AN: So I have rewritten this chapter completely, that's why it's taken me a few days to update, because I nearly had the next one finished before I realised I really didn't like the whole thing. And Adwin were fighting in the original draft of this and I never like them fighting, I vastly prefer this version to the last one. Although, there was a great joke in the draft of the next one which now won't involve the Spooks at all, where Sally's eating a month-old chocolate mousse and Adam says that's gross and she says that "sell-by dates are a conspiracy to increase food wastage and make people spend more money on more food when the food they had was already fine."

DAY 157

Remote Viewing

Adam

"Do you have to do that, babe? You know it scares him," Oswin said disapprovingly, watching Adam Mitchell drive a remote-controlled BB-8 around the floor in front of the sofas after Sprite. Sprite reacted to the BB-8 the same way a small dog would, by jumping around in fright. He would bark if he had the vocal capacity; as it was he kept beeping. Oswin sat on the sofa with her feet up – both of them, prosthesis attached even though it was mildly uncomfortable – drawing diagrams and writing equations on a tablet with an electronic pen. "Mitchell," she said sternly, and he looked at her. "Leave him be. C'mere." She held her hand down to the floor and waved her hand a little so that Sprite came to be rescued, crawling up her and perching on the cushion she was leaning on, next to her head. Sprite bleeped in her ear. "I know, he is a nasty boy."

"Hey!" Adam protested, "I'm only kidding."

"He doesn't know that. He's like a child. You're like one of those people who makes fun of toddlers to their faces because you think they don't understand, or they'll forget, when actually they're a lot more intuitive than you give them credit for. And so is Sprite," she said. He put down the remote on the carpet next to the toy he had bought because he was bored a few days ago, and ambled around the sofa to see what Oswin was up to.

"Since when did you know so much about children?"

"Since I have four younger brothers," she answered, getting back to her equations. He stood there for a few moments watching, his hands in his dressing gown pockets. He was trying to work out what she was drawing but didn't want to ask, in some odd test he had concocted all on his own for him to prove himself and his intelligence. Ultimately, he could not deduce it.

"Whatcha doodling?"

"I don't know, it's sort of like… if you have some clay, and you just know you want to sculpt something, but you don't really know what it is. It's kind of an… atmosphere controller. Or modifier. I'm worried that they don't have very good meteorological equipment on Eslilia, when I was wondering about the chemical content of the air. They do want to study the planet, after all," she explained. Well, sort of explained. "I don't know. You said you'd help with it, I figured you might want to tackle the whole water-purification problem. Water purifiers are way easier to build, anyway."

"Oh, so you assign me the easy task?"

"You can do whatever you like," she smiled, looking at her drawings, "But you made a commitment to my ex-girlfriend. And remember, the last two people who made commitments to Flek abandoned her and flew off into oblivion in stolen space shuttles and broke her tiny pink-haired heart." No pressure, then.

"Yeah…"

"It's a frontier colony, they need all the help they can get. It's a notoriously dangerous venture. That's why the first colony on Titan failed, they were just unprepared. Thought they'd be able to mine the planet for water but the drills weren't durable enough, and that's after centuries of in-depth scientific analysis. Can you imagine the problems they're facing on a completely unchartered planet?" she made some large strokes on her drawing, but it just looked like a lot of abstract shapes surrounded by scrawled, illegible strips of algebra. He really did often feel stupid around Oswin, which was no fault of hers because as long as he had known her she had never attempted to undermine somebody. Except the Doctor sometimes, but the Doctor could sometimes be very pompous and often needed taking down a peg or two.

"I've played Mass Effect: Andromeda. I know about colonising new places."

"Ooh, that's the one with the sexy blue ladies, isn't it? I like the sexy blue ladies. And that Scottish one – oof, what a daydream. She sounds like Cohen," Oswin said, focusing on her schematics all the while. For a moment he thought she would wolf-whistle, but she rose above his low expectations and did nothing of the sort. "Is that the game where that hoodie I always steal from you is from?"

"Eh, sort of – the N7 one is from the original trilogy. You mean the one with the cowl neck?"

"In the future, all hoodies have cowl necks," she told him curtly. He wondered if this was true, but they so rarely went on trips to her century he couldn't really judge. Well, except to nose around Eslilia. She went on trips to her century, when she paid visits to Fyn, but he often didn't go with her (though she did ask him to quite frequently.)

"I kind of love it when you mention being from the future."

She laughed, "Guess what?"

"What?"

"I'm from the future," she flashed a smile his way, a very valuable smile because she was doing her best to keep her eyes and her attention on her blueprints. Sprite scurried away and down her fake leg to perch on her foot, which drew Adam's eyes to her other foot, with its deep, jagged scars and three toes.

"Is it weird not having a big toe?" he asked her, and she laughed again.

"You know, nobody else ever asks me this stuff. Even Clara never asks me weird questions about my legs."

"Do you mind?"

"Nah. Barely being able to walk doesn't bother me so much. I mean, sure it bothers me, but it's not like I was an athlete before, or like I ever even left my bedroom. Ultimately, having half a leg or thereabouts hasn't changed things for me that much. Although, it is weird not having a big toe. Do you know how central they are to your balance? Very. Like when you have an inner ear infection and you keep banging into things. The not-having-any-sex-organs thing that comes with being a hologram is significantly more debilitating. I was thinking about painting my toenails, though."

"Only the middle two even have nails, the little one is all… skin," he said, squinting at it.

"Oh, yeah. They had to remove the nail about a year after they put my leg back together in the first place. Badly, I might add – and here Flek has the nerve to say I'm bad at performing emergency surgery. I think I gouged Jenny's eyes out very effectively," she grumbled, "Anyway, the thing about the nail was – actually, this is gross. Are you sure you want to hear it?"

"Uh… yep," he said, though in reality, he was not sure. If Oswin thought something was gross, the chances are it was horrific and certainly not fit for human consumption.

"Well it just sort of went all funny, and it was twisted and ingrowing – wasn't nice. And then Flek – the scoundrel – she wouldn't let me keep the nail after they removed it and cauterised the nail bed to stop it growing back. Not that it was very big, but still. Yet another part of me chipped away by the Dust War. Tell you what else I haven't got: a kneecap. My fibula is basically a metal rod, and half of my tibia is random bone segments all screwed together with titanium alloy. And then the femur – don't get me started on that, it's even worse. They put these metal plates over it to keep it together but it's made it go sort of bowed. Luckily for me, most of my right thigh has incredibly severe nerve damage so I can't feel any of that mess. Hooray."

"God, Oswin, I… shouldn't have asked about it."

"Why?" she frowned. She didn't seem all that harrowed about going into detail about what had been done to her messy, damaged leg. "Personally, I think they should have saved themselves the hassle and amputated both of them. But I didn't get much say in it because I was unconscious and slowly dying at the time. That's doctors for you, trying to 'save' it. Is it saved, though? Really? It's a fifty-fifty shot every day of whether the entire limb is numb or if it hurts beyond belief. Whatever. I suppose it's my own fault for trying to blow myself up in the first place."

"Are you telling the truth?" he asked carefully. He had always heard her blame it on a malfunction or an accident. Now, she sighed, and finally looked easy, shutting her eyes for a second.

"That's the thing I don't like talking about. Ask me about the symptoms but not about the cause. Body and mind are separate entities and in my case they're about as broken as each other. Moving on, you know your yacht that I… had an accident with?" The subject changed completely as she strained to escape the perils of discussing her mental health with him, and caught him by surprise. Did he know his yacht that she had an accident with? It took him a good few seconds to remember all about that particular fiasco.

"The Vinsomer, yeah." As far as he knew, his yacht was still wrecked in the TARDIS garage somewhere with the rest of his destroyed cars. He had to buy a new car, but a cheap one, one that he wouldn't mind getting destroyed quite as much as his Lamborghini (he was still upset about the loss of the Lamborghini, and his Hummer.) Then again, he'd always wanted a Bugatti Veyron…

"You know how I said I was going to build you a new one?"

"You really don't have to build me a new boat."

"The TARDIS does all the heavy lifting, Mitchell. It's okay. And you know I need projects. I got totally carried away, though. Here," she lifted up her tablet and held it above her head so that he, still standing behind her in his pyjamas, could see what she had just brought up.

"You've tried to design a boat and accidentally designed an all-terrain vehicle," he pointed out.

"I know! I'm working on how to make it fly. If it can fly, drive, go underwater, and has a CD player, it's basically a masterpiece. Not that I'd go with you if you took it underwater, you can do that on your own. Doesn't it just seem like the sort of thing we need?"

"I have no idea. But don't let me stop you, if you're enjoying yourself with your drawings."

"Oh, thank you, and if I do a really good one maybe you'll let me put it on the fridge. What a great boyfriend you-" A piercing shriek deafened them both and made Oswin drop her tablet on the floor to clamp her hands over hears; Adam did the same and staggered, his bad ankle then giving way and sending him onto the floor; Sprite jumped and curled into a ball in terror at Oswin's feet. The big screens they had lining the opposite wall flashed vivid purple and blasted out noise, a cackling skull visible there, a bloated computer glitch grinning from every screen in the room – including his computer in the corner.

"ADAM ALOYSIUS MITCHELL," it shouted in a synthesised voice, "THERE IS A DEVASTATING FLAW IN CYBORG. IF WE CAN EXPLOIT IT, SO CAN THEY, AND THEY ARE COMING. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. CATCH US IF YOU CAN." And then the purple exploded in a haze of vivid pixels which fell away into nothing, the black background disappearing too until the screens re-established themselves. Then it was Oswin's favourite view again, that of the lower-deck windows of Titan Beta and the thollim-streaked horizon of the moon, with Saturn way off somewhere to the left. It was funny, they often alternated between Horizon and a grey-skied shale beach, such were the sights from Adam Mitchell's own modernist mansion on the southern coast of England. Home sweet home, and all that.

"What the fuck!? Are you okay, baby!?" Oswin exclaimed. Adam struggled back onto his feet, staring at the screens, at the Saturn's animated and distant asteroid belt. He was thinking the exact same thing she was – 'what the fuck' – and could come up with no good answer. It was a very serious question, what the fuck. It would take a lot of thought. "Mitchell!"

"Huh?"

"I said, are you okay?"

"I thought you were talking to Sprite."

"Sprite?" she exclaimed, and when she did Sprite beeped and ran across the top of the sofa towards them, "I said 'baby.'"

"Yeah. Are you calling me 'baby' now? Is that an upgrade?" he asked.

"I don't know! Are you okay?"

"I think so."

"Sprite, go fetch Helix," Oswin said aside, and the critter ran off to the other sofa to drag the white Helix handset back across. Oswin was struggling to try and sit up and twist to face him, which was tricky because of her leg problems.

"I'm fine."

"The big freaky skull was talking to you, though," she said, "Get over here so I can scan you, see if your brain chip hasn't been messed with. But it's encrypted through Helix, so I can't see why it would be…" She sat up properly on the sofa with her feet on the floor, shuffling up to make room for him next to her, where she pointed for him to sit down. He wasn't one to argue with Oswin when she was worried about him, so he did sit down, and she took the Helix portable from Sprite's little metal pincers. "Helix, do a full scan of Adam."

"I have detected a data breach in this vicinity, Miss Oswald," Helix said.

"Yes, I know, we detected it too. It was very loud and scary. Were you affected?"

"Negative, Miss Oswald."

"Then scan Adam, please," she said. She was the only person who ever said 'please' to Helix. Blue light projected from the device and scanned him, which felt sort of tingly and hurt his eyes; as far as he could remember, he had never been scanned like this before.

"I am sorry, Miss Oswald. Subject:: Adam Mitchell is clinically dead."

"Apart from being clinically dead, though, is he alright?" Oswin asked, "The chip in his brain, has it been violated?"

"Did you have to say 'violated'?" he asked, cringing.

"Negative, Miss Oswald. Subject:: Adam Mitchell has identical vital signs to all other recorded scans of his physiology. By my estimate, he has been dead for over sixty-seven days."

"Well that's nice," Adam muttered.

"He's not dead, Helix, please don't say that. He's in cryostasis, he's frozen."

"I apologise, Miss Oswald."

"Tell me about the data breach, please," she requested.

"It appears that Adam Mitchell's personal accounts have been hacked into remotely and a message was sent to the TARDIS systems by accessing the unique IP address of his on-board computer and games consoles. If I may, I can track the transmission back to its original source. It will take a few moments," Helix said smoothly in that strangely comforting way.

"Good, do it, please, thanks," Oswin said hastily. Helix went quiet and the handset began to hum.

"How have my personal accounts been hacked? Remotely? On the TARDIS? Aside from the fact we're in space, all my stuff is encrypted with Cyborg. Cyborg's hackproof, you said it yourself. Hackproof."

"Uh-huh… that skull called you Adam 'Aloysius' Mitchell."

"I… suppose it did…"

"Is that your middle name? You have a middle name? And it's Aloysius?"

"Well your middle names are 'Diane Rosalind' so I don't think you're winning any competitions."

"Okay, in the embarrassing middle names competition, you are the clear victor. Aloysius. Is that even a word?"

"Yes, it's a word, it's the name of some posh bloke's childhood teddy bear in this book. I don't know, Oswin, my mum likes it. It's nothing to do with me. I've never even read it." She smiled at him in a way that could be described as 'admiring.'

"You're named after a teddy bear?"

"My middle name," he mumbled.

"That's adorable."

"I don't want to be adorable."

"Why not? What's wrong with being adorable? What's wrong with being a teddy bear? Everyone likes those. I had this one when I was young, it looked like a robot bear," she said, and then she got distracted thinking about it.

"…What was it called?"

"He was called Exabyte," she admitted.

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"You're such a nerd.

"And you're a teddy bear," she told him smugly, "That's your new name. My teddy-bear."

"Please don't call me that."

"It's too late," she said, "You can replace Exabyte."

"…What happened to him?"

"I took him with me when I ran away," she said after a moment, "I guess he was still in the wreck of the SS Alaska somewhere, and that whole planet blew up, so…" She was more upset remembering the loss of a bear than she was about the loss of her leg.

"I have completed my scan, Miss Oswald. The transmission was emitted on the evening of December 4th, 2013, from a building in Cambridge registered to the software development company, CyTech," Helix said.

"Wait, it came from where? CyTech? That transmission came from CyTech in the year 2013?"

"No way," said Oswin, "That's way too advanced."

"That's my company – someone hacked me from inside my own company? My own buildings?" Adam was actually angry, and he never got angry.

"Adam, calm down, we'll sort it," Oswin told him softly.

"No – but – you said it was hackproof!"

"Well, hypothetically. I mean, I could hack it, but I'm me, I can hack anything. Nobody in your century with your technology should be able to hack it. As for alien gadgetry, I can't possibly comment. I don't actually know everything in the universe. I'm not a supercomputer. I can't account for every single variable in history." He stayed quiet. "Look, get dressed, and then we'll just go to CyTech and see what's going on, yeah? The creepy message did say 'catch us if you can', after all. It'd be rude to turn down the invitation."