Hey lovelies! I'm back with another chapter as promised! Please check out the poll on my profile for which Doctor will appear in a few adventures from now. Five, Six, and Seven are absent because I haven't really seen much of their episodes.

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What had happened? It almost seemed like time had looped around somehow. What had triggered it? She didn't think that it was anything on her end? Perhaps it was something that happened with the Doctor?

'Well, if it was something with the Doctor, then I suppose I'd better stay with him this time. Oh but what about Martha and Tish! I'll leave them a note I guess.'

Marion reached into her bag and found an old receipt from some convenience store. She grabbed the first pen she could find. It was the Sonic one. She clicked the pen and wrote: "Hi Martha. Exit Door will be locked. Override panel towards the back. Third from the top on the left side. -M". The orange ink glowed slightly on the paper and the letters seemed to hover on the page. She folded the note and handed it to Lucy.

"Lucy," she said, looking at the woman. "Give this to Martha. She's the woman in the purple dress with the silver tube with the blue light. Stay with them". She pointed to where they were. And then, Marion ran after the Doctor to help him distract the Thing.

"You really thought that you of all people could cheat death?, You're nothing but a miserable pile of rib cages and hubris. No one is going to remember you," she shouted. She grabbed the Doctor's hand as she ran past him and the two of them ran down a white-walled corridor, leading Lazarus away from everyone else.

Marion intended to ask the Doctor what exactly had happened, but she knew that there were more pressing matters right them. For example, the murder scorpion crawling above them.

"He's climbing on the ceiling Doctor!" she said. "Stay sharp Pinstripe!"

"Oh, so you do the nicknames this early huh!"

"Not the time,"

The two of them ran until they came across a ladder. Marion pointedly put a finger on her lips and then pointed downwards.

The Doctor nodded and the two of them went down the ladder. They silently crept along the pipes.

"You two can run all you like," Lazarus growled out as his shadow grew darker against the wall, "You can't stop me,"

"Are you as confident in that as you are in your machine being functional," Marion called back creeping around a control panel.

"You can't stand in the way of progress,"

"You call feeding on innocent people progress? You're delusional!" the Doctor yelled.

"It is a necessary sacrifice," the monster with a human? face growled back.

"And who says that you're the one who gets to make it," Marion said back, looking upwards to catch his shadow as she and the Doctor crept through the...what was this place? Some kind of boiler room maybe?

The two of them were walking when the lights flickered on. Marion tugged on the Doctor's sleeve and then pointed upwards and then to the exit. The Doctor, looking upwards to where she was pointing saw the monster.

In Marion's opinion, if it was bad to look at from afar, then it was even WORSE at close distance.

"Peekaboo," it said in a mock sing-song voice. It lunged down at them but the two of them had already made their way through the door and down a corridor. The reached a door where, ideally, the Doctor would have opened the door as he sprinted out. However, he was instead just pressing the door opening bar without anything actually happening.

"Hey Doctor, why isn't the door open?" Marion said in that calm yet terrified tone normally reserved for when you say, "Hey, you did your part of the group project yesterday," To the member of your lab group who is only there because they were too busy calling their boyfriend to pay attention and you and your friend were the only group of two.

"It won't open," he said, pushing the door push button repeatedly.

Marion heard the sound of the monster getting closer and her stomach twisted.

"What do you mean 'it won't open'?" she asked through gritted teeth, putting a hand in her hair and tugging slightly.

"I mean it will not open!"

"Try the other doors!"

"They won't open either,"

"Should I use this?", she asked, holding up her new pen.

"Why would a pen open a door,"

"I DON'T KNOW! It's Sonic,"

The monster getting closer and the feeling of dread grew.

"Dammit", Marion said as she punched the door in frustration.

The fear she felt faded to surprise; the door not only opened but fell to the ground. 'Christ who built this door? This is a secure lab, not a public school bathroom stall.' she thought to herself.

The monster was right behind them. The Doctor grabbed her arm and they ran over the fallen door and into yet another corridor.

Once they were a considerable distance from the monster, they ducked into another lab.

"I'll get the lightbulb, you get the gas," He jumped on top of a table and started to tamper with the wires. Marion looked around for bunsen burners. She supposed that he was used to her knowing what he was going to do before he was going to do it and didn't feel the need to elaborate.

'That door wasn't supposed to be locked,' she thought, twisting the nozzle and unleashing a hiss of gas. She heard a loud crash in the distance. 'Is it just me, or did Lazarus get here quicker than he was supposed to? Must've been the delay at the door.'

The crashing grew closer so she yanked out an orange tube and she crouched behind a bench. The Doctor joined her and she and the Doctor made their way around turning on as much gas as possible.

"More hide and seek? How disappointing. Why don't you come out and face me?"

"Have you looked in the mirror lately," The Doctor before standing, standing.

"Why would I want to see a face like that?" Marion asked rhetorically. The monster charged towards them but by the time he was close, they were nearly at the back door. Marion hit the switch as they passed it and she shoved open the door. The room exploded right behind them and the heat propelled the forward and onto the ground.

"That's not going to do much more than annoy him is it?" the Doctor asked Marion, knowing the answer, already.

"Nope,"

"So we should..."

"Leave pronto? Absolutely,"

They ran through the corridor and the Doctor nearly ran Martha over.

"What are you doing here?" he said, holding Martha by the shoulders and looking her up and down.

Martha held up a sonic screwdriver, "I'm returning this. I thought you two might need it,"

"How did you..."

"I heard the explosion and I guess that it was you two,"

Just then they heard a rumbling.

"This meeting is going super, but that rumbling means that there is a giant murder monster strong enough to treat an explosion like it was a nerf dart to the face is both angry and heading right towards us,"

Marion looked across the balcony and saw Lazarus preparing to leap across.

"Let's go," they raced around the corridor and ended up back in the reception room.

"What now? We've just gone around in a circle,"

The Doctor looked towards Lazarus's machine which Marion was already moving hastily towards. Marion got in first, moving towards the back of the machine with her back facing the sides so that there would be room for the other two. The Doctor held open the door for Martha before following her in just as the monster made it close to the door.

It was a bit of a tight squeeze.

"Are we hiding?" Martha asked.

"Not quite," Marion said, "we're basically gambling that his desire to kill us isn't as strong as his pride over his machine. He hopefully won't be willing to break his masterpiece, even if it's to get to us,"

"But we're trapped,"

"Well, yeah, it's a slight problem," said the Doctor

"You mean, you don't have a plan?"

"His plan was to get inside and then come up with another plan,"

"You know a plan right Marion?"

"Yeah, hold on a second. Which coat pocket is your sonic in Doctor?"

"Same one it's always in,"

"And that one would be..."

"Left inner pocket,"

"Okay,"

She reached across between the two of them and grabbed it out of his pocket and handed it to him.

"Here. There's a removable panel under our feet. You should be able to rewire the machine to reflect energy,"

"Brilliant," he said, sliding down the side and towards the panel. He began messing with the wires down there.

"I still don't understand where that thing came from. Is it aliens?" Martha asked

"No, for once it's strictly human in origin," the Doctor said quickly

"Human? How can it be human?"

"Well, there are a whole bunch of evolutionary possibilities that a species can express. In this timeline, we went for the bipedal sort of ape look. In another timeline, perhaps we went for the 'giant death scorpion' look. No matter what option got picked, the one we didn't was still in our genetic code," Marion explained, eyeing the shadow cast by said giant death scorpion moving around the machine.

"Evolution rejected that option for you millions of years ago, but the potential is still there. Locked away in your genes, forgotten about until Lazarus unlocked it by mistake,"

"It's like Pandora's box," Martha said, understanding.

"Exactly, but instead of all the world's evil, it's scorpions,"

"Nice shoes by the way," the Doctor said. Marion could hear the sound of buzzing and a spark as he moved the wires around.

Marion saw the shadow of Lazarus move towards the activation button. And the room filled with blue light.

"Oh, That's just super," Marion deadpanned.

"Marion, what's happening?"

"He switched the machine on,"

"That's not good is it?" Martha asked, already knowing the answer.

"Well, it's not great," Marion said.

"I was hoping it was going to take him a little bit longer to work that out," said the Doctor pulling up some wires and sonicing them.

"I don't want to hurry you, but..."

"He's almost done. Right Doctor?"

"Nearly done. I just need to...there,"

From the machine, there was a loud bang as the force of its energy output pushed Lazarus backwards. Finally, when it was quiet, Martha, Marion, and the Doctor exited the machine. Lazarus was no longer a monster, but merely a man lying face down on the floor.

"I thought we were going to go through the blender then," Martha said as she shakily moved from the box.

"Nah. We made out with at least 30 seconds to spare. Well done Doctor," Marion.

"Really shouldn't take that long just to reverse the polarity. I must be a bit out of practice" said the Doctor as he stepped out. They saw Lazarus's naked body face down on the reception room floor where he had been thrown by the energy output.

"God, he seems so human again. It's kind of pitiful," Martha said, looking down at him.

"Eliot saw that, too. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper,"

Marion felt like she was forgetting something, but she couldn't quite figure out what. She continued to have this feeling as they made their way to the front entrance and used the phone to call 999. And she continued to have this feeling as they walked down the red carpet.

"She's here! Oh! She's alright," Tish said, embracing her sister.

Francine walked up to the Doctor with the kind of power walk that would make most people wary of what would happen when she got to her destination. The Doctor was not most people.

"Ah, Mrs. Jones. We still haven't finished our chat," he said.

"Wait Doctor look-"

Francine slapped him across the face.

"-out," Marion finished sheepishly.

"Keep away from my daughter! Both of you!" Francine shouted at them.

"Always the mothers," the Doctor said rubbing his face.

'Wonder what the Master's goons told her about me.'

"They're dangerous. I've been told things," Francine said, putting her hands on her daughter's shoulder and staring into her eyes.

"What are you talking about?"

"Look around you. Nothing but death and destruction,"

"That's not on him ma'am. The Doctor rarely causes this kind of disaster. He's more of a 'solving problems on accident' kind of man. It's not his fault that disaster seems to follow him," Marion said, attempting to placate her.

"This isn't his fault. He saved us, all of us!" Martha's voice rose a bit as she spoke.

"And it was Tish who invited everyone to this thing in the first place. I'd say technically, it's her fault," Leo said almost jokingly.

Tish elbowed him in the side and there was a crashing coming from the ambulance.

'Son of a fuck! So that's what I missed' Marion thought as she and the Doctor ran towards the sound of the crash.

The back of the ambulance was open and inside, where two humanoid shapes that looked like they were made of brown terracotta clay. The former paramedics. 'How did I forget about this?' she thought. 'I didn't even remember Lazarus being put into an ambulance let alone killing the paramedics.'

"Lazarus, back from the dead, I should've known really," the Doctor said. Rather than take out his screwdriver, he looked to Marion.

"Marion, question three, where is he headed,"

"That building right there," Marion said, pointing to the church to the left of the ambulance.

"Cathedral. It's Southwark Cathedral. He told me,"

They made their way into the church.

"Why would he come in here?" Martha asked as the four of them moved quietly through the sanctuary.

"He feels like a scared little boy. This is where he went back when he actually was one," Marion said softly as she made her way towards the front of the church, beckoning the other three over with her hand. She found him there. Crouched down behind the altar was Lazarus covered in the red ambulance blanket, shivering.

"I came here before, a lifetime ago. I thought I was going to die then. In fact, I was sure of it. I sat here, just a child, the sound of planes and bombs outside," he said sounding as if he had just run a marathon.

"The Blitz," the Doctor said, looking down at him.

Lazarus looked the Doctor up and down. "You've read about it?"

"Marion and I were there,"

"You're too young,"

"So are you,"

Lazarus laughed and then his body made a gross kind of noise. It sounded like when someone cracks their knuckles but instead of knuckles, it was his whole body.

"In the morning, the fires had died, and I was still alive. I swore I'd never face death like that again. So defenseless. I would arm myself, fight back, defeat it,"

"That's what you were trying to do today?" The Doctor said, walking around Lazarus and looking towards the ceiling.

"That's what I did today,"

"All you did is make yourself look a bit younger!" Marion said sharply. She understood what had led this man to cheat death, but at the same time, couldn't abide by it," 'Defeat death?' With the people you killed? You merely became it yourself,"

"Those people were nothing. I changed the course of history,"

"Any of them might have done too. You think history's only made with equations?" the Doctor stopped walking. "Facing death is part of being human. You can't change that,"

"No, Doctor" Lazarus sneered, "Avoiding death, that's being human. It's our strongest impulse, to cling to life with every fiber of being. I'm only doing what everyone before me has tried to do. I've simply been more successful," Lazarus leaned back and shrieked, his bones making a noise like oil in a frying pan.

"Is that the sound of success then?" Marion said, trying not to throw up. "Your bones sound like they're on fire,"

"It's the sound of progress. I'm more now than what I was. More than just an ordinary human,"

"There isn't a single human who is truly ordinary on earth!" Marion shot back.

"He's going to change back any minute," Martha whispered.

"I know. If I can get him up into the bell tower somehow, I've an idea that might work," the Doctor whispered back.

"Up there?" Martha said looking upwards.

The Doctor nodded.

Lazarus looked up from the floor, "You're so sentimental, Doctor. Maybe you two are older than you look,"

"I'm old enough to know that a longer life isn't always a better one. In the end, you just get tired. Tired of the struggle, tired of losing people that matter to you, tired of watching everything turn to dust," said the Doctor.

Marion crouched down to look at Lazarus, "A life where you have to kill constantly to keep it isn't much of a life is it?"

"That's a price worth paying,"

"Is it?"

"I will feed soon,"

"We aren't going to let that happen," said Marion.

"You've not been able to stop me so far," Lazarus responded.

"That's not true and you know it," Marion said, thinking about Lucy.

Lazarus began to slowly move towards the Doctor and Marion until Martha offered up a distraction,

"Leave him, Lazarus! He's old and bitter. I thought you had a taste for fresher meat," she ran away in the opposite direction of the Doctor. Tish ran after her and Marion ran after them, Lazarus close behind. They ran up the spiral staircase before briefly catching their breath. They heard the sound of bones cracking and shifting around.

"Did you hear that?" Tish said as she came to stop.

"Yes. He's shifting back into a monster again. We have to keep moving!" Marion said to the sisters, urgency in her voice.

They ran the rest of the way until they came up to some windows looking down into the cathedral.

"MARTHA!" they heard the Doctor call out.

"Doctor!" Martha said.

"Take him to the-"

Marion cut him off, "Yes, yes, the very top of the bell tower. Get to the organ room. We'll be at the bell tower in a second,"

"Then what do we do?"

"Well right now, we should MOVE!" said Marion, seeing that Lazarus was right behind them.

She grabbed their arms and ran up one more flight of stairs and through a short corridor. This led to a small, circular room with a bell hanging above a large circular hole taking up most of the room. The hole was surrounded by a wooden guardrail.

"There's nowhere to go. We're trapped!" Tish said looking around frantically.

"It's all part of the plan," Marion said carefully, making her way away from the door.

"All right, so then we're not trapped. We're bait," Tish said.

"Well," Marion said, "if you want to look at it that way, then yeah. But the plan is going to work. You'll be fine. Promise". She looked through the entrance trying to see how far away Lazarus was.

Not very.

"Ladies~" she heard as the bone scorpion as it walked into the small room. She quickly moved to the opposite side of the room from the entrance. He put a leg on the wooden guardrail as if to leap over it. Tish backed herself against the wall with Martha in front of her and Marion in front of both of them. Marion stood with her arms out.

"Ok so...there is a 5% chance that this plan does not work, and in the event that is the case, you too can make a run for it. I'll probably be able to hold him off long enough for the Doctor to come up with a plan B,"

The monster grew closer and swiped it's tail at them trying to sting them.

"Duck!" Marion altering the women to move down so that the tail would swing over their heads. It was then that they heard it. Loud, church organ music.

'Thank GOD!' Marion thought to herself. "Couldn't have come a minute sooner,"

"Sit tight everyone!" Marion said, "the plan is almost working," Just as she said that Lazarus managed to knock over part of the guardrail. He swung his tail across the room nearly hitting Martha in the face. Marion knew and expected this and so, she grabbed and pulled Martha down so that the tail went over her head and didn't knock her over the edge.

What she didn't expect, however, was for Lazarus to go for a third swing. And she didn't expect said swing to hit her in the middle of her back and send her flying. The swing had knocked the wind out of her, and she was unable to grab a hold of the ledge and so, she fell out to hole and towards the ground.

"MARION!" Tish screamed.

'I had to die somehow.' Marion thought to herself as she realized what was happening, 'I guess pushing someone out of the way of a bony scorpion monster and being shoved off the bell tower walkway and falling to your death in a cathedral while booming organ music plays is at least, dramatic.'

Let's talk about physics and why falling headfirst 60 meters onto marble is, scientifically speaking, not a great thing to do.

Obviously, a fall from a great height is deadly, but why?

What you have to understand, it's not the fall itself that kills you. The longer something falls, the more it's velocity increases assuming that you are not in a zero-gravity environment. Earth is not a zero-gravity environment, and the gravity on this planet makes falling objects accelerate at an average rate of 9.8 m/s². When a falling object eventually hits the floor, its velocity will go from whatever it had been as it was falling to 0. This sudden and erupt change and the energy from it needs to go somewhere. This 'somewhere' is the surface that is landed on and the object that landed on it. If that force it too much, then it can prove fatal. This is why high heights are deadly. It's not the fall, it's the landing.

Now the obvious next question is, how screwed exactly is Marion?

With the distance between where she started, (the walking platform) and where she will end up (the cathedral floor) being roughly 60 meters, Marion will fall for about 3.5 seconds and will reach a speed of 34.3 m/s right before she hits the ground. Marion weighs roughly 58 kg. And so, when she collides with the cathedral floor, she will hit it with a force of 34.104 kJ or, 34,104 Newtons. It takes 4000 Newtons to fracture a femur, a bit over 3000 to fracture the spine, 2500 Newtons to fracture the skull, and much less make the not bones in a body go to smush.

Scientifically speaking, about 3.5 seconds after she is knocked off the platform, Marion will be dead and her story over.

But just because that's what SHOULD happen scientifically, doesn't mean that that's what will happen does it?

(Next Chapter: The Sound of Clocks)

Marion, waking up in a cold sweat: Hey wasn't T.S. Eliot the dude who wrote the poem CATS was based on?

It should be more than obvious, but Marion isn't dead. Also, she's not regenerating. Originally, this wasn't going to end on a cliffhanger... But, the chapter was going on for a bit long and I'm still trying to figure out how to begin the next adventure. (As of writing this, I'm 80% sure it's going to be Arachnids in the UK), so I made this one chapter into two. The next chapter will be the conclusion of the Lazarus Experiment along with some other things. This gives me time to write a good chapter five while still making sure that y'all get a decent sized chapter.

Anyway. Drop a review. Drop a Favorite. Drop a Follow. And have a nice day!