The Twilight Zone

4

Harris Kober was a weed of a man whom Clara recognised as being among the Aegean brothers' entourage when they had dredged the dead sqwill out of the water. When the little robot guided them through an intimidating security gate at the base of the Lighthouse, Kober fell over himself to get at them, carrying a tablet in his hand like a clipboard. He held a slimy hand out for the Doctor to shake, but her attention was occupied by a trail of goop on the floor glowing faintly blue: the blood of the sqwill they had poached.

"What's this?" she asked him, refusing to shake his hand.

"That?" he glanced down at the streak of blue gunk underfoot, "It's cleaning solution. We're really very clean here, everything is in order."

"It looks like blood," said the Doctor. Kober frowned.

"What did you say your name was again?"

"I'm Caleb Bradham. This is Ally Hartman," she indicated Clara, who didn't know where she had just pulled these names from. "We're here as part of an expansion project to get more soda to outer worlds like Xetos."

"Do you have the money for that? After the Planet Coke debacle?"

"Excuse me? Debacle?" asked the Doctor, pretending to be offended, "Planet Coke was a raging success. Who wouldn't want to go to a planet made of Coke? Nobody, that's who. We're currently working on adding some moons, but the brainiacs in R&D can't decide whether to go with Diet Coke or Fanta. In fact, we'd be interested to hear the Aegeans' thoughts on the matter. They seem like savvy guys, maybe just the kind of talent we're looking for over at Coca-Cola." Kober stepped back to scrutinise her.

"You're already wearing diving suits," he pointed out. Maybe they should have gotten changed again.

"We came prepared," said Clara.

"Always thinking ahead," said the Doctor, "You don't wanna see what happens when we don't think ahead. Backing apartheid in South Africa? PR disaster. Don't go into business with racists, it's not future-proofed. Are you going to let us upstairs, Harry?"

"It's Mr Kober."

"Sure thing, Hal."

"…Blane and Pax would like to see you, Miss Bradham."

"You've got it all wrong – I'd like to see Blane and Pax and offer them an invaluable business opportunity. I set the meetings, not them."

"And what does she do? Is she needed in the meeting?" he indicated Clara.

"Is she needed? She's my girl Friday, she goes where I go. Can you believe this guy?"

"I really can't," said Clara. Kober was clearly still suspicious of them, but the Doctor was managing to talk a big game, so he finally led them through to a glass elevator at the end of Lighthouse's ground floor foyer. It was all very art deco but in a disingenuous way that made the Doctor's skin crawl almost as much as Kober did.

"I hear there's a private dock here for the Aegeans?" the Doctor asked.

"Spaceport on the top, seaport underneath," said Kober bluntly.

"And what about the xetians?"

"…What about them?"

"Well, how do they access the goods and services the sponsors provide the city? We're not bringing Coke out here just to ignore an entire, second city of customers."

"Oh. There's the Platform, you can put some outlets down there."

"And how good is the relationship between Aegean-4 and Xetia?" the Doctor probed.

"It's excellent. Everything is going well," lied Kober. The elevator rose steadily; it reminded the Doctor of her visit to the Empire State Building when it neared completion, and she had a similar sense of unease – at least there weren't any Daleks on Xetos to contend with. "But the xetians don't have a mind for business."

"What do you mean? They don't have commerce?"

"It's not worth trying to talk to them."

"You think Aegean-4 should have a monopoly on Coca-Cola on Xetos? Because, if you are, I'm warning you, we don't like the word 'monopoly.' It's got bad connotations. We're not trying to monopolise anything, we just want everybody in the civilised universe to drink products made by Coca-Cola and only products made by Coca-Cola while making all our competitors bankrupt. Not that 'competitors' is accurate, we'd rather call them… copycats. Now, if that sounds like a monopoly to you, I'm afraid we'll have to look elsewhere for the installation of our bespoke beverage dispensaries."

"Vending machines?"

She stared at him, "How dare you. Did you hear what he just said to me? Vending machines?" she asked Clara.

"Outrageous," Clara agreed.

"You couldn't brand your way out of a paper bag," she told Kober sharply. "Let's hope your bosses are better capitalists than you are." Kober wasn't happy about her belittling him.

"What's going on with those walls?" Clara asked.

"What do you mean?" said Kober.

"Well, we're in a glass lift. You don't build a glass lift unless you've got a good view, but these walls are all black," she said, "Why is that?"

"…The windows have been painted over. I'm organising the installation of some screens."

"Do Blane and Pax not want to look at the city they own?" asked Clara, "How is Coca-Cola supposed to take pride in Aegean-4 if they don't?"

"The windows were difficult to clean," he said stiffly.

"Oh, okay," Clara nodded, then repeated to the Doctor, "The windows were difficult to clean."

"Why don't we all live in windowless basements? That'd be the day," she said. "I don't even have any walls. I live in an apartment made out of old Coke billboards stacked on top of each other."

Kober was finally spared from having to speak to them anymore when the elevator ground to a halt and the glass doors slid open, revealing a lobby that looked like it had been torn from an office. There was a large, ornate desk directly opposite them, flanked by two doors; it was unoccupied so Clara guessed it must belong to Kober. He shuffled over to the desk, set his fancy clipboard down, and began to speak into a deceptively analogue microphone.

"Excuse me, Mr Aegean, those Coca-Cola executives are here to see you," he said. There was a pause.

"Send them in already! We need to find out if they're any good at golf," said one of the brothers loudly over the speaker.

"You can go in," Kober motioned to the door on his right and pressed a button on the desk to buzz them through. A light on top flashed white. They sailed past Kober, through the door, and into a doughnut-shaped penthouse that was a combination of a lifestyle article about the billionaire class in Time magazine and the gimmicky steakhouse on top of the Stratosphere Hotel. It was gaudy, to say the least, filled with strange furniture and photographs of alien worlds and unusual decorations that Clara suspected were made of solid diamond. Screens had already been installed in the Lighthouse's living quarters like the ones they had on the TARDIS to simulate picturesque views in a box with no windows, but they showed a sterilised image of Xetos. There was the grey ocean glittering beneath the silver star, but the metal city? It wasn't there at all. They were floating high above the water, and Aegean-4 had been gutted from the landscape.

Dead ahead was a long stretch of artificial grass, coloured white for some reason, with one of the brothers about to smack a black golf ball with a club while the other waited nearby for his turn.

"That's a long iron, what are you doing?" the Doctor exclaimed upon seeing this, "The hole is barely ten feet away."

"Fore!" shouted the brother with the club, hitting the ball as hard as he could. Both Clara and the Doctor winced as it shot through the air with a vengeance, striking an oil painting at the far end of the room and tearing right through the canvas. "I got him."

"Who?" asked the Doctor, squinting at the painting.

"Our father," said the brother, setting down the club and approaching them, holding out his hand for the Doctor to shake, "I'm Pax. That's Blane." Pax was taller but Blane was wider.

"Uh-huh…" said the Doctor, still stunned by watching them drive golf balls through a family portrait. Clara spotted a few broken ornaments littered around the painting, as well as a big dent in the wall behind it, but her attention was quickly supplanted by a foul odour wafting its way through the suite. "Maybe you should work on your putting."

"Sorry we didn't have anyone to meet you; we didn't know you were coming," said Blane, also coming to greet them.

Clara coughed, "Sorry, but, what's that smell?"

"Fish," said Blane, "Not a fan?"

"I'm from the coast, the smell of fish doesn't bother me – but this?" Clara asked.

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark," quipped the Doctor, "Smells like a dead sqwill to me. They decompose very quickly."

"Do you know much about the planet?" Pax asked them.

"I know it's a moon, not a planet," said the Doctor, quickly losing her patience, "And I know it's illegal to kill a sqwill because the Shadow Proclamation has them listed as V-Class organisms."

"It was already dead. We fished it out of the sea," he said, becoming guarded.

"I should let you know, Coca-Cola doesn't mess around with the Shadow Proclamation. We respect laws. Maybe not laws about trade unions or why you shouldn't pay strikebreakers in Colombia to murder your own workforce, but the Shadow Proclamation? And we want to do business with Aegean-4 and Xetia. If there's any bad blood between the cities because of poaching-"

"Now, poaching is a strong word," Pax cut her off, "My brother already explained that the thing was dead when we found it."

"Really? So there won't be any wounds from harpoons in its body if I were to go and take a look? Just to double-check, before I go signing any deals between Aegean Industries and the Coca-Cola Company. The last thing we need right now is bad publicity after all those people drowned on Planet Coke."

"You might find harpoons. What's it to do with us whether the xetians harpoon their wildlife?" Pax challenged.

"Well, there's a big difference between the harpoons, is all. Xetians usually hunt near the seafloor, and they use a very interesting and distinct lighting agent capable of combusting underwater that you can't get on any other planet. Humans are still trying to kill whales with rubber bands."

"And you think you can tell the difference? Between one of our state-of-the-art harpoons and the tools they use to dig around in the sand at the bottom of the sea?" Pax continued.

"Sure I can," the Doctor shrugged, "Why? Can you not? The last thing you need is some of your employees have been poaching sqwills, after all. That would be bad publicity for both us and you, just wait until we get the word out."

"…We've been having some problems with our radios," said Blane, "Quite hard to get word out to anyone about anything. That'll be why we didn't hear you were coming."

"Oh, sure. The radios. Of course, they'll come looking if anything happens to us. Coca-Cola, I mean," said the Doctor. "I'm invaluable to them, after all. Their best ideas man. Tell them some of my ideas," she asked Clara, putting her on the spot.

"Coke-flavoured lube," was the first thing she could think of.

"And that was a genius move, lemme tell you," said the Doctor, "Not only are we cornering the soft drink market, but we're also moving in on sex. And I've got another idea in the pipeline: Coke-bots. Robots, made of old Coke cans. I'm developing an advanced bioelectrical system that will utilise Coca-Cola as its primary circuitry agent. Cut them and they bleed Coke, along with the necessary chemicals unfit for consumption. By the way," she began walking away from the brothers towards the source of the stink, "Is there an extra floor in this thing?"

"Just the landing bay and the orbital navigation hub," said Blane quickly, "Where are you going? You can't just walk into our home like this, I don't care who you work for."

"Really? You don't care who I work for?" she ignored them completely. Clara quickly followed. "You don't care that I'm a Coca-Cola bigwig with gazillions of credits to throw at ventures like turning Xetos's ocean the colour of caramel and cocaine?"

"No. Not if you're rude, and you trespass – get back here!" Pax demanded, but it was too late. The Doctor had circled around the suite far enough that she arrived upon a dining room just as gaudy as the rest of the place, only the length of the table was taken up entirely with the decaying corpse of the very same sqwill the Aegeans had fished out of the sea that very day.

"That's good, that you don't care about who I work for, because I don't work for anybody."

"Excuse me?"

"Your secretary out there didn't even ask to see ID," said the Doctor, "I could be anyone and, well, I am. Anyone. Oh, but," she clicked her fingers like she was just remembering something, "I am a passing acquaintance with the head honchos at the Shadow Proclamation. The Judoon have tried to arrest me more than a few times, but I always come out on top because, well, I'm just that good. A loveable rogue, as it were."

"If you don't work for anyone," Pax began, "then no one will miss you, surely?"

"No, Clara will miss me, and she's right there."

"But she's here, too. Right in our apartment. No witnesses except Kober and he's loyal to a fault," said Blane, "And you know, the radios still don't work."

She laughed, "You're threatening us? Really, so soon? Don't you even want to know who we are and what we want? We're not xetian and we're sure as hell not your employees, aren't you a little curious about how we got here?"

"Well, we…" Blane faltered.

"This is insulting," said Pax angrily, picking up his golf club and brandishing it like a weapon.

"Okay, suit yourselves, bash my head in, let's hope I haven't managed to get a message out to the space police. I know the Atraxi, as well, by the way." She walked around to the other side of the table, leaning down to peer at the dead sqwill, searching for the evidence of human spears she knew were there somewhere. "And do you know what else I know? I know that this building is a big old transceiver, and if you blast out just enough white noise you'd have a very effective signal jammer. Did you say the orbital navigation hub is just above us? Are you consolidating your personal off-world communications in a satellite, to let everybody else know that 'all is good' and they can keep making deliveries of cigarettes and milkshakes?"

"My two favourite things," said Clara, "Certainly worth all that effort."

"It looks to me like you two are the ones kneecapping Xetia's ability to get the word out to the Shadow Proclamation about what you're doing here, and that if I go up there and flick a few switches, the airwaves will be cleared. Or am I wrong?"

"You're wrong," said Pax.

"How so? Enlighten me."

"You just are."

"Did you hear that, Coo? 'I just am.' Well, that's me told. I guess I'll show myself out."

"You're not going anywhere, either of you," Blane threatened.

"Why kill the sqwills?" she asked loudly and seriously, "They're filter feeders, not even predators. What do you get out of killing them and damaging the ecosystem? Are you going to stuff this thing and turn it into a trophy?"

"It's just recreational, what do you care so much?"

"Recreational hunting? I've never been a fan."

"It's cowardly," said Clara, "Killing something that doesn't even stand a chance. Even a shark wouldn't stand a chance against a big enough gun, and at least they actually are dangerous if you piss them off."

"Don't worry, we've killed a lot of sharks, too," said Pax.

"So you admit you're a coward?" she countered.

"I – you – that's not what I said," he stammered. Clara shrugged. "I won't stand for this, I don't have to. We own this city and everybody in it, including you two." He stormed off out of the room. Blane looked equally angry but did not move, remaining in the kitchen. Pax wasn't gone for long: he returned brandishing a speargun, the one used to kill the sqwill undoubtedly, and pointed it right at the Doctor.

"Hey, calm down," she said, "There's no need for that."

"Nobody stopped me from killing that monster, and nobody will stop me from killing you. She'll try, I'm sure, but I'll just shoot the pair of you. Would I be a coward then?" Clara believed that he would try, but where he had a harpoon gun, she had telekinesis and a vested interest in keeping the Doctor from harm. The Doctor knew this, too, and trusted her deeply, but still played along with Pax for the time being, holding up her hands.

"Alright already. I just came here to talk."

"Who are you?" he snapped, "Speak, now, or I'll shoot you between the eyes."

"I'm the Doctor. You might have heard of me."

"You're the madwoman who's been hiding with the pondlife for months?" asked Blane.

"Don't you dare insult them like that," said the Doctor, "They've been sending diplomats to try and negotiate with you ever since you took over this barge, and you haven't even sat down to talk."

"Who can talk to a bunch of fish?"

"First of all, they're cephalopods, not fish," said the Doctor, "Second of all, your arrogance disgusts me. Third, and last, yes, the madwoman and I are one and the same. You might have heard the story about me facing down a Rutan warship that arrived to mine Pheran for resources with a hydrogen extractor a few decades ago. The Doctor."

"How could that be you? You're barely thirty."

"I'm a Time Lord," she said, "Did you not listen to the story? Would you like me to tell it to you?"

"I would, actually," Clara interjected.

"Who are you, exactly?" Blane asked her coldly.

"I'm her wife, and I want to know what happened with the Rutan."

"They came out here looking to set up a base so that they could go back and forth between Pheran sucking up all of its hydrogen, fuelling a new fleet of warships they'd just designed and hopefully get one-up on the Sontarans – they're still at war. The extractor was big enough to strip the planet of at least half of its mass, which would seriously throw its gravity out of whack, potentially enough to disrupt Xetos so much it gets pulled into the white dwarf. Now, that star might not pack a lot of punch, but if you fall into it, you're still gonna burn up.

"Naturally, I wanted to stick up for the little guy, especially when the Rutan Host threatened to use their weather manipulators to boil the seas and roast everyone in Xetia. I did my best to reason with them, but they didn't care one bit about the xetians and how their war might affect them – and this was first contact, so I'm not about to roll over and let them think every alien race out there is a conqueror. I couldn't negotiate, so I snuck onto their ship and I did some tweaking and reduced the integrity of their hydrogen storage tanks. Hydrogen is very flammable, you only need a leak and a spark." Clara stared at her, but the Doctor would not meet her eyes. "I warned them what would happen if they activated their extractor. I gave them the chance to turn around and leave. They didn't take it, and they went right on with their plan. The ship with the extractor mounted to it was blown in half, and the whole thing was pulled in by the planet and crushed. The rest of the Rutan fleet turned around and ran because they didn't listen to me." So that was why she kept dodging the subject every time Clara asked her about it.

"You got an army to turn around and leave, and yet I've got you dead to rights with a spear," Pax said.

"You don't have a chance of hitting me with that, and I dare you to try." He took her up on that challenge and pulled the trigger after barely aiming for a second. Clara was quicker on the draw than him, however; she didn't need to move a muscle to send the spear careening off in the wrong direction, striking the door of their fridge a good six feet to the Doctor's left while the Doctor herself didn't even flinch. Pax did not have another spear immediately to hand to reload. The Doctor crossed her arms. "Have you got that out of your system? I hope so, because I'm going to talk now, and you're going to listen."

"You're a murderer. How many would you kill to protect some petri dish of octopus-people? More than the city's population?"

"Don't worry, I can have the Judoon here in minutes as soon as I get a look at your satellite array, no harm necessary," she said darkly, "But I'm not just here to talk about Xetia, I'm here to talk about Aegean-4 and what you've done to those people ever since you took over management."

"We've made it more profitable, that's all," said Blane, "We've reduced staff, cut costs-"

"You've reduced staff by letting them die of decompression sickness and drug addiction which, by the way, I know full well you're profiting from by harvesting radioactive coral from the seabed. Or did you not know about that? Was it just an enterprising member of your diving crew hacking off contaminated chunks of the reef and reducing it down to a narcotic? If so, you've missed a trick, they're selling it for quite a profit in the slums."

"…What are you talking about?" asked Blane slowly, "What narcotics and coral?"

"God, the pair of you – you're the definition of ivory tower up here. With those stupid screens blocking out the view of the city you've run into the ground. It's called Glow and it's causing an epidemic of radiation sickness in people taking it to get some alleviation from the bends they have because you changed the safety rules around diving!"

"Fewer people means more man-hours are necessary to maintain the propellers," said Pax, "They're getting more work, that's good."

"There are fewer people because they're dying!" the Doctor shouted, "This stuff is all connected, and you two are the common denominator. If you carry on like this, soon enough you're going to get a city full of corpses because they've all turned to this drug! Which wouldn't have happened if you enforced proper safety protocols instead of cutting costs to slightly increase your bottom line! What do you even do with the money you've saved? Buy new spearguns, diamond statuettes, commission more oil paintings to destroy? Buy drugs that aren't manufactured on the streets?"

"I should throw you to the sea for this slander!"

"Maybe you should."

"Who are your divers?" Clara asked, "Who went with you when you killed that sqwill?" They said nothing.

"You'd better wise up and answer her before she makes you," said the Doctor coolly.

"Why should you care? You don't know them."

"Because they're the ones bringing the coral to the surface and making it into drugs. People close to you."

"That's the thing about capitalism, Coo; it's contagious," said the Doctor.

"They're going right behind your backs'," said Clara, "Doesn't that make you feel like mugs? Do you actually know anything about business?"

"Business is in our blood," said Pax, still brandishing his gun at them even if he didn't have any more ammunition. "What would a pair of comrades like you know about it?"

The Doctor laughed, "Is that the best you can do? Next you're gonna call me a 'pinko.' But, she's right – you've ruined this place because it's got your name on it, and you're trying to do the same to Xetia because it doesn't. But why jam the radios at all? It's not just because of the sqwills, surely?" They didn't answer her. "Where does the electricity go?"

"You don't have the right to ask questions like that," Pax spat.

"I'm afraid I'm not gonna stop. Who are you selling it to? If it's so important to maintain the turbines." They still wouldn't speak.

"How do you transport electricity, for sale?" Clara asked.

"Batteries," said the Doctor, "Stick it in batteries, load them onto ships, send them into space."

Clara nodded, "And there would be some kind of ledger, wouldn't there? A record of transactions, a list of deliveries and pick-ups? At the very least, there must be data about what ships have docked in the spaceport? In the orbital navigation hub you mentioned?"

"See that?" the Doctor said to the Aegeans, "She's good."

"Or you could just tell us," said Clara.

"For God's sake – it goes to all sorts of places, alright?" said Blane, "Everyone who needs cheap power with no questions asked."

"How cheap?" asked the Doctor.

"We're undercutting all our competition. The primo suppliers in this corner of the galaxy," he boasted. The Doctor scoffed.

"And that's why you're slimming down on staff, on equipment, on insurance? Increasing the hours? All so you can keep selling more for less? You're playing with people's lives – they're dying!" she shouted, "Do you even understand that you're murderers, plain and simple?"

"How fucking dare you," said Pax, throwing his empty harpoon gun to the floor, "Get out. Get out, now. You have no right to come in here and accuse us of being criminals."

"You are criminals, and the Shadow Proclamation will hear about this just as soon as I shut down your signal jammer and a message can get out," said the Doctor.

"You won't get out of here alive. We'd sooner throw you off the roof than let you get up there of your own accord," said Blane, "And what's one more accident?"

"You know what? I can see it's not even worth my time trying to talk to you. And that's big because usually, people can't do anything to make me shut up. I'm going upstairs and you won't be able to stop me."

A scuffle ensued. The Aegeans tried to corner the Doctor by each going a different route to get around the table with the rotting sqwill on it, pushing her into Clara's arms and the opposite direction of the door. Luckily, Clara's arms were exactly where she had planned to be, and for the second time that day her intangibility – much as the Doctor disliked it – was their saving grace. In the last seconds before they were bludgeoned to death with a golf club, Clara dragged the Doctor towards the cabinets and they went toppling right through the wall. Since the Aegeans' suite was just a big doughnut, they found themselves back in the blacked-out lift, much to the horror of Kober who was sitting at his receptionist desk directly opposite.

"You – but – you can't-"

"Oh, don't get up!" the Doctor called, taking out her sonic screwdriver, "I can push the button myself!" Kober ignored this and clambered over the desk to try and get to them, but the Doctor was too fast; she sonicked the interface and the doors slid closed, shutting them in. She hit the button for the roof. "Should buy us a few minutes. No doubt they'll reload their harpoons in the meantime…" The lift began to glide upwards.

"What are we gonna do?" asked Clara seriously.

"We're going to get the communications back online, first of all."

"And talk to the Shadow Proclamation? Will they really do anything?"

She sighed, "It depends. It depends on whether Aegean-4 is supplying them with cheap power or not. If they're not aware of the crimes here, then I guess I can see them doing business with Aegean Industries. Hopefully, they do have a ledger."

"And after that? Xetos has a lot of problems – if the Shadow Proclamation is in their pocket, how would we get rid of them? And isn't it against your code to get involved in politics?"

She ran a hand through her hair, frustrated, "I don't know, Coo-Bear. I still have to figure out what to do about the Rani on top of all this, and how to stop a drug epidemic… I need more time to think." Clara didn't press her any further.

The lift stopped and the doors opened onto the roof of the Lighthouse, a vast but empty spaceport covered in rain and grime. But there in the middle was a tall cylinder, and on it, Clara could just about see a computer terminal. The Doctor sonicked the lift again to try and stall it for longer and then took off across the slick metal, Clara following behind and watching closely to make sure she didn't slip. The computer was waterproof and worked just fine when it was soaking wet.

"Does it always rain here?" asked Clara.

"Trust me – this is a nice day," said the Doctor, "It's a good thing we're not here in an actual storm with the fifty-foot waves."

"What?"

"A-ha! Would you look at that." From what Clara could tell, it just looked like a big list of numbers.

"What is it?"

"All the frequencies they're broadcasting on, polluting the airwaves with white noise." There were dozens of them, and the Doctor went down the list and shut them all off one by one.

"Can't they just switch them all back on again?" asked Clara.

"Not if I break their computer, they can't," she said, "There we are, that's all cleaned up… now to see if they have a ledger… keep an eye on that lift." Clara didn't need to be told twice. "Well, you were right; they are selling to the Shadow Proclamation. Along with the Rutan Host and Sontarans, plus all the corporate sponsors. Looks like war profiteering 101. I think the xetians are the only people they're not selling electricity to."

"Then what are we supposed to do? Trust in the law?" Clara asked, "Hope that the Shadow Proclamation will just ignore that they'd be arresting the people who provide all their power?" Again, Clara was making a good point.

"Hmm… I suppose, maybe we could-"

"Lift!"

"What?"

Clara pushed her sharply and she fell to the ground right as a harpoon sailed between them and impaled the computer right through the screen. It sparked and then exploded rather pathetically, a few coils of foul-smelling smoke mingling with the rime in the air. The Aegeans and Kober were standing in the elevator, and now both brothers were armed with both harpoon guns and a dozen additional spears. Pax had shot at them and he began to reload as Blane took aim and shot another missile directly at the Doctor, the source of the trouble, but they were a good thirty feet away and weren't great shots. She scrambled to her feet and the spear missed, sticking into the roof at her feet.

"I was just about to break your computer myself, and everything!" the Doctor shouted at them loudly over the wind.

"You have no control over us!" Pax yelled back, "We own the Shadow Proclamation!"

"That's not true, they'd roll over if someone gave them a better deal – that's the beauty of capitalism. It's cutthroat."

"I'll cut your throat in a minute," threatened Blane.

"With a harpoon? Sounds like a chore."

"And besides, if that story about the Rutan is true, then that makes you a war criminal. Unceremoniously blowing up ships is a lot more severe in the Proclamation's books than a few alleged poaching incidents."

"He's right," said Kober, reading from his tablet, "'The Doctor' is one of the most notorious criminals in the galaxy."

"I am? What have they got me for?" she asked. Pax still had his gun trained on her, but the two of them weren't exactly a threat. Well, Clara could be if she wanted, but violence wasn't in her nature.

"Desertion."

The Doctor tutted, "Typical – just because I didn't want to lead their army to wage war on the Daleks. This is why I don't side with cops."

"So, you ran away?" asked Kober, trying to rile her.

"Ran away? You listen to me: I didn't lead that army because I don't need an army to fight Daleks, and I don't need an army to get rid of you three, either."

"Get rid of us? With no allies and no weapons, just the two of you?" Pax jibed, "How are you going to do that?"

"That's easy enough. I'll just-" The radio receiver within the collars of the diving suits began to crackle, both Clara's and the Doctor's. A voice was drifting through. "Hold on a second," she turned away from the Aegeans to answer.

"You little-" Pax shot another harpoon but once again Clara waved a hand and it veered off course, twanging as it stabbed the roof. He swore to himself.

"Zono? Is that you?" the Doctor asked, fidgeting with the controls of the transceiver, "Who designed this thing?"

"My sister," Clara reminded her.

"Corsair!" Zono exclaimed when her voice finally came through clear, "I've been trying to get through – but the radios-"

"I've just cleared the airwaves for you, the Aegeans have been signal jamming both cities for months," the Doctor explained.

"Thank you! But – it's urgent, I need your help!"

"What's the sitch?"

"It's the kids, they've got another one of these 'singularity bombs', and they're on the Platform now threatening to detonate it and destroy the turbines. Stop the entire city from producing electricity."

"They're what!?" the Doctor was horrified. Clara had to divert yet another harpoon, this time from Blane – would they never learn? The Doctor remained unfazed, chattering away. "They can't do that – it could damage the entire flotation system, sink the city! That could destroy Aegean-4 and Xetia!"

"Yes, I know – I need you to stop them, you're the only other person who understands those bombs, and the Doctor won't help at all. She gave it to them, said she's 'tweaked it', but she won't leave her lab."

"That…" the Doctor made a noise of frustration, "Okay. Can you stall them until we get there? Tell them I can get them an audience with the Aegeans themselves, they'll listen to their complaints."

"We won't do a fucking thing for you," said Pax.

"Shut up, you'll do as I say, or your precious turbines are going to get destroyed. You can't exactly pawn cheap power if you stop producing it," she snapped at them. "Zono, keep them busy, Clara and I will be there as soon as we can."

"Thank you, thank you – I'll keep you updated."

"Please, do," she said, then muted her own channel on the collar receiver. "There are some protestors down there with a very dangerous and volatile black hole bomb. You're going to let us use your private submarine from the executive dock underneath the Lighthouse and go down to the Platform to speak to them, or your livelihood is going to be obliterated. Even if you get off-planet, you mark my words that the Shadow Proclamation will write off your entire company – I'll personally make sure of it. There are tens of thousands of humans here and a few million xetians in the city below, and if you stop me from managing this bomb threat, you're going to have all their blood on your hands."

The two brothers began muttering to each other. What was more important – their pride, or their greed?

"These black hole bombs," asked Kober, "Can they be mass-produced?"

"Sure," said the Doctor, annoyed, "If you let me down there, I'll teach you all about harnessing dangerous and unstable cosmic phenomenon so you can make a buck selling it to intergalactic warmongers. It would be my pleasure." They did not understand that she was being entirely sarcastic.

"You've got a deal," said Pax.

"Great."

"Kober – make sure we get that in writing before she leaves," Blane added. Kober nodded. The Doctor rolled her eyes.

"So? Private dock, submarine, millions of lives – and credits – in danger if you don't help me get down there right this second?" she prompted.

"Absolutely! Whatever you need," said Blane.

"I guess it's true what they say," said the Doctor quietly to Clara, "Money sure does talk…"