Anna ran and jumped, and could not repress a giggle as she saw the ground zip under her feet. It was almost like flying. She ran a few yards after landing, still giggling, then stopped to wait for the Doctor who was following her at a normal pace. She picked up a large rock and threw it aside. The rock was massive and quite compact, and she doubted she would have been able to hurl it further than a foot or two if she had been in Arendelle, assuming she had managed to lift it in the first place. Here however, the rock flew a couple of yards away.
"Don't you have enough of that?" the Doctor said as he came closer.
"No," Anna said. "Maybe you are used to that sort of thing, Doctor, but I've never been to a place where I can jump ten feet without run-up, and where I can throw a rock that big as easily as I did. It's so fun!"
"So, do you want to stop and play a little more or shall we go on looking for the Ice Warriors' problem?"
"Why can't we do both?"
"Because maybe we will need stealth at some point. And stealth is harder to do when you are jumping around and throwing rocks."
"Why do you think we would need stealth?" Anna asked, falling in stride alongside the Doctor.
"Because heat is not the only problem they have, if you remember. The Ice Warriors also said some them had gone missing. And this kind of heat is not natural, Freckles. At this point in history, the temperature of the planet should be lower than it is now, given the pressure. So hot air currents, especially localised like this, are not normal. All this could be taken as evidence of hostile action."
Anna looked around her. The snow had melted in places, letting patches of red rock appear here and there like in the mountains of her home in early spring, although the snow in Arendelle was not rust-red. She could still make out the strange shape of the Ice Warrior base some distance from them. It did not seem very far even though they had been walking for a couple of miles, although it had not felt that long either in this lower gravity, as the Doctor had called the cause of everything being lighter.
"But why would they be hostile? Maybe they are people who want the Ice Warriors to be warmer. And, uh, kept some of them as guests, like Ixadra did for Elsa, Olaf and Kristoff."
"Ice Warriors react badly to heat. It makes them sluggish. They would be at a severe disadvantage should someone attack them now."
"Oh. So, you think that someone wants to attack the Ice Warriors? But who would do that? Other Ice Warriors?"
"I don't know, but it is only one possibility," the Doctor said, brandishing his sonic screwdriver and slowly turning over himself before resuming his walk.
"But if they are other Ice Warriors, wouldn't they have the heat problem too?"
"Good thinking," the Doctor said dryly.
"So who else could do that?"
"Someone able to raise the temperature of the atmosphere in a localised area, and stealthily enough to avoid being detected. Which requires a rather advanced technological level."
"Or magic."
"Same thing. My point is, this could be dangerous. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Anna said quietly.
"And that does not bother you?" the Doctor asked mildly.
"We've been in danger before," Anna said. "There were all these Ice Beasts in the nightmare Arendelle, and then this ice man who kept attacking us. But we pulled through."
"Ah, Freckles," the Doctor said, shaking his head. "This time, things may be much more dangerous than that."
"You have already been through more dangerous situations than with the ice man?"
"Sometimes."
"And you're still here, so you won in the end."
"But sometimes the price was too high."
"Well, we're not sure things are going to be dangerous now, right?" Anna said perkily. "And anyway, the Ice Warriors won't release Elsa until we find something."
"Are you worried about your sister?"
"Yes," Anna said without hesitation. "But Queen Ixadra said that she would be treated well, and I believe her. She seems trustworthy. She says so, anyway. It seems to me she is. She is, right?"
"Probably. Ice Warriors put a lot of importance on honour. If they said your sister will be safe, she will be. But they are also fierce warriors. It is not a good idea to be on their bad side."
"So… the Ice Warriors are not bad people?"
"Not more than humans. What is your point?"
"It's a good thing if we help them, then. It's OK to take risks to help people. Kristoff does it all the time, even if he doesn't want to admit it – ice harvesting is quite difficult and can be dangerous, you know? And Elsa told me a good leader had to know when to take risks."
"Good for you. But I'm not talking about frostbite or getting into a row with an ambassador. I'm talking about risking your life."
"Well, we risked our life when we fought the ice man in the Arendelle of the past, and we succeeded. And I… well, I tried to save Elsa, before that, while someone was attacking her with a sword. You saw it today, only it is not today any more… I think. Anyway, what I meant is that I've done this life-risking before. The worst that can happen is that I die. Not that I want to, of course. Elsa, Olaf and Kristoff would be sad."
"There can be worse things than death," the Doctor said between his teeth.
"And this is so fun!" Anna said, ignoring him. "I'm standing on another planet, where I can jump ten feet high, and there is this incredibly huge mountain and these people with their scaly armours and their blinking lights everywhere and their flying carriage and their funny queen and… everything! It's so amazing!"
"You know," the Doctor said conversationally, "I think this may be the first time in two thousand years that I've heard someone call an Ice Queen funny."
"Did you meet her father, by the way?" Anna said after taking another jump.
"Why do you ask?"
"I don't know… when you said you had heard about him, I thought you may have done more than hear about him."
"Her father is on Earth, stuck in the ice of the North Pole. He will be freed in a few millennia. I was there."
"So you've met him? He's still alive?"
"For all intent and purposes, not now. But he will rejoin his people eventually."
"It's sad to have your father disappearing and not even knowing where he went. Can't you do something for Ixadra?"
"Sorry, no. That would cause a very bad paradox."
"That's… that's like the thing that made Elsa to have been angry in the past?"
"More like the 'thing' that made her almost disappear."
They walked in silence for a while. The Doctor sometimes stopped, sniffed, and abruptly changed direction. Anna had been trying to keep track of the changes, but it seemed to her they were more or less going in circles, which would explain why the Ice Warrior base seemed still so close and not behind them either.
She looked curiously at the dead landscape. Here and there she could catch sight of what looked like very ancient ruins and some sparse plant life emerging from under the red snow or in places where it had melted.
"Doctor?" she asked after a while. "How was life here when the air was warmer and… thicker?"
"The Martian civilization thrived. They were great poets and engineers."
"Why did the temperature change? Was it… did someone do it?"
"No, that was natural evolution, helped by a few cataclysms. It will happen to Earth too, in a few million years."
"Are we going to become like the Ice Warrior? I mean, green and scaly and… armoury?"
"Green and scaly is normal for Ice Warriors, just as they probably find you all pink and smooth."
"Oh, OK. So they were different from the start, then?"
"Yes. Does this pose a problem to you?"
"Er, no, should it? Kristoff's family are trolls. They're made of rock."
"You told me about that. I'd like to meet them. They sound interesting."
"Yes, they are. Er, Doctor?"
"You never stop with the questions, do you?"
"How come the Ice Warriors speak our language? I mean, there are a lot of countries on Earth where people speak a different language, and I have been to some diplomatic meetings where we all had to speak French because nobody spoke the others' languages, but the Ice Warriors don't even speak our language with an accent, and we are not on Earth, they may not have even met people from Earth before…"
"TARDIS telepathic translation circuits."
"You mean… Madam TARDIS is working as an interpreter? And, uh, making us hear the translation directly? Even if we are not around?"
"Something like that."
"Thank you Madam TARDIS!" Anna whispered.
The Doctor brandished his sonic screwdriver and took another sharp turn. Anna could not help but notice that they were now moving in the general direction of the Ice Warrior base.
"Have you found where the heat is coming from, Doctor?"
"Oh, I'm not looking for that," the Doctor said airily. "I'm sure the Ice Warriors will have already searched that thoroughly."
"So, what have you found?"
"Nothing yet, but I'm working on it."
"Then why are we coming back?"
"We are not coming back, we are investigating closer to the Ice Warrior base."
"You think the Ice Warriors have not searched here yet?"
"You see, Freckles, the Ice Warriors are a great people, but they can't help being soldiers. And one of the many flaws of soldiers is that they think the danger always comes from outside."
"Oh, you think this could be done by… one of them?"
"Not necessarily, but I know that if I had to stalk a hive full of angry Ice Warriors, I would not try to get too far from them. First, it would be much easier that way. Second, I'm pretty sure that they would not think to set their sensors to scan for something right under their noses… so to speak. Third, even if they did, given how their system seems to be glitching, they could very well have missed it. And maybe their sensors glitching is not accidental either."
"Er… what are these sensors you have been talking about with Ixadra? Is it like a scenting dog? A Martian scenting dog?"
"No, a sensor is a device. Think of it as a very advanced telescope that could see things without actually seeing it."
"You mean, like... like… er… like when you drop a rock at the bottom of a well to know how deep it is?"
"No. But if it helps you to understand, keep thinking that."
"And what are… glitches?"
"Think of them as Ice-Cream Brain talking loudly nearby while you are dropping your rock at the bottom of your well."
"But Olaf does not… Oh, I see, it's an example. Well, if it helps you to explain, keep saying that," Anna said with a hearty smile, to which the Doctor answered with a smirk.
They were now descending into a small canyon, at the bottom of which Anna would have expected to find the kind of brook that is reduced to a trickle in summer. But right now most of it was covered in the red snow.
"And this sensor device works better than searching on foot like we do?"
"Only if you know what to look for and where to look. Which I'm betting the Ice Warriors did not."
"Well… unless they already know and wanted to play a joke on us?"
"The Ice Warriors don't make jokes. Not any more, and they lost a lot in translation anyway." The Doctor once again brandished his whistling sonic screwdriver and looked at it.
"Are you… sensoring… with your sonic wand?"
"Yes."
"What are you looking for?"
"Anything. Unknown energy field. Out of place piece of technology. Life signs. Thermal variations. Or a big red sign saying that what we are looking for is here, but that never happens."
"That's funny, this rock over there looks like the ones at the entrance of the Ice Warrior base. Why did they disguise their entrance as rocks anyway?"
"They did not disguise their entrance as rocks, that's simply the way they… Wait, where did you say you saw something looking like the entrance to their base?" the Doctor said, turning abruptly toward her.
Anna pointed. The Doctor strode over and waved his sonic screwdriver over what still looked a lot like a haphazard assembly of boulders.
"Well done, Freckles," he commented. "This is indeed an Ice Warrior door."
"Oh, so, is it another base? Or a back entrance to the same one?"
"Probably the latter – Ice Warriors hives are never that close to one another. But this is very interesting," the Doctor said, looking at his screwdriver. "It seems to have been sealed off some time ago… but it has been used recently. And there is a low-level perception filter on it, and that's not something Ice Warriors use. Do you know what that means, Freckles?"
"Er… that there is something wrong with this door? Apart from looking like a bunch of rocks."
"We may have found what we were looking for," the Doctor said grimly.
"You mean… the thing that makes the heat and stalks the Ice Warriors could be hidden here? Behind an old entrance to their base? But how could they not find it? I mean, I know you said that soldiers think the danger always comes from the outside, but even in Arendelle the soldiers patrol inside the castle sometimes."
"This probably leads to an abandoned part of their base. The Ice Warrior Empire is on a slow decline in this era, and they have been reducing the sizes of their bases accordingly."
"So, do we go in to check?"
"You really have no self-preservation instinct, do you?" the Doctor said, in a tone that seemed more appreciative than reproachful.
"Well, is this what we were looking for?"
"Maybe."
"So if we go in, we'll know. Isn't this logical?"
"Flawlessly so," the Doctor said curtly. "Now listen to me, Freckles. We don't know what's down there. So don't go wandering around, don't touch anything, and if I tell you to run, you run. Understood?"
"Yes, Doctor!" Anna said cheerfully.
Try as she might, she could not help feeling excited by this new adventure. Part of her understood that she should be as worried as the Doctor seemed to be trying to make her, but it was drowned out in the sheer exhilaration she had been feeling ever since she had realised she was really walking on an unexplored land. After all these years spent exploring a castle she had come to know like the back of her hand, finding herself one of the first human beings exploring this otherworldly place was more than anything she could have ever dreamed of.
It was not like the previous events of the day – at least, her day. The Arendelle castle, past and future, had not only been a very well known sight but the ice covering it had made it depressing – even more so when she had realised that Elsa was in danger, in more ways than one. Heeding to the Doctor's warnings had not been hard then, but standing now in this desolated, but so alien, red landscape, under this pale sky, Anna found it difficult to imagine that something really dangerous could happen to any of them.
The entrance opened on a long corridor similar to those she had seen above, with a smooth floor that seemed to be sloping gently downwards. With one finger on his lips, the Doctor began to walk cautiously down the slope. Anna wasted no time in following him.
They walked for less than a minute before the Doctor held his arm in front of her. He brandished his sonic screwdriver, which whistled in different tones. As she looked at the tunnel around her illuminated by the green glow from the wand, Anna discovered a small device fixed on the wall a dozen of feet from them, which she could have sworn had not been there earlier. As she turned to the Doctor to ask him about it, he pointed his sonic screwdriver to the device, which let out a few sparks.
"Cameras," he whispered to her. "Like those you use to take selfies with, unless you have not started to do it yet. Camouflaged holographically, of course. Easy to miss if you are not expecting them. I put them into a loop for a couple of minutes."
"Was that to take pictures of us?"
"Yes. Pictures that would be instantly sent to whoever is behind this." As they walked on, the Doctor pointed at other devices haphazardly affixed to the wall. "Scrounged technology. Whoever did this scavenged what they could. Some of it is Ice Warrior, but this, for instance…" he said, pointing to another device, "this comes from somewhere else. Can't quite put my finger on it…"
They set on walking prudently through the dark corridors, alight with some strange luminescence emanating from the walls. They reached an intersection and the Doctor consulted his sonic wand before choosing a direction. The corridors looked a lot like those Anna had seen in the base above, although they lacked the bustle of activity and the strange noises that she had seen there. It was hard to tell with these strange surfaces and materials, but the place did feel as if it had been abandoned for some time. Anna expected to see cobwebs, but apparently spiders did not exist on Mars. She found herself running her finger on protrusions in the wall to check for dust.
As she did so she noticed 3 parallel scratches on the smooth wall. The Doctor stopped when he saw her looking at them.
"Did an animal do that?" she whispered.
"Probably not," he said after briefly placing his hands over the mark. "This looks too much like it was made by an Ice Warrior's armoured claw."
"Oh, so this means they are coming here after all?"
"Maybe," the Doctor said grimly "but they don't scratch their walls as a habit."
"OK but… if an Ice Warrior already found this place… that means it's not what we are looking for?"
"An Ice Warrior may have already been here, Freckles," the Doctor said with a rather unpleasant grin, "but that does not mean he was allowed to report his findings. You do remember Ixadra said some of her warriors had disappeared, don't you? Now hush!" he intimated as he resumed walking.
The Doctor stopped a couple of paces later to open a door on the side of the corridor, which revealed an empty room with some unidentifiable junk in one corner. The Doctor grunted and set off walking, now stopping at each door and opening it with a wave of his glowing wand or by touching a large plate on the side of the door. But each door only revealed more empty rooms.
Anna had remained silent, impressed despite herself by the atmosphere of the place and by the Doctor's stance. The grey-haired man was moving cautiously with a tenser, more focused expression than what she had been used to seeing in him. She was nevertheless about to ask another question when the door he activated opened on a room that was not empty. There were some blinking devices in the middle, and a low hum emanating from it.
"This is more like it," the Doctor said enthusiastically. "This is not Ice Warrior tech. Now, let's see what it does."
Anna stood on the threshold and watched the Doctor as he hovered around the strange apparatus, brandishing his sonic screwdriver and uttering appreciative grunts or hard to understand exclamations.
"A control panel," he muttered. "For… thermal expanders? So that would be why the temperature is rising. But the power source is elsewhere. Ha, and here are the feeds from the cameras. Hold on, this one is further inside the base. It is connected to the whole sensor network… No wonder they are glitching."
Anna glanced at the corridor to her side. There were two more doors before the next intersection. She walked slowly to one of them and tried waving and knocking on the plate on the wall near it, but nothing happened.
As she moved toward the second door, Anna became aware of a low, rhythmic, pulsating sound that seemed to come from behind it, like someone banging a drum in a very slow rhythm, although it did not sound like it was done with a drum or anything she had ever heard. This time the door slid noiselessly aside when she brushed her hand against the small plaque on the side. She popped her head through the threshold, and discovered a smaller room that also contained some strange, beeping devices on all sides. And there was another even stranger device standing in the middle of it.
It looked a bit like a large snowman, although one that would have been built quite inexpertly out of some strange metal with a bronze colour. There were small globes affixed to its lower section, two metal bars stuck into its midsection, and a round top decorated with two small glass spheres and with another, smaller metal bar stuck to it.
As Anna opened her mouth to call the Doctor, she saw the top of the metal snowman slowly swivel with a whirring sound until the stick faced her, revealing a blue light glowing on its end. At the same time, she felt a hand close on her wrist in a vice-like grip.
"Run," the Doctor hissed in her ear.
Before Anna had the time to react, she was yanked away from the door and pulled behind the tall man, who had begun running through the corridor. As they ran, a strange, shrieking, metallic voice echoed behind them.
"HALT!"
"Run!" shouted the Doctor, accelerating, as the strange voice reverberated again across the corridor.
"EXTERMINATE!"
Author's Notes: Well, there is only so much Doctor Who fanfiction you can write while resisting the urge to add everyone's favourite pepper pots to the mix…