This chapter has like three jokes I've been excited to make for several months
Marion and the Doctor walked for a while following the bank of the lake. It was largely quiet save for the sound of their footsteps and the occasional drip of water.
"How much farther do you think it will be Marion?"
"Well, I don't really know. I don't think that Zoe and Jamie were wandering for that long. But they also didn't run into Medusa. So they didn't go in the same direction that we went. So, it's kind of hard to tell but it might be a while until we-" Marion turned a corner. There was a large hole in the wall with crumbling stones around the entrance.
"Huh…" Marion said slowly. "Nevermind!"
"Is that the exit, Marion?"
"I think so?"
Marion brushed her finger tips against the rocks and they crumbled away sending up dust and dirt. She coughed heavily.
The Doctor stepped through the hole.
"Well," he called after her, "we certainly aren't in the labyrinth anymore."
They entered a canyon. Large rocks lead up high into the sky and at the very top, was a huge castle.
Marion took a step back and squinted up at it thoughtfully up for a moment.
She walked forward to get a closer look at the cliff face. It wasn't smooth. Marion looked up at the sky. There was supposed to be a superhero or something jumping out of nowhere, but that was pretty easy to deal with. She stared back at the cliff face. She reached up and grabbed a part of the wall thoughtfully. She jumped up and dug her toe in a nice spot a couple feet up, held herself there, and then she let go and dropped.
"I mean," she said, half to herself, "I could probably climb that. It's pretty high, but like, my arms and legs don't get tired. And if I fell I could just get back up again…" Marion clicked her tongue, "Ah, but then I couldn't risk carrying you up with me." Marion turned tapped the rock face and raised her voice a bit. "Don't suppose you've got any carabiners in your pocket? The big steel kind?" Marion stopped rummaging through her back and paused. "Although, then again, I don't think I've got a rope long enough to pull you up after me once I got to the top. We'd have to come up some other way I guess. And I'd need a hook or something. I don't-"
"Marion?"
"Yeah, Doc?"
"Who said that?"
Marion turned around and saw the Doctor looking around frantically. He was still wearing the reading glasses, so he should have been still able to see her.
"You mean you didn't?" Marion asked slowly. It occurred to Marion that her sense of unease might not have been just because of what was going on, or the close proximity to a possible rockslide.
"No?"
Shit.
"We should-we should leave now." Marion looked back and forth.
"Marion?"
"What was that?" the Doctor asked again.
"The reason we should leave."
Marion didn't answer. She looked around the valley frantically looking for the other Doctor. She grabbed the Doctor's arm and dragged him along with her.
"Marion, what was that?"
"Don't worry about it-"
"Marion!" The voice sounded a lot closer.
"It sounded like-"
"Doctor-" Marion insisted. "We need to go!"
"Marion, what was that?"
"Oh no."
"It sounded like-"
Something shifted out from behind a pile of boulders. Its limbs twisted and twitched as it pulled itself from where it hid and its form eventually came into something that kind of looked human if you were very generous.
He was too tall and his skin was too white and his hair and eyes and clothes were too grey and his outline was still fuzzy and out of focus as it walked towards them, its feet sliding against the ground out of time with its steps.
Marion held out her arm and pushed the Doctor further back behind her.
Its neck clicked and as it approached, Marion heard a buzzing in her head.
"Marion?" This time it came from the real Doctor, not the other one. "The thing you were talking about earlier. The copy."
"That's it yea." Marion took a step back.
"Marion?" The copy said taking a step forward.
"Why does it look like that?" the Doctor asked, "Is it some kind of projection of your mind? Is that how you see me?"
Its eyes and mouth continued to be the normal amount of open.
"Why does it look like that?"
Marion figured that the reason why it hadn't started to run was because they hadn't started to run, but she still had no idea what to do about it. Marion ignored the figure. She turned her head so that she was looking at the Doctor, while at the same time monitoring the Other One out of the corner of her eye.
"What? Of course not. He's much taller than you. And greyer."
Of course, that did raise the question of why the copy looked almost identical to how the Doctor looked on the screen instead of how he looked in person and why his form rippled with what could only be compared to scanlines.
Zoe had dealt with the comic book character, (Marion couldn't remember what it had been called) by physically fighting it. That didn't seem like the answer here. Still, just in case, Marion rummaged through her bag searching for her knife just in case. It was pretty deep in her bag and she had to dig deep down past a crowbar and the robot hand and the rope and she had no idea how it had gotten that far down there.
The Doctor suddenly cried out. Marion's vision spun and her arm suddenly burned and she realized that she had taken her eyes off the copy. Its eyes were too big and its mouth was too wide and it was positioning itself like he was preparing to lunge at them.
She wondered if the copy knew that she was there. Was she invisible to it too? Did it think the Doctor was alone and was running after him?
"Marion?" "Marion?"
Marion took a step back, using her arm to push the Doctor with her. It didn't matter if the copy could see the Doctor or not, it wasn't as if she was intangible.
"Doctor?" Marion whispered out of the side of her mouth. "If I tell you to run, you've got to run. You got that?"
"Marion, I'm not going to leave you alone."
"Alone."
"Shut it!" Marion shouted, "Not you." she assured the Doctor.
Marion continued to rummage through her bag. She couldn't find the knife that she was looking for. Her fingertips brushed against something plastic and covered with buttons. The remote. She had almost forgotten about it. Marion stared at the thing. Its limbs begin to stiffen and it leaned forward in what was nearly a lunge, like it was clearly preparing to jump at them. Its fingers were longer than they should have been like the copy had been made out of still-drying clay with fingertips too heavy that were gradually being weighed down. She stared at its greyscale tv fuzzed form and the scanlines.
How long had the creature been wandering in the woods before she ran into him? Surely he would have tried to lure her out from the start if he had always been there. But he hadn't shown up until she was about to leave.
Or in other words, until she had turned the TV on.
In a blink, the thing launched towards them. Marion shoved the Doctor backward and pushed herself forward. Her chest burned as she quickly pulled out the remote. Her thumb found the power button and she pressed it and moments before the distorted copy crashed into her it disappeared.
Marion quickly flipped the remote on its back. It was the kind where removing the back just required pushing something up and clicking something else back down. No screws. Marion ripped off the back and removed the batteries. Just on the off chance that it jumbled around in her bag caused it to hit against the power button. She pulled out the batteries and dropped them into her purse along with the remote.
"Marion! What did you do?"
"That copy looked like something off the TV. A tape of some kind. Analog media. Analog horror."
"I don't follow."
"Middle early 21st century horror. It plays around with the currency generations nostalgia for vhs and cassettes. And then there's always some kind of monster that copies people's appearances but does it wrong."
"To what end?"
"Either to find more people to replace or to eat people. Or both. Really depends on the story. But the POINT is do you know how to get rid of something scary that's on the TV?"
The Doctor nodded, "Oh, yes, I see. You turned the TV off."
"Exactly?"
"Where did you get that remote?"
"In the house that I woke up in." Marion replied, "Now, we really need to keep moving. If Zoe were here, she-" Marion stopped herself, she didn't know how much the Master was able to listen, "Well, anyway, unless you want me to turn the tv back on and bring back your terrible twin, we're going to have to find the way up ourselves. Come on, I think it's this way."
"Marion," asked the Doctor, "Why did the copy look that way?"
"You mean with the distorted limbs and the messed up eyes?"
"Well yes, but before then it was black and white but otherwise normal, except for the height of course. If it was based on a sort of horror based on memories of the 80s to the 2000s, shouldn't it have been in color?"
That was a good question. A question that Marion thought that she knew the answer to, but had no interest in telling.
"I'm not sure." she lied. "Maybe it thought that the TV fuzz would be scarier." Marion looked around. "Anyway, there's got to be a way to get up."
The mountain was less like a mountain and more like a very tall plateau. Marion walked carefully around the sides.
"Marion what are those up there?" the Doctor asked.
"Hmm?" she looked at where he was pointing, "Looks like stairs?" Marion replied, "They're pretty high up. But it should lead somewhere." Marion wandered around the edge until she found two large boulders. In between the two of them was a path that steadily led upwards. Marion stepped back and looked upward and the trail seemed to eventually meet those steep stairs and presumably, it would take them all the way up to the top.
"Come on," said Marion, "It's going to be a long way."
In undergrad, Marion had and a group of friends had gone rock climbing. The kind where you're outside and have to build an anchor of your own off the cliff and climb up the rockface outdoors and it had been an incredibly fun afternoon. What hadn't been fun, was the hike back up the summit. The "steps" if they could be called that were nearly two and a half feet tall, she had to brace herself with her hands half of the time, and by the time she got to the top she considered simply lying down in the fallen leaves and just not getting up again.
She was pretty sure she had made a joke about abolishing the Sierra Club.
Hiking up a plateau was a hell of a lot more fun when you couldn't get tired. Her muscles didn't burn, her legs didn't shake, and she wasn't getting the post-hike blurry black vision that told her that she needed to eat something and soon or she was set to collapse and not get back up for a but.
She had to stop every now and then and wait for the doctor. And on one of the higher scrambles, she did lean down, grab him by the hand, and pull him up the rest of the way. Time Lords were more hardy than humans. Or, at the very least, they had stronger lung capacity. But the matter was that someone who was able to power through while being tired wasn't going to be able to compete with someone who simply wasn't tired at all.
She stared up at the last flight of steps. They had been walking for a while. Maybe twenty minutes? Maybe more? They hadn't done a lot of talking.
Marion heard the sound of heavy breathing. "Marion, could you slow down a bit."
"Oh," She stood next to the Doctor, she could faintly feel the sound of his chest buzzing as his bypass went into overdrive. "Oh, I'm sorry. Okay, we can wait for a sec. It should just be this flight of stairs and then we're done."
There were a lot of stairs. Marion wasn't certain that she could have gotten to the top at a decent pace if it wasn't for the fact that she was what she was. It almost felt jarring to look back down the stairs that she had just ascended and remember climbing them and feeling like she had barely walked anywhere.
In front of them was a large castle gate surrounded by walls that looked to be either made of stone brick or painted styrofoam depending on where you looked at it straight on or out of the corner of your eye and with a texture that varied from fingertip to fingertip as her hand traced along it.
It felt weird, so she yanked her hand back and frowned.
Marion turned to look at the door. It was a large wooden door, the kind you'd expect from a castle with a grill that could be slid aside to see who dared to approach and a long cord that controlled the doorbell.
The Doctor grabbed a hold of the cord and yanked it once, and then twice. The sound of a loud bell started to ring out. It reminded Marion of an old phone ringing.
The grill on the door slid aside to reveal nothing but a yawning empty blackness and from the void, came a voice.
"State your name and attribution." the voice ordered. Marion grimaced. Now she was remembering, the Doctor had impersonated that hero that Zoe had found. But there was no hero to impersonate, and Marion couldn't even remember his name.
Then again, if Marion was remembering correctly, this was all a part of a trap anyway. A trap that they were meant to trip, but a trap nonetheless. And that meant that bullshitting her way through couldn't be that hard. It's not as if the guy in charge DIDN'T want her through that door.
She took too long to speak and so the person on the other side asked again.
"State your name and attribution!" he asked.
Marion suddenly got her favorite kind of idea. The kind that was incredibly stupid, but still against all odds had the potential to be successful.
"Your name!" she said quickly.
The Doctor looked like he was about to speak and Marion held up a hand to hush him.
"Who said that?"
"I did!"
"Your name?" the voice repeated.
"Yes," Marion replied, "or You."
"You?" he asked.
"Yes." she repeated, "I'm You."
"Me?"
"No!" She made herself sound frustrated. As if it was something that she struggled to explain. "You. You know. Your name."
"First name? Last name?"
"Sometimes!" Marion replied. She smiled and nodded her head, as if thrilled that she no longer had to explain herself, as the person she was speaking to finally got it. "Sometimes y/n. Sometimes everyone avoids my name. Sometimes I get a nickname. I don't really have a set name. Or an appearance." Marion remembered that she was still invisible. "'S why I look like this."
"Why you look like what?"
"Nothing specific really."
Marion took a deep breath, crossing her fingers in hope that it would work. That the one in charge would find the answer good enough to let her move forward.
"Attribution?" the man asked.
"Many places." Marion replied, "Many times. A lot of romances, but not just romances."
Another bit of silence.
"And who is the man with you?" the man asked.
Marion held up a hand to stop the Doctor from talking. "My friend," she said.
"What's his name?"
"Friend's Name. Also from many places and many times. He gets to have a form set most of the time though. Sometimes he doesn't. It depends."
More silence. And then "Authenticated. You may enter."
Marion took a step forward and then paused as if in thought.
"And Friend's Name?"
Silence that almost sounded exasperated. "You both may enter."
Marion nodded, "Thank you so much."
Marion and the Doctor walked through the now open door into the dimly lit hallway. It closed behind them with a thud that assured that the door would be unlikely to be opening on their own power any time soon.
"What was that? Was that a Nobody trick?"
"No- oh you mean like Odysseus?" Marion asked, "Oh, no. No, it wasn't that. God, I should have thought of that."
"Oh? Then what sort of person were you pretending to be."
"The Second."
"Second-OH!"
"Exactly!"
The Doctor clasped his hands together. "Oh, that's rather clever."
"I'm glad you think so. I panicked."
"It got us through the door didn't it?"
"Well, yes of course, but I'm pretty sure that we're where He wanted us to be."
"So we're walking into a trap."
"Well, yes, but Jamie and Zoe should already be here. And it's not as if we have anywhere else to be. We might as well have a bite of the cheese while we're here yes?"
The corridors slowly grew brighter and brighter and in the distance, Marion could hear the sounds of Zoe and Jamie arguing with a man who was probably Gulliver.
That was good. Zoe and Jamie were together. Marion had hoped, but she had been worried that the two of them might have gone off somewhere.
"-Now listen, if there aren't any robots, who do you think was carrying out those orders? I mean, who were we hiding from?"
"Why, sir, the Yahoos."
"And who are the Yahoos?" Zoe asked.
"A cursed race of inferior creatures. I never beheld so disagreeable an animal,"
Marion reached a doorway that she was pretty sure that she wasn't meant to walk through and called out to the two of them.
"HEYO!" Marion called out.
Jamie and Zoe stopped arguing with Guilliver and turned to look at them.
"Oh!" said Zoe, "There you-," Marion saw the girl look at the Doctor, and then look up at her forehead where the bandana was still tied.
"Unfortunately," Marion replied.
"Don't come any closer!" exclaimed Jamie. "There's an electrical gadget 'round here somewhere which sets off an alarm gong. I walked through it, the gong went off and they set a gang of robots after me."
"They were the same as the ones before!" Zoe added, "The big white ones!"
Marion looked down. She pointed to a device that was against the wall, and then paused, realizing that no one could see her except for the Doctor with his glasses.
"There's a sensor down here. See, the little nozzle thing. You tripped it when you walked past."
"Ah," the Doctor looked down, "Yes, it's a simple photoelectric cell. We just... we just need to step over it and-" Marion very carefully hopped over the place where the beam was pointing out with the Doctor jumping soon after her.
"Be careful!" Jamie admonished.
"There we are, about as safe and sound as one can be in a place like this."
"We were chased by one of those tin soldiers," Jamie said. And then the two of us were separated. Luckily, there was a princess with long hair, and she helped me climb up the cliff up here."
"And I ran into the Karkus! But I got him to see reason, and he led me around the way to here. Luckily, we met up again."
So that was the name of the hero.
"And then we nearly fell down a flight of stairs, but there was this young man in red pajamas and sunglasses. And he warned us about them ahead of time."
Marion blinked. "What?"
"The thing is, how do we get out?"
"Oh, I'm not leaving yet!" the Doctor shook his head, "I'm here on business."
"He's got places to be and people to see, you know."
"What places!" Jamie asked, "What people?"
"The lair of the being that calls himself the Master and the Master himself of course."
"This resolution perhaps may appear very bold and dangerous." Guillver cut in.
"Why would you say that?" Zoe asked.
"I think you should not be here. The Master makes rules for the government of his Kingdom. It is unwise for you to disobey."
"Your unsolicited council has been noted and will be given the appropriate amount of consideration when the time comes to make our final decision," Marion said. No one could see her but the Doctor, so she didn't bother with the fake smile that would typically accompany that kind of remark.
"If you would take my advice, swear a peace with the Master and his kingdom. Find yourselves a place to lodge, stay quietly with the expectation that things would mend."
"Yes." the Doctor nodded, "Well, I'll er... I see. I'll think it over very carefully."
Gulliver nodded with the expression of a man who clearly thought that he had won that conversation. He gave a gentlemanly bow to the Doctor and Marion, and then to Zoe and Jamie, and then walked away.
"You're not really going to do as he says, are you?" Jamie stared at the Doctor.
"No, of course not." the Doctor said under his breath in a low whisper, "I said I'd think it over. Well, I've thought it over. We're staying on and fighting on."
"And I've given Guillver the appropriate amount of consideration. None at all."
"But this is a world that the Master has made! And even if Marion has an idea of what he's planning next, he can still throw anything he wants at us."
"Let him throw what he wants. All we have to do is either catch or dodge. We handled Medusa just fine."
Jamie snapped his fingers. "Ah, Medusa. Yes, I read about that on this machine here." Jamie walked towards one of the ticker tape machines. "Wee words keep coming out of it all the time."
"Oh, yes?" the Doctor lifted up one of the strips of paper and read off it.
"'Cancel. Doctor, test report failure. Cancel. Marion, test report failure' Oh, I think I'm beginning to understand."
"Well, I wish I was!" Jamie replied.
Marion, admittedly, only vaguely remembered what was going on. She was pretty sure she remembered most of the what and part of the why but she was almost certain that there were parts that she was missing.
"Well," the Doctor spoke slowly as if he was developing a hypothesis as he spoke. "when someone writes about an incident after it's happened, that is history, hmm?"
Zoe nodded.
"But when the writing comes first, that's fiction."
"But Doctor," Jamie asked, "Marion's written things down to warn us before. And they've come true. And we're not fiction."
Marion didn't say anything. And she tried to remember what her facial expression had been before the conversation had begun so that she could maintain it. At that moment, no one could see Marion but the Doctor, but the Doctor was the one that she wanted to see her face the least. He knew her expressions far too well.
"Yes Jamie," the Doctor said, "But Marion knows what she knows because from her point of view, it's already happened, just without her being there. To her, we're history. But if we'd have fallen into the Master's trap, we would have become fiction."
"Oh, that's horrible." Zoe turned on her heels, "Come on, let's get out of here-" she moved quickly towards the stairs.
"Where are you going? Zoe-,"
"-before it's too late."
Zoe raced towards the doorway and Marion lunged at her, just missing her hand. She didn't manage to grab her before she triggered the sensors in the doorway.
"No," the Doctor cried, "not through there!"
There was a loud blaring noise.
"Oh no!"
"Attention. Attention." It was the same voice that she had heard from the other side of the door. "There are still strangers at large. Renew the search. The strangers must be found."
Zoe moved to the side of the doorway with her back to the wall so she couldn't be seen by "Well, what are we going to do?"
"I mean, that's funny. Gulliver walked through there."
"Gulliver's not real," Marion said quickly.
In the distance, Marion could hear the sound of footsteps. Heavy clanging metal footsteps. Zoe ran away from the door. "They're coming. Well, where can we hide?"
"Do we even need to hide, Marion?" the Doctor asked.
"I don't think so."
"Of course, you don't need to hide," said Jamie. His eyes almost met hers, "All you need to do is take off that headband of yours"
"No, I mean we don't need to hide."
"Why not!" Zoe cried, "What if they find us?"
"Let them find us!" said the Doctor.
"You mean, just stand here and wait?"
"I mean you could sit and wait if you wanted."
"Wait for what?"
"To talk of course. With the man in charge."
"They may not give us time to ask for anything." "Look"
Marion turned. Three large robots about seven or eight feet tall stood in the doorway. They had sideways rectangular eyes and two antennae on either side of their heads that met in a bar on top of their heads and bendy accordion arms and necks, and bodies that looked to have been made of a single sheet of metal that had been bent this way and that. Something hexagonal with something sticking out of their chests. They reminded Marion of a cyberman, but not. As if someone had tried to design a cyberman based on a description from someone who had seen one once or twice and then never again.
Marion felt strongly that they weren't immediately hostile. That didn't mean that she wanted them near.
Marion held up her arm to slow her companions down a bit. Jamie moved next to her, and the Doctor took Zoe and moved further back behind them.
"Are you... are you looking for us by any chance?" the Doctor called, "We demand an interview with the Master."
A wall behind them slid open.
"How very fortunate. Do come in, Doctor. I've been expecting you. Oh, don't be alarmed. Won't you walk into my parlour?"
"Said the spider to the fly," the Doctor replied under his breath. He sighed deeply and turned around. "Come along."
"Now remember?" said Marion quietly, "Stick together. And if you get the urge to run off. Do Not."
The hallway that they walked into was dark. Every transition was dark from one area to another had been dark now that Marion thought about it. She wondered if the rooms weren't there before she walked into them and if the darkness was the room's way of hiding that fact.
It was a bit like how unless there was an emergency, the TARDIS always attempted to grab her attention and get her to look the other way or go around a corner when it linked together hallways that hadn't existed before and placed doors wherever it saw fit to place doors, so she didn't have to see the kind of nauseating way things shifted around.
After a bit of walking, Marion bumped nose first into something.
"There's something blocking the way," Jamie remarked.
Marion wrapped her knuckles against it. "It's thin whatever it is. It's a door I think."
"You would be correct Marion," said a voice. It sounded further than when she had heard it before. But also closer. "Do come in."
The doors slid aside revealing a room that was lit with dozens of TV screens from flat to CRT lining the walls. In the center of the room was an older man. He could've been anywhere visual between an older-looking 40-year-old to a younger-looking 70-year-old. He had short hair and a beard and was dressed in a suit and a tie, but in a way that came across as less formal and more academic. He was wearing a small hat on the back of his head and the hat was connected with wires to an odd polyhedric shape that spun slowly, allowing the many thin white wires within it to catch the light.
The room hummed with an odd mechanical energy. Not too dissimilar to the sound of fluorescent lighting.
Marion wasn't a fan.
The man sat up a bit in his chair when he saw them walk in and adjusted his glasses.
"Oh Doctor, this is a great pleasure. And your three young companions. Now let me see. Oh yes, yes, yes. Zoe, Jamie, and Marion! I have your dossiers here in front of me." He pulled out three sets of files and examined them.
"You appear to be very well organised." Zoe remarked.
Marion wondered what was on hers.
"Oh yes, indeed. We have to be. The running of this place requires enormous attention to detail. It's a responsible position, but very rewarding."
Marion had never heard someone refer to their job as "very rewarding" in the tone of voice that the man used unless it was either a job they were trying to recruit someone else into joining, they hated their job, was complaining about their job, and was mocking the person who told them to take it.
"Responsible, huh?" the Doctor asked, "To someone else?"
"Not to someone. Another power. Higher than you could begin to imagine."
"I think you'd be surprised."
"Oh. Oh, I must congratulate you on the great skill in which you tackled the various stages of your examination." the man said as if they hadn't spoken. He was staring right at her. "And you Marion. Utterly fascinating the way you responded to horror and mystery while still managing to maintain calm disposition. Although, I have to say, the words you used were quite vulgar. Such language is quite unbecoming of a young lady such as yourself you know."
"Yeah well-"
"What is the purpose of all these tests?" The Doctor cut Marion off before she could show him just how unbecoming her language could get.
"Well, do you know, when I was first brought here myself," the man replied, avoiding the question. "I was as bewildered as you are."
The man's voice sounded like it was constantly moments away from a hysterical laugh. In a way that made Marion feel uneasy.
Actually it might've not just been him that was making her feel uneasy.
"Well, how long have you been here?"
"I left England in the summer of 1926. It was a very hot day, I remember," the man removed his glasses, and then blinked and put them back on again, "I think I must have dozed off over my desk, and when I awoke... Oh, but that's a long story. Did you ever hear of the Adventures of Captain Jack Harkaway?"
Marion had not. But whether or not she knew about it didn't matter.
"No, I can't say that I…" the Doctor thought for a moment, "Wait a minute, a serial in a boys' magazine?"
"The Ensign!"
"The Ensign!"
The man held up a magazine. "And for twenty-five years, I delivered five thousand words every week."
The Doctor pointed at the man. "You're a writer."
"Twenty-five years, five thousand words a week," Zoe replied, "Well, that's well over half a million words."
"Oh, he wrote much more than that. More than six and a half million. Half a million isn't that impressive. Any idiot can write up half a million wordshhh." Marion suddenly felt a sharp pain in the side of her neck. Like she was being poked with a sharpened pencil. "You don't need 25 years to write half a million words. All you really need is a little bit over four years and an obsess- OW." Marion rubbed the side of her neck as the pain flared again.
"Marion, what's wrong." the Doctor asked, concerned.
"I- don't know." The sting in her neck faded as if it had never been there at all "I'm sure it's nothing."
"It was probably some kind of record." the man said with a smile, "Anyway, that was why I was selected to work here."
His eyes were too wide.
Even if she hadn't known something was off with him Marion would have been suspicious. Everything about him was wrong. The uncanny cadence of man trying to pass off an ill-fitting mask as his face.
Jamie shook his head and gestured around the room. "And you're the one that's in charge of all of this? Could you make Marion visible again?"
There was a momentary crack in the man's expression before it smoothed out into the fake smile. "Ah well, the you see-"
The Doctor's mouth hardened into a line. "You can can't you? You're in charge, aren't you? Or," the Doctor's eyes flickered upward to stare at the glass polyhedron, "is all of this in charge of you."
The lights in the polyhedron began to flash faster and faster and Marion thought that she could see a brain in the middle.
"My brain is the source of the creative power which keeps this whole operation going."
The mask wasn't lining up correctly with his eyes.
The Doctor frowned.
"I see. That means that you are virtually a prisoner."
"Oh no no no-" the humming grew louder and louder. And the lights pulsed in warning. The man froze. His eyes grew wide, the false smile dropped, and he seemed to be staring at something off in the distance. Then he seemed to come back to himself. The machines continued to let out a low droning noise that made the hair on Marion's arms stand up.
"You... you... you must excuse me for a moment." The man no longer sounded cheerful or like he was moments from laughter. He opened a book and started to scribble in it with a frantic anxiety.
Jamie leaned down.
"Come on, let's get out of here."
"Yes," nodded Zoe, "let's. It gives me the creeps."
"No, I need to find out more."
"I thought it was obvious," Marion said softly, "You're right about the Land of Fiction being in control of him and not the other way around. He wants you to take his place at the center."
"And that would be a bad idea?"
"And that would be a-" Marion cut herself off, "Yes Doctor. That would be a very bad idea."
"Well, look, you two keep him talking, and Zoe and me will find another way out."
"Jamie, I think it will be safer if we all stick together."
"I agree with the Doctor, Jamie. Now is not the time for us to split up." Marion remembered how frequently companions ignored those kinds of directions, "Seriously! I mean it!"
The polyhedron's droning grew louder and louder and then it stopped abruptly. The man blinked rapidly and then sat up. The cheerful mask slid back into place.
"Oh, I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting." the man said, "Now, where were we?"
"You were about to answer my question. Are you a prisoner here?" the Doctor demanded.
"Well, no. No, I wouldn't say that." Jamie and Zoe began to creep around the other side of the table. Marion glared at them and tried to tilt her head to the side to get them to stop, but they, of course, couldn't see her. They could hopefully see her bandana and get the hint. "In fact, I rather like being here. I have everything I could possibly want."
"You say that with your mouth, but everything about your tone and your face and your eyes says that there's something afoot. You sound like a timeshare salesman. You've done nothing to convince me that you're truly happy where you are."
"Why of course I'm happy here!" the man said in a tone that was about as convincing as an email from Fcaebook telling you to click on a link and reset your password. "Why this is a vast library with all the known works of fiction. All the masterpieces written by Earthmen since the beginning of time."
"Both print and online apparently. Yes, we're familiar?"
"I see, yes." the Doctor nodded, "And only an Earthman-type creature has the power to create fiction. The power to imagine."
"Exactly. This is one field in which the intelligence I serve cannot compete. They need man or a woman I suppose. Someone of boundless imagination, as a... powerhouse. A lifeline, as you might say."
"Oh, might we?"
"What is this intelligence you serve, and why were we brought here?"
"Well, as you see, I'm no longer young, whereas you, Doctor, are ageless. You exist outside the barriers of Time and Space. And you Marion, you ignore them entirely! Either one of you could be a promising candidate. Both even. You could work together."
"And here comes the pitch."
"Ah, yes. I would like it if you two would take my place in the position as the Masters of the Land of Fiction."
"No."
"I refuse!" the Doctor shouted.
The machines started to buzz and shriek louder. The light within the center flashed wildly.
"Refusal is impossible." The inflection in his voice changed. He sounded angrier but with less emotion. His eyes were glazed. "You are here to serve us. There is no alternative."
Marion started to push the Doctor behind her.
"Thanks, but no thanks," Marion said with a bright smile. "If you could just bring the TARDIS here so that we could-"
"Resistance is useless." The man said sharply, "Submit your will for the sake of the greater good. It has been decided."
"I refuse! I shall make that decision for myself."
The droning stopped.
The man's voice began to sound more human again, but he had lost the faux affable demeanor.
"You will find there is only one decision open to you. Mission accomplished. Procedure as arranged."
"What does that mean?"
"The latest chapter of the serial story. I'll read you the last sentences." The Doctor leaned over the desk while Marion started to look around carefully. "Zoe and Jamie attempted to escape, but in making it through the library they were ambushed by a party of guards and were overpowered."
"Marion," the Doctor said quickly. "See if you can find them before it's too late."
"I-" Marion paused. The anxiety had been steady. But it hadn't gotten any worse and might have very well have been normal instead of the vaguely supernatural kind. And it-. She didn't want to leave the Doctor alone. But at the very least, she knew that if she started to fail the Doctor, she'd know and could rush back. She got no such warning for Zoe or Jamie. "I- yes." Marion untied her bandana and tucked it into her back in hopes that she wouldn't be seen and sprinted off. In the distance, she could hear the Doctor and the man still talking with each other.
As the voices of the Doctor and the man grew fainter she could hear the sound of Jamie and Zoe's shouting getting closer and closer as she sprinted through a maze of bookshelves after a moment of thought, she grabbed ahold of the shelf and scrambled on top leaping from shelf top to shelf top hoping that they would be steady enough that it wouldn't fall behind her.
Marion finally found where the robots had Jamie and Zoe concerned in between the pages of a book that Marion was pretty sure was in French, was understandable enough as English that she could read it but not enough that looking at it didn't give her a huge headache.
Marion called out because she knew that neither Zoe or Jamie would be able to see her and then jumped down towards one of the robots feet first. It was sent to the ground with Marion not soon after it. Her legs stung horrifically and she was getting the nausea and head pain combo she knew signified a concussion. The bright lights from the remaining robot wasn't helping much.
From the way she stared at her, she was positive that unlike her human friends, the robots could see her just fine. They were distracted momentarily. And she saw Jamie and Zoe pulling themselves away from the book.
"Run," Marion shouted. "Find the Doctor! Get on the bookshelf. They can't climb."
Marion pushed herself up and she felt a cold metallic hand grab ahold of her wrist and lift her up in the air. She tried to stand so that she could get enough leverage in order to support herself and jerk away. Marion shouted and kicked, and hissed in pain as she felt something snap. Another robot grabbed her other arm.
Marion continued to kick as she was dragged towards the book. The moments she was let go she braced herself, trying to use her elbow and gritting her teeth as the bones in her arms clicked back together, keeping the book from shutting and she was so focused on that she didn't notice the wires that embedded themselves into her skull until she had no choice but to think about them.
Marion heard a whisper in her ear that sounded like hers but not. It felt less like something speaking into her mind. It was nothing like the earworm of the Face of Boe, and more like something was vibrating her skull like a speaker and making her hear sounds.
"Just give in." The voice that wasn't hers whispered softly. It had the same near-laughing tone the man had had. An air of fake politeness that only just barely hit contempt. "Take your place as the Mistress of the Land of Fiction."
"Shut up," she said, ignoring the pressure in her ears. Could the Doctor see her? Was she on the screen? Could he hear the other voice, or just her own?
"You don't have a choice, Miss." It hummed "If you refuse. The Doctor will either accept our offer or he will die."
"The Doctor will NOT do either." Marion said firmly. Marion locked her limbs in place so that the book couldn't close. But doing so wouldn't let her grab the wires that she could feel in the back of her neck. "I won't let him. I won't let that happen. He will not become the Master of the Land of Fiction. "
"He won't have to. If you simply become the new Master in his stead. The Mistress."
"No. I'm not-"
"Yes, you will Miss."
"No, I won't-"
And then Marion heard the sound of a loud buzzing in the back of her head and then felt a burning in her skull.
Marion was sure that the Doctor was watching her, so she did her best not to scream. But she wasn't sure that she hadn't.
Her head felt like she was burning, and it was the sort of pain that she had come to associate with the sound of clocks but unlike those pains, it wasn't stopping and it wasn't stopping and it wasn't stopping and it wasn't stopping and it wasn't-
And then, she was floating. She couldn't feel much of anything. Not the paper under her fingertips, not the she had been wearing, not the pain. So it was very possible that it was still going on but she just couldn't feel it or anything else except for a rattling in her skull was denial.
Not the kind of denial where you try to convince yourself that the terrible thing that's happening isn't happening. The other kind.
It was the kind of denial that was a firm no.
An angry "absolutely not".
And then she felt the edges of her vision go black and her throat burned.
And then Marion was deep asleep and she was wide awake.
Next Chapter: She Who Wakes, Leaps, Breaks, and Sleeps
Marion: …
Well, gang. See y'all on the 24th. :).