations."

"Clearly." Oswin was suspicious, and nudged Sprite, who crawled away across the floor towards the deceased scientist in the corner. Oswin watched him carefully out of the corner of her eye, while Clara's attention was focused on the Head.

"We'll go find it for you," said Clara, "It's the least we can do. I know I'd want someone to help me if I was… you know."

"A head in a jar?" the Head questioned.

"…Yeah. We'll help, won't we, Os?" Clara implored her. Oswin didn't know why Clara asked her since they both knew Clara was going to insist on helping the Head anyway, but she was saved from having answer by Sprite making some beeping sounds and coming scuttling back to Oswin's side.

"What's that thing!?" the Head exclaimed.

"A micro-AI I built," Oswin said offhandedly, "Sprite says that the scientist over there isn't dead."

"Is he not?"

"He's comatose."

"Forgive me for not checking for a pulse. It would be a bit hard, since I'm a decapitated head."

"Is there anything we can do?" Clara asked Oswin. Oswin was about to speak, but was cut off.

"Just leave it, he can't help anyway. This is his mess," said the Head, "He was a rubbish scientist. This is what I get for not asking for references! It'll be a wonderful anecdote one day. Are you going to leave to go find my body now? I'm sure you don't need a description. I'd draw you a picture, but-"

"You're a head in a jar?" Oswin suggested while Clara went to retrieve the borrowed lamp from where she had left it next to the gurney. The Head fake-gasped.

"How did you know!?" Oswin glared at it.

"Come on, Os," Clara touched her arm to indicate they were leaving.

"Do you ever stop going on about being a head in a jar?" Oswin asked.

"Leaving, sweetheart," Clara said, holding the lantern, "You can quiz her later."

"But-"

"This way." And Oswin resigned herself to Clara's guidance, following her out just as Sprite crawled up onto her back again. The cockpit doors slid closed behind them, but Oswin didn't say a word, knowing that the active comms meant the Head was going to hear anything they said. Clara didn't say anything either, and Oswin was suddenly dying to know what she was thinking. Did she trust the Head? Oswin wanted to crawl into Clara's mind and dig up whatever she could, not knowing if Clara would ever share her truthful opinions of her Echoes with her. She may maintain the sentiment that Oswin was her favourite, but also looked at all of them like they were made of gold and they could do no wrong. Clara even got along with Eyeball – and Eyeball was a criminal in Oswin's mind.

"Is Flek okay?" Clara interrupted.

"…Not really," Oswin said, "I'm going to find her a girlfriend."

"Just look in a mirror."

"Ha, ha. I'm serious, it's my new project. That and… helping the Spore Remnants."

"You're what? Going to help them?" Clara asked, putting an arm around Oswin once they were out of the ship again so that she could help her up the rocky crater. "Help them do what, sweetheart?" That was her worried tone of voice. Concerned. Oswin recognised it well.

"I don't know – survive on a very hostile planet? I… Adam's going to help," she said, "He'll… if they try to get me to… you know, he'll keep me in line. In check. Safe."

"Speaking of hostile planets, any idea how we're going to find a super-strong headless body?" Clara asked her.

"Keep an eye out?" Oswin suggested, "It can't have got too far. It hasn't got a head."

"How is it even alive without a head?"

"God knows, but it's alive enough to rip open a wall. There's this phenomenon, happens to people who get lost in deserts, right? Useless people who don't know how to read stars and don't have compasses. The thing is, human beings automatically curve around when they walk. You blindfold a man and put him in a big enough field and tell him to walk straight, he'll eventually wander right back to where he started," Oswin explained. Clara finally let her go; they had reached the top of the crater.

"So, what? The body is still on the ship?"

"No, but I doubt it's strayed as far as it wanted to," she said, "Give me your husband's screwdriver."

"What makes you think I have it?" Clara asked. Oswin gave her a look. "…Fine." She reached into her pocket, the same one she kept her cigarettes in, and handed the sonic to Oswin. At the same time she also drew out her fags and lighter and lit another one up, her third of the morning.

"You're smoking more than usual," Oswin said, "Can you hold my cane?"

"Are you going to be alright to stand up?"

"I've got excellent balance in my artificial leg," said Oswin. Clara took the cane once she had put her lighter away, and Oswin knew she was also holding her up telekinetically. Sprite crawled down to the end of her arm, too big to fit into her palm, and Oswin held out the sonic to him.

"What are you doing?"

"Giving him a boost. Sprite scans the terrain automatically, I'm just increasing his range temporarily. See if there are any caves, I think a cave is our best bet. But the smoking?"

"You keep track of my smoking?"

"I worry about you," said Oswin, "When you smoke more, it means you're preoccupied."

"I'm not preoccupied by anything specific," Clara said.

"You're not thinking about your wife again, are you?"

"Well I am now… but no, I wasn't thinking about her. I'm just worried about the Doctor, if Jenny does move out. He's just got her back, you should hear the way he talks about her – like nothing else matters," said Clara, "It's sweet. Almost like he had something… missing."

"He did have something missing, his daughter he left for dead and never looked for."

"He's trying to make up for it now, Os," Clara told her sternly, "He's sincere. If that's good enough for Jenny then it should be good enough for you – it's not like you're her girlfriend. Except in your dreams."

"And what exciting dreams they are, some of my favourites," said Oswin, then she took her cane back and let Sprite drop to the ground, "He'll show us the way to any suitable caves he's found. Try not to get too out of breath. Don't cough up any lungs." They began to walk, Clara now in a bit of a mood because Oswin had criticised her for smoking. Oswin kept her eye on Sprite. "…Hey. Do you like your Echoes?"

"I like you," said Clara, "Despite, you know, your personality."

"Why do you care so much?"

"I don't know. I'm sure Sigmund Freud would love to work that out, too. Is it just guilt? Is it genuine responsibility for my creations? Is it a sort of surrogacy for the fact I can't have children in my current relationship? A way for me to emulate my deceased mother? All of the above? I think about it a lot. The Doctor asks about it. He asks me about you when he wants advice with Jenny, isn't that bizarre?"

"It is. You must be the weirdest parent in the universe."

"I don't think I'm a parent. I'm just looking out for them."

"You say you're not a parent but you still call me your daughter."

"Ah, but you're special. You're the smartest girl in the universe. Plus, it's mainly out of pity because so much bad stuff has happened to you," Clara joked.

"Thanks," Oswin nudged her playfully with her elbow, "I love being a sympathy shag. What do you think about that Head, then?"

"Princess Claranna?"

"A stupid name."

"I don't know," Clara shrugged, "Didn't seem particularly out of the ordinary by our standards."

"A severed head in a jar asking us to find its lost body didn't seem out of the ordinary?" Oswin questioned.

"As opposed to the manic-depressive Dalek living in a wonderland full of soufflés?" Clara challenged, "It's fine, Os. We'll get the body no problem. If I can fight off Rose Tyler with my telekinesis I'm sure I can fight off this thing, I doubt it's anywhere near as strong."

"I just think there's something fishy going on."

"You always think there's something fishy going on, that's nothing new," Clara sighed.

"Excuse me for being cautious – you don't think it was odd that there was a comatose bloke on the floor and she thought he was dead?"

"She had a point about not being able to check for a pulse, Os. Were you expecting…" Clara stopped talking.

"What?" Oswin asked. Clara was digging around in her pocket again after leaving the lamp floating in mid-air, and she drew out the Echoculum, which appeared to have unfurled itself in her pocket and was glowing a slightly darker shade of pink than it had been all morning. "That's odd."

"Why?"

"It means the Echo is getting more panicked."

"We should go back to the ship," Clara said.

"No, it's a proximity thing too. We couldn't use it to trace because it reacts so close to the Echoes it's practically redundant – it's a feature I couldn't get rid of, something to do with the blood," Oswin said, looking at the device as Clara held it up to her.

"So, let's go."

"No," said Oswin firmly, grabbing her elbow when she turned around, "It didn't do the proximity thing when we were close to the Head."

"So?"

"And I don't remember that Head being particularly panic-stricken. I don't think the Echoculum is detecting the Head of Princess Claranna, I think it's connected to the rogue body. Let's keep following Sprite," Oswin said, continuing to walk. But Clara didn't follow. "Clara?" She was thinking.

"…Okay, I'll trust you," she said, "But if anything happens to this Echo then I'm blaming you."

"When am I ever wrong?" said Oswin. Clara sighed and joined her again, flicking away her cigarette and plucking the lantern back out of the air, keeping the Echoculum out. Conversation dwindled again because Clara became preoccupied worrying about her Echo. Oswin was growing even more concerned now – there was definitely something afoot. She just couldn't work out what. But then she got a text, and pulled out her phone to read a message from Nios: How do you ask a girl to let you see her flat without sounding sleazy? "Hey, honey?"

"Mmhmm?"

"How do you ask a girl to let you see her flat without sounding sleazy?"

"Uh… if you ask to see something in her flat and sound really excited about it," Clara said, "Why?"

"Nios is asking me for advice," Oswin explained, writing down what Clara had said relatively awkwardly with her one hand, "I hope it goes well for her with this girl. Even if I'll get lonely."

"You've always got me."

"Together forever – the thought fills me with dread," she put her phone away, and when she looked up again she saw that they were on a downwards path through the icy gloom of the Island towards a dark opening, still being led by Sprite. Oswin clicked her fingers and Sprite returned to her side in a flash, scuttling onto her shoulder again. She didn't want this 'body' to decide to grab and mangle him. "Almost as much dread as going into this creepy cave."

"I'll hold your hand if you like."

"Don't you dare."

"What? I can't just hold your hand and have it be in a normal, non-incest-y way?"

"No, you can't. Stay over there."

"We've slept in the same bed before but god forbid I touch you."

"That," Oswin rounded on her, "Was because you had one of your nightmares and were very upset about it. There was nothing untoward and I don't appreciate this turn of-"

"Shit, Os," Clara grabbed her shoulders to force her to turn around and look into the mouth of the cave. It wasn't as deep as it had initially appeared, and something within was moving, it caught the light of Clara's lamp. Clara raised the lamp high above their heads and Oswin stayed very close as they edged into the gloom. "Hello?" Clara called out to it.

"Headless bodies don't have ears, you know," said Oswin, "Or mouths, or eyes, or noses – or any way to understand or communicate with the world around them."

"Well, Helen Keller was deaf and blind and she still learnt how to write," said Clara.

"Helen Keller still had a brain," said Oswin, "This thing is…" The 'thing' itself came shuffling towards them now, with the lantern illuminating it. It looked just like them, this body, only a little bit battered and it was wearing nothing save for a grimy surgical gown like it had escaped from an ICU. How did it know where they were? How could it sense the light? How was it even alive? She actually wished she had Flek there to try and shed some light on this medical mystery, as the dumb thing staggered towards them. Clara left the lantern suspended in thin air again and approached the thing with hardly a notion of caution. "Wait, honey, maybe you should be careful…" But Clara walked right up and took the thing by its shoulders as though she was going to look into its face. Of course, it didn't have a face to look at.

"This is the Echo," Clara said, "There's a connection. Do you feel it?"

"They're not my Echoes. I only have the bond with you, not the others. That's how it works. But I think the Echoculum would agree with you."

"How does that work, though?" said Clara, "If this body was grown, in a lab, by a scientist, in the last few days-"

"Who ever said that your time-splinters have to be born and raised in a conventional way?" Oswin said, "As far as I can see, there aren't a lot of rules for this kind of thing. Seems like you're the only one stupid enough to jump into the Doctor's time stream. All so that you could get your leg over. Was it worth it?"

"Shag of a lifetime on a daily basis – of course it was worth it."

"I'm glad to see you have your priorities in order, Clary."

"She clearly recognises us," Clara said, "Or me, at least. As a friend. Probably the bond, right?"

"Probably," said Oswin. She was keeping her distance, leaning both hands on her cane in front of her, Sprite perched timidly on the back of her shoulder. She was thinking. "It must have a consciousness, somewhere."

"Is that possible?"

"Are you forgetting that Donna and Amy don't even have their brains in their heads anymore? They were removed by quack robot doctors form another universe pretending to be Martians?"

"…Yes, actually, I did forget that."

"So, yes, it's possible to be connected to your brain but not have your brain in your body. I'm just a digital consciousness in a floating box, after all, and Helix doesn't have what you'd call a 'brain,' he lives inside a server cloud… I've got an idea, can you help me sit down?"

"Sure, of course," Clara said, letting go of the Echo's body, which made the Echo wave its arms like it was looking for her to cling to, but Oswin needed assistance now. Clara helped her sit down on the floor and she tried not to think about how dirty it was all the while, then the Sphere appeared out of thin-air and fell, where Oswin caught it easily. It made Clara jump. Oswin was still in possession of the sonic, and Sprite crawled onto the top of her head to get a look at what she was doing. "What are you trying to do?"

"Exploit this connection it has with its brain," Oswin said, "I have a theory that there's more technology at play here than meets the eye. In case you're forgetting, I'm talking to you right now without a head. Or any other body part, really. Except the fake leg."

"But you've only got one Sphere."

"Well, you know what they say, honey. A problem shared is a problem halved." Oswin sonicked the Sphere at that moment, after fidgeting with her settings and scanning and typing some code very quickly on her hologramatic keyboard. It was not a pleasant experience, having to free up some of the processing space in her Sphere she kept for her own cognitive functions. And having an IQ of three-hundred-and-fifty, Oswin Oswald had an abundance of cognitive functions. It was painful, to put it lightly, and the Body convulsed while Oswin's image flickered, and Clara didn't know which of them to fawn over. The Body collapsed and Clara only just managed to cushion its fall with telekinesis, also feeling the pain through both of her Echoes present. It reminded her of when Eleven had 'installed' the mind-patch connecting she and Oswin. God, that was a long time ago now…

"What happened? Where am I? Who are you? I don't know where I am," said the voice of the Echo, sounding mechanical as it drifted out of Oswin's Sphere.

"Oh, what a nostalgia-fest this is turning out to be," Clara muttered, remembering the time when the Great Intelligence had sucked her into its Cloud. It was probably a very similar thing. She had a headache now, and rubbed the side of her skull, but it didn't alleviate anything. She sank to the ground too, and all three of them were then sitting there on the dirty floor of an alien cave, trying to get to the bottom of a mystery.

"I can see! But I haven't got a head – but how am I talking – how am I doing anything – oh my stars, I can see myself! Is that me? I haven't got a head!"

"Yes, you haven't got a head, well done, top marks for observation," Oswin grumbled. She was not enjoying sharing her Sphere, not at all. The sooner this was over with, the better.

"It's complicated," said Clara to the Echo, unsure if she should direct her gaze at the Body or at the Sphere, "We found your head, we spoke to it."

"That's not me," said the Echo, "I mean, it's – it's my head, but it's not me in there."

"Then who is it?" Clara persisted.

"Professor Ouroboros."

"Now it makes sense why the Head nearly told us that was its name," Oswin pointed out.

"Right, but, how is some professor inside your head?"

"Shit!" Oswin exclaimed, "The body on the floor! The comatose body! That must be this 'professor' bloke."

"He's trying to steal my identity," said the Echo, "My name is Claranna Oswinius, my grandfather passed away just recently and left me the heir of the entire Oswinius Transport Company, the biggest interstellar commercial transport company in this quarter of the universe." So she was a railway baron – or at least, the granddaughter of a railway baron. That explained why she was so rich, Clara thought. "That phoney professor is after my fortune by trying to pretend to be me!"

"So, how did you lose your head?" Clara asked.

"There was a woman, called the Doctor, and a freak accident. She was doing something, I don't remember, but I do know I saw a girl who looked just like me by her side. She warned me to get out of the way, but I was so intrigued… I'm not sure what happened. It was one of my own shuttles, I think, crashed into me. My head was the only part of me they could save, thanks to this Doctor. But I never saw her again," Claranna explained. Clara felt a pang of guilt. Whatever the accident was that was going to remove Claranna's head, Clara was going to bear witness to it in the next few decades at some point. At least she knew in advance that things were going to be alright – that was, if they could fix whatever had happened to the Body and the Head.

"Nice to see wifey is still getting into trouble," Oswin quipped.

"Oswin, shush," Clara ordered her.

"I don't understand why you look like me."

"Yeah… the thing is, I sort of… made you. The girl who looked like you stood next to this Doctor, that was probably me. Or, it will be me, in my future," Clara said, "We're time travellers. I'm married to the Doctor."

"Made me?"

"By jumping into the Doctor's time stream. I made copies of myself designed to save the Doctor's life across history. We call them Echoes. This is Oswin, she's an Echo as well," Clara said. The Body stayed still and the voice stayed silent. "I know this is a lot to take in, like I'm trying to tell you you're not who you think you are – but whatever identity you've made for yourself, that's you, and whoever raised you, they're your parents. And I'm here now to look after you when it matters, and try and fix the mess this Professor Ouroboros made."

"…Do you know what's happened to me?"

"My best guess is the wires have been crossed," said Oswin, though she was still struggling to think, "It's my brain-space you're sharing right now, by the way, and my Sphere you're using to talk to us. I think your consciousness and the consciousness of this Ouroboros are competing for control of that head. Whatever he was trying to do didn't work very well."

"We'll help you, I promise," said Clara, "I'm sorry about everything that's happened to you, about your head being cut off because of the Doctor. But it doesn't make you invalid as a person or individual, and I'm not trying to say that it does, I just… there are things that have to happen in order for the universe to function. And you getting decapitated was one of them."

"Let her process it on her own," Oswin said, "You don't have to keep apologising. Right now, the head thing is the priority."

"Do you know how to connect the head with the body?" Clara asked her.

"Well, I… it's just anatomy, how complicated can it be?"

"A head transplant? How complicated can a head transplant be?"

"I'm a fast learner. And look, the hard parts have already been done, those being keeping the organs alive separately. The rest of it is just like… Lego. You know, just wedge it back together."

"Well don't I feel safe in your hands."

"I'm actually a genius," said Oswin.

"That's what Ouroboros said."

"Well I'm a real genius, I just don't specialise in biology. This Sphere you're using to talk, I built it."

"And the creepy robot?"

"Yes, I built him, too, he's an AI," she said, "I'm very good with AIs. If worse comes to worst we can suck out your consciousness and whack it in a sexy robot. Or a sexy hologram – I'm a sexy hologram myself. I actually died saving Clara's Doctor. So have some of the others."

"Are you taking this seriously?"

"Oswin never takes anything seriously."

"Au contraire, mon chéri, I take everything seriously," Oswin said, "I just operate on a higher plane of consciousness to the rest of you. I'm abstract, and intellectual."

"You talk almost non-stop about wanking."

"Abstract wanking, honey. Serious wanking."

"I'm honestly so sorry about her," Clara returned to talking to the Echo.

"Do you do anything except apologise?"

"I'm British, it's our thing."

"I'm the one who's going to put Humpty Dumpty here back together again, so sorry if I sound a bit rude while I'm literally over here being amazing. Sacrificing my processing speeds just so dear Miss Oswinius here can tell us about how rich she is."

"You were quite rich when you were still alive, sweetheart."

"Why do you call each other by pet names?" the Echo asked, "You two are weird. You flirt with each other."

"We do not!" Clara scoffed.

"We should get back," said Oswin, "It's not like that Head can do anything to stop us. I'm going to need to disconnect the Sphere, is-"

"No! You can't do that! Do you know what it's like not to be able to feel anything? Or see? Or hear? Barely able to think?"

"Look, I need access to every ounce of brainpower I've got to reconnect your useless body parts. Admittedly, it is a little bit more complicated than Lego. Like flat-pack furniture without any instructions. And exploiting your connection to your brain with the Sphere is probably weakening it."

"Don't disconnect it! This body is super-strong, I swear I'll-"

"You won't do anything to her," said Clara, "I won't let you. But if Oswin says you need to be disconnected, then I'm sorry."

"No! Don't you-" and that was where Oswin switched off the connection, and the Body turned very blindly violent until Clara restrained it with telekinesis. It even bashed one of its fists into the solid rock wall and broke off a handful of pebbles. Clara came to help Oswin back to her feet.

"I think she's the one I hate the least so far, to be honest," Oswin said.

"I still don't know why you hate them – competing for my attention. It's juvenile," she said, going to take the Echo's arm.

"Nice that you've found at least one clone of yourself who'll let you touch her up," Oswin quipped as they left the bleak cave.

"I'm helping her! Don't be awful," Clara told her off, "Just point me to where the spaceship is." The surface was even worse now; Oswin suspected there was a storm brewing. They had better hurry up getting back to the ship, she didn't know what toxic chemicals might be dredged up by the weather turning. "Tell me more about Eslilia."

"It's this jungle planet. You've been."

"Ha, ha – I mean what Flek's roped you into."

"She didn't rope me into anything, I offered. It's just general stuff – infrastructure and water purification. Adam wants to help, you know he likes that environment crap. Anyway, I thought I'd get Flek's help with something, too."

"Something like how?"

"Like – we've got Martha and Rory for medical staff, and they're great, Martha's a brilliant doctor. But I'm always having to call Flek up as well."

"I'm not sure you have to call Flek up…"

"I thought she might help me learn some stuff about medicine. I really don't know a thing, it puts me to shame."

"But if you did that, you wouldn't have an excuse to get Flek onto the TARDIS. Or this new playmate of Nios."

"Dr Cohen isn't that kind of doctor, I told you, she's a pathologist," said Oswin, "She only deals with the dead. I just think that if I'm going to live forever I might as well learn things. Look at Jenny – she's got three degrees. I haven't got any, I've never even been to school."

"You're our AI expert," Clara said, "You probably know more about AIs than anyone else. Where's this coming from? Are you finally becoming humble?"

"I'm a lot more humble than people realise."

"You can't boast about how humble you are, that's the opposite of being humble."

"I should just take advantage of it. Of being… me. Being so clever. I never feel like I'm doing enough. I need more hobbies, education is a hobby," she said.

"You do whatever will make you happy, sweetheart," Clara was walking at Oswin's normal walking pace now, having to hold up the Echo, which had stopped trying to fight. It must trust them more than it had been letting on.

"That's rubbish advice."

"Has Adam still been trying to get fit?" Clara changed the subject when she remembered something Oswin had told her quite a while ago now.

"He has, actually," Oswin said, "And while it obviously makes no difference to me-"

"Obviously."

"It is kind of hot," she said, unable to stop herself from smiling.

"You're so pathetic, Oswin. And you won't even admit that you want to marry him."

"Why are you so obsessed with it?"

"I think it would be sweet! Cute, even."

"Your timing is completely wrong. There are too many weddings at the moment. I'm all wedding'd out, and I'm sure this Ten and Rose thing is going to be a fiasco."

"What? You think they'll break up?"

"No, I mean the actual wedding. It's a disaster waiting to happen. The Doctor's wedding, for god's sake. It's an invitation for somebody to come and try to fuck it up, if you'll pardon my French. Like shining the bat signal over the hotel."

"You're just jealous because you still think Ten used to fancy you."

"He did fancy me!"

"You think everyone fancies you."

"Everyone does fancy me!" Oswin protested, "Especially you, you fancy me more than anyone."

"I'm just using you for sex."

"Well, I'm pregnant, so we're going to have to get married and settle down."

"What a disaster – which one of us would do the cooking?"

"Wait a minute," Oswin stopped dead.

"What?"

"We do flirt with each other. Eurgh." Clara just laughed.

"I'm married, darling. Don't get too excited." Oswin scowled.

"I'm going to cover myself in bleach when we get back to the TARDIS. And then seduce my boyfriend."

"Good luck with that. I hear he can't get it up."

"Very funny. Now look, I can see the ship; we'd better get there before this storm gets any worse. I want to leave. Because of the bleach thing."

"I'd hate to keep you away from your bleach."

"And the boyfriend thing."

"I'd hate to keep you away from your boyfriend."

"You forgot your lantern in the cave, by the way."

"I did? Bollocks… do you think the lizard-bloke will be angry?"

"Were you planning on seeing him again?"

"Hey – I'm not the one who called him 'daddy' earlier."

"He's such a daddy."

"You are a nightmare. Now come on. Let's go talk to the mad professor."

It was still chaos in the cockpit-cum-laboratory when they finally returned after their trek halfway across the Island and back, both Twins relieved to be out of the turning weather. Everything had a more sinister feel to it now though, now that they realised they had been lied to, and Oswin was still rather upset with herself that she hadn't been able to figure it out. This 'professor' had almost used their own name when they introduced themselves, after all. But it didn't matter; they were going to fix things now.

"Oh, excellent, you found my body!" the Head in the jar exclaimed, still perched at a slight angle in the pilot's chair at the front of the room.

"Actually, I think that's your body over there, isn't it?" Oswin pointed at the comatose male form lying behind some rubbish, "Professor Ouroboros!" The Head gasped very theatrically.

"Who's that?" it asked.

"You?"

"No, no, no. You're mistaken. I'm Princess Claranna. Claranna Oswoona."

"Oswinius," corrected Clara.

"That's what I said," said the Head, "I'll just have my body back now?"

"That's not really going to jibe well with us," said Clara, "Because we talked to Claranna – who isn't even a princess, she's just some industrialist, Ayn-Rand-wet-dream – and she says that you're trying to steal her identity to get her fortune."

"Well, that's… just a lie, really. How can you talk to somebody who hasn't got a head?"

"But you just said that you're her head," Oswin pointed out, "So, you're an idiot." Oswin was searching around the room for medical equipment. "Clara, help me pick this stuff up." Clara left the Body, which again did not want to lose her support, to come and help turn the gurney they had found the Head behind initially the right way up again. Finally, Oswin spied an advanced computer with some devices resembling electrodes, only more complicated, dangling off it. Clara helped her with all this while Sprite crawled around to drag the plugs back into the walls and reconnect them to the wall.

"What are you doing? Don't touch those – that's my personal cables," argued the head, "You can't – they're – that professor's, I don't really know what any of them do, best to leave them alone."

"No dice," said Oswin, "This is everything you need to transplant a human head onto a fresh, new body. Including this." She held up a metal ring.

"What is it? A halo?" Clara asked.

"No, it's a neck brace. Or more like a choker. Keeps the head and the body fused until the 'healing process' is complete," she said, "See, it is just like Lego. I was right the first time. Still not sure how you planned on getting your head onto this body to begin with."

"I'm not this 'professor' you keep mentioning," said the Head, "But if I was – it would just be a minor oversight."

"Removing your entire body is an oversight?" Oswin questioned. "Clara, can you go bring that thing over here? And then we have to strap the Echo onto the gurney, which I doubt she'll be too happy about." Clara did as Oswin asked.

"What are you going to do?"

"Raise them up into the ceiling during a lightning storm? Make them drink from the Holy Grail? Take your pick."

"But, really."

"But really it's not particularly complicated."

"Separating two brains fighting over the same head isn't complicated?"

"No, I mean… it's a bit like getting rid of a computer virus," Oswin shrugged, "Very simple, just put these on this tank here…" Clara managed to calm the Echo enough – and exercise enough telekinesis – to get it restrained on the gurney, but it was quite the challenge. "You need to keep her still so I can attach these devices."

"That seems cruel."

"Crueller than letting her die because she can't eat?" Oswin challenged, "Cruel to be kind, honey. Trust me." Clara sighed, but again followed Oswin's instructions, holding out her hands and exercising enough invisible force that the Echo became stuck in place, only able to move her fingers. "Does it hurt you to do that? I remember when it took all the effort in the world for you to just make sugar cubes levitate," Oswin asked while she untangled wires, ignoring the fervent protests of the Head of Ouroboros next to her. It was quite annoying. "In fact, I remember when you had to raise a spaceship out of a bog and got that brain aneurysm."

"It's just a muscle," said Clara, "Needs to be stretched. You do remember I held off Rose before? Doesn't get much more powerful than that. Just hurry up, I don't like doing it. It can't be nice, what she's going through."

"So you can hold her down and do other things?"

"Things like what?"

"I need that head," said Oswin, "I need the head out of the jar."

"Oswin – it'll die."

"Yes, it'll die, I'll die, we'll all probably die," the Ouroboros interjected.

"No, no, no," said Oswin, "The human brain can survive unscathed for six minutes without oxygen. After six minutes, the damage starts. But we've always got your trusty nanogenes, haven't we? I need to connect the head to the neck-ring-thingy."

"How does that even work?"

"You just plug it in, it's easy – look, on three, pull the head out of the jar. Phase it, or whatever."

"Sweetheart, are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure. Now come on – one, two, three!" Clara grabbed the Head, despite its protests, and phased it so that it came out of its cell, soaked and instantly losing consciousness. That was when she began to panic.

"Shit – now what!?"

"Put it down!"

"Where!?"

"On the table! Above the neck! It'll die, hurry up!"

"You said it would be fine!"

"Yeah, well, I'm… trying to sound optimistic."

"Are you not optimistic!?"

"I'll let you know in approximately… five and a half minutes," Oswin said, flashing Clara a smile, but Clara was not amused. "Come on, Sprite, get these cables." Sprite crawled up onto the table to use his little pincers to plug wires into the neck-brace, wires which had the electrodes on the other end of them. He did half of them and Oswin did the other half, and then she ordered Clara to keep the Echo as still as possible while she slid the head down into position. "She really needs to wash her hair."

"Focus!"

"I am focused! Can't a girl make a joke?"

"No! Not right now!"

"Sheesh, when did you get so nervous all the time…" but Clara was very much not amused. Not at all. Oswin shook her head slightly. Couldn't she just look on the bright side? Just because it was a touch-and-go, life-or-death situation they were right in the middle of… When the wires were all hooked up, Oswin turned her attention to the computer.

"Don't you need to wire up the mad scientist's body?" Clara asked.

"No, it wasn't wired up to begin with. Things like this just have a way of resolving themselves, you need more faith."

"Excuse me for not suspending my disbelief in light of this preposterous situation we're in."

"The preposterous situations are always the ones where you should suspend your disbelief, Clary. Now just, uh… ah…"

"What? What was that? Is there a problem?"

"Yeah, no, it's fine, it's just… do you happen to have any defibrillators?"

"Oswin!"

"No, right, obviously, uh… ah-ha!" she remembered the myriad of special features she kept in her cane. Including a way to weaponise it, in the form of delivering non-lethal electric shocks, the same kind of shocks emitted by the stun guns she had built which nobody ever even used (did anyone on the TARDIS appreciate all the work she did?) She picked up her cane and tried to alter the settings, but they were losing time, and there wasn't a promising amount of brain activity registering on any of the monitors she had plugged in. "We should've brought Esther with us – Adam does pay her to watch out for your Echoes."

"Esther's not here."

"I know that, just..." Oswin said nothing else, finally managing to switch her cane onto the correct setting, and then jamming it into the Echo's side and pressing a button which ejected a decent shock into the body. It convulsed and Clara jumped, but nothing else happened. "Shit."

"It didn't work!"

"I can see that! Let me try again." And she did try again, but there was no response.

"Are you sure you're doing this right?"

"Yes!" Oswin protested, trying for a third time. Three shocks and still nothing, nothing! They were running out of time. There were seconds left before the brain was going to start dying, and who knew how long the Body could survive without its Head at all? Was there even any point trying to keep it alive? That was the moment that Oswin noticed there was a tiny little button with a light next to it on the edge of the neck-brace, and that the light wasn't turned on. She pressed it and it lit up red, and then she emitted a fourth and final shock and the light turned green and the entire body flinched. The eyes opened, it gasped, and sat up with a jerk, taking deep breaths and coughing, the monitors exploding with information.

At the same time, a similar reaction happened within the unconscious body of Ouroboros somewhere behind them. Oswin laughed.

"I can't believe that worked!" she exclaimed, grinning. Then she caught Clara's very disapproving eye and her smile vanished, "I mean, I always knew it would work. Obviously. I'm a genius."

"Are you alright? Are you Claranna?" Clara turned to ask the Echo. But the now-connected head-and-body was staring at its own hands and arms.

"I can move," she said, "Arms, and legs, and everything else, I've got it all…"

"Well, you're doing better than I am," Oswin remarked.

"And you…" the Echo turned her cold eyes on the staggering scientist in the corner, who was very old and had a long beard and it rather unnerved Clara to think of him trying to living inside her. "You exploited me, you tried to steal everything from me…" She pushed herself down from the gurney and wobbled, Clara spotting her like she was going to collapse at any moment. Oswin wouldn't be surprised if she did.

"No, no, I just…" Ouroboros had no defence for himself, "April Fool's?" he suggested meekly. And Claranna marched right over and slugged him, slugged him with her abnormally strong body. Took him down with just the one punch and left him sprawled on the floor with a very obviously broken jaw, a trickle of blood coming from his lip.

"Thank god somebody finally shut him up," said Oswin, "He was doing my head in." Clara and Claranna both looked at her. "What? Too soon?"