While in the Judoon Prison

by Passerby108976

AU in which 13 hatches a reckless and futile plan to escape from the Judoon prison years before Jack Harkenss's cell lands next to hers. Rating for rape, suicidal ideations, & violence. All chapters with M-rated material will begin with a content warning (ch 4, 5, & 7 so far). Chapters to be published daily until story status is changed to complete.

1. Chapter 1

Finally, an anomaly. After 8938 cycles trapped in this stubbornly monotonous Judoon prison, the Doctor spotted an anomaly. Such a delicious, curious, wonderful anomaly.

Before it, the days were starting to lose definition. The Doctor, on a loop, ate the nasty brown meal brick, followed the arrows, followed the scheduled exercises, and feigned sleep as prescribed. It was it's own form of torture— a testament to the Judoon's brilliance. Her mind, ever-adaptive, began melting away a few hundred cycles ago, numbing the pain of solitude and hopelessness.

But then, one blessed day, something different happened. As the Doctor followed the arrows and greeted her prison-friends, the Weeping Angel and Mighty Pting among others, she was jolted into awareness by the sound of an airlock depressurizing in the distance. When she had been first imprisoned, she had mentally mapped each of the floors she had been escorted to and recognized the sound as coming from a doorway on a wall she had dedicated to being on the "west"* side of the prison.

The Doctor halted and zeroed in on the doorway just in time to see another prison emerge. The inmate, an older humanoid, was covered in a thick layer of red dust and his hands were bloody from cuts and blisters. He seemed severely dehydrated, and although it was impossible, his face and arms were sunburnt.

Yes! Every atom in the Doctor's body suddenly felt alive again. Questions flooded her mind as the anomaly quickly became an intriguing mystery for her to solve. There was no red dust in the prison, and the only times they were exposed to any type of solar energy was too fleeting to ever be burnt from it. Also, he was tagged. It was easy for any Judoon prisoner to spot another based off their tag. During the intake process, the Judoon implant a lit tag under the inmates' skin. As they age the light grows duller as it sinks deeper into their skin, acting as a basic visual representation of the years they have served. This man, the anomaly man covered in red dust and sunburns, had to have been imprisoned for at least ten years according to his tag's semi-deepened glow.

Why was he allowed to leave the prison? Where did they send him and why? But first, the Doctor wondered, how could she convince the Judoon to let her go with him?

*Silly Earthly directional conventions brought her a sort of nostalgic comfort upon her arrival to the Judoon prison