Fluorescent Adolescent

2

"I don't think that this is a good use of our time," said Matilda as two piping hot, Full English breakfasts were placed down in front of them. Clara had improved enough to walk without drawing too much suspicion, and the first place they went was a greasy spoon she faintly remembered from her student days (after she had sonicked a nearby cashpoint and given herself a dozen twenty-pound notes to use). The café was barebones, with pine-coloured furnishings, white walls, and red, checkerboard table cloths, but had a healthy number of customers ordering a variety of fried foods already. Of the two clocks on the walls one was broken, and the window in the front door had a board of plywood across it; it must have been smashed through recently.

"I'm starving," said Clara. She did not use the cutlery, instead opting to pick up an entire sausage and bite into it. Mattie was very put off by the sight of her bloodied, dirty hands; she'd gone into the bathroom to clean herself up a bit while Mattie ordered food, but was still a mess. She was also drenched in sweat and looked, even at a glance, extremely unwell; she had turned slightly grey.

"That isn't hygienic," said Mattie. Clara only shook her head, ravenous, and finished off the sausage in one fell swoop. "What if it, y'know, drops out? Through the hole?"

"It's not bleeding anymore," said Clara. She was hunched over and leaning on her side against the wall, wedged into a corner so that she didn't have to exert much effort to stay upright. "Are you going to eat that?"

"Probably not," she admitted. "I bet you only asked me to get two so you can eat both of them, didn't you?" Clara did not answer this question, cramming an entire rasher of bacon into her mouth at once instead. "Why are we at a café and not looking for you?"

"Because," she began, "If I know my nineteen-year-old self – and I like to think I do – she won't even be conscious until midday." There was a clock on the wall of the café betraying the time as just after eleven. The intense heat of the summer's day they'd found themselves stranded in had fooled Mattie into thinking it was later. "Besides, they must think I'm dead. They stabbed me, after all. We've got a while until they work out that I'm not."

"That's a big risk to take," said Mattie.

"It's fine, it's fine," Clara was dismissive, "There's every chance I'll come to this café anyway, I used to hang around here all the time in second year. It's June, so I think I must have moved all my stuff into shared housing probably two weeks ago? Not that I remember too well…"

"You know in Reservoir Dogs? When he's been shot and he spends the whole movie lying on the floor, bleeding out? That's what you look like right now."

"It's not so bad. Did Martha ever tell you about the time me, her and Oswin all ended up stranded on this planet after an escape pod crashed?" Clara said, mouth full. Mattie shrugged; truthfully, she didn't remember. "I landed on a big branch and was completely impaled. Dislocated my wrist, too. It's very hard trying to dislodge yourself from a branch with a dislocated wrist. And I still – very bravely, I might add – defended your mother from being attacked by a giant crab."

"Mum can protect herself from a big crab," said Mattie.

"No, it was before she got her powers," said Clara, "I was being very noble. But I think I collapsed, and somebody beat it to death with a stick. Oswin, if I recall correctly…"

"I can't imagine Oswin doing something like that."

"She could walk alright back then, for a while."

"Yeah, but – beating a giant crab? To death? With a stick? It's hard to imagine her even going outside."

"She doesn't often go outside, admittedly," said Clara. Oswin spent her days lurking on the TARDIS, lurking on Jenny's ship, lurking in their house in Brighton, or very occasionally lurking a Venusian apartment complex with her immediate, holographic family members. None of these things counted.

"Mum told me about the time you ripped a crossbow bolt out of your own face."

"I did do that."

"Why didn't you phase?"

"I don't remember. Maybe I hadn't worked out I could do it yet."

"Why didn't you phase when he stabbed you just now?" she lowered her voice.

"I didn't have time to react!" Clara protested, "I didn't even know what had happened until he pulled it out. I thought I got punched."

"And what happens if you actually do come in here for breakfast? What if you see yourself?" asked Mattie.

"We'll go hide in the toilets."

"You'll go hide in the toilets," she grumbled, "She won't recognise me. How do you know she's not dead already?"

"I'd know if I was dead," said Clara, "If that had happened, there would be a huge paradox and the Reapers would show up. They look like dragons and they screech, you can't miss them."

"Why kill you in the past at all, then?"

"Can I have your bacon?" Clara asked.

"Sure, whatever," Mattie pushed the plate towards her, and she began working her way through a second portion of fried meat.

"Basically, if this is about the Doctor, killing me in the past will kill the Doctor, too," Clara explained, "Because of my Echoes. What happened is, the Great Intelligence travelled into the Doctor's time stream to kill the Doctor across the universe. I went in after and made my Echoes to stop the Great Intelligence during the Doctor's entire life. If you kill me in the past, you destroy the Doctor as well, in a universe-altering paradox."

"Right. But, if you die, then the Doctor dies, so how will the Doctor exist in the future for the Great Intelligence to take revenge on at all?"

"I told you, paradox," said Clara, "That's the whole point."

"It's a classic grandfather paradox," a voice in Clara's ear made her jump and she almost slid out of her chair.

"You scared me," she complained. Mattie frowned.

"Who are you talking to?" she asked. At Clara's side, rendered digitally inside her own head, Oswin sat on a chair that was just as imagined as she was.

"She's going mad," said Oswin directly to Matilda, who could not hear her, "Hearing voices. Must be the tetrodotoxin causing neural degradation – that is the main thing it does. After the paralysis."

"Don't be a dick," Clara told her off, "I'm recuperating from a very unpleasant injury." Mattie was still staring at her. "It's Oswin, she's projecting."

"She's what?"

"Projecting. Through the mind-patch. It's like I'm hallucinating the most irritating person in the universe."

"Hey! I got a shocked call from the Doctor raving about you being stabbed. She said your phone isn't working and asked me to look in. But, quite honestly, I'm offended that you were dying and you didn't think to speak to me at all." Clara paused midway through a hash brown.

"Didn't you sense anything through the ether?" Oswin glared at her. "I'm sorry, Os. My head was all over the place. I was delirious. Ask Mattie." Clara looked at Mattie expectantly, who was slowly making her way through a glass of Coke.

"What? Oh, uh, yeah. You weren't really saying much of anything."

"See?" said Clara.

"I'm still upset. What if you'd died?"

"Then you would have sensed it, I'm sure," said Clara. "But, look, I'm fine now." She shoved the rest of the hash brown into her mouth and almost swallowed it whole.

"You don't look fine. You look like you've been digested and crapped out by something horrible."

"What do you expect when I've had a near-death experience?" Everybody around them still thought that Clara was just talking to Mattie, thankfully.

Oswin sighed, "Admittedly, the nanogene software for detoxification is a little ham-fisted, especially for poisoning; I don't think I've written any custom scripts for that – you'll be running the default treatment program. Still, you seem like you're recovering. And loading up on calories will be good for you – I'd advise mixing some fruit into this plate of fried shite, though." Clara went after another bacon rasher because it was the furthest thing from a piece of fruit in sight, and Oswin gave her a very disapproving look. "Let me see your phone."

Clara turned to Mattie, "Have you got my phone still?"

"Oh, sure." Mattie put the phone on the table and slid it over. Clara unlocked it while Oswin peered nosily over her shoulder, incapable of interacting with the phone herself.

"What are you looking for?"

"Signal jamming technology," she said, squinting at the screen, "I don't understand how this woman could be obstructing the intertemporal communication system we use. As far as I know, the only people with the technology to do that are me and Missy – and Missy only has it because of me. And our mind-patch works on a lot of the same principles, so whatever she's doing must be phone-specific. Does she know about the mind-patch?"

"I don't know. I don't know how she would."

"What does she know?"

"Where I work, my name. She seems to know a lot more about the Doctor."

"She knew Gallifrey," said Mattie, inferring what she could from Clara's half of the conversation, "She brought it up."

"So it is about the Doctor? It's just, that's what the Doctor said, but she thinks everything is about her, so you understand me not listening to a word she says." Clara rolled her eyes.

"It's about her."

"She really doesn't know about me, then, or to block off the mind-patch – that's good. Maybe it's just your phone number she's blocking, specifically? She can't have a blanket jam in place or people on Earth would know about it. Satellites, see, they're all intertemporal communications because of relativity. And you called the Doctor on the phone, didn't you?"

"A phone box."

"What about Mattie? Is her phone working?"

"Mattie didn't bring her phone to the shop," said Clara. Oswin frowned.

"Steph won't stop texting me and asking weird questions about you," Mattie said defensively, "I wanted a break."

"Well, I suppose it doesn't matter," said Oswin, "I'll be floating around if you need me."

"What about the temporal scoop? Can you trace it?" asked Clara.

"Maybe, but we'd need to bring the TARDIS down here, and I know you don't want that. Which I agree with, it's far too risky."

"It's what she wants, the Queen, to lure the Doctor out in case her plan doesn't work – which it won't, now I'm here."

"Alright, alright; I'll keep her and the TARDIS well away. I'll shag her or something; she probably won't be able to tell the difference."

"The missing leg is a dead giveaway."

"Wow, Clara. Really? 'Dead' giveaway? I'll pretend I'm not offended."

"You can leave, I'm fine. Make sure my wife is okay." Oswin smiled and disappeared. "She's gone now."

"Does she do that a lot? Pop up in your head?" asked Mattie.

"We do it so rarely that I didn't even think about trying it earlier," said Clara, "Talking telepathically has always seemed to freak other people out."

"I wonder why. Does she know why your phone won't work, then?"

"She thinks it's my number being affected specifically rather than any other line of communication," said Clara, "Obviously, the Queen doesn't know I have a sister at all. I told you, it's all about the Doctor – I'm just the best way to get to her. But it does look like we're going to have to follow my younger self around. And Oswin can't trace the scoop to find her faster."

"Convenient," said Mattie dryly.

"Wait a second," Clara froze as if something terrible had happened, and Mattie glanced around the café expecting another disguised droid to have stood up from one of the tables.

"What?"

"It's this song."

"What about it?"

"It's one of my favourites!"

Mattie paused to listen to the words coming over the café's radios: "Although you're trying not to listen… avert your eyes and staring at the ground… she makes a subtle proposition… I'm sorry, love, I'll have to turn you down…"

"More of your weird music?" she asked.

"This is Arctic Monkeys, they're not weird," said Clara, "They're the biggest band in the country."

"Yeah, in the olden days."

"I'm the same age as Alex Turner, you know."

"He's the sad, old man to your sad, old woman."

Clara didn't dignify that with a response, picking up another sausage instead. Mattie crossed her arms and leant back in her chair, looking out of the window at all the passing cars and cyclists. There was a bit of a traffic jam forming on the road and somebody honked aggressively every so often. When there wasn't any honking, she could hear the gentle clatter of cutlery and low conversation from the rest of the customers. Clara was humming along to the song while she ate.

"Mum's at uni as well in 2006. Not here, though; in London."

"Before she met the Doctor."

"…How long does it take to get to London?"

"Two and a half hours on a train," said Clara carefully. Mattie continued to think. Clara put down her sausage. "Sweetheart-"

"Don't 'sweetheart' me. I know we can't go. You don't have to rub it in."

"I'm not rubbing anything in," said Clara softly, "I just… I'm in the same boat, a little. My dad's still alive in 2006. He's a stone's throw away, in Blackpool."

"I wasn't going to suggest it."

"Okay." Clara believed her but knew she was thinking about it nonetheless.

"It's just strange, isn't it? Seeing the world like they did – that this is what England was like when mum and dad grew up."

"And what is it like, in your opinion?"

"Smelly. All the petrol. Weren't people worried about climate change?"

"Not enough to do anything until CO2 scrubbers actually became useful. The government, I mean; ordinary people were doing everything they could," said Clara. "I do miss it here. This was really the last time you could get away with not having a phone and being connected to the internet non-stop. And, more importantly, the height of Big Brother. Plus, you could smoke indoors still, see?" She indicated a man on the opposite side of the café who had a little mountain of cigarette stubs in the ashtray in front of him.

"Why aren't you smoking, then?"

"Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right," said Clara, "I'm not subjecting you – or anyone else, for that matter – to my second-hand smoke."

"Why do you live in the 2060s and not back here, then? Especially since you're struggling so much to integrate."

"I am not," said Clara, "And it's because I wanted to be in sync. I didn't want to come back to an Earth exactly as I left it, pretending nothing happened for fifty years. It worked out alright, anyway; means we're able to look after you."

"Yeah, well… I still think we're dallying here," she said.

"You don't understand how much I need to eat this food."

"Maybe we should call someone else?" she suggested, "Or get Oswin to. Like Rose, she could still get here without the TARDIS."

"Why would we do that?" asked Clara while she chewed.

"Because. I've seen Back to the Future. It's dangerous to follow your younger self around. How do you know you won't accidentally cause a paradox just by being here?" Mattie challenged, "What if you get seen? What if that's her plan – to get you to screw up your own life?"

"That won't happen, I'm great at sneaking around. That's why they call me 'the Phantom'."

"Who does?"

"People."

"I've never heard it."

"They do!" Clara argued, "Where do you think the 'Fantoma' in 'C.R.O. Fantoma' comes from? It means 'phantom' in Romanian. Although…" She dropped the slice of fried bread she'd been going at and picked up her phone.

"What?"

"Earlier, we saw that collection of Ravenwood's stories. I've got it digitally. But she has a story about this, about the clockwork droids in Victorian London."

"What is it with you lot and Victorian London? Are you that desperate to return to colonialism?" Clara ignored her.

"Here it is. It's called 'Don't Breathe.'" Unable to sum up the willpower to skim the entire thing, Clara searched for the word 'Antoinette' in the app and found mentions of the ship, the SS Marie Antoinette, which Ravenwood had not renamed. "Hm…" she said.

"What?"

"Looks like the Doctor blew all those robots up. So I wonder where these ones came from."

"Dad's told me that story, you know," said Mattie, "About the French droids. He said they were trying to steal her brain. So, wouldn't these robots want the brain of Marie Antoinette?"

"If she can execute a temporal scoop she can probably reprogram a few droids, that's if they're not naturally loyal to her because they think she's the real Marie Antoinette. Which she could be, I suppose. Plus, we don't actually know where those droids are manufactured in the first place." She paused, skimming her phone. "This isn't a very good story, though, honestly. This Professor character wastes a lot of time dicking about in restaurants."

"Oh, you mean like literally what we're doing right now?" said Mattie. "And is that really what she calls the Doctor? It's not very imaginative."

"Some of the stories do get lambasted quite widely for being Sherlock Holmes knock-offs. The adventures of 'the Professor' and his 'trusty apprentice Flora'?"

"You write the same stuff, though. She writes the stuff before the sex, and you write about the actual sex. It's all about you and the Doctor."

"Well, Ravenwood never slept with the Doctor, for your information. And I think most of these stories are actually about Jenny. Who's been rechristened 'Annie'."

"I really think we need to get moving," Mattie said, "If you're a student here, won't your address be on file? It can't be that hard to hack into a university computer system and find one address. They could be camped out at your house, or flat."

"That's a good point," said Clara, "But only if I stayed the night there. And this is nineteen-year-old Clara Oswald we're talking about, there's a very slim chance that I slept in my own bed last night."

"Great, you could be anywhere in this entire city."

"I doubt I'm too far," Clara assured her, "And it's good news for us, they must be struggling to find me if they're wandering around the streets keeping a lookout. I just need to remember exactly what I was doing on June 16th, 2006, and we can…" she trailed off.

"We can what?" asked Mattie.

"Shh." Clara was listening to the radio again, but it was no longer old-timey music, instead, it was somebody talking. They were discussing an upcoming football match. "Of course, it's the World Cup. Argentina vs Serbia and Montenegro – I remember this match."

"What?" Mattie snorted, "Since when do you pay attention to football? You always refuse to watch the West Ham matches with me."

"I don't pay attention to it, but I remember this, because…" she frowned, thinking, straining to recall, "I was arguing with a boy about it. He was listening to this – this broadcast, now – and telling me how he was placing a bet on Serbia because they were the underdogs." The match was set to begin at four o'clock that evening in the UK. "I wanted to annoy him so I bet a fiver that Argentina would win, which they do, six-nil, and I rubbed it in his face later."

"So, where were you?" Mattie implored.

"At his, I'm sure," said Clara, "But I don't know where that was."

"What was his name, at least?" Clara bit her lip guiltily. "You're kidding?"

"I'm not very good with names, I can barely even remember what he-" She was interrupted by one of the waitresses approaching the table and setting down a jug of water with so much force the water sloshed over the rim and onto the table. Clara, who'd almost wiped both plates clean by this point, looked up at the woman towering over her. She was blonde – of course – and relatively tall. Clara remembered just as much about her as she did about the football boy, which was to say next to nothing, except she knew they'd taken a tumble together a very long time ago.

"Why didn't you call me back, Clara?" the waitress hissed. Clara narrowed her eyes, trying to put a name to the face. She was not wearing a nametag, just normal clothes with an apron over the top that was the same checker pattern as the tablecloths.

"Err…" Clara faltered.

"After last week? Friday night?"

"I've been busy," said immediately resorted to lying to try and defuse the situation since she doubted she'd ever remember the details of their liaison. "Exam season. Moving house."

"You promised you'd call me."

"Yes," Clara nodded, "I did. And I will. I just – I didn't mean I'd call you, you know, immediately-"

"You said you'd call me that weekend."

"I haven't had a chance. Like I said, moving," she tried to do what ordinarily would be her best smile, but unfortunately, she still looked pallid and contagious, as if she had the flu. Mattie was trying to make herself as small as possible so that she remained unnoticed.

"Really?"

"Yes! Look, why don't you give me your number again?" Clara offered, "It might have got lost." The waitress scrutinised her for a few seconds to try and work out if she was being sincere. But Clara was a seasoned and very convincing liar when she wanted to be. And, of course, it didn't hurt that even with her ill complexion, her flashy smiles still had some sway.

"…Alright. But you better call me, I don't… you know I've never… with a girl," she lowered her voice.

"Of course," said Clara seriously, "I will. We'll talk. I'm just busy at the moment, babysitting for a friend."

"What? Oh," the waitress finally noticed Mattie, who glared at Clara.

"Uni open day," said Clara, "I'm supervising." The waitress looked a little embarrassed that she'd revealed so much in the presence of a teenager. But Clara had finally gotten through to her. She took out her notepad and scribbled down a phone number and name – Henrietta – and handed it to Clara, who made a show about putting it in her pocket after reading it over. "Could you, um, bring the bill over, by the way?"

"Yeah. Sure." Henrietta left after picking her jug of water back up, heading back towards the tills.

"You're a cad," said Mattie.

"Ouch. I thought I defused that very well. It's certainly not the worst encounter I've had with… oh, shit."

"What?" Mattie looked back to see what Clara had seen. Henrietta had been harangued at the tills by a second waitress, this one shorter with dark hair who was also, very obviously, angry. With as much disdain as she could muster, Mattie said, "Don't tell you me you slept with her, too." Clara didn't speak. Mattie raised her eyebrows.

"You told me not to tell you."

"Unbelievable." The waitresses began having a heated argument, indicating Clara and gaining a lot of attention from the rest of the clientele – as was Clara herself, who sat there growing increasingly uncomfortable.

"Bollocks, they're coming."

"Can't wait to see how well you 'defuse' this one," said Mattie.

"What the fuck, Clara?" said the second, shorter waitress, also conveniently not wearing a nametag of any kind. "You slept with both of us? In the same week!?" Everybody in the café was now staring at them.

"I don't entirely remember it that-" She upended the jug of water over Clara's head with no warning whatsoever. Not only was Clara covered in water, but so was her plate. "My food!" she protested.

"I hope you enjoyed it, because you won't be eating here again. You're barred for as long as either of us is working here."

"Come on, that's hardly fair," said Clara, "You're both very attractive-"

"Do you hear yourself? God, how often do you do this?"

"Um…"

"I bet you don't even remember my name. I bet you didn't remember her name until she wrote it down for you."

"Wait," Henrietta stepped in, "Did you not remember my name?"

"Of course I did!" Clara lied, "And I remember yours, erm… it's… something with an 'R'?" Something-With-An-R proceeded to and slap Clara very hard across the face. It was quite a show.

"You're so full of it. Don't call her. Don't speak to either of us ever again unless it's to pay for the sexual health tests we'll both need now because of you."

"Now, listen, my intimate health-" She got another slap for that.

"I just said don't speak to either of us ever again."

"…It's Gina, right?" Clara guessed. For a second, she thought she had it right because the girl paused for a few moments, but then she picked up Clara's half-drunk cup of coffee and threw that in her face as well. Clara coughed a little.

"No, it isn't. Now, get out of this café and never come back. You've got thirty seconds."

She turned on her heel and left, dragging Henrietta away with her while Henrietta mouthed 'call me' to Clara and made a phone shape with one of her hands. Clara picked up a napkin to wipe some of the fluids off her face.

"Well," she said, "That explains one age-old mystery."

"Which would be?"

"Why I got barred from this café. I came in here and they poured a milkshake into my lap and said something about how 'we could've sworn we told you to never show your face here again'. At the time I had no idea what they were talking about, or how they knew I slept with them both…" she sighed. "Oh well."

"You don't seem particularly annoyed."

"Well, I deserve it, I suppose." The unnamed waitress was still glaring at her from behind the counter.

"How do you do it?"

"Do what? Shag people I barely know and then forget who they are?"

"No. How do you stay so calm? Anyone else would lose it being called out like that in public and basically assaulted."

"Travelling with the Doctor will really change your perspective on what is and isn't stressful. Besides, this has happened to me more times than I'd care to admit. Happened at Rose's wedding, in fact – another waitress poured a bottle of wine over me." Clara explained, stacking her remaining bacon rasher and a forkful of baked beans on top of the last half of fried bread she had and picking it up. Even though it was a little waterlogged, she was still going to eat it. "Come on, then. We'd best leave."

Mattie didn't need to be told twice and was already out of the door while Clara was still peeling notes from her stack of twenties to leave behind, not even bothering to wait for an actual bill.

"Bye, you two!" Clara called brightly as she left, the bell tinkling overhead. She was gone before they could hurl any more abuse at her, back on the baking-hot pavements with Matilda.

"How much cash did you leave them?"

"A lot," said Clara, "Enough for STI tests. And a tip. And an apology."

"You're paying them off? That's so slimy."

"Well, I have a reputation as a shameless womaniser to live up to. Anyway, maybe me giving them some hard cash is what makes them only pour a milkshake on me in the past rather than punching me in the face or slapping me again." She rubbed her cheek gingerly when she said that.

"Nice to see you've healed, then."

"Mm. I feel loads better. Revitalised. Still hungry, though," said Clara. "You weren't worried about me, were you?"

"Obviously I was worried about you, you were stabbed. I've never seen you get hurt like that."

"I'm sorry," she said sincerely, "I wish you hadn't had to go through that."

"Yeah, well, it's whatever… Where are we going, then? To the university?"

"No, that's the other direction. We're going somewhere else first, and then we can catch a cab," she said cryptically. They were heading back towards the stabbing site, where Mattie now saw on the distant pavement a smattering of blood. There was even a bloody handprint on the glass of the phone box. "This way, Matts," Clara led her to the left, through a set of doors with a metal sign reading 'Leeds City Markets' above them.

"What are we looking for?"

"You'll see. It'll only take a minute."

The covered market was dense and bustling, selling all kinds of goods and clothes Mattie suspected were counterfeit and swimming in the smell of a fresh butcher and fishmonger somewhere deeper in the building. She didn't know what they were doing there until Clara ducked into one of the many strange shops – somewhere between a tent and an actual room – and they came upon an array of computers. Mattie initially thought the shop was selling computers, but she was mistaken: it was an internet café. She had never stepped foot in an internet café in her life.

"What are we doing here?" Mattie asked. Clara gave the clerk another of her many twenty-pound notes and told him to keep the change, pulling out a chair in front of an ancient computer.

"This is brilliant," said Clara, "The Doctor will be extremely jealous of me getting to use one of these things."

"What is it?"

"It's the iMac! The first one." Mattie could hardly believe that it was an Apple computer sitting before them, encased in a semi-transparent, bright purple plastic covering she thought was quite hideous. Still, Clara booted it up no problem.

"It's not even flat screen," said Mattie.

"It's 2006," Clara reiterated, "This is a cutting-edge CRT monitor, I'll have you know. Or it was five years ago, it's a little retro even now. I only need to check my MSN messages."

"How will you remember your password?"

"I always use the same one," Clara shrugged.

"That's secure…" Lo and behold, Clara was able to log in to a decrepit Windows Live account with no problem at all and bring up her messages.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, "Here he is. Mike Townes."

"Who's that? Football boy?"

"Exactly. And you were right earlier, about it being easy to hack into a university computer system." Already she was bringing up the University of Leeds' clunky, web 1.0 site.

"Since when do you hack computers?"

"Since I had the knowledge implanted in my brain by the Great Intelligence. Don't think he knew what he was getting into, I used to be terrible. Almost as bad with computers as with cooking. That's how I met the Doctor, actually – calling what I thought was an IT helpline. Turned out to be the TARDIS.

"Here we go, internal student directory, easy enough. All you have to do is spoof a faculty login and they let anyone break in."

"You haven't been possessed by Oswin, have you?"

"Nah, don't worry. Here's his address. He lives in Henry Price."

"Which means what?"

"That's his halls, which means it's where I am, provided we get there quickly," Clara stood back up. "We'll hail a cab and head straight over; it'll only take a minute."

"You paid for four hours, miss!" the clerk called after her as she left.

"Just give my time to somebody else, keep the twenty!" said Clara brightly, exceptionally chipper for a woman who had been stabbed, poisoned, and publicly humiliated in only an hour. Mattie followed her, wondering what on Earth they would be faced with next.