Hi. Bookworm/Morgan did a whole lot more art. If you aren't following them and you like this fic you should probably fix that.
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Tesla's lab had been a large mostly empty room with rugs all over the ground and just enough furniture to make the room somehow seem emptier.
"Whoa!" Graham said looking around, "This is some set-up he's got."
"Pretty standard."
Edison's lab reminded Marion of her university studio. A person behind most desks. Some people were looking down intently at their work. Some people were talking to each other and looking over their shoulders. Most of them were so cluttered you could barely tell what color the table top even was. The main difference was the lack of computers, the absence of the smell of coffee, the amount of sparks flying, and the lack of scrap cardboard.
"See," Ryan pointed at the man's back, "this guy I've definitely heard of. He's got to be America's most famous inventor."
"It sure seems that way."
"Yeah. But not exactly a shrinking violet, is he? I mean, he's plastered his name all over the shop. Talk about tooting your own horn."
The thing that Graham was referring to was the: "EDISON BRINGS LIGHT" written in all caps across the wall in bright lights.
It probably would have been quite impressive to someone from 1903.
"Well," Marion remarked, looking at the sign, "if he doesn't stamp it everywhere, how will he remember what name to slap on his employee's work."
When they entered the office. Ryan put the gun down on the desk.
Edison leaned down to examine it. "I have never seen anything like this in my life. Is it your design? Who has the patent?"
"This isn't a business opportunity." the Doctor said sharply, "Someone tried to shoot us with it just before we caught an employee of yours spying on Nikola Tesla."
"Speaking of, just a bit of advice from me to you, maybe tell your spy not to use the biggest flash imaginable. I mean I know your light bulb is amazing, and all, but one of the most important parts of spying is the person you're spying on not knowing that you're a spy."
"Someone's trying to steal from him, and he seems pretty sure it's you."
"Does he, now? Ma'am, I may keep an eye on my rivals, but I do not steal."
Speaking of keeping an eye on his rivals. Marion started to think for a moment and she realized that she wasn't as positive as she might've liked that the spy was one of his. Not that spying was behavior out of character for him. Again, the fact that she didn't mention Louis Le Prince meant she deserved at least a high five.
"I have no need to. There are a thousand patents in the Edison name. You might have seen it on the building."
"And how many of those inventions can you say were truly your work?"
"Did Tesla tell you that? He's sore about the past. You know, I gave him a job when he first arrived in this country on the factory floor. He ended up digging ditches for two bucks a day."
"Tesla?" Graham questioned, "Dapper dude who dresses for the opera? How did he end up digging a ditch?"
Edison didn't answer. "He heard me say I'd pay 50,000 dollars to the man who could fix my generator. He worked on that thing day and night for a year, and he did it."
"And you, being the upstanding businessman, paid every last cent, I presume."
Marion wasn't sure if Graham was being sarcastic or not. She didn't know him well enough to tell. And also he was British so that further complicated things.
She was going to choose to believe that he was being sarcastic and politely ignore him if he suggested otherwise.
"I offered him a ten buck raise. He quit and chose to dig. Man just didn't understand the American sense of humor. Did he Miss."
Marion looked around and realized that the man was looking at her.
"Oh? Are you talking to me?" Marion blinked. "Well yeah. I understand." Marion she said, in a tone that suggested anything but agreement. "If you'll excuse me for a moment."
She stepped out of Edison's office and looked out into the lab with all the people working on their projects. Tesla had worked here. She wondered what table he'd been sitting at. Was it towards the back near the door? Maybe in the middle near where that man dressed in black was walking. Of course, he had overheard Edison talking, so probably somewhere near the-
'Wait'
Marion looked at the man dressed in black and her vision spun.
"Shit."
"Marion?" Ryan had followed her out of the office and was looking at her with concern. "What's going on?"
Marion wished that she could pull a fire alarm. A nice big red button behind glass meant to be broken in place of emergency.
Unfortunately, the year was 1903, the Triangle Waist Factory fire had yet to happen, and so buildings didn't have a convenient "pull this to get everybody get out now" button.
The humble fire alarm was truly a technological marvel.
"Marion what's-".
Marion cut him off. "Something's wrong."
Marion took off running towards the man in black as fast as she could. This was fairly fast considering that she could hold a sprint indefinitely. She held out her arm to clothesline the figure and bring him to the ground just as his hands started to crackle with red electricity.
"Everybody out!" Marion shouted.
And then she wasn't quite sure what came after that because suddenly she burned and her muscles seized. It hurt less than getting shot by a Dalek she supposed.
But it was close.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock
Marion hoped that most of the men in the lab had the good sense to flee and not attempt to be heroic. Many of them had families depending on them. And the turn of the 20th century didn't really have much in the name of public safety nets. Not to mention how difficult it was for women to get a job that was safe and paid decently. And if they had kids? Well, heroism is all fun and good until it leads to your kid losing his fingers in a textile factory.
Perhaps she was catastrophizing a bit.
Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick
Whatever damage had been, had been bad enough to "kill" but not bad enough for the damage to take too long to reverse it seemed. Perhaps if she had been wearing an insulated jacket she might not have felt any of it at all.
She still felt wrong. The muscles in her arm kept twitching in a way that didn't exactly hurt, but felt sure weird.
Marion could hear the sound of footsteps coming closer to her. She pushed herself up. Suddenly, she was hit by incredibly strong arm pain and her eyes shot open and she clutched her side. Her skin jolted uncomfortably.
Ryan was crouched in front of the reaching out.
"Ryan stop!" The Doctor said quickly. "Don't touch her."
"She's-"
"Don't." The Doctor repeated.
The closer the Doctor got to her, the more she felt like something was pressing down on her chest. Her arm spasmed again.
She could hear a handful of voices asking if she was alright. She couldn't recognize all of them. Which was good.
The Doctor stood up a moment and then grabbed something off one of the nearby table's lightbulbs. She placed it on the ground and pushed it towards her carefully.
"Marion. I need you to pick that up for me. You absorbed a lot of energy. And you need to get it out."
Marion trusted the Doctor and she grabbed the metal end of the lightbulb with both hands.
The moment she touched it, the bulb glowed steadily and the pressure in her chest disappeared. Her hand buzzed as it got brighter and brighter. She closed her eyes and then the bulb exploded with a loud pop. Her hand bled for a moment where the glass shards had slammed into them and she was pretty sure that some had ended up in her face as well. Then the droplet or two of blood flowed back into her hand and pushed the glass out and she felt bits clatter to the floor.
Marion wondered, if what she had been feeling was a side effect of having electricity course through her veins and near her heart or a side effect of the fact that the Doctor had been close to her, and had they touched, what had happened to the light bulb would be happening to her friend.
She had a feeling it was the latter.
"How are you feeling?" Graham asked.
"I think I'm fine now." Marion replied, "A little nauseous but-"
The Doctor wordlessly slid her another lightbulb. Marion grabbed ahold of it. Nothing. Didn't light up at all.
"What the hell is going on here?"
"Did your men leave?" Marion asked, "No one's- is everyone- oh. Alright."
There were a couple of bodies lying on the floor of the workshop. Not ideal. But there wasn't a corpse lying down behind every single desk so Marion was going to take that as a win.
She had to take that as a win.
"There's-." Marion got up steadily to her feet. "If they hadn't run. They might've been caught in that blast like they were," Marion gestured to the bodies on the ground and looked away.
"But they're just stunned. Like you were. They'll be up soon won't they."
Marion looked at Edison. He looked worried. Honestly worried about his men. She supposed that that counted for something. But it only made what she said next sadder.
"No. I'm afraid they're dead."
"But you're-"
"I'm a lot harder to kill than many people would prefer," Marion said carefully. "That's why I told everyone to run, and I tried to distract the guy."
"And then what happened?"
"Don't know. I was unconscious as a side effect of the distraction."
The dizziness got more intense. Marion's arm got a sudden twinge of pain. She clutched at it. She heard a loud thumping noise. She shoved herself forward towards the door.
"He's still here," Marion said quickly. "the man who did this."
"Yeah," said Ryan. "We figured that."
Marion didn't turn around, but she raised her voice, "All Edison employees who are still here and still alive should be aware that continuing to do one might complicate the other."
Behind her, she heard the sound of quick feet.
The Doctor, having made sure that she was alright, checked on the closest body to their group. It seemed that the group had made a beeline over to her as soon as they entered the room. That was thoughtful.
The Doctor looked at the man's face. "He's the real Harold Green. Whatever's chasing us is projecting his image and using it to keep its true self hidden," The Doctor turned around sharply to look at Edison, "You'd better not be hiding anything. People have died."
"My workers!" All those men worked for me. They had families," he pointed to the body of Harold, "I had dinner with this guy and his wife last week. I have to tell her, tell the families. Now give me the gun."
"Definitely not"
"We're not shooting it! We need to contain it, work out what it wants," The Doctor raced to a table where she'd gotten the lightbulbs."This is your chemical lab." the woman started to examine the different things on the table, "Perfect! Ammonium nitrate, bit of green stuff. Where's your zinc? Marion, you wouldn't happen to have any Zinc with you in your bag?"
"No dice." Marion replied with a shrug, "'Suppose I could start carrying around a chemistry set if you wanted." Marion murmured mostly to herself. "I mean I could fit one in my bag I think."
"Zinc?" Edison questioned, "Have you lost your damn mi-?" And then it clicked. Marion didn't know enough about chemistry to know why zinc specifically clicked, but it was good that it clicked "Oh."
"Finally" the Doctor smiled, "thinking like a scientist. Marion, can I borrow your lighter?"
"Of course!"
The Doctor started to mix various different powders on the desk together. Marion's limited knowledge of chemistry suggested that MAYBE she shouldn't be handling that stuff with her bare hands the way that she was, but maybe things were different for Time Lords.
Or, perhaps things were different for the Doctor specifically. Either physiologically or psychologically.
Marion remembered something, and she took out her phone. A quick glance told her that the phone knew it was 1903. Marion wasn't sure how her phone knew that it was 1903, but it knew that it was 1903. Maybe the TARDIS was using the moon as a satellite or something. She quickly found Yaz's contact. Marion just searched up her name instead of scrolling.
Scrolling would require going past the D's, M's, and J's. She wasn't ready for that just yet.
For better or worse, she hadn't gotten any texts from anyone under D, M, or J.
- hey yaz.
- what are you and tesla doing rn?
It took a few moments to get an answer. And the green circle lit up next to the Y that made up the woman's contact photo. She supposed she'd have to make time to get a real one.
- He's hooked up a bunch of different wires to the orb. Apparently it's giving off a large amount of electricity.
- Is there something wrong?
- Did Edison do something?
-Might be.
-Get Dorothy in the lab with you, and then none of you leave that room until we get there.
-Not Edison
-Not Edison directly.
-it's something else.
-If something knocks on the door, get away from the window
-Should I tell him to turn off the orb.
Marion thought for a moment.
-If someone knocks on the door sure, but whatever damage might already be done. Let him have his fun.
-Lock the door tho.
A moment or two later, her phone buzzed with a thumbs-up next to her most recent text.
Marion slid her phone back into her bag.
"Told Yaz what was going on."
"Good thinking." the Doctor replied.
The woman took the mixture and poured it in a circle near the entrance to the chemistry lab and left a small trail from that circle to the benches. They crouched down behind him.
A few moments later, Marion heard a loud airy snarling noise and the sound of slow and careful footsteps.
The Doctor wordlessly held out her hand to Marion. Marion slid her lighter. The Doctor clicked it, once, twice, and then brought the flame down to the line of white powder. The flame zoomed along the path until the man was caught in a ring of fire.
The man in the fire circle looked demonic, and if she was remembering right (which she hoped that she was but she couldn't be sure because she was starting to realize that she didn't remember this episode all that well) we would have looked the way without the flickering flames and the hissing growling noises that pushed past his throat.
A lot of predator animals have this thing called tapetum lucidum. It's a reflective film in the back of their eyes that allows them to see in the dark. When the light hits their eye just right, it reflects back and appears to glow.
So most of the time, when something is described as having "glowing eyes" it's talking about that.
Glowing eyes glow in the same way that reflective tape on the Halloween costume of the child of a concerned parent glows.
The being standing in the fire circle's eyes glowed bright red. But it wasn't because it was reflecting existing light.
They glowed like the man's skull was completely hollow and like there were a pair of red LEDs stuck in his eye sockets.
"There'll be more where that came from,"
The being in the fire circle hissed and growled loudly.
"How about we try this again?" the Doctor ordered, "Who are you? Show your true form."
Its face started to warp and twist like it was made of plastic. It snarled and revealed sharp teeth.
"What in God's name?" Edison asked.
"I dunno how much of a hand God had in that." Marion mused.
"We need to go," the Doctor said, "Marion, call Yaz-" the Doctor paused and reached into her pocket and retrieved her own phone. She looked at it for a moment. "She's calling me."
The Doctor started running.
"Tell Tesla. Tell Dorothy. Lock every door." some silence as the Doctor listened. "Yaz? Yaz, are you all right? Yaz?"
The Doctor looked down at her phone and put it into her pocket. She turned a corner and ran into an alley. She looked around and held up her Sonic Screwdriver. With a rush of air, the TARDIS appeared and the Doctor ran inside with Marion, Ryan, and Graham close behind.
"What are you-"
Marion ducked her head out of the TARDIS and stared at Edison.
"Look, either come in or stay out."
Marion walked back inside. She could hear the door behind her open and close again as Edison walked in behind her.
The Doctor had her phone on the TARDIS console using it to link to where its signal had last been present.
"If I time it right…" the Doctor mused, "I can get us there just a second or two after Yaz dropped the call."
"What?" Edison asked.
"Time Machine," Marion replied without looking up. There was a panel of buttons in front of her, that were at roughly the right distance for her to hit all of them with her fingers without moving her palm. Every now and then, one of them would buzz lightly under her fingertips and she would press it.
Thirteen's console was a lot more cluttered than any of the others. And not all of it was buttons and switches.
The more specific way to describe it, was that it was a bunch of stuff connected to other stuff that did stuff. Even if the stuff didn't look how you'd imagine important things connected to other things to work like.
If that sounded difficult to understand…well it was also tricky for Marion to fully understand, so that was fine! All she needed to understand was that there were things to flick and press and tap and twist and the TARDIS would tell her what she needed to do and when.
The TARDIS landed and the Doctor ducked her head outside of the ship.
"You're all right." Marion heard the Doctor say, trying to calm down whomever she was talking to. "You've probably got questions."
"They took them."
The Doctor froze for a moment and then lowered her arm. She beckoned Dorothy inside and then shut the door behind her. The expression Dorothy's face, made Marion wish that she had a blanket in her bag. The kind that were bright orange that you give to someone who'd just experienced something traumatic.
Marion then remembered that she was in a time machine. All she would need is for the Associate to put that kind of blanket under a chair somewhere, and then she could have access to it now. She would just need to remember.
Marion noticed a chair right next to the door. She walked confidently towards it and reached down.
"Ah-ha!" Marion said.
Tucked just out of sight was a soft grey blanket. It felt a bit weighted, but it didn't feel heavy enough that it would be a burden. Her guess was that it was somewhere in the range of 2-3 pounds. That seemed perfect enough.
Dorothy sat on one of the stairs leading down from the TARDIS door with Ryan sitting next to her.
"Here." Marion held out the blanket to the woman.
"Thank you." the woman nodded. She shrugged the blanket around her shoulders.
"Long day?" Marion remarked, sitting down next to Dorothy and just behind Ryan.
"First time here can be a lot," Ryan said softly.
"It certainly is... a lot." the woman's eyes flickered around the room. Marion hadn't heard her remark that the TARDIS was bigger on the inside or not. But the way her eyes flickered about the room told her that she had to be thinking it, "But you take it in your stride. Where do you even come from?"
"Me personally, another Earth. A bit like yours. In fact, a lot like yours. We even had our own Tesla. Ours is just a bit ahead. Timeline wise. Not Tesla-wise. Pretty sure that they both were around the same point"
"And as for me, Yorkshire, England." Ryan introduced, "I was at home. You know, normal life, work - then, boom - The Doctor. Changed me whole life."
"She's quite an amazing person. She travels around. Fixin' some things and breaking others. Sometimes on purpose, other times not."
"I was the same before I met Mister Tesla." The woman looked like she was trying not to cry. Like she was sure that she had just watched someone die in front of her and couldn't think fast enough to do anything about it. "I wanted my own career, something steady, then he showed me all these discoveries that could be made. But it seemed like impossible things. And now, something normal, steady..."
"...doesn't seem so important." Ryan finished.
"Dorothy," Marion said kindly, but firmly. "Mr. Tesla and Yaz are going to be fine. I promise. What's going to happen is that he's going to discover new technologies and he's going to practically talk your ear off about them and maybe come up with a new angle for an idea or two." Marion looked at Ryan. "You should know me, do you think I would look this calm if I thought Yaz was in danger."
Marion wasn't going to entertain the possibility that Yaz might be dead. So far, no companions had died when they hadn't in the TV show the way that the Doctor had, and so she was going to believe that unless she did something drastic and changed things too rapidly, everything would be fine.
No point in worrying about things she didn't know if she needed to worry about or not.
Marion stood up.
"I'm going to go over and see if the Doctor needs anything."
If the Doctor thought she was going to warp herself onto the ship without Marion then she was truly and unfortunately mistaken.
The Doctor was situating the Orb in some kind of cradle. Its green glow flickered in intensity.
Edison paced around the console. Marion watched him out of the corner of her eye, her vision still focused on the Doctor.
"This is the most extraordinary thing. Is it a single machine or some kind of, er... mechanical factory?"
"No," Marion replied. Without looking at the man. "No touching." at the same time Graham slapped his hand away from the lever.
"You're in here strictly on the QT, right?" Graham said firmly. "So get those dollar signs out of your eyes cos this little lot ain't for sale. Copyright, her."
"That's a British accent, isn't it?"
"Yes?"
"Now there's a country who's never understood business."
Marion turned her head to the side to look at them.
"I'm with Him," Marion said pointedly. Emphasizing the fact that her accent was very American. "And frankly, even if we let you try, I don't think you'd be able to recreate one TARDIS, let alone-"
"Got it!"
All of them turned to look at the Doctor. The Orb was humming and the green glow had focused itself at a single point. Light from the cradle shone back and forth over the surface like clockwork.
"Have you got something, Doc?" Graham asked.
One of the hexagons that covered the dome-shaped console room lit up, went staticky, and then began to show images.
"Of course!" The Doctor gasped, "That's why they left it behind. It's been hacked. It's not broadcasting anymore. It's receiving."
The images flashed on the hexagon. First space, then the earth, then Stonehenge, and then various scenes of turn of the century New York"
"You mean it's a bugging device," Graham nodded, "Thought so, moment I saw it," he added, non-convincingly.
"Exactly." the Doctor nodded, "Repurposed from its original intent. It's been scanning the Earth since it got here." She lifted her sonic screwdriver and paused the image right at the end.
"And it must have finally found what it's been looking for."
An image of Nikola Tesla staring into the orb stared back at them.
"They're hiding their real faces behind projections. They could look like anything, be anywhere. There's no trail!"
"They're in a ship above New York," Marion said. She paused. "Huh. I can say that at least. It's floating in the air. And it's invisible."
"So they're still within Earth's orbit?" the Doctor remarked. She looked down at the console and flipped a switch or two. She frowned. "Whatever they're using to make their ship invisible is cloaking their location. There's nothing for me to latch onto. I need some kind of signal."
Ryan looked up at the hexagon screen thoughtfully.
"If we're looking for a trail to follow, what if Tesla already found it?"
"But he did." said Dorothy, everyone turned to look at the woman. She walked closer to the hexagon. The image had gone from a picture of Tesla to a picture of a newspaper. "The Mars signal. I didn't believe him, not really. But he records all his observations. We have to go to Wardenclyffe."
Marion wondered at what point the Doctor figured out how to reliably get the TARDIS from point A to point B over short distances.
She remembered Four making a point, the E-Space being significantly tinier than the normal universe made it possible for him to travel in a way that he hadn't been able to travel before. But considering his piloting abilities at the time, well, that might very well have just been a skill issue.
The point was, with barely more than a flip of a switch or two they had successfully landed in Tesla's lab in Long Island.
The TARDIS whooshed loudly for a moment and then stopped. The Doctor quickly left the TARDIS with Dorothy just behind her. Followed by Marion and Ryan.
Tesla's lab looked much more like an inventor's laboratory than the one they had left. The room was filled with tables with shiny metal devices and telescopes and disks.
Dorothy, seemed to take the whole, teleporting from one place to another instantly with stride, walking out of the TARDIS and directly towards a telescope-like device on a nearby table.
Marion wondered if it was because she had watched the TARDIS appear out of nowhere in front of her earlier and just sort of accepted it, if it was working with Tesla as long as she did that made science fiction becoming science fact just part of the course, or if it was a case of it having been a long enough day for her to stop caring.
"Mister Tesla started transferring all of his work to Wardenclyffe months ago." She picked up the telescope-looking thing and held it out to the Doctor, "He intercepted the Mars signal with this. He calls it his Teslascope. Here are all the readings he took."
The Doctor looked down at the desk. On the desks were rolls and circles of paper with lines. It reminded Marion of a lie detector reading. She was sure that there was a specific word for those kinds of lines, but she wasn't sure what it was.
"They must have increased the cloaking when they realised he'd spotted them."
Dorothy glanced off towards the TARDIS and realized that Edison had exited the TARDIS as well. She grit her teeth and glanced between Graham and Marion.
"Hey." her eyes flickered towards Edison, "Don't take your eyes off him, and don't let him touch anything."
"Yes ma'am" Marion replied with a nod.
Although, Edison seemed far less interested in lab than the TARDIS itself. He stared at it in disbelief.
"We're on Long Island. This box transported us halfway across New York. Unbelievable."
"Yeah, well, keep it to yourself, or people'll say you're as crazy as Tesla." Graham said offhandedly.
"That, my friend," the man replied seriously, "will never happen."
Graham smiled for a moment, and then turned around to face the other man. "Yeah. Still, bet you'd jump at the chance to have him back working for you, wouldn't you?"
"Yeah?"
"Yeah!"
"How'd you figure that?"
"Cos I had a supervisor like you at my old depot. And men like you don't pay a bloke that much attention unless you think there's a pay-out coming."
"It must be here somewhere. Ah, I've found it!" The Doctor lifted up a long sheet of white paper. She looked through each part trying to look for something specific. She nodded. "The signal readout. Now we're in business."
The Doctor had asked Marion if she knew where her toolbox was. Marion, was fairly certain she knew where Four, Ten, and Eleven had kept theirs, but the Doctor specifically? She had no idea. So that Doctor had taken her into the TARDIS, shown her the location (it was in a panel inside of the console room to the left of the clockwork squirrel) and then the two of them had exited the ship again.
The Doctor opened the box on the table and rummaged through it. Finally, she pulled out two things. A bracelet and what looked like a large battery. The bracelet's stone and its visible glass-covered core were a fluorescent green and orange whose colors reminded Marion of sherbet.
"I knew I had one in my toolbox. Braxium Bouncer, Mark III," she held it up, "Found it at a bazaar. Bit wonky, but I can't take the TARDIS. This should give us enough power to transport me, her," the Doctor pointed at Marion. Which. Good. Glad that that went without saying. "Yaz and Tesla back here. But once I'm there, I can't jump back until it recharges itself. Which, you know, I'm not worried about." the Doctor said quickly.
"Doctor, it'll be fine."
"See?" the Doctor said, the tone of her voice not changing, "Marion says it'll be fine. So, it'll be fine. Definitely. So you shouldn't be worried about it either. We should go now. The quicker we go, the quicker we can come back."
The Doctor held out her hand for Marion to take and then she did something with her wrist.
One moment, they were in Long Island, and then the next moment they weren't. The air seemed to stagnate. And the soft yellow-orange of golden hour morphed sharply into something green. And Marion could hear the sound of many chitinous legs. She didn't look up.
"How are you feeling?" the Doctor asked.
"Hmm? Oh, I'm fine."
She was feeling a bit anxious, but honestly, at this point, not feeling at least some level of anxiety was more significant than feeling it.
Marion heard a gravely, vaguely feminine-sounding voice in the distance.
"This is the price of refusal. First, she dies, then everyone down there."
"Does she mean-"
"This way," Marion said quickly rushing down the corridor. The Doctor ran next to her.
She could hear their conversation better and better now. A masculine voice chimed in, Tesla's.
"Stop! She's my assistant, I need her,"
"Marion-"
"Just around this corner!"
A more masculine-sounding voice, that was just as gravely as the feminine one from before chimed in just as the two of them made a final turn.
"She's not important."
Marion felt the words "I'll kill you." push against the back of her teeth. She swallowed them.
"I'm going to have to disagree with that," The Doctor remarked. She stepped forward, looking around the room. Marion walked alongside her. "Ah. Nice place you've got here," she glanced down at a pile of half-put-together machinery."Probably. If you cleaned up a bit. I mean, I'm messy, but this? Are you guys all right?"
The Doctor directed that last part towards Yaz and Tesla.
"Better now you're here," Yaz said.
The Doctor and Marion turned around to face the queen. The Doctor stood in between the two and the Queen and Marion, feeling her vision swim ever so slightly stood close enough to the Doctor that she could reach out with her arm and push her backwards if she needed to.
"I'm the Doctor. I don't believe we've met."
"You address the Queen of the Skithra. You trespass on my ship."
The Queen of the Skithra looked mostly humanoid. The main difference being the large scorpion tail and her face, it was dark and chitinous. Pincers emerging from her neck and from the top of her head. Curved horns went around the sides and eyes. Her nose looked oddly human like and her teeth might've as well if not for the fact that their roots were exposed at the gums and were also upside down.
Marion's eyes kept flickering back to that tail. She didn't want to think about the Doctor and scorpion tails.
"Oh, this is your ship?" The Doctor looked around, "Because it looks Venusian to me, and I'm pretty sure that's a Klendov warp drive. Is there a single thing on this ship that you've built yourselves?"
She laughed. "This one is clever. She will assist Tesla."
"How do you figure that?"
"If she doesn't she will die."
Marion tugged the Doctor back.
"Absolutely not."
"And you are?"
"Marion Henson and if you lay one claw on them, then I'm going to be a problem. And as your buddy over there can confirm," she added, looking at Not Greene, "You can't kill me in a way that matters so there's nothing you'll be able to do to stop me from being A Problem."
Marion wished that she had gotten ahold of that sword already. But she had a knife and she had her fists and she could assume that the Queen's exoskeleton could be cracked in a way that would hurt terribly.
It seemed that her brain felt about scorpions the same way she felt about large wasps now.
She doubted that she would ever come across a mandrel again so the jury was still out on how she'd react.
"Stolen tech, stolen faces, and now all your stolen gear is breaking down. And what do you do? Steal someone else to fix it. All this killing and looting. Did it never occur to you to try thinking or building something instead?"
The Queen let out a laugh that sounded like a garbage disposal.
"Why would we build when all there is is ours to take?"
"Tesla." the Doctor turned around to glance at the man and also looked down to see how charged the device was. It was more green than orange now. "Why Tesla?" she turned around again, "Why send the sphere to track him, an inventor from 1900?"
"W-"
"We required an engineer." another one of the Queen's glowing-eyed minions chimed in. Her eyes narrowed. The Queen's tail lifted. Marion's arm burned for a moment. She grabbed the Doctor by the arm and quickly tugged her to the side just as a beam of red light zoomed maybe an inch to the left of where her head had just been and crashed into the minion who'd spoken.
Marion had misjudged slightly how much lighter Thirteen was compared to Four or Six and had to plant her feet to hold her for a moment to keep the woman from falling.
"Sorry," she whispered sheepishly.
"I was talking!" The Queen said sharply, glaring at the lightly smoking body that had once been one of her underlings. "We required an engineer. Tesla showed superior signs of intelligence. He discovered our signal."
"But how did you know that?" The Doctor asked.
Marion closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them again. "How else would you know someone had heard you, Doctor."
"He signalled back." the Queen hissed.
The Doctor turned around to stare at Tesla in disbelief.
"You didn't think to mention that?"
"I didn't know it worked," Tesla replied sheepishly.
Yaz also stared at him "Seriously?"
Marion was a little bit more forgiving. "Eh, you didn't know what would happen. And I'm sure this one would have done the same in your place." she nodded her head towards the Doctor. "Wouldn't you."
"You'd do it too," the Doctor whispered.
"I don't think I'd know how." Marion whispered back.
The queen had exceeded the amount of time she was willing to not be addressed."The Skithra have always taken what we need. And Doctor…" she raised her tail sending a shooting pain through Marion's arm that only abated at all when she pushed the Doctor back. Far lighter this time. "I do not see a need for you."
Marion felt the Doctor grab her upper arm and Marion couldn't be 100% sure that the light from the stringer was the only reason her vision was tinted red. She wondered if, in a world where she had decided to stay behind in the lab she would be blacking out about now, or if she would have already blacked out.
Marion wasn't able to be too angry at the miners for too long. Yeah, her first reaction towards them had been vaguely violent, but it was hard to be AS angry at them with the knowledge that they had been taken advantage of and weren't in their right minds. And it became even harder to want to do them harm after spending enough time around Luke that they stopped being minor antagonists and started being people.
There were no such extenuating circumstances concerning the Queen. The Queen was of arguably sound mind. That just made her angrier. Marion's hand found its way into her bag and around the hilt of her knife.
Before any of the words trapped behind her teeth could seep out, and she could fully draw the knife the Doctor gripped her a little bit tighter, glanced down at the hand that was buried inside her bag, and subtly shook her head. She pointedly glanced down at the battery. There was hardly any orange left. It was almost all green.
Then, the woman stepped away from her and pointed at a piece of junk.
"Oh, is that a Dullirian resonator?" she asked lifting up a metal ball surrounded by rings of metal, "Oh, and this" what looked like a giant candlestick with the candle missing, "can power a starship for months." The Doctor dropped the things back on the ground and then grabbed Marion's hand. Marion let her arm be guided around the Doctor's waist, and taking the hint, held it there, "You think Tesla's clever? We make him look like the village idiot. A smart, forward-thinking scorpion queen like yourself, I wouldn't go killing me and Yaz. Cos Yaz..." The Doctor leaned down to pick something else up and hand it to the other woman. "...can tell you what this is."
"It's a camera!"
"Bingo."
The Doctor clicked the camera repeatedly in the Queen's face, the repetitive flashes temporarily blinding her. Then, when she was distracted, she grabbed ahold of Tesla and Yaz's hands as Marion held on tighter to her waist, and then with a final flash of light, they were gone.
It was still golden hour when they appeared back in Tesla's lab. The last of Marion's nausea petered away. The Doctor let go of Yaz and Tesla's hands and leaned heavily against Marion taking in slow deep breaths.
"You're back!" greeted Graham.
"Ah, Yaz!" Ryan reached for a hug.
"Mister Tesla!"
"Miss Skerritt."
The two greeted each other.
"Well, I'll be darned." Edison said, breaking whatever moment the two of them were about to have. "They actually got you back"
Marion was unable to see the expression on Tesla's face having seen his main rival in his private lab, but she could only assume that he was furious.
"What is he doing here?!"
Marion leaned over towards Tesla. "He just kind of started following us around. I don't know what to tell you."
"Tesla," Edison greeted in an attempt to be civil, "quite a day we're all having"
The Doctor stopped leaning on Marion as heavily and stood up straight.
"It's not over yet," she looked at all of them and then started to march towards the TARDIS. "Come on."
"This is my private laboratory, Edison." Tesla continued to glare at Edison, "You have no right to be here."
Edison ignored him and walked into the TARDIS.
Marion waited at the entrance.
"What is this? Wh... Wh..."
Marion tilted her head towards the entrance.
"Yeah, it's really weird and really cool. Come in."
"What do you mean come in.
"I mean come in. I promise there's room."
"Come inside."
Marion walked the rest of the way into the TARDIS. The door clicked shut behind her Marion stepped forward a bit and the door opened a moment later.
The man stepped inside and closed the door behind him. And Marion could pinpoint the exact moment when he realized that he had stepped a bit deeper into the room than what should have been possible. His expression changed to that of wonder and confusion and that expression remained as he walked further inside and the chances of the TARDIS interior being some trick of the light or an illusion decreased more and more.
He approached their group around the TARDIS console. The Doctor was trying to recreate the connection she'd made with the orb.
"Fantastical!" he said in a hushed whisper.
"I couldn't figure it out either," remarked Edison.
"The internal dimensions transcend the external."
"The secret, is that the laws of physics are bribable if you know how to ask and what to offer."
"Marion…" the Doctor sonicked the orb.
"What?"
The Doctor leaned down to speak into the Orb like it was a microphone.
"Listen up, Skithra Queen. It's me, on behalf of Tesla," The man in question leaned down to look into one of the microscopes the Doctor had embedded into the console. She wondered what sample the Doctor had put in there, "Consider this your official eviction notice. Get your ship away from Earth right now,"
"We will take the engineer," said the voice of the Queen "or this planet shall burn! Surrender him and your lives may be spared."
Tesla froze and then slowly looked up.
"You can't have him." the Doctor said calmly but firmly. A tone that indicated a statement of fact, and not an argument, "He's with us, and we're not going anywhere."
"Then we will kill all the teeming millions that infect this world, and you and your friends will die first. This is the choice you must make. Give us Tesla, or the planet, and all who live on it, shall die."
"Yeah, that's not happenin'"
Tesla swallowed and stared at them. "It cannot be me or the Earth. You can't place this burden on me."
With that, he practically ran out of the ship.
"Mister Tesla!" Dorothy went to run after her and then stopped.
Marion stared after Telsa for a moment.
"I'll talk to him." she found herself saying and then rushing out of the ship.
The door to the TARDIS clicked shut behind her. Tesla stood with his back to her. Marion waited for a moment, wondering if the Doctor was going to follow after her. She didn't.
Marion thought about Thirteen's personality and supposed that that made some sense.
Marion stood next to the other man silently.
"I've spent my life wondering what might be out there," he said quietly in an acknowledgment of her presence. "But creatures who would destroy the whole planet just to get their hands on me?"
"Sure, there's that." Marion nodded, "But like, it's a big universe. Plenty of different types of well, people and creatures. There's also creatures who would be thrilled at the idea of getting to meet you face to face."
"Like you five?"
"Ah well. Only one of us isn't from Earth. But yeah, she was really excited to meet you. You don't even know." Marion tapped her thigh, "I'll betcha Edison's pissed that the aliens want you and couldn't care less about him. That's something at least."
"This place, Wardenclyffe. I was so close. People would finally see what it can do," he laughed softly, "What I can do. Now no one will ever know. You must all go. Let them take me."
Marion clicked her tongue. "Nah. Terrible idea. Think of something else."
"I have to surrender myself." the man turned away from the window to look directly at her. "There is nothing else to be done. This is beyond me."
"Like I said. Nah. We're not doing that."
"Nah?"
"Nah," Marion repeated. "It's not-" Marion drummed her fingertips against her upper arm. She was experiencing yet another incident where she knew what the information she wanted to convey, but couldn't be certain of how to word it. "Nikola Tesla, you're a smart man. A genius. You can't possibly believe that if you give yourself up the Skithra they'll uphold their end of the bargain. Even if they do keep their word and don't start killing people on Earth instantly anyway, well now you've proven to them that they've got leverage." Marion tried to copy the gravely tone in the Queen's voice, "Make us a weapon that'll blow this planet we're fighting with before we blow up yours. It's never going to stop. Y'know, you aren't the first genius inventor I've met who seemed to think that working with aliens of dubious morality was a smart idea, but most of the time their motivations are for power or glory. Not altruism. Which, you know, sets you apart as a person."
Tesla stared at her.
"And what happens to them."
"Nothing good. Not to be morbid," Marion added, "But if you get on that well, most of the inventors I've met who've worked for alien overlord megalomaniacs end up dead. And rarely painlessly. And when that happens, they'll either find someone else. You know, assuming they haven't already killed everyone on Earth already."
"So what Miss Henson!" Tesla asked. "Maybe sacrificing myself is a long shot, but it's the only chance we've got."
"Nah."
"You're fond of saying that."
"Not really, it just fits. Now, we've had our little heart-to-heart. We should go back inside the TARDIS. Talk to the Doctor, I'm sure she can put together a solid plan."
"You mean you said all that and you don't have any idea what to do?"
"Oh, I have ideas. I have plenty of ideas. I just don't know anything about electrical or mechanical engineering. And we're going to need a lot of that. So, we're going to talk to the Doctor, and she's going to come up with a great plan, and I don't want to hear anything more about you trying to sacrifice yourself for the greater good, you hear? You've got a lot of good to do on Earth. Can't do that if you're dead now can you?"
"I-"
"Good. Glad that we agree." Marion said simply. She pat him on the shoulder. "Now, I'm going to get the Doctor. And while I'm getting the Doctor, I want you to get out the plans and anything else relevant you can find about Wardenclyffe. And then, I'm going to call the Doctor over and then the two of you are going to put your brains together, and come up with something. Alright?"
Next Chapter: Feeling Blue
Thirteen: Oh good. Marion's having the emotional talk with Tesla so I don't have to! One of many reasons she's so incredibly important to me.
Marion: ...oh. She's not coming out. Is she...
Hope y'all enjoyed this chapter. If you aren't following the side stories, I posted one a couple weeks ago. It takes place in the Doctor Mysterio cold open and it's from the POV of Baby Grant. Also, about a week or so from today is the four year anniversary of this fic. If I post anything special for that anniversary, it'll be a surprise to all of us.