Chapter 29 The One with the Heat
Happy new year and happy new chapter! Enjoy!
I own nothing recognisable x
Florence awoke in the same room she had fallen asleep in, but with no idea as to whether she was in the same timeline that she had fallen asleep in. It felt the same, but then again she had been lulled into that false hope of familiarity before, with only Rory to give her some sort of hint as to whether she had jumped again or not. She swung her legs off the side of the bed, feeling a strange sense of deja vu when she did so, the odd comfort she felt in the room she had only slept in a handful of times still made her squirm.
She hummed as she ran her fingers over the chest of drawers next to her bed, flicking the jewellery that hung delicately from a gold stand causing various necklaces to tangle up with one another momentarily. Opening a grand wardrobe, she was pleased to find it stocked with various basics that would suit the weird life she had found herself in, jeans, cargo trousers, tank tops, jumpers and t-shirts gave her plenty of options. She smiled at the sight of her familiar tatty converse laying on the bottom shelf of the wardrobe, a sure winner, screw the fancy dress and heels from the night before, comfort over style always.
Having made up her mind, quickly dressing in a pair of straight legged blue jeans and a multi coloured striped tank top, she shoved her feet into her converse and grabbed a black jacket from behind the door as she stepped into the TARDIS hallway, already antsy to find out where (and when) she was.
As she entered the console room, she was pleasantly surprised to find Martha and her pinstriped Doctor standing by the worn out leather chair, the former watching the latter fiddle with her phone. He was pointing the sonic screwdriver at it while the screen flashed. Florence frowned as she got to their sides, tiptoeing to see over Martha's shoulder as she read the words 'Universal Roaming Activated', "Can I have that?" She asked suddenly, making Martha jump and hold a hand to her chest.
"Jesus! You're like a cat!"
Florence laughed slightly at her friend's fright but ignored her in favour of badgering the Doctor. "I mean, of course, when I eventually have my phone back?"
"Why have you not got a-?" "Where's your phone?" The two asked simultaneously, and Florence gave the Doctor a glare.
"Still in your bloody pocket!" She accused him, rather like a child would accuse their grandfather of still having their nose despite it not being physically possible for him to have caught it between his fingers. "Back in Cardiff!" The Doctor nodded, remembering their conversation back when they were trying to find a way for Donna to get to her wedding.
"Ah yes…"
"What do you mean 'in Cardiff'? What were you doing in Cardiff?" Martha asked and the Doctor laughed slightly, flipping her phone around and popping the back on once more.
"Problems with Slitheen, Florence is just upset she let me borrow her phone and forgot to ask for it back before she left."
"Speaking of leaving…" Florence began, pointing between the two of them, noticing both their changes of outfits, though she supposed she had possibly slept a good while. "When are we talking? I was just with you guys…" The Doctor narrowed his eyes,
"Yes, you were." Florence considered her next words carefully, and noticed the Doctor watching her search for how to describe where (and when) they had left off.
"Beethoven?" She asked rather than told him, and his face lit up.
"Lazarus! You haven't gone anywhere, Martha's just woken up!"
"I haven't jumped?" Florence asked, her heart beating wildly. "Oh that's a nice surprise! A nice long sleep and waking up where I left you both? What a treat!" The Doctor continued grinning at her enthusiasm.
"You've not been this chronological in a while!" Florence looked over at Martha, who looked rather confused but overall pleased with their conversation.
"Oh, Martha Jones! I'm beginning to think you're my good luck charm!"
The Doctor laughed, before turning back to the device he held in his hand, flipping it closed and tossing it over to Martha.
"Well, good luck charm, there we go! Universal roaming. Never have to worry about signal again." He walked over to the other side of the console, flipping some switches as he went, and waggled a finger at Florence. "And, yes, Florence, you can have it too… when you get your phone back." Florence pulled a face at him, mocking his stupid smug clever face.
"No way!" Martha was looking at her phone, opening it and closing it, looking at the little symbol in the corner that told her it was working even from inside the TARDIS. "This is too mad! You're seriously telling me I can phone anyone, anywhere in space and time on my mobile?"
"Long as you know the area code." The Doctor quipped, fidgeting with the scanner in front of him. "Go on, try it." Before Martha had a chance to, the TARDIS shuddered and jolted unexpectedly, a klaxon blaring around the room. Florence made her way to the Doctor's side, looking at the red symbols covering the screen. "Distress signal." He suddenly stretched his leg, hooking his foot onto the lever near him on the mainframe. "Locking on! Might be a bit of-" The room shook and a spark flew from next to Florence's hand, causing her to shriek and grab onto the Doctor as they both ducked their heads. It was over as soon as it began, and the TARDIS gave one last shudder before coming to a halt. "-Turbulence, sorry!" He wrapped his arm around Florence. "All good?" Florence swatted him with the back of her hand.
"I'm going to have to make you teach me how to drive, stop using your feet to steer!" The Doctor laughed, pulling her with him as he made his way to the door of the TARDIS.
"Come on, Martha!" He called out to the other woman. "Let's take a look."
He flung the door open, stepping out in only his suit and open shirt (the first time Florence had seen him without a tie or bowtie, which she thought made him look remarkably like the version of him she hadn't seen since the Blitz), and pulling Florence out with him before she could grab her own jacket.
A good thing too, as the hot air hit her face as if she had just stepped off the plane in the middle of South America in the summer, she already felt as if her hair was growing ten times thicker in the humidity and, as it fell heavy on the back of her neck, felt as though she was being suffocated by it.
"Fuck!"
"Now, that is hot!" The Doctor, for once, didn't tell her off for her foul language, already casting his eyes over their new surroundings, a dark steaming engine room that had no natural light and no sign of cooling down, the alarm blaring as loudly as the steam ducts every so often hissed.
"Distress signal transmitted." Martha followed them out of the TARDIS, and Florence noticed her almost immediately taking off the black cardigan she had been wearing in the console room.
"Wow, its like a sauna in here!" She exclaimed, puffing her cheeks slightly as she and Florence shared the universal 'fuck, it's hot' look.
"Venting systems." The Doctor noted, looking over the machinery around them. "Working at full pelt, trying to cool down… wherever it is we are."
Florence flapped her hand in front of her face, only managing to flap warm air into her general direction. "Is there an ice pool wherever it is we are, too?"
"Well…" The Doctor began, heading towards the only visible exit. "If you can't stand the heat…!" He laughed as he pushed the bulkhead door open and peered out of it, gesturing to the women to follow. "Now, that's better!"
As he spoke the sound of multiple footsteps echoed across the metal flooring and straight towards them, and as Florence and Martha made it out of the room and into the new area (Area 30, Florence noted), she saw that it was two men and a woman running up to them in a state of panic.
"Oi! You three!" One of them called out to them, while the woman next to him in cargo trousers and a black vest yelled out,
"Get out of there!"
"Seal that door now!" The first man shouted to them, and Florence pushed the door closed behind them quickly, allowing him to push her away and bolt the door himself.
"Who are you?" The woman asked. "What are you doing on my ship?" Florence corrected herself, the captain asked.
"Are you the police?" The young man next to Florence wondered, and she gave him a slightly suspicious look.
"Why would we be police? Are you expecting the police?"
"We got your distress signal." Martha mediated, but the captain still looked suspicious, and so did the Doctor,
"If this is a ship, why can't I hear any engines?"
"It went dead four minutes ago." The captain told them plainly, and the remaining man who had yet to speak finally piped up,
"So maybe we should stop chatting and get to Engineering. Captain." He added the title at the end with a pointed look.
"Secure closure Active." The ship announced, and even the crew looked confused.
"What?" The captain asked herself more than anyone else, and just in the distance they could see another figure running towards them.
"The ship's gone mad!" The bulkheads were slamming shut just behind the woman running towards them, cutting off the route that they had seen the original crew members coming from.
"Who activated secure closure? I nearly got locked into area twenty seven!" The young woman asked them, panting slightly, she had short messy brown hair and a frown on her face. "Who are you?"
"He's the Doctor, I'm Martha, and that's Florence." Martha responded distantly, looking past the crowd that had gathered and out towards what looked like a window, Florence followed the direction of her eyesight and noticed the orange glow emanating. "Hello." She pushed past the crew members and waved her hand behind her for Florence to follow, the sound of the ship's announcement echoing above them.
"Impact projection forty-two minutes twenty-seven seconds."
"We'll get out of this, I promise." The captain told them, and Florence looked between them and Martha in confusion.
"Um, forty-two minutes til what?" She asked, the Doctor looking at the crew members with a deep frown.
"Doctor… Look!" Martha called, and Florence twisted her neck, stepping closer to Martha to look out of the window.
"Oh. My. God." The orange glow was blinding the closer Florence got to the window, the heat in the ship felt even more stifling once she had seen what was waiting for them out of the confines of the ship. The Doctor ran over to them, joining at the window to see what they were seeing, they were floating in the deep recess of space, hurtling towards a flaming orange star, with dark pools of magma ebbing and flowing across its surface.
"Forty-two minutes until we crash into the sun." The captain told them, and the Doctor placed a comforting hand on Florence's lower back and tried to turn her away from the window, and their attention back towards the crew.
"How many crew members on board?" He asked urgently, stepping away from his companions and towards the other four.
"Seven, including us."
"We transport cargo across the galaxy." The older of the two men informed them. "Everything's automated. We just keep the ship spaceworthy." The Doctor was hardly listening, already sprinting away from them and back towards the door they had come out of only minutes before.
"Call the others, I'll get you out!" The crew members went to stop him, calling out to him all at once as he pried the door open with a grunt. Only for a burst of steam to greet him, pushing him back with a yell, Florence and Martha ran forward to help pull him away with the other crew members, while the young woman who had joined them from area twenty-seven shoved her welders mask on and resealed the door before too much of the pressurised heat could escape. "My ship's in there!"
"In the vent chamber?" One of the guys asked, incredulously.
"It's our lifeboat!"
"It's lava!" The other told him, Florence gripped the Doctor's arm and helped him to his feet, while the woman who had shut the door pointed to the temperature gauge next to the door.
"The temperature's going mad in there! Up three thousand degrees in ten seconds, and still rising!"
"Channelling the air." The younger man explained. "The closer we get to the sun, the hotter that room'll get." Martha glared up at the Doctor.
"We're stuck here." The Doctor looked away from her, anxious to get going, ready with his next move,
"So, we fix the engines, we steer the ship away from the sun. Simple." He glanced down at Florence, she wasn't sure if he was looking for her approval or looking to see if she was okay. She nodded.
"Simple." She repeated, with a small smile, and he grabbed her hand with a soft sigh and a nod.
"Right! Engineering down here, is it?" He ran off, dragging Florence behind him, pulling her through a doorway and down a set of rickety steel stairs into the engine room, Florence grabbing onto the railing to keep herself from tripping over her own feet.
"Impact in forty twenty-six." Echoed behind them.
"Blimey!" The Doctor called out, coming to an abrupt stop, Florence looked around his tall figure and saw the mangled remains of a large exposed engine, it looked as though it had been ripped apart by an inhumane force. "D'you always leave things in such a mess?"
"Oh my god." The captain gasped, and the rest of the crew looked on with dismay.
"It's wrecked!" The Doctor dropped Florence's hand, and made his way around the mess to see if there was anything salvageable.
"Pretty efficiently too. Someone knew what they were doing."
"Where's Korwin?" The captain asked her colleagues. "Has anyone heard from him or Ashton?"
"No." The older man replied, shining a torch on the wreckage in front of them.
"You mean someone did this on purpose?" Martha asked, and Florence looked at the Doctor, who had put on his nerdy specs to have a look at the scanner nearby.
"Who would do that?" She asked, but the crew were too busy looking for spare materials while the captain was trying to get attention on the intercom.
"Korwin, Ashton? Where are you?" She asked, her voice wavering between demanding and worry. "Korwin, can you answer?" She pulled away from the intercom, groaning in frustration. "Where the hell is he? He should be up here." Florence sidled up to the Doctor's side, watching him fuss around with some buttons until an image of planets and orbit rings flashed up on the screen, looking decidedly different from the one Florence was used to seeing.
"Oh, we're in the Torajii system, lovely!" He beamed down at Florence, pointing at one of the small dots on the left. "There's a great little galactic fair just on an asteroid over by the…" He trailed off at Florence's small cough, he was getting distracted again. "You're a long way from home, Martha Jones." He turned his head slightly to brag to his companion. "Half a universe away."
"Yeah." Martha sang sarcastically, sharing a 'is he serious?' look with Florence, who rolled her eyes. "Feels it." The Doctor tapped the screen lightly where some writing had popped up, turning away with a hum and approaching the captain.
"And you're still using energy scoops for fusion?" He asked, innocently. "Hasn't that been outlawed yet?"
"We're due to upgrade next docking." The captain explained quickly, before turning to her second. "Scannell, engine report."
Florence and Martha shared a look, weird.
"No response." Said the older of the two men, Scannell, hitting the side of the screen in frustration.
"What?" The captain asked incredulously, but Scannell merely shrugged, looking at the wreckage again with the torch.
"They're burnt out." He threw the wire he was holding to the ground. "The controls are wrecked. I can't get them back online."
The Doctor whipped his glasses off with a disappointed look on his face,
"Oh, come on! Auxiliary engines!" He exclaimed. "Every craft's got auxiliaries!"
The captain sighed heavily, "We don't have access from here. The auxiliary controls are in the front of the ship."
"Yeah, with twenty-nine password-sealed doors between us and them." Scannell finished, pessimistically. "You'll never get there in time."
Florence put her hands on her hips. "Positive bunch, you are!"
"Can't you override the doors?" Martha asked, but Scannell shook his head.
"No. Sealed closure means what it says. They're all deadlock sealed."
The Doctor pulled a face and he and Florence shared a look. "So sonic screwdriver's no use." He muttered, and Florence hummed in agreement, suddenly without their trusty screwdriver she felt as positive as the crew.
"Nothing's any use!" Scannell exploded, miserably. "We've got no engines, no time, and no chance!"
"Oh, listen to you!" The Doctor berated. "Defeated before you've even started! Where's your Dunkirk spirit?"
"Agreed!" Florence smiled brightly at the Doctor. "We've been in stickier situations! First problem: auxiliary controls are sealed away by passwords. Solution: who has the passwords?"
It was the younger man's turn to pipe up. "They're randomly generated." They all turned to face him. "Reckon I know most of 'em." He stopped suddenly, before smiling awkwardly. "Sorry, Riley Vashtee."
The Doctor smiled back and nodded in greeting. "Then what are you waiting for, Riley Vashtee? Get on it."
"Well, it's a two person job." Riley countered, turning to grab a heavy looking backpack attached to a monitor. "One, to take this for the questions," He placed the straps over his shoulders before grabbing a larger, almost battering ram looking object, "and the other to carry this. The oldest and cheapest security system around, eh, Captain?"
"Reliable and simple, just like you, eh, Riley?" The captain countered, and Florence smiled at the banter.
"Try and be helpful, get abuse. Nice." Martha grabbed the ram from his hand,
"I'll help you." She offered, giving the Doctor and Florence a small smile, Florence could tell from her friend's mannerisms that the heat and stress was slightly getting to her, offering a small smile in return. "Make myself useful."
"It's remotely controlled by the computer panel." Riley continued to explain. "That's why it needs two." The two of them started to head off, but the Doctor stopped Martha by calling out,
"Oi." She turned back. "Be careful." Florence jumped forward and gave her a quick, and sweaty, hug, Martha responding by wrapping her free arm around her briefly but tightly.
"Give us a bell if you need us." Florence whispered, and Martha pulled back with a smile,
"You too. Watch out for him." Florence nudged her to go and her friend trotted off after the young Riley Vashtee.
The remaining group didn't even have a moment to think of their own plan when they were interrupted by the coms system buzzing in. "McDonnell. It's Ashton." The captain, who Florence now knew to be McDonnell, lept towards the controls to answer,
"Where are you? Is Korwin with you?"
"Get up to the med-centre now!" The Doctor grabbed Florence's hand and dragged her out with him as he followed McDonnell to the med-centre.
"Impact in thirty-four thirty-one." Echoed behind them as they ran.
They entered the med-bay in the midst of chaos, a young woman and scruffy looking man were attempting to hold another man down, screaming in pain as they tried to lay him flat on the bed of what looked to be an MRI machine. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut as he squirmed and writhed in pain, the Doctor and McDonnell ran over to him while Florence stood back.
"Korwin! What's happened? Is he okay?" McDonnell asked urgently, but the man on the table barely recognised them as being there,
"Help me! It's burning me!"
"How long's he been like this?" The Doctor asked, and if the young woman in red scrubs was confused by the new member on board, she didn't show it.
"Ashton just brought him in." She told the Doctor, who began to scan the man with his screwdriver.
"What are you doing?" McDonnell asked, the Doctor motioned her to stay back,
"Don't get too close." He warned, but McDonnell took no heed, pushing Ashton out of the way to grab Korwin's hand,
"Don't be so stupid. That's my husband."
"And he just sabotaged our ship." Ashton told her, and she turned her head sharply to look at him.
"What?" She asked, the Doctor scanned Korwin's whole body while the other three attempted to hold him down.
"He went mad." Ashton explained. "He put the ship into secure closure, then he set the heat pulse to melt the controls."
McDonnell shook her head. "No way. He wouldn't do that."
"I saw it happen, Captain."
Florence stepped slightly closer, the Doctor didn't even turn his head in her direction as he held out a hand to keep her back, Florence could tell he was more nervous than he would let on, he wouldn't let her out of his sight but wouldn't let her close to danger. He was a walking contradiction
"Korwin?" The Doctor asked, gently. "Korwin, open your eyes for me a second."
Korwin began to shake his head rapidly. "No, I can't!" He moaned, and the Doctor stopped scanning him, urging him to open his eyes,
"Yeah, course you can. Go on." Korwin moaned and continued to shake his head.
"Don't make me look at you, please!" The Doctor looked back at the tray of equipment next to him, picking up a strange nail gun looking instrument.
"Alright, alright. Just relax." He flashed the gun to the nurse. "Sedative?" She nodded and confirmed for him before he stuck the barrel into Korwin's neck, causing him to stop moving with a quiet grunt.
"What's wrong with him?" McDonnell asked, and the Doctor looked at the screen next to the chamber.
"Rising body temperature, unusual energy readings." He murmured to himself slightly, not quite answering McDonnell, before pointing at the larger machinery they had placed Korwin in. "Stasis chamber. I do love a good stasis chamber! Keep him sedated in there." He told the nurse, who looked uneasy taking orders from a stranger, but didn't disagree. "Regulate the body temperature." She turned and began fiddling with the scanner. "And, just for fun, run a bioscan and tissue profile on a metabolic detail."
She glanced over her shoulder and shot him a look, as if he had read her mind. "Just doing them now…"
"Oh you're good…" The Doctor smiled reassuringly at her. "Anyone else presenting these symptoms?"
"Not so far." Florence sighed in relief slightly, she really didn't want to have to deal with some sort of slow infection of the whole crew, including them.
McDonnell finally turned away from her husband, but kept a hand on his body, as if reassuring herself that he was still there. "Will someone tell me what is the matter with him?"
"Some sort of infection." The Doctor told her simply. "We'll know more after the test results. Now, allons-y! Back downstairs, see about those engines." Ashton nodded, preparing to go, while McDonnell seemed reluctant to move away from Korwin. "Hey." The Doctor got her attention. "Go." She took one last look before following Ashton out. The Doctor turned back to the nurse, who seemed a bit in shock by the last few minutes. "Call us if there's news. Any questions?" He barely gave her a moment before he was heading off after McDonnell and Ashton, pulling Florence along with him.
"Yeah. Who are you?" The nurse called after them, and the Doctor poked his head back in the med-bay.
"I'm the Doctor, this is Florence!" Florence gave the woman a smile and a wave before she was yanked away.
She gave the Doctor a moment for his mind to stop racing before she asked, "Doctor, what do you think's going on? I mean, 'don't make me look at you'? What's that about?"
The Doctor shook his head, running his free hand (the other, slightly sweaty palm, was tightly wrapped around her own) through his hair, messing it up even more.
"I'm not sure yet, something's not right." He growled slightly in frustration. "Korwin's sabotaging the ship, but why? What's making him do that?"
Florence stopped them before they reached the engine room, she could hear McDonnell talking to the men a bit further up ahead. "Doctor, I have a bad feeling about this." The Doctor opened his mouth to say something but she cut him off. "Not like 'alien' bad, just… something's off about this ship. I don't like it." The Doctor's eyes darted around her, looking at all the dark corners of the ship.
"I know the feeling." He gave her hand a squeeze, looking into her eyes deeply. "I'll get us home, as soon as we can get back into that room, as soon as I can stop this ship from crashing."
Florence smiled up at him, it was the first time he had described the TARDIS as 'home' to her, and she wasn't as put off as she thought she might have been by the concept. It had been a long time since she had thought of somewhere as 'home', between the five or six flats she had moved into back and forth across London while at university, the closest she had gotten to a home in the last couple of years had been the diner. That was just sad.
"I know you will."
"Impact in thirty-three fifteen." Florence squeezed his hand,
"Come on, you. People to save." The Doctor nodded, taking a deep breath and pulling the two of them back into the engineering room.
Florence pushed the Doctor out of the way once he had heard Abi the nurse's update on Korwin, before dragging him back slightly once she realised she had no idea how to contact someone on the intercom. "Get Martha up." She muttered to him, ignoring his slightly amused face as he keyed in an area code. "Martha? Martha Jones, how we doing?"
"Area twenty-nine! At the door to twenty-eight!" It was the Doctor's turn to butt in, shoving his glasses back on and examining a map of the ship.
"Yeah, you've gotta move faster!" He told them, and Florence could almost see Martha rolling her eyes.
"We're doing our best!"
"Find the next number in the sequence three-one-three, three-three-one, three-six-seven." They heard Riley mutter, reading out the next question. "What?" Florence was similarly stumped.
"You said the crew knew all the answers!" Martha scolded.
"The crew's changed since we set the questions!" Riley defended, and Florence smacked her hand against her forehead,
"Are you serious?!"
"You're joking!" Martha shot at him at the same time.
"Three-seven-nine!" The Doctor shouted over, and Florence repeated it into the comms.
"What?" Martha asked, and Florence shrugged, though her friend couldn't see her.
"That's what the Doctor said, three-seven-nine!"
She looked to the Doctor for an explanation and he jumped over one of the broken bits of engines to stand over her at the comms. "It's a sequence of happy primes!" He spoke quickly and clearly. "Three-seven-nine!"
"Happy what?" Martha asked in confusion, and Florence felt the irritation radiate from the Doctor.
"Just enter it!"
"Are you sure?" Riley asked. "We only get one chance!" Florence and the Doctor both shared a look of mild annoyance this time, and the Doctor gritted his teeth before speaking.
"Any number that reduces to one when you take the sum of the square of its digits and you continue iterating until it yields one is a happy number. Any number that doesn't, isn't." The speed in which his brain worked still astounded her. "A happy prime is a number that is both happy and prime. Now type it in!" He looked down at Florence, rolling his eyes behind his geeky specs. "I don't know, talk about dumbing it down! Don't they teach recreational mathematics anymore?" Florence gently patted his chest, smiling sweetly at him.
"I don't know what half the things you just said mean, dear."
"We're through!" Florence turned back to the comms and let out a cheer.
"Amazing! The man really does know his stuff! Keep going, you two! Quick as you can!"
"And Martha…" The Doctor told her, finger hovering over the button to end the call for the time being. "Be careful. There may be something else on board this ship."
"Anytime you wanna unnerve me, feel free."
The Doctor looked nonplussed at his actions. "Will do, thanks!" He turned off the comms and ran back to where Scannell was trying to pull apart the mainframe of the engines to use it another way. "Woah! Woah! What are you doing?" He asked as the man started to hammer at the one bit of the engine that seemed intact.
"What's the point! It's all gone to shit! There's nothing we can do! We can't fix this!"
"Impact in thirty fifty." The computer helpfully told them, and the Doctor shook his head at the crew's pessimism.
"None of that! Who said anything about fixing it? Rather than thinking of what we can't do, let's think about what we can do!" Florence might have laughed at his incessant optimism in comparison to the crew, if the situation weren't so dire. "We need a backup in case they don't reach the auxiliary engines in time." He picked up a broken chunk of wiring and threw it to the side. "Come on, think! Resources! What have we got?"
Before anyone could respond, the static of the comms echoed across the room.
"Doctor?" Came Martha's voice, and the Doctor looked mildly annoyed once more by the interruption.
"What is it now?" He asked.
"Who had the most number ones, Elvis or the Beatles? That's pre download."
"Elvis." Came the Doctor's immediate response, and Florence pulled a face,
"Really, I'd have thought the Beatles."
The Doctor immediately nodded. "Wait! Yes! The Beatles!" He floundered, before smacking his own head with the palm of his hand. "No, no erm, what was that remix? Oh, I don't know! I am a bit busy!" He snapped, and Martha huffed slightly from the other side of the comms,
"Alright, I'll ask someone else!"
"Now, where was I?" The Doctor asked the rest of the crew, who looked a bit shell shocked over what had just happened. "Here comes the sun. No! Resources! So! Power's still working, the generator's going. If we can harness that… Ah!"
McDonnell suddenly realised his train of thought, and Florence was glad to hear someone understood where he was going with it. "Use the generator to jump-start the ship!" She finished, and the Doctor smiled manically,
"Exactly! At the very least, it'll buy us some more time!"
The deadpan captain of the ship looked amazed, and impressed. "That is brilliant." She told him, and the Doctor nodded his head,
"I know!" He looked around at the crew and Florence. "See? Tiny glimmer of hope!"
"If it works." Scannell added, bringing the mood further down that it already had been.
"Oh, believe me." McDonnell started, giving him a dark look. "You're gonna make it work." At her words, the man skulked off to follow orders, and the Doctor grinned at the interaction.
"That told him!" He sang, with a waggle of his finger that made Florence giggle.
"Impact in twenty-nine forty-six."
It wasn't long before the comms were in transmission again, this time coming from a rather panicked sounding Abi. "Doctor?" She called out. "These readings are starting to scare me…"
"What d'you mean?" The Doctor asked.
"Well, Korwin's body's changing. His whole biological makeup! It's impossible!" She paused, Florence strained her ears to hear anything else from the young woman. She pressed the comms button again.
"Abi?" She called out, and the comms beeped once more.
"This is Med-Centre. Urgent assistance requested. Urgent assistance!" Came Abi's panicked voice, and Florence turned to the Doctor quickly,
"Doctor!" The Doctor immediately started to run towards the med-bay.
"Stay here!" He told Florence and the others. "Keep working!" The second he had turned the corner, Florence glanced at McDonnell and gave her a quick, forced smile, before following after him. Two sets of footsteps, one belonging to McDonnell she was sure of, echoed behind her.
"Burn with me." Flooded through the ship, Florence careening to a stop in the middle of the corridor, almost running head first into the Doctor.
"Why do you never listen to me?" He asked, but there was no anger behind his voice, and Florence smiled up at him,
"Well, if I never do, then you should hardly be surprised anymore!" The Doctor said nothing at that, before turning his attention to the two others who hadn't listened to his demands,
"I told you to stay in Engineering!"
McDonnell scoffed, and Scanell - clearly the second steps following behind her - raised his eyebrows at the other man. "I only take orders from one person round here." The two crew members barely gave the Doctor another glance as they brushed past him and into the med-bay.
"Is he always this cheery?" He asked rhetorically, before hurrying after them, grabbing onto Florence's hand. The continued to run through the corridors of the ship, but just as they had reached the stairs leading to the med-bay they stopped in their tracks, a distinctly female scream echoing over the comms through the ship.
"Doctor!" Martha called out. "What were those screams?"
"Concentrate on those doors!" The Doctor called back to his companion, tightening his grip on Florence's hand. "You've got to keep moving forward!"
"Impact in twenty-seven oh-six."
They ran into the med-centre, Florence was dismayed to find it empty, except a scorch mark on the wall near the comms. Florence gasped and held her hand to her mouth when she realised that the scorch mark was in the shape of a woman. A woman with the same height, build and hairstyle of Abi. "Doctor." She murmured.
"Korwin's gone." McDonnell pointed out. Florence ignored them, walking close to the mark, the Doctor following her.
"Oh my god." Scannell muttered behind them. "Tell me that's not Lerner." The Doctor raised a hand to the scorch mark, running his fingers lightly over what remained of Abi Lerner.
"Endothermic vaporisation." He rubbed his fingers together lightly. "Horrible… I've never seen one this ferocious."
"Burn with me." Florence said to them, looking at the Doctor in worry. "That's what he said, burn with me. Doctor, he didn't want to look at you!"
McDonnell shook her head. "No, no way. Scannell, tell them! Korwin is not a killer. He can't vaporise people! He's human!" The Doctor headed towards the results that Abi had left on the side, holding one of the papers up to the light, various bars and readings showing up.
"His bio-scan results." He told them. "Internal temperature, one hundred degrees! Body oxygen replaced by hydrogen! Your husband hasn't been infected, he's been overwhelmed!"
"The tests are wrong!" McDonnell maintained, snatching the papers from his grasp, while Florence ran her hand through her hair.
"How's he up and moving? This thing, whatever it is, it's possessing him!"
The Doctor let out a deep breath. "I don't know what it is… a parasite? A mutagenic virus? How did it get inside of him?"
"Stop talking like he's some kind of experiment!" McDonnell shouted at him, her voice wavering slightly.
"Where's the ship been?" The Doctor asked them. "Have you made planet-fall recently? Docked with any other vessels? Any kind of external contact at all?"
McDonnell narrowed her eyes. "What is this, an interrogation?"
"We're trying to help you!" Florence told the woman, angrily. She understood her reluctance to admit her husband may be to blame for Abi's death, but she was growing tired of her lack of cooperation. "If he kills another one of your crew, then what?" She didn't even look at Florence, keeping her eyes on the papers in the Doctor's hands. "Huh?"
"We are just a cargo ship." McDonnell turned away, wiping her face with her hands, and Scannell stepped in front of her slightly.
"If you just give her a minute." She shook her head, turning back.
"I'm fine. I need to warn the crew." She headed towards the comms link and pressed the button to open all the links across the ship. "Everybody, listen to me… Something has infected Korwin. We think…" She stole a quick glance and the Doctor and Florence. "We think he killed Abi Lerner. None of you must go anywhere near him, is that clear?"
"Understood, Captain." Came the voice of Ashton in engineering, before the comms went quiet again.
"Impact in twenty-four fifty-one." McDonnell turned back to the Doctor, ready to carry on with whatever he had found on the papers he had gone back to,
"Is the infection permanent? Can you cure him?" She asked, taking a seat on a platform near the stasis chamber.
He looked at her for a moment. "I don't know." He told her, simply, and unconvincingly.
"Don't lie to me, Doctor." It seemed that McDonnell had noticed too. "Eleven years we've been married. We chose this ship together. He keeps me honest, so I don't want false hope."
The Doctor didn't even hesitate to comply. "The parasite's too aggressive. Your husband's gone. There's no way back… I'm sorry."
The captain nodded. "Thank you." She whispered.
He gave her a moment, before stepping closer.
"Are you certain nothing happened to provoke this? Nobody's working on anything in secret? Because its vital that you tell me."
"I know every inch of this ship." McDonnell told him, shaking her head. "I know every detail of my crew's lives. There is nothing."
"Then why's this thing so interested in you?"
McDonnell shrugged. "I wish I knew."
"Doctor, Florence?" Florence ran to the comms, never happier to hear Martha's voice. "We're through to area seventeen."
Florence sighed in relief. "Great, keep going, you two! sixteen more to go!"
"Heat shields failing. At twenty percent." The Doctor groaned.
"They've got to move faster." He muttered, and Florence slapped his stomach gently with the back of her hand.
"They're going as fast as they can!" She scolded him. "It's not just a pub quiz, not everyone knows about happy clappy numbers…" He raised his eyebrows at her, and she gave him a look. "You know I'm right! You have too much going on in that big brain of yours, some of us have just about memorised our phone numbers."
"What do you think?" He asked her suddenly, and she blinked in confusion.
"Huh?" She whispered, looking over at Scannell and McDonnell. "What do you mean?"
"Earlier, you said something was off… What do you think we should do next?" Florence bit her lip, his questioning felt sincere, he wasn't trying to catch her out or make her feel stupid, he was genuinely asking for her assistance. She hated the fact that she wasn't sure.
"I think… we should go back to the others. Where's Korwin? If he's anywhere in this ship, don't you think he'd be going after our escape routes?" The Doctor nodded.
"The engines." He turned back to McDonnell and Scannell. "Come on, you two! Back to the others." The foursome headed out of the med-bay, Florence noticing that the Doctor kept an eye out for danger as they turned every corner, as if waiting for Korwin to jump out at them.
"DOCTOR!" Martha's voice screamed at them through the comms. "We're stuck in an escape pod off the area seventeen airlock! One of the crew's trying to jettison us! You've gotta help us!"
Florence whipped her neck around, stopping by the comms and grabbing the Doctor's arm.
"Oh, my god! Martha!" The Doctor took a quick look at a map to find the area she had mentioned before throwing McDonnell and Scannell a serious look.
"Stay here! I mean it this time!" He grabbed Florence's arm, which she was glad of, she didn't want to let him out of her sight. "Jump start those engines!"
Florence and the Doctor set off, she presumed he had memorised the entire map the way he was leading her, almost leaping through the doors left wide open after Riley and Martha had unlocked them. Florence managed to keep an eye out on the numbers, eleven doors suddenly felt like an eternity knowing that on the other side Martha was trapped in an escape pod pointing directly at a sun.
He pulled Florence with him through the final door, stopping at the sight of a man whose head was covered with a red helmet, wearing thick fire retardant gloves and tapping away at the security panel of the door in front of him.
"That's enough!" The man turned slowly to face him. "What do you want? Why this ship? Tell me!"
There was a growl, and a strangled yell as the man raised a gloved fist and propelled it at the panel, punching straight through it, causing sparks and alarms to sound.
"Jettison activated."
He turned away from the door, and slowly walked towards the Doctor and Florence, the former pushed Florence further behind him as the man stalked closer to them.
"Come on." He muttered, enticing the other figure. "Let's see you. I wanna know what you really are." They were suddenly nose to nose, and the gloved hand rose to lift the visor of his helmet, Florence braced herself behind the Doctor. Before he could reveal what was underneath the helmet, he suddenly doubled over in apparent pain, groaning and backing away from the Doctor. After a few seconds, he stood up tall once more, brushing past the Doctor and Florence without a second glance, heading back the way they had come from.
The Doctor ran to the door he had abandoned, pressing the button for the comms link.
"McDonnell! Ashton's heading in your direction. He's been infected, just like Korwin!"
"Korwin's dead, Doctor." Scannell told them, and Florence sighed in relief, before suddenly looking at the panelling Ashton had destroyed.
"Martha!" She stood on her tiptoes and looked through the porthole, Martha was shrouded in a blue light as she looked around in panic.
"Airlock decompression completed. Jettisoning pod." Florence looked at the Doctor at those words,
"No! Doctor! We have to do something" The Doctor joined her at the window, abandoning the panel, Martha looked up just as he did, her palms smacking against the window as Florence saw her mouth forming their names over and over as she called out to them.
"I'll save you!" The Doctor called out, exaggerating his mouth movements so she could read his lips better. "I'll save you!"
The pod detached from the ship, Martha and Riley stuck inside, floating towards the centre of the sun. They were stuck, and Florence could do nothing but watch, palm pressed against the glass as though if she tried hard enough, she could feel Martha's hand pressing against her own.
Oooooh Martha! I was so conflicted what to do with this segment, whether Florence should be in the pod or out the pod but in the end I feel as though so much of Martha's development comes when the Doctor isn't there to save her, and when she's left almost completely alone - and I felt if Florence was with her it would detract from the Doctor really wanting to help Martha, not Florence and Martha.
Hope you enjoyed cutesy Doc/Flo moments! Many more to come!
See you for chapter 30! xo