Kristoff grunted as he struggled against the Doctor's grip. He had been surprised to find out how strong the older and smaller man actually was. The Doctor had also managed to lock his arms in a way that prevented any movement from Kristoff unless he was ready to dislocate his own shoulders, which he had actually been considering if it meant breaking free.
"You're being unreasonable, Reindeer Man," the Doctor said with infuriating calm – and equally infuriating lack of strain. "I'm losing precious minutes stopping you here."
"I must help Anna!" Kristoff rasped.
"Not by rushing down there you won't," the Doctor said. "You'll get exterminated or restrained, and end up in another of their conversion pods either way."
"But I can't let Anna be turned into this thing! You heard her screams for help! Are you heartless?"
"Doubly not so. And I'm telling you that rushing down there is not the way to do it. We need to be more subtle."
"We don't have time for subtle!"
"There is always time for subtle. And believe me, I know a thing of two about time." The Doctor sighed. "Listen, Reindeer Man, their conversion process takes some time. If it is interrupted early on, it can be reversed. And by the look of it, we are still in the stage where it can, but we soon won't be any more if you keep wasting time by forcing me to pin you down here."
"You want to help her get out? You'd really do that?" Kristoff said, ceasing his struggles.
"Sure. Anything that prevents the Daleks from getting more reinforcements for their army of puppets is welcome."
"And that's the only reason?" Kristoff asked incredulously, as he felt the pressure on his joints relax.
"Which one would you like instead?" the Doctor asked, standing up. "Now, come quick. We should not waste more time."
"What is happening to her now?" Kristoff said as he stood up, massaging his wrists, and briefly considering giving the Doctor a good one on the jaw.
"They'll begin by removing all emotion from her apart from hate," the Doctor said, as he set off quickly. Kristoff lost no time following him.
"You mean, they are making Anna hate? Anna does not have any hate in her! She's the most loving person I've ever known."
"They'll tamper with her memories. That's the very first step, in fact. And then if they find any sliver of anger or hate they will focus on that and nurture it until that's the only thing she can feel."
Kristoff shivered as he followed the Doctor through the dark corridors.
"And... if they manage to do that… that's where it can't be fixed any more?"
"Oh no, this is just the very beginning of the procedure" the Doctor said. "Of course, there is no guarantee it can be reversed without permanent psychological damage, but there is still a chance it can be done."
"So… what comes next?" Kristoff said, steadying himself against a wall and fighting both the urge to rush at Anna's side and the compulsion to be sick.
"Oh, next comes some mild conditioning to make her think more like a Dalek, or at least a Dalek slave," the Doctor said. "Obedience to Daleks and wanting to exterminate everything around, things like that. Then some physical alterations, like equipping her with a transmitter to connect her to the Dalek network, and finally growing the puppeteer inside of her. To be completely honest with you I'm not sure whether they will skip the intermediary stages and go straight to the last one to gain some time, or if they'll dispense from growing the puppet since she's still alive and doesn't need it to move around."
"So, where are we going now?" asked Kristoff.
"To the entrance to the conversion chamber, of course."
"I thought you said we were not rushing there."
"I did not say we were rushing. I need to take care of the Ice Warriors."
"But Doctor, there was a Dalek too down there!" Kristoff said.
"It won't stay during the whole conversion process. These Daleks are stretched very thin – I'd say there are not more than a dozen of them on Mars. If there had been more of them, they would have attacked the Ice Warriors head-on instead of being sneaky. And I don't think they can't spare a Dalek constantly surveying the conversion process."
Kristoff followed the Doctor through an uneventful trek downward, although he wondered why nobody was able to hear the beating of his own heart from two hundred feet away. Eventually the Doctor waved at him and flattened against the wall as they neared the entrance to a larger room. Kristoff, who was despite everything improving at getting his bearings in the unfamiliar environment, thought they might be around the level of the floor of the conversion room they had surveyed from above before.
"There," the Doctor said, poking his head through the opening. "The Dalek has gone. Now, Reindeer Man, listen to me. The Ice Warriors will stop moving for some time, but not for long. We will have to retrieve Freckles during that time. Are you ready?"
"Of course! But how do you know they will stop moving?"
"Because I'm going to interfere with their armours," the Doctor said, brandishing his sonic screwdriver, which was whistling in rapidly changing pitches. "They are controlled through sonic technology. If I find the right frequency, I can override them for a short while."
"Why didn't you do that before?"
"Because it takes time to find the right frequency, it only works at close range, and it will only last a short while before they are able to adjust their armours. It would not work on real, alive Ice Warriors, because they would do that almost instantly, but here we've got a chance. Ah, I think I got it. Get ready."
"You think you got it?" Kristoff asked.
But already the Doctor was standing up and striding into the room.
"Hello," he said amiably to the crowd of Ice Warrior puppets. "I'm the Doctor. Don't mind me, I'm just coming here to retrieve Reindeer Man's girlfriend here and I'll leave."
Kristoff watched in horrified fascination the puppets turning to look at the Doctor in a single movement. Then they all shouted in unison and advanced toward him.
"Are you coming or not, Reindeer Man?" the Doctor called, brandishing his screwdriver.
The wand whistled loudly, and the Ice Warriors around him began to stumble haltingly, some of them even collapsing to the floor, twitching. Kristoff stood frozen in place for a second, but imagining Anna looking at him with one of those horrible sticks emerging from her delicate forehead was enough to propel him forward.
"Took your time," the Doctor commented, as he walked purposefully toward the large machine in the centre of the room. "Freckles' pod should be the one on the left. Go there, I'm going to open it."
Kristoff rushed to the sarcophagus the Doctor had indicated. The lid was made of glass, and Kristoff could see Anna lying inside with her eyes closed. Even though she seemed to be sleeping peacefully, Kristoff felt as if his heart was trying to crawl up his throat at the sight. There was a whistle from the wand the Doctor kept calling a screwdriver, and the lid began to open.
Kristoff reached inside as soon as it was sufficiently opened but discovered that Anna's wrists and ankles were locked with some kind of manacles to the bottom of the sarcophagus. He tried to pull at them but was unable to even make them rattle.
"She's still locked!" he shouted.
"Yes, I'm taking care of it right now," the Doctor said, his wand whistling. "How are our friends doing?"
Kristoff glanced at the Ice Warriors writhing on the floor, and wondered if they were not twitching much less than before. Before he had time to answer, there was a whirring in the sarcophagus in front of him and the manacles disappeared into its bottom. Kristoff grabbed Anna and lifted her effortlessly.
"I'm ready," he shouted, "let's go! I… I think they are coming about…" he added, looking uncomfortably at the Ice Warriors who were definitely beginning to move with more purpose, one of them even trying to stand up.
"I'll be a minute," the Doctor said, still standing in front of the machine. "Just go on, I'm right behind... Oh, that's interesting."
"What is?" Kristoff said, walking quickly toward the exit, among the Ice Warriors puppets that were struggling to get up. "They really are waking up!" he added more urgently.
"They have linked their puppets with something patterned from their own Pathweb, although much cruder, of course. Probably to make them more effective. If I could…"
"Doctor! They are getting up!" Kristoff shouted, accelerating toward the threshold.
"What? Ah, yes. Run!"
"Halt!" hissed one of the puppets who had been faster than the others to get on its feet.
Kristoff accelerated, narrowly avoiding the grasp of another Ice Warrior who tried to lunge at him as it stood up. There was a high-pitched whistle and sparks flew from a wall. Kristoff hunched over as he ran, trying to shield Anna as much as possible. He saw the Doctor overtake him as he sped up toward the door, his coat lapels flapping behind him. More sounds of weapons being fired began echoing across the room. Sparks flew from the floor uncomfortably close to Kristoff's feet.
"Can't you stop them again?" Kristoff shouted as they crossed the threshold out of the large room.
"I'd need to find the new frequency. Just run!" the Doctor shouted back.
Then began another mad dash across the alien ship, Kristoff doing his best to follow the Doctor as he ran, turned sharply, dived behind debris, or stood still for a couple of seconds before running back into the other direction. Kristoff was holding Anna as tightly as he could, trying to listen to her breathing whenever they stopped running, although his own laboured panting made this nigh impossible. Eventually the Doctor stopped in a small alcove littered with debris and holes in the wall. Kristoff half collapsed against the bulkhead and gently laid Anna on the floor. As light as she was, carrying her unconscious body while running for dear life could be exhausting after a while.
"Anna?" he called softly between two gulps of air. "Can you hear me? Anna?"
As she failed to answer, Kristoff held her closer in his arms. At least now he could see that she was breathing softly, although her face did not look as if she was simply sleeping.
"Doctor?" he called. "Will she be all right?"
The Doctor brandished his glowing wand and waved it above Anna for a few seconds before looking at the side of his device.
"No serious biological modification has occurred," he said.
"That's good, isn't it? She won't have… one of those sticks in the head?" Kristoff almost begged.
"No, there is no sign of the puppeteer," the Doctor said, waving his stick once more.
"So we got to her in time?"
"Hard to know," the Doctor said, shrugging. "There have been some changes to her neural patterns. She may have lost some memories, or gained some alterations to her behaviour."
"But… that can be fixed, right?"
"I don't know, Kristoff. I'm sorry," the Doctor said, looking uncharacteristically embarrassed.
"What is this?!" Kristoff said with a start.
He had been gently stroking Anna's face, trying to wake her up, and his hand had come upon something hard lost in her soft hair. With growing horror, his fingers brought up a metal object attached to one of her delicate ears, which did not look like any of her jewellery.
"Oh, they already implanted her with the transmitter to the network," the Doctor said, waving his glowing screwdriver over the piece of metal. "But it has not been activated yet."
"Does that mean she… she already had the… the transformations that can't be reversed?" Kristoff asked, holding Anna closer to him.
"No, that one is easy to remove. Simple surgery. I have what I need in the TARDIS."
"So… it's OK?"
"Yes, this is good news. If I manage to force the link to activate only one way, she would be able to give us information on what the other puppets are doing. It could make our job so much easier," the Doctor said excitedly.
Kristoff spent some time processing the sentence in his head. He was about to reach a conclusion and was wondering if he should ask the Doctor to explain what he had meant or directly punch him when Anna stirred and whimpered softly.
"Anna? Anna, can you hear me?"
"Hush, Reindeer Man," the Doctor said, pulling Kristoff away. "Let her recover at her own pace. Oi, Freckles!" he went on, crouching near Anna. "Can you hear me?"
"I thought you told me to let her recover!"
"You, not me. Freckles! What do you remember?"
Anna's eyelids opened slowly, revealing her beautiful eyes, which looked at Kristoff with the unfocused stare she had when she was awakened suddenly. At least they had nothing to do with the thing Kristoff had seen at the end of the eye sticks.
"Elsa…" Anna whispered softly.
"No, this is Reindeer Man," the Doctor said. "I know they are hard to tell apart, but if you look you can see that his hair is braided differently than Platinum. And I'm not her either."
"How are you feeling, Anna?" Kristoff asked eagerly.
"'m dizzy… " Anna mumbled. "Wha… where is Elsa?"
"Can you walk, Freckles?"
"Come on, Doctor, she's barely awake! Why do you want her to walk, anyway?"
"Because I don't want to stay in the same place for too long. And we still need to find a way to stop the Daleks. See if she can stand, or carry her again, but it's time to move."
Gently, Kristoff rose to his feet, helping Anna up as he did. To his relief, she managed to stand without too much difficulty, although she kept looking around her with sleepy eyes.
"Anna," he said gently, "we will have to move. Can you walk? Otherwise I'll carry you."
"Walk," Anna said in a drowsy voice. "I can walk. Walk to Elsa."
"Good," the Doctor said briskly. "Now let's go."
They set off cautiously. Anna managed to follow Kristoff's lead without difficulty, although she moved slowly as if she was sleepwalking. This was not really a problem, as the Doctor was now advancing more cautiously, frequently stopping to wave his glowing, whistling screwdriver at the decorations in the wall, some of which lit up as he did so.
"You OK, Anna?" Kristoff asked during one of these stops. "Do you want me to carry you?"
"Can walk…" Anna mumbled
"How are you feeling?"
"I'm… I don't… where's Elsa?"
"Er… I don't know. But we'll go looking for her, right, Doctor?"
"And why would we do that?" the Doctor asked as he began moving again.
"Because… because Anna is asking for her? And I'd like to know where she is too!" Kristoff said, his arm around Anna who followed obediently.
"I don't think the Daleks have more than one of these conversion centres, Reindeer Man," the Doctor said, plunging his sonic screwdriver through a hole in a wall. "And we have not seen Platinum there being processed. So, either she has already been converted, and there's nothing we can do," the Doctor went on, ignoring Kristoff's frantic shushing gestures, "or she is hiding somewhere on the ship, or she has managed to escape and she's better off than us."
Kristoff looked at Anna desperately, and was half relieved to see that the princess did not seem to have reacted to the Doctor's words. She kept shuffling forward, looking sleepily around her.
"Well, she may be in danger anyway," Kristoff said in a low voice. "Even if she left the ship, she could run into… something outside."
"I told you, most of the wild fauna has disappeared from Mars in this era. She should be OK if she stays clear of the Daleks or their puppets."
"What about the air? You said the pills we took would last a couple of hours, and we've been here for longer than that."
"Yes, that might be a problem," the Doctor conceded in a calm voice, as if Kristoff had just told him the weather could turn to light rain in a moment. "Especially if she has been running a lot."
"Oh, but we would have noticed it for us, right? I mean, I'm still breathing fine. And Anna… Anna, do you have problems breathing? Do you still feel dizzy?"
"I'm fine…" Anna managed. "Is Elsa… is Elsa here?"
"Er… we will see her, but not right now. That's OK for you?"
Anna nodded vaguely while muttering something that sounded like "Elsa".
"You wouldn't know if the oxygen pills had run out," the Doctor said. "The pressure inside this ship is closer to that of the Earth atmosphere you're used to."
"Oh, er, does that means it's as if we were at sea level?"
"Yes, and this also means that you are drawing far less on the pill because of that, so it will last longer. Now hush!" the Doctor intimated as the corridor they had been following reached another room.
Kristoff flattened himself against the wall, holding Anna close to him, and trying to see above the Doctor's shoulder. He was not very surprised to discover a group of Ice Warrior puppets and a Dalek standing in a tight group, but he was more surprised when he managed to recognise what was in the middle of the group.
"Doctor, that's your box!" he hissed.
"Yes, that's very good news," the Doctor said, slowly backing away from the entrance. "Now we have a way out."
"A way out? You mean your box? How would you get past all those Ice Warriors, not to mention the Dalek?"
"I'm working on it, Reindeer Man," the Doctor said, moving to another intersecting corridor. "At least we have one important step figured out."
"Yes, but it's the last one!"
"And what is wrong with that? At least we won't have to bother with the next step after that."
"Next," muttered Anna, who had paid no attention to the exchange and was still staring drowsily ahead of her.
"What did you say, Anna?" Kristoff said, turning to her.
"I… don't know," she said, turning her glassy stare on him. "I… want to see Elsa next."
They walked in silence for a while. The Doctor was apparently trying to find something in the walls and kept pulling at strange metal cables from any hole he could find, before putting them back after waving his screwdriver at them.
"What are you trying to do?" Kristoff asked eventually.
"Trying to hack into their communication and sensor network," he said as if stating an evidence, "without being detected by their monitoring terminals."
"Terminal," Anna parroted, her eyes still unfocused. "Where is Elsa?"
"Not here yet," Kristoff said. "And… that will be useful to us why?" he went on, addressing the Doctor.
"They seem to be jamming the communications from the Ice Warrior base, and I'm pretty sure they hacked deeply into their sensor network to receive information on everything that goes on there. Maybe I can do something about that."
"Uh, OK. Er, Doctor, about this heat... I had been wondering about something."
"I'm sure you do."
"The heat slows down the Ice Warriors, right?"
"Yes, flaw in their armour. Never fixed it. Probably a design error."
"So, er, this means the, uh, puppets would also get slowed down by heat? Since they are wearing the same armour."
The Doctor stopped so suddenly that Kristoff nearly walked into him.
"Next Elsa terminal," Anna mumbled, stopping obediently alongside Kristoff.
"That is uncharacteristically brilliant from you, Reindeer Man," he said. "Or I was being uncharacteristically stupid. Yes… this explains why there were not more guards around this ship when we came in. Of course, it also raises the question of why the Daleks let the heat rise while it also impairs their slaves… This would mean they are close to completing their plan, and that they won't need them afterwards. What do you think? Any uncharacteristically brilliant insight about that?"
Kristoff hesitated a second before answering. He had not understood much of what the Doctor had said, but he was beginning to think that maybe the man was not quite as bad as he seemed. For one thing, he had actually delivered on his promise to rescue Anna, no matter how grudgingly. Maybe he simply liked to rile people up.
"Nah, I'll let you do the thinking, to see if you are as clever as you say you are," Kristoff said with a crooked smile, to which the Doctor responded with a smirk. "Are you OK, Anna?" Kristoff went on, turning to the delicate girl at his side.
"I'm fine," she said drowsily. "Elsa… Elsa is not here?"
"Er, no, sorry, Anna. But I'm here now, and so is the Doctor. We'll… we'll find Elsa later."
"Find Elsa later," Anna mumbled happily.
Kristoff looked at her with concern, then glanced back at the Doctor, trying to catch his eye. But the grey-haired man had returned to his work on the cables in the walls again.
"Er, it's gonna be OK, Anna," Kristoff said. "Right Doctor? We're gonna be OK?"
"What? Oh, sure, sure… Oh, by the way, Freckles, let me know as soon as you get anything from the transmitter they put in your ear. I don't know if it has been fully connected, but maybe you could receive something."
"I can't hear Elsa…" Anna said sleepily.
"Er… Doctor?" Kristoff asked urgently.
"Don't worry, she's going to be fine," the Doctor said, hunched over his wall. "Probably. For a given definition of fine anyway…"
"There is a… an Ice Warrior right ahead… one of those with the stick in the forehead… and… I think he's seen us!"
"Oh? Oh," the Doctor said, interrupting his work and frowning at the Ice Warrior speeding toward them.
"Next terminal later."
"What are you saying, Anna? Doctor, there is another one coming behind us!"
"That's annoying," the Doctor said, stepping back from the wall and waving his glowing wand toward it. "I was almost finished. But on the plus side I'll be able to test your theory, Reindeer Man."
"My theory? Doctor, they are really close!" Kristoff said, holding Anna close to him. She muttered something that did not quite sound like her sister's name. "Can't you do that thing with your, er, screwdriver, to stop them?"
"I don't have the time to find the right frequency again. Come over here, both of you. When I say duck, duck."
"Exterminate!" one of the Ice Warriors said, aiming his weapon at them, the eye stick in his forehead glowing ominously.
"I love you Anna," Kristoff said, embracing her.
"Duck!" the Doctor shouted.
There was a whistling from his strange wand, and then lightning erupted from the walls where he had been tampering. The bolts struck the Ice Warriors, who collapsed instantly.
Kristoff staggered back, and hugged Anna more tightly. He was relieved to see her eyes light up in response.
"Are you OK, Anna?"
"Speak with Elsa... now," she said. "Next terminal late."
"Err… you will have to wait a little more, Anna. You did this, Doctor?" he asked, turning to him. "You made the walls… strike them with lightning?"
"I simply caused a feedback loop through the power nodes. Not enough to harm them, but enough to make the temperature of their armour rise rapidly. You were right, Reindeer Man, they are still vulnerable to heat. I did the thinking part to check."
"OK, great, well done. Shall we move now?"
"Might as well do that," the Doctor said dejectedly. "With that little show they will have pinpointed where we are, I'll have to finish my work somewhere else."
"Well, maybe we can take their weapons?" Kristoff asked, releasing Anna from his embrace to move toward one of the downed Ice Warriors, who had been carrying what looked like a larger version of the weapon they sported on their wrists.
"So, you want to fight them now, Reindeer Man? Are you a fighter?"
"Elsa..." said Anna calmly, somewhere behind them.
"No," Kristoff hissed between his teeth, turning back to face the Doctor, "I'm not a fighter. I'm an ice harvester. But I'm ready to fight to protect those I love. I won't let them take Anna again."
"Ekslat..." Anna said, her voice coming lower, as if she was kneeling down.
The Doctor held Kristoff's gaze for a few seconds. Kristoff was unable to decipher the expressions that flickered in the blue grey eyes, but felt as if his own mind had become transparent under the piercing stare. He blinked first.
"Extlarm..." Anna's voice said behind him, coming closer.
"OK, Reindeer Man," the Doctor said, his austere face briefly lighting up with a smile. "I understand that you want to fight the Daleks. But using weapons is not my way."
"Exterm..." said Anna, just as something hit Kristoff violently on the back of the head.
Olaf sat in a corner of the room, looking at the Ice Warriors hurrying around him, and trying to make sense of what they were doing. He had understood they were soldiers, but they looked nothing like the soldiers back home. The guards in Arendelle very seldom wore armour, for one thing, and the only helmets he had seen that could cover the whole face had been on old armours decorating the castle. He had played with these helmets a few times, with Anna or Sven, but he was not sure the Ice Warriors would accept to lend him one of theirs to do that. Another difference with the Arendelle guards was that he had almost never seen them hurry so much and smile so little. Elsa had explained to him once that Arendelle was at peace now, and this meant its army did not have to be as ready to fight as it once was. It was becoming obvious to him that these Ice Warriors were definitely not at peace, and he even suspected that they would not have been even without the Daleks around to declare war on them. None of the Ice Warriors had accepted his offer for a warm hug, no matter how brief, and even after he had tried explaining that warm was a figure of speech and that a hug would not be actually warm, since at the moment he needed to be away from heat as much as them.
He contented himself by looking at the various lights blinking around the room and the images that appeared sometimes on the large glass panes on the walls, and listening to the various sounds and distant voices echoing across the room. He had been trying to understand what was going on, and so far had been able to ascertain that, after a certain noise sounded, an Ice Warrior would press a button somewhere and the image of an Ice Warrior would appear on a glass pane right above the button. He had been itching to go and press that button, or any other, but had managed to resist the urge so far. Maybe the Ice Warriors would take it as badly as the Doctor had, and he did not want to find himself sent to another world without Anna, Elsa and Kristoff.
He had just decided to count how many Ice Warriors were in the room, a task made difficult by the fact that he had trouble telling them apart and they were constantly moving around, when the one Ice Warrior that he could clearly distinguish from the others, Queen Ixadra, moved toward him.
"Isss there anything you require, Olaf of Arendelle?" she asked in her hissing voice.
"You can call me Olaf. You don't want a warm hug, do you?" Olaf asked without too much hope. "It is not really warm, so you have nothing to fear from the heat, if that's what is bothering you."
"A hug? Isss that sssome kind of attack?"
"Oh, er, no, a hug is never an attack. Kristoff told me bears do it sometimes as an attack, but that's just silly. Do you have bears on Mars? I have met some bears once, when we were going in the mountains, but they didn't try to hug me."
"There isss a lot for me to do, Olaf of Arendelle. I do not have much time for you," Ixadra said as she turned away and moved to join other Ice Warriors near a screen.
"That's OK," Olaf said cheerfully, trotting up to accompany her. "What is it you are doing, exactly?" he asked after a pause.
"Trying to retake our base from the Daleksss," Ixadra hissed with what sounded to Olaf like anger, even though it was a bit hard to tell with someone who seemed to boil with fury on each word.
"And are you succeeding?"
"The tasssk is… challenging. The Daleksss had converted more of our warriors than we thought," she added with a bitterness that Olaf had no trouble interpreting this time. "They are blocking usss out from our armoury, where our shipsss and our mossst powerful weaponsss are ssstored. But we made sssure they can't reach thisss command centre."
"I'm really sorry about all that. Don't you have any friends you could ask for help?" he said.
"The other hivesss could be of assssissstance, but we can't contact them. The Daleksss are jamming our communicationsss." Ixadra shot a couple of brief orders at some Ice Warriors who began pressing more buttons. "And it would be dishonourable to asssk for help without taking part in the fight ourssselves."
"Can't you send someone through this jam to warn your hives friends?"
"These hives are very far, Olaf of Arendelle. And without a ship," she hissed with even more fury, "it will be impossssible to reach them with thisss heat."
"I thought I heard Thedoctor saying that there was a, uh, ship of yours that we passed by when we tried to go outside. Only he also said it was a shuttle, so maybe it isn't the same thing…"
"My persssonal shuttle," Ixadra hissed with even more fury, "will not be used to call for help. Itsss purpose is to assssissst usss on the final assssault. But we ssstill don't know where this Dalek base is."
"Ah, that's where Elsa and Anna went? You want to go there too to meet up with them?"
"We are looking for thisss base to know where to attack! And," Ixadra added as an afterthought, "we may find Queen Elsssa and her party if she's really there too."
"You don't know where Elsa and Anna are?"
"The Daleks have alssso hacked into our sssensssorss and are jamming mossst of them. We have no way of knowing their position."
"Oh, er, OK," said Olaf, feeling suddenly very uneasy. "Er… could I go outside in your shuttle ship?"
"You want to fight at our ssside?"
"No…" The uneasiness was growing. "I would like to go… right now. I would like to find… Elsa. And Anna."
"I apologise, Olaf, but I will not use my shuttle jussst to sssearch for the Doctor or Queen Elsssa."
"But I think I know where they are," Olaf said earnestly, "so we would not need to search for them. And I would very much like to see them now. Something… something is wrong with Elsa. And… I think something is wrong with Anna as well."
Ixadra crouched swiftly, so that her helmeted face was on Olaf's level. He gazed into the red glass that covered her eyes, wondering if now was a good time to ask her if she could lend him her helmet to try on for a few seconds.
"You know how to find them?" she hissed eagerly.
Kristoff collapsed on the floor with a groan. The Doctor looked behind the ice harvester to discover Anna, brandishing the Ice Warrior weapon like a club.
"That was not a very nice thing to do to your boyfriend, Freckles," he said. "I know he was talking about using a weapon, but he wanted to do it to protect you."
"Ex-ex-ex," Anna stammered, slowly lowering the weapon.
"Oh, he's your ex-boyfriend now? Sorry, I was not paying attention. But there are other ways to break up, you know."
"T-t-t-ter," Anna uttered, grimacing while she slowly turned the weapon in her hands.
"Freckles?" the Doctor asked, slowly raising the hand holding his sonic screwdriver in front of him. "Anna? Talk to me. I don't know where Elsa is, but we are going after her once we are finished here, I promise."
"Mi-i-i-i-i," Anna said, her hands moving jerkily on the weapon, slowly pointing its muzzle at the Doctor.
"Anna, listen to me," the Doctor said urgently, aiming the sonic screwdriver in her direction. "Try to concentrate on the feelings of love. You do love Reindeer Man here, right? And Platinum? And Ice-Cream Brain?"
"N-n-n-ate," Anna said, positioning her finger on the trigger.
A high pitched whistle echoed in the corridor.