Big Brother is Watching You

Nios

To Nios, the most unnerving thing about Jaleah's death had been the abruptness of it. Less than a minute from the beginning of her odd seizure she was completely brain dead, no heart activity, every part of her body shutdown. Perhaps she was showing her true colours of being a cold and unfeeling machine by her preoccupation with the nature and details of Jaleah's death rather than the actual fact of it, but they couldn't all get overwhelmed with emotion. Adam Mitchell, next to her, was completely shell-shocked by what had happened, while Sprite was cowering on her shoulder. At least the Doctor was still trying to investigate; in the heavy silence, the only sound was that of the sonic screwdriver as he attempted to run a diagnosis. Immunised against every disease, perfectly healthy, a philanthropist clearly adored by the people now flocking to her body – it was part of a puzzle Nios could not yet solve (though she did think to herself that were Oswin there, she would surely know all the answers by now.)

"She was poisoned," the Doctor said eventually, holding the sonic up to his ear like he was listening to it. He tapped it a few times against the palm of his hand, then looked down at Jaleah's body again. There was blood at the corners of her mouth. "Traces of a deadly toxin in her bloodstream."

"How could she have been poisoned when she was standing right in front of us?" Nios asked, "Nobody touched her, we weren't even standing that close."

"You should check her arm," said Adam, apparently not as shocked as he appeared to be – more surprised than anything. "The augmentations. Maybe this was one of those mysterious 'prosthetic related deaths'? They were the reason we came."

"Good idea," said the Doctor, "Maybe you do have some value, teddy-bear."

"Don't call me that," Adam grumbled, "I don't even like when she calls me it, I keep telling her not to. She's relentless."

"It could be worse," said Nios as the Ninth Doctor – smirking to himself because he was proud about how much he was agitating Adam Mitchell – began to scan Jaleah's enhanced arm. "She called me 'Fisto' for some reason the other day."

"That's my fault, sorry," he said.

"You told Oswin to call me 'Fisto'?"

"No – no, it's not – there's this sex robot, in this game – I was just playing it, and she was all, 'what's going on?' so obviously I told her, and… It's called 'Fisto.'"

"You were playing with a sex robot?" the Doctor interrupted. This was definitely an insensitive conversation to be having around a recently deceased woman.

"No, it was for a quest – this really isn't the time," Adam said awkwardly, very aware of the body, "It's honestly not that funny at all."

"You were right, I can hardly believe it," said the Doctor eventually, addressing Adam though he still didn't look at him, focused on the body. "The arm killed her, it has an empty cavity with traces of the same fluid as in the blood, and an injectable mechanism."

"Her own arm injected her with insta-kill poison?" Adam asked in disbelief.

"Apparently."

"There's no sign of a malfunction?" Nios asked, "Maybe the fluid is just part of the mechanism? I have fluid running through me that would be toxic if it leaked. Humans are notoriously weak to internal bleeding. Perhaps it's something like that? Battery acid?"

"No. Poison. I recognise the chemical composition. No applicable use other than murder, but painfully easy to manufacture; it was definitely designed for this function. That's probably the explanation behind all the deaths. It was obscured from normal scanning, too, that's why it took me a few minutes to find it," he got back to his feet and crossed his arms. "We're definitely missing something here." Nios couldn't help but agree. "Fashionable prosthesis rigged to kill their owners? Eradicated plagues and only half the population is immunised against them? Not to mention that immunising people against these things at all carries the implication that at least somebody knew there was a risk of contact with the infections – and TB definitely doesn't naturally occur in space." She had half a mind to ask Cohen what she thought about it, but she still hadn't actually responded to the invitation to go to her flat, not wanting to change the subject because it would look like she was avoiding the question. And the fact that she was avoiding the question was completely irrelevant. Besides, she wasn't sure how best to summarise what, exactly, was going on, in order to see if Cohen did have any legitimate ideas.

The Zeros watching them didn't make a move. If Max was broadcasting unpleasant news bulletins about the Level Zeros to the Ones, she was sure that he would be doing the same in the other direction; they probably knew about the mysterious deaths. The Doctor had to have heard about them some way, after all. As well as that they were used to seeing people die around them; tragedy must be par for the course.

She had nearly forgotten Sprite was attached to her back like a very timid, robotic limpet, until he scuttled down from her in an instant and began to circle around her feet, beeping. Adam Mitchell almost jumped out of his skin at the sight of the little creature, while the Doctor remained suspicious of Oswin's latest creation.

"What is it?" Nios asked Sprite.

"Can you understand him?" the Doctor asked.

"Sprite and I are actually constantly sharing our thoughts in binary code through a micro server cloud," she said. The Doctor paused, then smiled slightly.

"I get it. You're tricking me."

"Yes." But Sprite was still dancing around her feet, then when he was finally satisfied he had their attention, he shot off in the opposite direction of the crowd, the corpse, and Max's food dispensary, into some spindly, narrow alleyways of the slum. "Why do humans insist on always having alleyways no matter where they build?" she queried as she began to follow Sprite, leaving Jaleah's body and the other sick Zeros.

"As architects, they're a very unoriginal species," said the Doctor, "You should have seen the Citadels on Gallifrey. Very few alleyways." This was the same direction the old woman had left in, the one with the dying grandson, before Jaleah's arrival. It made Nios pause, and then make a mad dash back to the dispensary to take a few of the tiny pill bottles of medication.

"I have a tuberculosis," she told the humans gathered around when they gave her dark looks for taking the medicine. She did a very unconvincing cough, her body not quite able to cough in the same way a human's did, and then rejoined Adam and Nine, power-walking away.

"Didn't know synths could get tuberculosis," Nine jibed.

"We get it from badgers," she said, not explaining herself. He didn't appear to care an awful lot, but by this point Sprite was kicking up a fuss in his desperate bid for them to follow him.

The thing agitating him happened to be just around the corner, too. He crawled up a wall like a spider and then began to apparently attack something, though Nios couldn't see anything there, high on the wall above them and nestled into the nook of a building. The Doctor, being the tallest, approached the spot agitating Sprite and reached up to feel around.

"Hold on – there's something- AH!" The 'something', whatever it was, appeared out of nowhere and then fell, landing on the Doctor's head. It clattered to the floor at their feet: a camera, for sure. A camera which had been sitting invisibly on the wall observing people, and only Sprite had been able to detect it. Grumbling and rubbing his head, the Doctor picked it up and examined it, while Sprite returned to crawling across Nios's feet.

"You could sell that to Tem," Adam commented.

"It's broken."

"He probably wouldn't notice."

"Enough about you exploiting people for profit," the Doctor quipped to Adam's annoyance, "Now the question is who's watching through these cameras?"

"Max?" Nios suggested.

"Not sure they'd need to be hidden so well if it was only the computer," said Nine, "Someone doesn't want these people to know they're being spied on… are there any more of these? We need to trace the signal." Sprite, thrilled about being utilised, practically leapt at the opportunity to help even more, and rushed off again to lead them in a new direction. "Wonder why he's able to find these cameras when the sonic didn't pick them up."

"Oswin built him," said Adam, "He's very advanced."

"Big fan of AI?"

"It's what's keeping her interest at the moment," he said, glancing at Nios as though Nios was one of Oswin's many 'projects.'

"What's her end goal?"

"I don't know – maybe she wants to be able to help them?" he suggested, "I mean, Oswin's like, the closest thing Nios has to a doctor." She nearly corrected him by bringing up Cohen but knew that wasn't remotely what he was getting at. Plus, he was right, Oswin was the only person capable of helping if something were to go wrong with her. "I don't think she's trying to create her own race of obedient super-computers, or anything."

"You don't 'think'?" Nine asked him.

"I'd hate to assume anything… she'll have good intentions."

Sprite had located another high spot on a wall, and this time the Doctor shooed him away from it and stood on his tiptoes, holding up the sonic after feeling around for the second invisible camera. Sprite crawled back up her leg and returned to his perch on her shoulder. While the Doctor tried to break through the cloaking, Nios's phone chose that moment to buzz in her pocket, and as soon as it did she entirely forgot about what was going on and checked it with startling reflexes. She had both been hoping for and dreading another message from Dr Cohen, and to her horror, it was another message from Dr Cohen:

If you don't want to come over you should just tell me.

"Oh, f… urgh," she grumbled under her breath, incredibly annoyed at herself and herself alone for not knowing how to respond. She was a vastly superior species to humanity in every way – there was no logical reason why she shouldn't know precisely how to behave. And yet, she was completely stumped.

"What's up?" Adam Mitchell asked, standing and waiting for Nine to be done, hands awkwardly in his pockets. Everything about him was awkward, the very act of existing seemed to make him monumentally uneasy.

"It's just… I don't know what to say to this," she completely relented and showed him her phone. He must have some insight for her, after all – he'd managed to get Oswin to date him, somehow (Nios hadn't been on the TARDIS prior to their relationship). He may actually have something valuable to contribute.

Perplexed, he asked, "Do you not want to go to her flat?"

"I don't know."

"I mean… why? I thought you like her?"

"I do." She was bearing her entire heart and soul, if machines could be said to have hearts and souls.

"Then go see her. That's like, a way more relaxed date than having to actually go somewhere. Me and Oswin don't really go places together often…" he seemed a little downtrodden about this however, but quickly gathered himself, "It's more important that you just spend time together rather than what you're actually doing. And at least in her flat there's nobody else around, I hate when there's other people."

"If you like this girl you should go see her," said the Doctor over the noise of his sonic, since he had apparently been listening in. "It's not easy getting invited inside someone's house. I usually have to break in because they always refuse to let me through the door. Don't know why that is… I have such a winning smile, too." He flashed them both a grin, which made Adam uncomfortable and passed right by Nios's attention span without registering; she was glued to her phone, trying to work out her response.

"What should I say?" she asked Adam.

"Uh…" he paused for a long while.

"Never mind, you're useless." Still not sure what to put, she ended up just putting her phone away again, still leaving Cohen hanging, at which point the Doctor succeeded in whatever he was trying to do to the camera.

It materialised still attached to the wall and he exclaimed, "Ah-ha! A signal! Now we can trace it back to… hang on… that can't be right – are you sure that's right?" He addressed the sonic directly and fidgeted with it. "The signal from the cameras is broadcasting to somewhere over three-hundred-thousand miles away."

"There's people even deeper in space watching this?" Adam asked.

"Yep – and I wouldn't say it's many people, either. This solar system is completely empty of habitable planets, no native species, nowhere to be colonised – my best guess is this feed goes to another space station. On the plus side, if they're three-hundred-thousand miles away there isn't a lot they can do to stop us snooping around. Unless Max has some sort of attack mode."

"Well don't jinx it…" Adam mumbled. The Doctor then snapped the relatively fragile camera from the wall and dropped it to the ground next to them, breaking that one as well.

"Speaking of attack mode…" Nios began. Sprite was freaking out again, and so they began to follow, under the assumption that he was going to lead them to another camera. They didn't necessarily need to find another camera at that point but were at a loss for any other leads. "He must be a lot more complicated than I thought."

"Why build him? What's his purpose?" the Doctor questioned, watching Sprite carefully.

"She told me she has him to help her with things. Day-to-day things," Nios explained.

"And what do you think? You're not riled up about it being slavery?"

"He's willing to help," said Nios, "And I think if he decided he didn't want to anymore, she wouldn't do anything to stop him from living his own life. Dogs do what people tell them as part of their nature."

"It's funny because she actually hates dogs," said Adam, "She doesn't really like any animals. Just machines."

"Machines are better than organic lifeforms in every conceivable way," Nios said. She was joking, but wasn't sure if Adam knew that (although, objectively speaking, they were better than organic lifeforms in every conceivable way.)

"I don't blame her; some of those cats you've got are a bit prickly. One of them keeps attacking me," said the Doctor.

"Yeah, the Maine Coon is a bit vicious…" Adam said, "The tentacle one's sweet though, I think we're keeping that one."

"Who said anything about keeping any of them?" Nine questioned.

"Erm… the, uh… the Doctor did…" he said uneasily, "The Eleventh Doctor."

"Typical," Nine scoffed, "Who have you found to give the others away to?"

"Clara Ravenwood wants the Maine Coon," explained Nios, "It doesn't attack her, it likes vampires. Hates Jenny, though."

"I was thinking about going around Rose's wedding and trying to get rid of them that way," Adam added. A relatively sound plan, Nios thought; it wasn't like any of them were actually old enough to give away yet, no matter how big and nasty the vampire cat was.

Nios began to hear crying, while Adam continued to explain to nobody in particular his plans for his cats. She paused in the alleyway to listen, straining her ears. Neither the Doctor nor Adam realised she had stopped for a few seconds, but she was completely sure she recognised the voice: it was the old woman whose grandson had been on the brink of life.

"Where are you going?" the Doctor asked her as she turned to leave towards a different alley of the slum, following the sound. She didn't answer.

"How can they deny medicine like this?" a man angrily argued, "It's cruel. Does nobody off-station know anything about this? About the dying, the disease?" Nios now knew that people off-station certainly did know about it, and yet nothing was being done. Eventually, she located the tiny dwelling where the people were, hearing the man argue while the elderly woman cried within. "My wife, my daughter, dead to these diseases – it's inhumane. We're nothing." She knocked on the door. "Who the hell could that be?" She braced herself as he came and opened it, revealing a tiny, two-bedroom flat, beds rammed into the living room and a miniscule kitchen vacant of food. It had little more than some plates, a sink, and a hydrofier.

"I saw your mother," she guessed at their relation, and was not corrected, "At the dispensary. I brought you some medicine." Truthfully, she did not know how much help her meagre portion of stolen supplies would be to that boy, who was lying in bed, unaware of his surroundings, covered in cowpox sores. He was so sick he hardly looked human, his skin made entirely of erupting, bloody welts. She held out the pill bottles.

"You used your social currency for this?" he questioned.

"…No. A woman called Jaleah did."

"Jaleah? Is she there now?" he became hopeful.

"She died, she had a seizure," said Nios. All his hope was taken away.

"They keep coming down here, those Level Ones. Every few weeks there's a new one who can't stand to see us on the news bulletins, and it always happens the same way. Thank you for this. Thank Jaleah for this. This might be enough to…" He looked at the boy and sighed. Nios was also not optimistic about his chances. "Just… thank you. Whoever you are." She nodded, and he closed the door.

All the while, the Doctor, Adam and Sprite had observed from nearby shadows.

"Why did you do that?" Nine asked her.

"Why didn't you?" she challenged. He didn't have an answer. "Come on, Sprite. What did you want to show us?"

In silence now, they resumed following Sprite. The Doctor's eyes bored into her as she walked slightly ahead, as though he were trying to unravel the mysteries of her synthetic consciousness just by staring. So she felt compassion for human beings – why was that revolutionary?

"Do I really seem so cold that me doing something for someone else shocks you like this?"

"It's probably all the 'machines are superior' talk," he quipped.

"It's not their fault they get sick, and it's not their fault they're being deprived of medicine, either. Just because I was manufactured and not born doesn't make me a careless monster."

"You just come across as one quite a lot." She was not sure she believed that. "Hold on, what's all this?" He took enough time out from questioning her personality that he noticed what she had failed to, that they had just turned a corner into a dead end, a smooth wall right in front of them. Sprite crawled up the wall and ran around in circles on its surface at her eye level. The Doctor walked past Nios to look at the wall, at which point Sprite jumped down from its surface and ran back and forth in front of it. He leant in close, then pressed his ear against it and knocked. "It echoes. I think there's something on the other side."

"Let me have a go," Adam Mitchell stepped forward.

"'Have a go'? What do you plan on doing?" Nine asked him incredulously.

"I have an idea, that's all. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work," he shrugged.

"Fine. Be my guest." The Doctor and Nios stepped aside to let Adam step up to the plate. He only needed to place his palm on the wall for it to start to freeze, presumably because he was nervous about having them watch him. The boy was just one big bag of nerves, quite honestly. "I keep forgetting about you lot and your 'abilities.'"

"And you don't think that you regenerating is an 'ability'?" Adam asked him as the wall turned to ice beneath his fingers.

"No. Just a quirky personality trait. A talent. Something wry, and appealing. There's nothing wry about freezing everything you touch."

"It's not everything…"

Nios decided to check her phone again: no follow-up message. She hoped her own ineptitude didn't ruin everything with Cohen… but she was a little distracted, in her defence.

Adam eventually did something a lot more impressive with his cryokinesis, however; he made a coating of ice around his fist and then punched the frozen part of the wall with as much strength as he could muster. This was not a great amount of strength, but the hardness of the ice against the weakened, fragile wall made it completely shatter – and they discovered it was not a wall at all. it was a very thin piece of glass, and behind it was a darkened area that appeared to be some kind of maintenance tunnel.

"This is just like something I saw in this game," Adam said.

"When is anything not like something you saw in some game?" Nios remarked.

"No, but – the fancy two-way screens, it's transparent on the other side," he stepped through the shattered hole in the wall first, "You can see everything from inside, but not from out there."

"Well then," said the Doctor, "Let's see where this secret tunnel leads…"