Back by popular demand, it's Nine. Hello. I think if I do Nine after this, it'll be something from the comics, but for now, here we go. Hopefully, I'll be done with the End of the World arc before school starts up again. It'll definitely be done if it's only one more chapter. If it's two chapters, then that becomes a little bit iffy, but who knows? Not me.
Here are the acknowledgments:
Thank you bwillia4 for favoriting
Thank you Orent for following
Thank you Emrys Akayuki for following and favoriting and reviewing
As if it was an apology for her nearly falling off the side of a railing or landing awkwardly on her ankles or getting nauseatingly shoved up and off to the side. Marion landed on something soft and grey with a soft oof.
"Y'know," Marion said, her voice half muffled by the quilt. "If you would just drop me off this way normally, maybe you'd have a nickname other than the 'Bitch Force'. Like, the Force or the Tug, or- something."
Marion rolled over and stared up at the TARDIS ceiling for a moment, before taking a deep breath and sitting up fully.
She didn't get to spend as much time in this room as she would have liked. It was a nice room. Marion stood up and walked over to her desk. Resting on top of it were two mason jars. A large one and a smaller one. The larger one was filled completely with puffy paper stars in a variety of sizes and colors and patterns. The smaller one wasn't as full, there was just a loose handful of stars there and a handkerchief was draped over the top of it. A few strips of paper were on the desk and one or two of them were on the floor. There was a note on the smaller of the jar that simply said: "Take me with you". A note from the Associate rested on top.
"I think that this is the longest single time I've ever spent in one place with the Doctor at a time." the note read. "It's been at least a few months, maybe more. If I didn't know any better, I'd think that my time jumping days are over, but I know that that can't be the case. The Doctor might be a bit…" Marion was doubtful that the Associate had written this directly and hadn't just spoken aloud while the pen transcribed for her. 'I was with the Doctor for a few months. I don't know when I arrived, not exactly, but I know that it was not too long after the end of the Time War and as I'm writing this, the Doctor has just told me that he's tracked the Nestene Consciousness to somewhere in London 2005." Ah. Okay. "Anyway, bring the smaller mason jar with you when you head out, and just, I don't need to tell you how to act. You're me, I know how you are and I know what you'll- Marion are you coming! We're about to land. I'll be right there Doctor. Hmm. No, it's not worth crossing the rest of this out. Good luck, see you soon,"
Yeah, and that middle bit confirmed it. Right.
Marion slid the jar into her bag along with the handkerchief.
She went through the "M" drawer and found a drawstring bag. It was partially open and the inside of it was lined with something shiny and metallic. Mario lifted it up and realized that the bag was oddly heavy. She quickly realized that this wasn't because of the bag itself, but because there was something inside of the bag. Marion looked inside. A hammer, well, more of a mallet. It probably could be used to push nails through wood, but it looked less like something that should be used to build things, and more like something you would use to forcibly dismantle a computer. Or a window. Or anything that was capable of being broken into pieces with enough bludgeoning force.
'Now the question is, was the Associate taken before, or after Rose," Marion pushed the door to her room open and walked through the hall. She could hear voices from down the hall, and she followed them.
"Where'd she go?" Marion could hear Rose's raised voice. "She was right there and then she fell and she was gone. What happened to her,"
And that answered that; after Rose. Before The End of the World.
"That's just something she does sometimes. She can't control it. One minute she's standing there, the next moment, she's somewhere else in time and space,"
"And then," Marion came through the hall and finally joined the rest of them in the console, "she comes back. Hello Rose, have you decided where you want to go yet?"
"I was going to, and then you shouted and you fell, and then you were gone. What happened?"
"Like that Doctor said," Marion shrugged, "I do that. I get taken from one place to another. Most of the time, I'm in the TARDIS but it's happened just outside the TARDIS before too. But also, I experience time wildly out of order, so whatever happened with you two and the mannequins, I don't know the specifics, especially stuff I'd have to be there to know,"
"How do you know about the mannequins then?"
Marion shrugged. "I just kind of know things. Now, enough about that, you wanted to travel yeah? Forwards or backwards?"
"I already asked her that," the Doctor said from over at the console, "then the Associate disappeared and we got off track-"
"The Associate?"
"Me," Marion explained, "Future versions of me. Saying future you and future me and past you and past me a whole lot gets confusing. So future me is the Associate. It's simpler that way. So what's your answer Rose? Forwards or backwards?"
"Forwards,"
"How far?"
Rose shook her head. "I- a hundred years?"
The Doctor leaned down, his face awash with green light. He started to flick different levers. It was kind of hard to tell because of how wildly different Nine and Eleven's console room looked, but Marion thought that those were the same levers that Eleven had used so that he could go forward and backward in time to get all those different pictures without moving anywhere in time. He spun a wheel, flipped another lever, and then he glanced at Marion. Marion could somewhat recognize the parts of the ship now. She pulled at a button? Toggle?
One of those things where you pull it to start it and push it back into place to stop it.
The TARDIS whirred loudly as it dematerialized. The Doctor was smiling excitedly. A moment later, he twisted something on the console and the sound of dematerialization came to a stop.
"There you go. Step outside those doors. It's the twenty-second century."
"You're kidding."
"He's not. It is the twenty-second century,"
'You know, assuming he didn't get it wrong,' Marion thought. Then again, they weren't going to be stepped foot outside, so Marion supposed it didn't matter much if he'd gotten the right destination or not.
"That's a bit boring, though." the Doctor leaned forward, "Do you want to go further?"
Rose smiled. "Fine by me."
The Doctor repeated the same thing he'd done before, only he spun the wheel for a lot longer than he had before. Marion pulled the toggle button thingy again and the Doctor twisted a lever. The TARDIS dematerialized and then rematerialized again a few moments later.
"Ten thousand years in the future. Step outside, it's the year 12005, the new Roman Empire."
Rose leaned over to Marion with a laugh. "He thinks he's so impressive, doesn't he,"
" I am so impressive!" the Doctor said, sitting up.
"You wish!"
"Right then!" the Doctor said, pointing at Rose, "you asked for it. I know exactly where to go. Hold on!" Marion pulled on the little pull thing and the Doctor started to spin the wheel around and around and around again, occasionally flicking at levers as he did so. The Doctor moved away from the side of the console he was at and he pulled on a lever. Marion let the TARDIS guide her to flicking a switch and then she tapped on a large bell.
"Where are we?" Rose asked. The Doctor simply pointed at the door as if to say "See for yourself."
"What's out there?"
Even if Marion hadn't been looking at her, she would've been able to tell that the young woman was smiling.
The Doctor just silently gestured towards the door, a huge grin on his face.
Rose's eyes turned to Marion.
"It's something out of this world."
Rose walked towards the door, looked back at them for a moment, then slowly walked through the door. The TARDIS clicked open and the door shut behind him.
"So, the end of the world, huh?" Marion commented. She and the Doctor started to head towards the door to join Rose at the observatory.
"She wanted to go forward in time. A hundred years wasn't enough. Ten thousand years wasn't enough."
"So five billion and five?"
"Technically speaking, it's five point five slash apple slash twenty-six." The Doctor nudged her.
"Yes, yes, technically speaking."
Marion pushed open the door and gestured with her head for the Doctor to leave and he shut the door behind them. The Doctor used the sonic screwdriver on the side panel. While Marion looked around the wood. The whole place was covered in wood or like, some kind of paneling that looked like wood. Marion liked it a lot more than the generic chrome and metal strips found on most spaceships. Less like a spaceship, and more like a higher chain hotel. The kind that might host a convention. Marion turned around and away from the Doctor and watched as the large black metal shutter lowered to reveal the earth.
Big, blue and white, and just an hour or so away from being burnt to a crisp.
Marion and the Doctor stood on either side of Rose.
"You lot, you spend all your time thinking about dying, like you're going to get killed by eggs or beef or global warming or asteroids. But you never take time to imagine the impossible, that maybe you survive. This is the year five point five slash apple slash twenty-six. Five billion years in your future, and this is the day," the Doctor glanced down at his watch, "Hold on,"
With a low roar that had to have come from the radiation causing the space station to shudder or something since sound doesn't travel in space the sun swelled and expanded.
Marion tapped lightly on the protective glass. "Today's the day that the sun expands and the Earth burns."
"The end of the world." the Doctor's somewhat somber tone was gone in an instant. "Come on, you don't want to be just standing here all day, do you?"
The Doctor walked back up the stairs, tapped a button on the glowing blue side panel and the door slid open. The Doctor reached out for Marion's hand and she took it as they walked down the halls. The upscale hotel vibes continued with the light wood with thin dark pillars on one side and the shiny sculptures on the other.
A computer's soft voice rang out from the intercoms.
"Shuttles five and six now docking. Guests are reminded that Platform One forbids the use of weapons, teleportation, and religion. Earth Death is scheduled for fifteen thirty nine Followed by drinks in the Manchester Suite."
"So, when it says guests," Rose asked, "does that mean people?"
"Yup," Marion replied, "All kinds of people, from all kinds of species, from all kinds of worlds, from all over the galaxy. Maybe even the universe."
"You mean aliens?"
"'Course,"
"What are they doing on board this spaceship? What's it all for?"
The Doctor let go of Marion's hand to do something with his sonic screwdriver on a screen embedded into a nearby wall.
"It's not really a spaceship, more like an observation deck," the Doctor said as he started to do whatever it was that he was doing. "The great and the good are gathering to watch the planet burn."
"What for?"
"Fun,"
"Watching a planet like Earth burn is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It honestly wouldn't shock me if they've got a camera up somewhere and are live streaming it. But there's of course people who'd be willing to pay a whole lot of money to see it all happen in person,"
"Mind you," the Doctor reminded, "when I said the great and the good, what I mean is, the rich."
They came around the corner once more to a large open room. The same dark, medium, and light wood tones that were everywhere on the platform were present. Between large dark brown pillars were display cases with things that Marion was too uncultured and too from the 21st century to recognize. On the opposite end of the door were three huge side-by-side windows that went from a few inches above the floor and curved up to the ceiling.
The sun was huge. Mercury and Venus were long gone, and if Marion was remembering correctly if anything had still been living on the surface of the planet, it absolutely wasn't "living" there now.
They had a better view from this point than they had from the loading dock. Marion wondered how the sun's expansion would've looked from this observation platform. Or the TARDIS for that matter.
Rose stared out the window for a moment. "But, hold on," She made a motion with her hands, "They did this once on Newsround Extra. The sun expanding, that takes hundreds of years."
"Hundreds? Try hundreds of millions."
"The planet's now property of the National Trust. They've been keeping it preserved." the Doctor pointed down to a few floating metal devices they could see just above the atmosphere of the planet. "See down there? Gravity satellites holding back the sun."
"The planet looks the same as ever. I thought the continents shifted and things,"
"Sure," Marion shrugged, "but people don't like change much, so the Trust shifted it back."
"But now the money's run out so nature is taking over."
"How long's it got?"
The Doctor checked his watch. "About half an hour, and then the planet gets roasted."
"Is that why we're here?" Rose asked, "I mean, is that what you two do? Jump in at the last minute and save the Earth?"
"I mean, normally, yes," Marion replied, "but not this time."
"But what about the people?"
"It's empty. They're all gone. No one left."
"You're making it sound worse than it is. Anyone who hasn't already left earth and started traveling around the galaxy is on a huge ship set to land somewhere 700 years away. Plants too. The Earth's empty. It's just rock now. Rock and ice and… well, you get the picture. Humanity is still very, very much around. Just not on Earth."
"Who the hell are you?"
"Oh that's nice, thanks," the Doctor replied, sarcastically.
Marion turned to see a blue-skinned man dressed in a brown suit rushing towards them.
He was one of the three people who were going to die? Right? It was him, and then another steward and Jabe?
She'd just have to do a bunch of metal spider smashing. Or a lot of dragging people elsewhere.
"But how did you get in?" The man all but shouted, stepping closer to her, "This is a maximum hospitality zone. The guests have disembarked. They're on their way any second now."
"That's me. I'm a guest." As the Doctor spoke, Marion started to rummage through her bag looking for the little wallet where she kept her "invitation". "Look, I've got an invitation. Look. There, you see? It's fine, you see? The Doctor plus one. I'm the Doctor, this is Rose Tyler. She's my plus one. Is that all right?"
"And what about you?"
Marion pulled the wallet out. "Marion Henson. Don't have a plus one I'm afraid."
"I see," the Steward replied, "Apologies, et cetera. If you're on board, we'd better start. Enjoy." The man walked away from the two of them and over to a glass podium.
"The paper's slightly psychic," The Doctor leaned down to Rose. "It shows them whatever I want them to see. Saves a lot of time."
"You'd be surprised what you can get away with enough confidence and a sheet of paper that tells whoever is looking at it that you're where you're supposed to be and you are who you say you are.,"
"He's blue." Rose remarked, starting at the Steward.
"We're in space," Marion reminded.
"Okay."
The Steward cleared his throat. Music started to play.
"We have in attendance the Doctor, Rose Tyler, and Marion Henson," The Steward clapped his hands. "Thank you. All staff to their positions."
A dozen or so people with blue skin and black uniforms started to march forward and then go through the hallway on the other side of the room in the direction where the guests were supposed to come from.
"Hurry, now, thank you," the Steward called after them, "Quick as we can. Come along, come along. And now, might I introduce the next honoured guest? Representing the Forest of Cheam, we have trees, namely, Jabe, Lute, and Coffa."
Three beings who looked like their skin was made of wood with what looked like rough bark on top of their heads in the place of hair stepped through the door. Two taller and broader figures dressed nearly identically in polished brown armor with a woman standing in between the two of them dressed in yellow and red.
Marion only had the vaguest of plans as to how she was going to save the Stewards but keeping Jabe safe would be fairly easy. Simply stick by the Doctor and make sure Jabe wasn't the one who had to pull the lever.
"There will be an exchange of gifts representing peace. If you could keep the room circulating, thank you," the Steward remarked, looking down at his notebook. "Next, from the solicitors Jolco and Jolco, we have the Moxx of Balhoon."
A blue man about the size of a very large child came rolling in on a gold moving chair.
"And next, from Financial Family Seven, we have the Adherents of the Repeated Meme," A bunch of figures in black robes appeared in the doorway.
Those were robots. Not like, D48 (and god she needed to find a place to upload him to) or even Kettleburn's machine. They were mindless drones, being controlled by a flap of skin. But it wasn't like Marion could attack them. Not then. Not yet. The best she could do was keep people from getting killed.
In Marion's musing, she missed the brothers Hop Plyeen, Carl Sparkplug, Mr. and Mrs. Pacoo, and the Ambassadors from the City State of Binding Light.
She did, however, notice, that Jabe was standing right in front of them, holding a potted plant in her hand.
"The Gift of Peace," she said, delicately holding one out to them. "I bring you a cutting of my Grandfather."
The Doctor took it with one hand and started to rummage through his pockets with the other.
He looked up at Jabe. "I give you air from my lungs," The Doctor breathed gently on her.
"Oh, how intimate,"
"There's more where that came from,"
"Oh, I bet there is," the woman replied with a smile.
Marion quickly took the Mason jar out of her bag. She unscrewed the lid, reached inside, and pulled out three of the little paper stars and held out to Jabe, Lute. and Coffa.
"And I give you paper stars, folded using a traditional Earth technique originating in the-" Fuck, what did they refer to that time period as? There was a name for it. The first period? No. First era? No. SEGMENT. That's what that was called. It baffled Marion that she could remember something like that, but she couldn't remember whether or not the creature from the pocket universe was actively hostile or not, or who the murderer on the Sandminer was. But she could remember that. Superb. Great going brain."first segment." Marion finished. Marion delicately dropped the stars in Jabe's open hands.
"Oh, how charming,"
"They're surprisingly simple to make!" Marion remarked. "All you need is a strip of paper or something else thin and foldable and a bit of patience."
Jabe simply nodded her head and with a soft smile and walked away.
The blue man rolled up to them next. Marion stepped off to the side both so that she wouldn't get spit on (excuse me, accept the Mox's "gift of bodily saliva") and also so that she could talk to Jack. Marion stared at the tank as it rolled into the room. She pressed the handkerchief and the mason jar into Rose's hand and went off to the side to talk to the tank. She kept a careful eye on the adherents of the repeated meme. And those fucking robo-spheres.
The moment she was close enough to nearly touch Jack's tank she felt something buzzing in her brain. The closest thing Marion could compare it to was radio static, and then the static cleared into a voice.
The best way to describe someone speaking to you telepathically is like this:
Have you ever gotten a song stuck in your head so hard that even though you should be in complete silence you can hear the words and melody as if you had your headphones on? Imagine that, but it's a voice and it changes when you respond to it.
"Well if it isn't Miss Marion," Jack said. His words buzzed in her brain. Telepathy, Marion decided, felt odd. She didn't dislike it, but if she was given the option of having someone speak to her using brain waves vs. sound waves, she was going to go for the sound waves.
"Hello Jack," Marion said, and then paused, "Unless you go by the Face of Boe now. Sorry I shouldn't assume."
"No one's called me Jack for millenia." he replied, "Except for you of course. I don't mind,"
Marion let out a sigh of relief. "Y'know, the first time you met me, do you remember, back at the Blitz, that's the only time I've talked to you. So I don't know if…everything that came after that. Did I help?". This was something Marion had been worried about. Jack Harkness went through a lot. It was hard to quantify how much he went through in comparison to the Doctor mostly due to factors like age and Marion consuming nowhere near as much Torchwood content as she had Doctor Who. "Did, did I help. Did I make things better. Did people still-"
Did people still die? What became of Torchwood Three. Ianto? Owen? Tosh? The Children of the Earth?
"Did I make a difference? Did-did you still lose people? I mean, other than from y'know. Old age."
Telepathic laughter felt weird. Like when you lean your head against the window on a bus,
"Of course, that's the first thing you ask. You know, you change a bit when you get older. But not very much. You know I can't tell you everything. Spoilers!"
"Yeah, yeah, I know, but I'm not asking for details. I just want to know if I was able to help,"
"Yes,"
"Yes?"
"You helped. I woke up on Satellite Five with a notebook on my chest. A brown one, with my name on it. You couldn't tell me everything. You were worried about things changing and the book becoming useless or it falling into the wrong hands. But you told me everything that you could, and it saved so many lives."
"Oh," Marion took a deep breath. "Oh thank God. That's good. That's really, really, really, good."
Marion wasn't going to ask the details of how she had done it. That would be spoilers. But she knew that it was possible.
Marion had to start writing in that notebook right away. Next stop in the TARDIS she came, she was getting some paper, and writing down literally everything that she could remember. She'd organize it later.
Marion looked up and away from Jack's tank just as the Steward began to announce the final guest.
"And last but not least, our very special guest. Ladies and gentlemen, and trees and multiforms, consider the Earth below. In memory of this dying world, we call forth the last Human. The Lady Cassandra O'Brien Dot Delta Seventeen."
The floor cleared as a pair of doctors or medical professionals or nurses or attendants or whatever their specific role was wheeled in a large talking flap of skin stretched like a tapestry on a metal frame.
And it's not like Marion hadn't seen the End of the World and New Earth. She knew about Cassandra. She'd seen her a few times. But much like the Starwhale of the starship UK, there's only so much that BBC is able to show.
It wasn't that Marion had never seen stretched-out skin before either. But the thing is that that had been animal skin. And also, it had been dry. And dead.
This was alive and twitching slightly and vaguely translucent; she could see the blood pulsing through her in a way that made feel Marion faintly ill. Sne hoped that she wouldn't seem impolite if she refused to look directly at her even if they were talking.
Then it hit her that Cassandra was going to try to kill a bunch of people so that her stock investments would go up and suddenly, Marion found herself caring far less.
"Oh, now, don't stare. I know, I know it's shocking, isn't it? I've had my chin completely taken away and look at the difference,"
The only thing worse than watching Cassandra being rolled in was watching her talk. Parts of her stretched and slacked and she opened her mouth Marion was able to get a decently clear look at the other side of her. Horrifying. "Look how thin I am. Thin and dainty," her eyes darted back and forth and Marion very much wished that they hadn't. "I don't look a day over two thousand. Moisturise me. Moisturise me."
One of her attendants started to spray her with a squeeze spray thingy. Rose stepped away from the Doctor and started to try to look around the other side of the woman. A thing that Marion was most certainly uninterested in doing herself. As Marion moved to stand back next to the Doctor, Cassandra continued to speak.
"Truly, I am the last Human. My father was a Texan, my mother was from the Arctic Desert. They were born on the Earth and were the last to be buried in its soil. I have come to honour them and say goodbye," Marion had no clue how someone could be the thickness of cardstock and still have tear ducts but Cassandra was slightly crying and one of her attendants was wiping her eyes. "Oh, no tears, no tears. I'm sorry. But behold, I bring gifts," One of the Station's employees walked in carrying something that was shaped like an egg.
Marion wondered what the pros and cons would be of just taking the egg and throwing it to the ground like a basketball. It'd probably cause a scene and Cassandra would get off scot-free. So not worth it. "From Earth itself, the last remaining ostrich egg. Legend says it had a wingspan of fifty feet and blew fire from its nostrils. Or was that my third husband? Oh, no. Oh, don't laugh. I'll get laughter lines," The attendants reeled in something else. A large jukebox. The kind that you might see in a 50's style American diner that had been built in the 70s. "And here, another rarity."
"According to the archives, this was called an iPod. It stores classical music from humanity's greatest composers. Play on!"
Hearing Tainted Love blasting from a jukebox just under five billion years in her future on a satellite set up to watch the Earth get consumed by the Sun while surrounded by aliens was something that was so incredibly surreal that it managed to loop right back around to feeling normal.
This normality was seemingly not felt by Rose who after looking around the room from the Aliens to Cassandra to the Doctor who was smiling and doing a little dance in place, she ran out of the viewing room.
"I'll follow her," Marion told the Doctor.
Marion was almost out of the door, but she was stopped by one of the Adherents holding out one of those evil metal balls with the spiders inside.
"A gift of peace in all good faith!"
"Wow." Marion said, pointedly without emphasis. "Thanks."
Marion hurried on after Rose. She took the bag she'd found in the M drawer earlier out and shoved the ball inside of it. The tucked the hammer where it was easy to access in the top of her bag in case that little shit came to life and needed shattering, and then slung the bag over her back and kept moving.
She found Rose looking out of a window much smaller than the one in the viewing room.
She turned around just as Marion got close, she seemed jumpy.
"Sorry about that," Marion rubbed the back of her neck. "Didn't mean to startle you. I saw you run off, we just wanted to make sure that you were alright. As far as first trips in the TARDIS goes, this," Marion gestured out the open window. "Is a lot."
"Yeah," Rose laughed. Rose looked past Marion to someone behind her.
"Sorry. Are we allowed to be in here?"
Marion turned around to see a young woman with blue skin dressed in a dark green uniform and a baseball hat on top of a headwrap. Marion hadn't been close enough to tell if the Steward was the same, but the woman's pupils were yellow and slit. Like a cat's.
Marion, just needed to stick around to pull her out of the vent, right? That was all. She could do that.
"You have to give us permission to talk," the woman said gently.
"Oh," said Rose.
"You can talk," "You have permission to talk," Marion and Rose said more or less at the same time.
"Thank you," the woman shook her head, "And, no, you're not in the way. Guests are allowed anywhere."
"Okay."
The woman tapped something on a side panel.
"What's your name?" Rose asked.
"Raffalo"
"Raffalo?"
"Yes, miss," Raffalo crouched down in front of a grate and started to unscrew the panel from the wall. "I won't be long, I've just got to carry out some maintenance. There's a tiny little glitch in the Face of Boe's suite. There must be something blocking the system. He's not getting any hot water."
"So you're a plumber?" Rose asked.
"Yes miss,"
"They still have plumbers?"
"I hope so, else I'm out of a job,"
Marion listened to the two of them speak, but also for the sound of quick metal footsteps. Just in case.
"Where are you from?" Rose asked.
"Crespallion,"
"Is that a planet?"
"No," The woman stood up and shook her head. "Crespallion's part of the Jaggit Brocade, affiliated to the Scarlet Junction, Convex fifty-six. And where are you from, miss? If you don't mind me asking."
"No, not at all. Er, I don't know. A long way away," Rose started to stare off into space. Clearly, her plan of stepping off to the side to get away from the fact that she was stuck in place wasn't working. " I just sort of hitched a lift with her and a man. I didn't even think about it. I don't even know who they are. They're complete strangers. Anyway, don't let me keep you. Good luck with it." Rose turned around and started to walk away.
"Thank you, miss. And er," Rose stopped, "thank you for the permission. Not many people are that considerate."
"Okay," Rose replied, "See you later."
"I would love to talk some more," Raffalo said. "But I really do have repairs to do.."
"Oh," Marion nodded, "Of course of course. I'll just-"
Marion stepped off to the side and until a couple seconds after she heard the sound of the metal panel gently bumping to the ground and the sound of someone moving through a vent. Marion crept back to where she and Rose had just talked. Just out of Raffalo's view.
"Now then. Control, I'm at junction nineteen and I think the problem's coming from in here. I'll go inside and have a look."
Marion could hear the sound of metal on metal, but she didn't move. Not yet.
"What's that? Is something in there?" Raffalo called out.
"Oh! Who are you, then?"
More metal noises.
"Hold on!" Raffalo called out, "If you're an upgrade I just need to register you, that's all. Oh, come back."
The woman climbed inside of the conduit and Marion left her hiding place. She stood right woman's legs. Ready to pull her out.
"Ah, there you are. Now, I just need to register your ident- Oh, there's two of you," Raffalo's voice echoed around the room, "Got yourself a little mate. I think I'd better report this to Control. How many of you are there? What are you? Oh, no, no, no!"
Just as the woman started to get pulled into the vent, Marion grabbed ahold of her ankle, just above her shoe. Marion planted one foot on the ground and one foot on the side of the wall, and started to pull as hard as she could.
"Help!" Marion heard the woman call out. "There's something here, there's something in the vents,"
"I've gotcha Miss Rafallo," Marion called back.
And you'd think that a bunch of robot spiders with spindly legs wouldn't have that great of a grip on anything, but you'd be incorrect. Didn't matter how strong their grip was, of course. Not when the person pulling on the other end was Marion. Or maybe they had realized that considering someone was trying to grab their would-be victim, trying to pull her in wasn't worth it. Something, something, witnesses.
A few moments later, Raffalo was mostly out of the vent. Marion moved to grab her by arm instead of her leg so that she didn't end up dropping the woman on her face.
"I'm just grabbing your arm to help you get out the rest of the way," Marion called out.
She did so. She pulled a little bit more and the woman's feet were fully on the ground. Marion helped to pull her out the rest of the way. Marion could hear the click-click clack of the tiny metal legs retreatings as she did.
Marion grabbed the panel cover and put it back into place.
She stood back against it, pointedly putting herself between the vent and the other woman. Speaking of Raffalo.
The woman had been standing a moment before, but now she was sitting. Her pupils, which had been somewhat relaxed and slit-like earlier, had widened.
"Hey," Marion said slowly. The woman didn't respond, so she repeated herself. "Hey, are you okay? What happened? I heard screaming and I came to investigate,"
Not that Marion didn't already know what happened. But to just say so would look suspicious. She needed to hear it from Raffalo.
"I-I removed the panels to get in there to do repairs. You know, in the Face of Boe's room,"
"I remember,"
"But when I looked inside, there was this-this thing. A metal robot of some kind. On four legs. Like a crab with a red eye,"
A crab with a red eye was a far better description of those drones than a metal spider.
"At first there was just one of them. And I thought that it was just you know, an upgrade or something. But it wasn't anything that I recognized, so I needed to register it. But then it left. And then it came back with another one and another one. And then they latched onto me and started trying to drag me further into the shaft. That's when I screamed."
"And that's when I heard you and started to pull you out,"
Raffalo nodded. "Once they realized that something else was trying to pull me out, that it wasn't just me struggling, they let me go and scurried back into the shaft. What were those,"
"Someone's trying to sabotage the ship," Marion said plainly. She helped Raffalo to her feet. Then she pulled out her psychic paper and thought very hard about what an official-looking corporate investigator's ID might look like,
"There's a lot of important people on this satellite. And this satellite is set to watch a sun expand and destroy a planet. There's stuff in place to protect everyone on here, but if someone wanted to break stuff, so they could profit off it, it would not be good. So they sent some people on the ground to look around."
"We need to tell the guests,"
Marion shook her head. "No, no, I have a good idea of who's responsible already. And it might be one of the guests. Now is not the time to confront them, they could get desperate and speed things up and no no no." Marion shook her head.
The Stewards voice chimed in over the intercom.
"Would the owner of the blue box in private gallery fifteen please report to the Steward's office immediately. Guests are reminded that the use of teleportation devices is strictly forbidden under Peace Treaty five point four slash cup slash sixteen. Thank you."
"Oh speaking of the Steward, I need to talk to him. Now. About this. But Raffalo, I need you to do me a favor,"
"I think you just saved my life,"
Marion chose to take that as a yes.
"I need you to leave here, and go somewhere with plenty of witnesses. Those drones do NOT like the fact that you saw them, but they don't want to be seen by more people. Try hanging around the guests or something. Just nowhere that involves you being alone in a room with a window with a solar filter that can be raised. Wait no," Marion snapped her fingers. "Go to the Face of Boe. I know him. Just sort of, stick around with him until my colleagues and I expose the saboteur. When you get back to the viewing room, tell the Face of Boe that 'there was an incident while you were fixing the pipes and that Marion told you to hang around by him until this is over.' He knows me, and he knows I wouldn't just say that willy nilly. Does that work? I hope that works,"
Raffalo just stared at Marion and nodded. She still looked a bit shaken, which was understandable, but Marion didn't really have the time to sit around and talk with her the way she wanted to. Not if she was going to successfully get to the Steward and smash that spider of his. And also come up with a good enough excuse to run in and smash a gift or at least get him out of his office.
"Good, good, good, I need to go speak to the Steward." Marion paused, "Where's the Stewards office,"
The other woman stared at her for a moment. "It's around the corner, along that hall. Third door on the left,"
Marion clapped her hands. "Great, great, I'll go there. You, go to the Face of Boe. Stay away from vents and small rooms with windows that can lift and just small rooms in general. Great? Great! I'll be seeing you." Marion patted Raffalo on the shoulder with a bright smile that Marion hoped looked nowhere near as manic as it felt on her face, Marion ran off.
Anyone who said honesty is always the best policy was simply incorrect. Honesty was simply a really really good policy. However, the originator of the phrase "honesty is the best policy" failed to take into account that sometimes, if you want someone to believe the truth, you need to lie about who you are and what your motivations are for waking to speak the truth.
The truth was that the Steward needed to either get rid of that robo-sphere or get out of his office or he was going to burn to death.
The lying would come in when Marion had to convince the Steward of this fact and the fact that she should be listened to in the first place. That was fine. She could do that.
She just needed to come up with something believable enough.
Marion knocked on the Steward's door. A moment later the door slid open. Marion glanced over at the side table where the Steward had placed the robot ball earlier. It was open and empty.
Fine. Ok. There went Plan A. Time for Plan B.
Her original plan, which was to claim that the Adherents of the Repeated Meme had given people religious artifacts that needed to be destroyed by her immediately with a hammer was no longer a viable lie. And she couldn't see the spider anywhere.
"Did you need something?" the Steward asked. "That's not your box in Gallery 15 is it? Because a man already came to claim it."
"Yes-no-kind of. It's complicated. Anyway, you need to get out of your office."
"I beg your pardon,"
Marion flashed her psychic paper at the man, trying to visualize something that looked sufficiently like something that would belong to a corporate investigator.
"We need to step outside of your office," Marion repeated, "If you've got a tablet of some kind that would allow you to contact control and continue any duties you need to do outside of your office, take that with you," Marion added. The man looked at her for a moment, and then reached into a drawer on his desk and retrieved what looked like an iPad sized piece of thick glass. Marion stood in the doorway. The last thing she wanted was for him to almost get to him and the door shut between them and be unable to open in.
The moment the Steward had left his office Marion let out a breath she didn't know she was holding.
"Is there a problem?" The man asked.
"Yes." Marion replied. "Not with you specifically I mean, but there is a problem. As you know, there's a lot of very, very, very important people here to see the death of the Earth and it would look very, very bad for the company and there was an incident with one of your employees. A Miss Raffalo?"
"Raffalo? What has she-,"
"She'd done nothing wrong, she's not the problem. There was an incident while she was trying to fix a glitch in the Face of Boe's accommodations. There was something in the vents that attempted to drag her inside, presumably to her death. She described something mechanical and crablike. Which leads me to believe that someone is attempting to sabotage this ship.I have my suspicions as to who the saboteur might be," Actually, she knew for a fact who it was, but she couldn't say that right then. She didn't want to risk Cassandra acting any more suspiciously than necessary. God willing, if she was listening in, she'd think that she was actually a safety inspector and completely and utterly on to them.
"Anyway, the important part here is that since it was found in the service panel, I have reason to believe that they were messing around with the electrical, mechanical, and computer systems in the ship. So I'd like it very much if everyone was more or less in the same place or at the very least, not in places like your office."
"What's wrong with my office?"
"Your door opening mechanism is run by the computer system."
"And?"
"The solar filter is also run by the computer system. What do you think would happen to a person inside of this room, if someone who was interested in sabotage decided to lower the solar filter and lock the doors? Something terrible. No, no, at least until my colleagues and I can root out the people responsible, we want everyone in roughly the same place. If everyone's all together, it's unlikely that they would lower the shields and kill everyone including themselves."
"I should alert Control about this!"
The man held up his tablet. From where Marion was standing, it looked transparent, but that could very well be because she wasn't looking at the front of it like he was. Could be some kind of privacy measure.
Also if he called them they'd tell him that there were no Inspectors of any kind on the ship and that would completely wreck what she was trying to do.
"You could," Marion agreed. "But I wouldn't, like I said, I'm still doing investigations, and I don't want control sending out an alert that spooks the culprits into acting unpredictably. I would appreciate it if you would just keep everyone in the viewing room for the time being, while I work on the rest. As soon as we find something, you'll be the first to know." Marion nodded firmly as if to punctate your statement. "I'd recommend you return to the viewing room and make sure no one is going off into small rooms on their own. I've got to go speak to my colleagues."
With that, Marion turned on her heel and walked as fast as she could to Gallery 15.
Next Chapter: The Third Degree
Marion: When in doubt, impersonate someone in authority.
Also, y'all are lucky. You're getting a slightly longer chapter than you would have otherwise, because I decided that the first 750 or so words of what would have been chapter fifty-three fit better here.
Marion's reference to the 700-year evacuation journey and the "first segment of time" is from the season three classic who serial "the Ark". It's a pretty good episode and it makes perfect sense to me that it and Gunfighters are the only two season three serials that are still available in their entirety.
I have to say though, watching the Ark and Doctor Who and the Silurians while being Quarantined during a pandemic was certainly An Experience.
Without spoiling it, the plot would not have happened if Dodo had been wearing a mask.
Also, if you saw me accidentally spell Raffalo as Ruffalo, please tell me.