I just read the Myths Maker novelization and Let. Me. Tell. You. I intend to rewrite the hell out of it. How did the man responsible for that garbage also give us "the Gunslingers"? I'll never know, but I'm glad that "the Gunslingers" was the one that stood the tests of time.

Thanks to the following for following: DestinLucifer,

Thanks to the following for favoriting: Steven546

Thanks to the following for doing both: karenkg01

And thanks to these for dropping reviews: lautaro94,

Rambling over, here you go.

By now, the three of them knew the way to the control room quite well.

The Doctor had run up ahead of Leela and Marion. He rushed into the room just as Marion and Leela turned the corner leading up to it.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Oh good, you're here. We're out of control. It's all I can do to keep her upright." said Toos, a woman dressed in gold with a headpiece that reminded Marion of a sideways spiderweb flattened out and gilded.

Marion walked into the room to see that the room was filled with robots that reminded Marion of that time about 20 minutes ago when she was strangled by a robot. She stood by a wall where she could see all of those green metallic men. She brought a hand to her head and scratched anxiously.

'They have to be tampered with to become murdery right?' she reminded herself, 'Although I'm not sure how I'd even know they'd been tampered with. Do their eyes stay red once you mess with them or do they just turn red for a moment and then go back to normal? I don't think that SV7 has been turned yet, but I don't know about the rest.,'

The Doctor moved next to Toos to look at a pale green translucent sphere embedded in a dias which, based on a quick glance, was showing symbols and figures that would probably mean something to someone who from a later century than she was and had some kind of technical knowledge, for example, the Doctor.

"You'll have to cut the power," said the Doctor walking towards the main panel in the control room.

"Are you sure?" protested Toos "If we do that we'll sink,"

"If you don't, she'll blow herself to pieces." replied the Doctor.

"And us!" Leela reminded.

A voice chimed in through the speaker.

"Hello, Toos?" the voice called.

"Dask, what's happening down there?" Toos called up.

"I've found Borg. He's dead. Strangled."

'First the ambulance workers, then Borg. How many people are going to die because I straight up forgot that they existed or did anything,' Marion groaned to herself.

"But what's happening to the motive units?" Toos asked.

"The drive links appear to have been sabotaged. I'll need a delta repair pick."

"No Dask," Marion said, "come back to the control deck. Quick as you can!"

Toos looked at her, "I'm sorry. This is a poor time for an inspection, isn't it? I promise that things normally run much smoother,"

"Well, it seemed like you're doing the best you can in an odd situation. That should count for something." Marion offered.

She had to raise her voice to be heard. It was loud enough in the control room that people had to shout in order to be heard.

"May I remind you we'll all go together when she blows if you don't cut the power!" the Doctor yelled shouted to Toos.

"V14, stop all motive units!" Toos ordered the robot.

"Motive units will not stop. Control failure indicated." the robot responded.

"Someone's sabotaged the controls!"

"What's the limit before the motive units explode?" the Doctor asked.

"Should be around 90% and I think we're somewhere around 70-75% ish," Marion said quickly.

"Severance kit. Severance kit, quickly." the Doctor raced towards a panel and gave it a tug.

"I can't get a good grip on it!" the Doctor said, tugging futilely on the side of the panel.

Marion remembered the pry bar and fished it out of her purse. "Here!" she said, holding it out to the Doctor, "Try with this."

The Doctor, realizing what she was holding, beamed and took it from her hand. He pried the panel open and dropped it to the ground revealing three ribbed tubes and several small wires. He handed the pry bar back to her and she returned it to the purse.

Just then, Dask ran into the room with a pair of what looked like the lovechild of a bolt cutter and a set of garden shears.

The Doctor took the bolt cutters from him and cut a wire that was hanging in front of one of the three ribbed tubes. There was a spark and the Doctor glanced back at Marion (who was standing a reasonable distance away) for a second before cutting another wire farther to the left side of the box.

Once he had cut it, the lights in the sandminer dimmed slightly before brightening back up again.

"All motive units closing down. All readings falling to safety," said V16.

"Good," said the Doctor, looking upward, "Now our troubles really begin."

"No momentum, shifting sands; the Sandminer's going to sink if someone doesn't fix the damaged motive units." Marion said, putting her hands in her pocket. Her fingers brushed against the flash drive like object the Associate had grabbed for her. She decided she'd ask the Doctor what it was later, just in case it was something important.

"Surface scanners inoperative."

Dask walked to where Leela was standing and looked at the orb, "The Inspector is right. We're sinking at a rate of 2 meters per second,"

It took Marion a couple of seconds to remember that she was the Inspector.

"I like a man who stays calm, Dask," Dask looked up at the Doctor, "but this isn't the Titanic."

"I do not understand the allusion, Doctor."

"The Titanic was a boat from the 20th century. It's synonymous with the concept of sunk and doomed ships. Unlike that ship, this one is repairable. If you can fix the damaged motor drives, you'll be back to tip-top shape in no time at all!" Marion beamed both trying to psyche him up and also trying to remember if by sending him to work maintenance, she was sending him to his death.

She didn't THINK that she was, but wasn't as certain of this as she felt a person should be before (potentially) sending a person to their deaths. All she really remembered was him putting a deactivation disk on a robot, who would then change, have blood-covered hands, and cause poor Poul to have a panic attack.

"I will go work on the repairs," Dask said tilting his head to Marion and heading out the door.

The Doctor went to follow Dask, "I'll give you a hand with the diatrodes."

"That will not be necessary." Dask said, stopping the Doctor in his tracks, "You repair the remote controls," he said and left the room.

The Doctor went to a large piece of machinery that rose at an angle. He took a panel off the side of it and began to attempt to fix what Marion assumed was the remote controls. Seeing as her technical knowledge wouldn't allow Marion to do much more than block out some of the light while the Doctor was trying to work and lean over his shoulder attempting to figure out what he was doing, she joined Leela in pretending that she understood the readings that the screen on top of the machinery.

"There isn't much time, Doctor. Pressure on the hull is increasing." Toos said, joining Marion and Leela looking at the monitors displaying numbers, symbols, and multicolored bars that might have meant something to someone who wasn't Marion and was from the current century. Like, for example, Toos.

Leela rubbed the back of her neck and looked upwards,

"It's getting warmer. The air smells different," she commented.

"The refrigeration and filtering systems are broken." Toos offered as an explanation. Just then, the communicator on her wrist beeped.

"Pilot Toos," she answered quickly.

"SV7 here. Commander Uvanov is injured. Chief Mover Poul instructs that he be restrained. Confirmation is required."

"Confirmed. I want damage control teams in all sections. I want a full scale mine integrity survey carried out at once. Clear?" as she said this, she turned her wrist for emphasis and winced in pain as she did so.

"Yes, Commander."

"Let me see that," Leela said, gently grabbing the other woman's wrist, "Why didn't you say something earlier?"

"I'd too much to do."

"You've got nothing to do now, Toos," the Doctor called up from his work, "Look after her, Leela."

"Here," Marion said, remembering the roll of bandages and removing them from her bag, "use these."

The Sandminer wasn't yet completely submerged in the sand, but it was sinking and the group minus the Doctor, who was finishing up some last-minute repairs.

Toos held out her wrist as Leela wrapped her arm.

"My tribe has a saying. If you're bleeding, look for a man with scars."

Poul and Zilda walked into the room breathing as if he had run the whole way there. Of course, that could have been in part because of the air filtration system being broken. Perhaps it was a bit of both.

"Thank you very much," Toss said to Leela. She then turned to the person who entered, "Poul, why is Commander Uvanov under restraint?"

"He tried to kill Zilda, I think he's responsible for the deaths of the others too," Poul accused.

"No," Toos said in disbelief.

"It's true," Zilda said, "Ten years ago, Uvanov left my brother to die outside for fear of missing out on a promising storm,"

"I saw the," Paul caught himself as if he was just about to say something that he shouldn't have, "I was there. And so was Kerril, and he's dead now, of course."

"But there'd have been an enquiry," Toos looked towards Marion, "He'd have been stripped of command wouldn't he,"

"Well," Marion said trying to come up with something that made some amount of sense, "I suppose depending on what he said during his enquiry, who he was speaking to, and how much money he was making for the company, it's very possible that they let him off the hook with nothing more than a stern 'don't do that again'," she tried to make herself look embarrassed and apologetic like when the younger cousin of a Facebook employee asks them why they keep dropping the ball on protecting the data of their users at Thanksgiving dinner and their uncle is looking at them expectantly.

"A note on his confidential biograph and that was it," Poul said, pointing "Case closed. Until Zilda turned up, of course. I should have recognised her before. She looks just like her brother. "

"And the moment I found out", Zilda said, clearly angry "one of the robots came towards me with a corpse marker. Uvanov's somehow been getting the robots to break their programming to attack the crew," Zilda turned to look at Marion, "He sent it after Inspector Henson too. Probably because she might've found something in the records he didn't want to be exposed."

"What happened to the robot?" Toos asked.

"The Inspector knocked it to the ground and managed to disarm and disable it,"

Toos looked at her, "How'd you manage that?"

Marion didn't think that "I don't know" would be a good answer, nor did she think that she could get away with simply not saying a word.

Fortunately, it was then that the Doctor finally joined them in the crew room.

"She grew up in the Ross colony and was visiting family before being called on inspection. It's got stronger gravity than this planet so the robot wasn't as heavy to her, as it might've been to you,"

Toos seemed to accept the explanation as did the rest of the surviving crewmembers. Marion didn't know if it was because it sounded plausible in their ears, or if it was because the Doctor said it was such conviction and certainty, that even she wondered for a moment if she was in fact, from this Ross colony and had been sent to earth as a baby. Had the Doctor offered an unintentional clue as to what was going on with her?

The answer to this question by the way is no.

Leela rubbed the side of her neck, "It's getting harder to breathe!" she commented. As soon as she said this, the room was filled with a creaking noise. It was loud enough that even when one of the robots said over the intercom system:

"Hull pressure now five hundred atmospheres."

The creaking could still be heard clearly.

The noise made Toos, Poul, and Zilda leap to their feet.

"Listen..." said Toos, holding up a finger.

"That sounded like the hull," said Zilda.

"It could go any minute!" said Poul, horrified.

'Good thing that Dask just fixed the motive units then,' Marion thought.

The Doctor leaned out of the crew room and looked into the hall looking for something before returning to the room.

"Do you know what I think?"

Whatever the Doctor had been going to say was interrupted by Dask talking into the intercom.

"Hello, Toos?"

"Dask, what is it?" Toos said, fearing the worst.

"I've repaired the damaged motive units. I'm starting up again now."

When she heard this, Toos hung her head back and sighed in relief.

"I think he's very clever." the Doctor said, finishing his thought.

Dask was quite clever. Marion could feel the sandminer rising and knew that soon they would be back on the surface and going along their merry way. At least until all of the robots tried to kill them.

Marion sighed.

Poul, Zilda, and Toos sat around a table eating a meal. Seeing this made Marion remember that she had been... Sent? ...Brought? Unceremoniously yanked backward like a gmod ragdoll?

The point was that she had woken up, put on some clothes, written a note, and had been taken from the 13th Doctor's TARDIS to the 4th's and started on her merry way with no time for breakfast. She didn't have to look at the band on her arm to know that she should probably eat something. She remembered the granola bar in her purse. It hadn't been in there for that long. She had put it in there as a snack if she was hungry on her way to or from the convenience store. She hadn't gotten to eat it before…

Marion took it out of her purse, unwrapped it, and ate it. She crumpled up the wrapper and put it back into her purse. She sat down next to Leela on the couch before she noticed the Doctor silently tilt his head at the two of them, silently beckoning them to come to him.

She and Leela got up and walked close to him.

"You're going to check out D84 right?" Marion said in a lowered tone.

"Exactly," the Doctor said, "Leela, you stay with Poul while Marion and I investigate."

"Leela, don't let him out of your sight, and if he tried to leave the room stop him. I said that you were the security advisor, try seeing if you can use that to keep him here." Marion said, knowing that once Poul left, he would see the robot with the bloody hands and panic.

"Do you think that he's lying?" Leela whispered, glancing back at Poul.

"He's not telling the whole truth," said the Doctor.

"He's scared of the robots and the idea that some of the robots here are capable of murder makes him uneasy," Marion explained.

Leela nodded and walked back to speak with the crew while the Doctor and Marion left the room.

"So where will we have to go to find our robotic friend,"

"Well..."

Marion had to think about this for a bit

'Well, he's supposed to be in Uvanov's cabin room, except he was only there to look at Zilda's body. Zilda isn't dead, so I suppose that he must be somewhere else. Possibly checking on Cass's body. Seeing as they seem to cover the bodies in the green sheet at their place of death...'

"I think he'll go to the crew cabin to check on the body," Marion said, "It's the room where they put us when they caught us,"

They entered the room to find it completely empty if not for the body of the late Cass lying

The Doctor put a finger in front of his mouth, gesturing for Marion to be quiet and pointed his finger towards the little alcove where Cass's body had been hidden and walked towards it.

Marion noted how, much like his older and spikier haired incarnation, he seemed to assume that she already more or less knew what he was planning and all he needed to do was to point out that he was doing the plan right then.

Well, he wasn't incorrect in his assumption, now was he?

Marion followed close behind him. The alcove was just the right size for two people so sit side by side so long as they didn't push their elbows or knees too far out to the side and also didn't mind their sides bumping against each other too much.

The Doctor was tall enough that all he had to do was lean back into the alcove like he was sitting on a slightly taller than average barstool while Marion had to pull herself up and turn around. They scooted back a bit until when they pulled their knees back and closed the curtain, it was hard to tell that they had been there at all.

As they were sitting, Marion suddenly remembered something. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the odd drive with the magnet.

"Hey Doctor, do you know what this is? The Associate left it with me, but I don't know what it's for,"

The Doctor took it from her hand and examined it for a moment.

"It looks like Proxima Centenarian Autodrive," he said. He scanned it with his screwdriver, "doesn't seem to have anything saved on it."

"Doctor," Marion asked,

"Yes, Marion?"

"What's a Proxima Centenarian Autodrive?"

"It's a type of secure external hard drive. See that strip, well it can stick to anything metallic that's got 1's and 0's, and an electric current running through it. It automatically creates a perfect backup of whatever it's on and continually updates itself. You see, on Proxima Centauri B..."

To make a long story (slightly) shorter, the drive was designed to make complete digital copies of whatever thing it was hooked up to, but was typically used for learning programs. They were commonly hooked up to machines that were programmed for tasks that required human-level pattern recognition or other kinds of self-awareness in situations where there was concern of the machine being destroyed in a situation where a constant digital connection to the cloud was either impossible (search and rescue when the vast caverns of the planet had a cave-in) or undesired (customers who wanted to make sure their data was up to date but feared hooking it up to a digital cloud for fear data being hacked).

To make a shorter explanation into a simple sentence; it was a magnetic black box for securely storing AI. Marion tried to figure out how she was going to get it onto D84. If she could keep him from dying to save them, then she most certainly would.

As soon as the Doctor had finished his explanation, they heard the door to the room open and the sound of footsteps. The Doctor silently pulled back the curtain and the two of them watched the robot pull back the green sheet and examined the body under it. He didn't seem to see them and when he put the curtain back, that's when the Doctor called attention to himself.

"Professional interest or morbid curiosity? Which?" he asked with a huge beaming smile as if he was merely talking about the weather or asking about a good book.

D84 didn't say anything because he was still pretending to be a good Dum droid.

"Which? There are three types of robots aboard this mine. Dumbs, Vocs, a Super Voc, and then there's you. Would you care to explain that?" the Doctor asked, sounding more serious.

"I know that you can talk D84, you spoke to me, and Leela earlier remember," Marion said, trying to sound soothing.

The robot continued to not speak.

The Doctor leaned forward and got out of the alcove and made motions like he was going to leave the room.

"Perhaps I'd better tell SV7 you can talk."

"Please, do not," D84 said. Marion could hear a slight hint of desperation in his tone. At hearing him speak, the Doctor smiled.

"That's better,"

When the robot refused to say anything else, the Doctor moved away from the door and closer to the robot. He turned his head as if inviting the robot to whisper in his ear. Marion jumped down from the alcove and moved to join them.

"I cannot explain," D84 replied.

"Oh, but you can," the Doctor assured, "you can."

"Can you explain why it is that the three of you have been impersonating company officials when there is no record of anyone with your names and/or physical descriptions working for the company let alone being licensed Inspectors or Maintenance Experts,"

'Ah, beans,'

Marion had almost forgotten that D84 would know that she had been lying. It was likely only the fact that D84 had been posing as a being unable to speak that had kept him from exposing Leela and her earlier.

"Ah...well...the thing is..." Marion said before sighing, "I knew that there was a killer onboard and I also knew that the killer wasn't me or my friend. I thought it'd be easier to save lives and solve the mystery if people thought that I was doing a kind of inspection. It'd give me more access to the Sandminer and keep the crew from being so focused on thinking that I or my friends were the killers that the real killer was able to kill again. I did succeed though! The killer went after both me and Zilda and neither of us is dead,"

Marion didn't think that there was a need to bring up the fact that she was pretty sure that her neck had been snapped and her body, tossed to the ground and that, had it not been for whatever was causing her to hear that mysterious ticking noise, she would have been dead. It wasn't that it wasn't important. It was more that she didn't really have a way to prove that she could be strangled and get back up again. Well, besides the obvious way but she wasn't really willing to do it.

"You pretended to be a Dum Droid. You also lied about what you were. You know that we aren't the killers, so what's the harm," the Doctor pointed out.

To Marion's surprise, this worked.

"You seem to have the same interest as me in finding out who has been killing crew members. In return for you not revealing that I can speak, I will tell you why I am here. A little over eight months ago, just before the Sandminer was due to begin its expedition, the company received a threat in the mail. It was too close to the beginning of the expedition for it to be canceled, so I was sent to investigate and suspicious behavior on the sandminer and to give a report if it turned out that the threatening letters turned out to be more than just idle threats,"

Marion snapped her fingers, "That explains why they gave you self awareness and made you look like a Dum type. If people think that you can't repeat what you hear and wouldn't even if you could, then they'd be more likely to say something incriminating to them. Is that not correct?"

"Yes. That is the reason that they had me pose as D84,"

Marion and the Doctor explained their suspicions regarding the robots onboard and Marion explicitly mentioned the one that was seemingly sent to kill both her and Zilda.

"Hmm," the Doctor said, "you're a robot detective then?" He gestured towards the body of Cass, "What does your computer mind make of this?"

D84 looked down at the body, "Strength is indicated," he looked back up at the Doctor, "but not beyond human capacity."

"Typical robot. No imagination," the Doctor dismissed.

"I don't know Doc, I think robots can have plenty of imagination. Surely you remember New Houston don't you?"

"Those were extenuating circumstances, Marion,"

"In any case," D84 cut in, "when it comes to conclusions, I require", he paused, "I require evidence. Your suspicions are not evidence, nor are lunatic threats of a robot revolution."

"The company took those threats seriously enough," said Marion, "I mean they put you on board. Your ability to reason is pretty sophisticated. I doubt they'd send you here if they didn't think there was something suspicious afoot,"

"A simple precaution. Those letters were signed by Taren Capel."

"Taren Capel?" the Doctor pivoted on his foot towards Marion, "Taren Capel. Who's Taren Capel,"

"He's a scientist who excels in the field of robotics. He disappeared a while back."

The Doctor turned back to D84, "Taren Capel, a scientist, in the field of robotics?"

"Correct."

The Doctor smiled let out a short, wheezing laugh, "And you're still looking for evidence?"

"If I was to tell you the world would end tomorrow, would you merely accept my word?" D84 asked. Despite the fact that his tone hadn't changed, Marion could hear the sarcasm in his voice.

"Perhaps," Marion said, leaning on the railing overlooking where the Doctor and the robot were talking, "perhaps if you had a history of telling me things that turned out to be true. If that were the case, I'd at least hear you out and if need be, take precautions."

There was a personnel file in the crew cabin room. The Doctor looked through it.

"What does Taren Capel look like?" he asked, flipping through the dossier with it's pictures of the crewmembers.

"There are no records. From childhood, he lived with only robots."

The Doctor let out a disbelieving laugh, "Oh, that's dim. Even for a Dumb, that's dim."

"I think he's on the ship. What do you think, Marion? Is Taren Capel on board,"

This was a Question. Marion was sure of it. And so she answered as such. "Yes. He's here,"

"No he is not," D84 said in a tone that was probably as angry and frustrated a person could make without being able to properly emote with one's voice, "I have checked extensively. There are only the crew, and you three."

"But you don't know what he looks like," the Doctor reminded me.

"But I know what they look like," D84 stated.

"Is it possible that you think you know what one of them looks like but he swapped out with someone and you, therefore, think that he's that someone when in fact he's someone else?" Marion questioned. She knew the answer. Capel was disguised as an extra SV-7 if she remembered right. She hadn't the foggiest how to tell which was which one.

D84 froze for a moment, considering what the woman had just said. For a robot who was supposed to lack the ability to emote, he really was good at expressing emotions. Desperation, sarcasm, frustration, and now, that special emotion that one feels when they realize that they've missed something that should have been obvious to them. This was an emotion that Marion was about to experience for neither the first nor the last time.

"I had overlooked the possibility of substitution,"

Marion connected the dots in her head and together, the dots came together to create an imaginary dunce cap that planted itself atop her curls.

"Seems like you did," said the Doctor, not realizing that D84 wasn't the only person who was just realizing that they had overlooked or forgot something important.

'Ah, fuck'

Both D84 and Marion were currently feeling that particular emotion.

'It's Dask. It's Dask! I spent several minutes racking my brain to see if I was sending him to be murdered and was the murderer all along. How did I manage to forget that! If I don't manage to somehow forget how to breathe, I'm jotting everything down in a notebook and adding more as I remember. This is ridiculous!'

D84 turned away from them to face the wall, "I have failed,"

'I feel the same way. I don't think I would've been able to save the other four either way, but it's a damn good thing I could save Zilda otherwise I'd be even more pissed at myself than I am now!'

"Yes," the Doctor said, still looking down at one of the files. The plans to the ship if Marion was remembering correctly. He noticed the dejected robot and got up from his seat, "Yes. Oh, come on. Don't be upset. Yes, you failed, you failed, but congratulations. Failure's one of the basic freedoms," he pointed to a space shown on the plans, "Listen. Do you think that looks like a likely place?"

"Likely for what?"

"Well, if Taren Capel is on board, he'd have a workshop, and we must find it before it's too late," the Doctor turned to leave the and was nearly out the door. Marion tugged on his arm to stop him and turned to face D84.

"Hey. Would you like to come investigate with us?" she asked, tilting her head in an inviting, "C'mon" motion.

"Yes please!" D84 said.

"Good!" the Doctor said, "then let's go."

(Next Chapter: Red Eyes? Take Warning. Also Run.)

Marion: Gosh, I hope Dask is okay! I sure would hate it if I sent an innocent person to their death because I couldn't remember events properly.

Marion, about an hour later: *slam's head against the wall.*

Marion's "ah fuck" realization is brought to you by the fact that the Dask twist actually managed to get me BOTH times I watched the serial. I don't even have the excuse that it was me seeing it once as a little kid and then again when I was older. I deadass watched it again, 2 months after I saw it the first time and my brain really went, "Wow! I sure hope the killer doesn't get Dask. He's great. I love him." TWICE.

Part of the reason I'm having Marion also not remember some of these things because I'm trying to make the story realistic, but not the "everything sucks and I hate it here" kind of way. You know? It's a whole lot of show to watch. She's not going to remember every single detail. You know?

Oh and also, there are some references in this chapter that you might not get, so I'll clarify.

When Marion mention's "New Houston" she is referring to the Big Finish Audio, "The Yes Men" involving Two, Jamie, Polly, and Ben. I don't want to spoil it, but more or less, robots gain self-awareness and want to become citizens of the colony.

The "Ross Colony" is supposed to be located on the planet "Ross 128-b". That's an exoplanet that's about 38% larger than earth and has a gravitational pull that's 1.12 times as strong as the earth's. It's an interesting planet for a few reasons. For one thing, it could potentially have liquid water on its surface. Scientists are still not 100% sure about the temperature, but many think it's got an average temperature of about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, (that's 7 degrees Celsius). For comparison, the average temperature of Earth is 58.3 Degrees Fahrenheit (14.6 degrees Celsius).

As for Proxima Centauri B, that's another exoplanet that could hypothetically support human life. It's tidal locked which means on one side it's always day and hot and on the other, it's always night and cold. The only place where it'd be hospitable for human life is around the terminator/twilight zone where it's always daybreak/dusk. Also, underground which was where I was trying to imply most of Proxima Centaurians live.