Hi guys. Between this chapter and last chapter I got really into Dragon Age. Just a personal update. It's not going to affect fic updates (at least for this fic).

Marion felt like she had woken up from a nap. The kind where you closed your eyes and when you opened them again you were vaguely aware that time must have passed and that it wasn't very long, but you couldn't be sure if it had been five minutes or fifteen.

She didn't know where she was.

She decided to narrow down the things that she did know. She wasn't in between the pages of the book. She didn't feel like her brain was boiling. She blinked slowly and she saw the Doctor standing in front of her. He looked normal. His face wasn't the wrong type of face and he was the right color and the right height and she wasn't sure why he was with her. Not that she hadn't thought that he wouldn't look for her, it was more the fact that he hadn't been there before she had-

What had she done?

As she stood there, her fingertips slowly became less numb, and she flexed them, her hands shaking slightly.

She took a step forward, and then she felt oddly light-headed and she fell forward colliding with the Doctor who caught and steadied her. Marion got to her feet and shook her head.

"Are you alright?" her friend asked.

"Hm…Oh, no I'm fine. When did you get here! Have you found Zoe and Jamie?"

"Ah, no I haven't, I'm afraid. I went looking for you first. It's a good thing I found you."

"Right…" Marion replied. She looked around trying to see what the Doctor was talking about.

Just behind the Doctor, there was a long line of bookshelves standing up with maybe three or so feet of space between them. The shelves were nearly entirely empty and Marion was fairly certain that the way that the books covered the floor likely had something to do with that. And when Marion looked to the side she could see the robot, or, at the very least, what had once been a robot.

What was left had ripped apart with a brutality that was only lessened by the fact that they had been made of metal and wires instead of flesh and blood. There were a few specks of blood near some of the more messy rips.

Marion remembered the odd feeling in her hands when she had fully come to.

She didn't remember the bookshelf falling. And she didn't remember ripping the robot apart. She must have. It sounded like something that she would have done. And the Doctor seemed convinced that she had done it. She simply, didn't remember anything between intense pain and then standing in frong of the Doctor. Her hands were shaking rapidly. She tried to calm down and put them by her side. And then she noticed the Doctor's face was empty. She looked down near her feet and spotted the Doctor's glasses. She crouched down to pick them up.

She held them out to him.

"Your glasses!" Marion said, "Wait- are you able to see me without them then?"

"Yes." the Doctor replied. "They fell off when you knocked into me. Threw us both to the ground."

"Oh, I'm sorry about that."

"Don't be. If you hadn't reacted quick enough I might've been crushed."

"Well," Marion said slowly. She tried to piece together the events that the Doctor had been describing.

Tackling the Doctor away from a crushed shelf and forcibly dismantling a robot sounded like something that she would do, even if she didn't remember doing it. And the Doctor was unhurt.

"I'm glad I was able to get there in time." And then Marion swiftly changed the subject, "Now, if Zoe and Jamie aren't here, then they have to be somewhere. And we ought to find them, before something else does."

"Have you any idea where they are?" the Doctor asked.

Marion shrugged. She looked towards the book that she was pretty sure that she had been stuck inside of. The book was open, and it allowed her to see a smeared and bloody handprint. Marion looked down at her right hand. There was something reddish brown and flaking under her nails. Marion tucked her hand into her pocket.

"I think that we should follow your instincts. Your guess is as good as mine. Did that Master say anything?"

"He said that you had merely delayed them, not stopped them."

Marion let out a frustrated sigh. "That sounds about right."

Marion wanted to leave the library as soon as she could. She didn't know what had happened or what was happening. And a part of her knew that she should have said so. But- well, she knew that she was real. And she needed the Doctor to trust her. And if he thought that she was fake, or fiction, or some kind of mockery he might attempt to run or give her the slip or otherwise get himself away from her presence and in this place that might mean that she would get hurt.

The Doctor nodded, "Ah, I see. Well then I-" the Doctor looked around, "Yes. I think- this way, yes! Come along now Marion."

The Doctor's instincts led them to scaling a ventilation shaft.

It was quite easy to access by climbing to the top of one of the bookshelves that hadn't been toppled over.

It wasn't very big. Its narrowness meant that wedging herself inside of it to scale wasn't too tricky. She had the Doctor go up first. Because on the off chance that she slipped for some reason, she'd be able to catch him. Marion rolled up her sleeves up to her upper arm and she began her ascent.

The vent opened out into a large rooftop. It made sense, she had seen the castle from the distance. If she looked out, she could just make out the path where she and the Doctor had come across the not her.

Marion looked up at the night sky and then she looked away, and then looked back, and then did a double take, and then chose to make an effort to not stare at the sky. The stars were in the sky wrong. They moved too much when she moved her head. Maybe they were too close. Marion was certain.

It was the celestial equivalent of talking to a person for a while and realizing that they hadn't breathed the whole time.

The Doctor started to walk around the side of the roof. And Marion walked next to him. She kept her eyes down and to the side, staring at the roof and the tiles and not the wrong stars.

They came across a large pillar. Marion and the Doctor backed up against it. The door creaked open and out came Jamie and Zoe. Or, at the very least, figures that strongly resembled Jamie and Zoe.

The Master might've been bluffing. They have might been fine. Marion's eyes flickered over their forms. Their teeth, their eyes, their hair, the little details that supposedly will prove if what you're staring at is really who or what it claims to be.

There wasn't anything obviously off with them. She was sure that she might find something if she looked closely at them. But she wasn't sure if that thing would be real and not her mind searching for patterns that weren't there.

"Doctor!" Zoe exclaimed.

"Oh, am I glad to see you two!" Jamie nodded.

"I was worried that you been turned into-"

Jamie cut the Doctor off. "Aye, where do we go from here?"

"Well, back to the TARDIS."

"We can't do that. It fell apart. Do you not remember?"

"Oh well, it's all over now, thank goodness."

"The TARDIS broke up!"

"Yes, you've said that, Jamie." the Doctor nodded.

Oh. Okay. No, these were definitely fake. And her thinking that wasn't just because vaguely remembered the conversation. The body language was correct, but it was too mechanical. Not to mention, the way Zoe and Jamie were staring at the Doctor. It wasn't that the eyes looked dead, or as if they lacked light. It was more that the light was the wrong kind of light.

"I'm tired," Zoe suddenly remarked. It was almost mechanical the way her head turned away from the Doctor. "I think I'll sit down and have a rest."

"Is something wrong, Zoe?"

"Aye, well, where do we go from here?" Jamie suddenly repeated. And it was him repeating. It sounded less like he was saying words that he had said before, and almost as if when he had said it before it had been a recording that was being played again.

"Back to the TARDIS," Zoe called.

"We can't do that. It broke up. Do you not remember?"

"But you…" the Doctor stared at Jamie and Zoe and then "Marion, they keep saying the same things." The Doctor snapped his fingers in front of Jamie's face for a moment. The man didn't blink, react, or do any of the things that you would expect when you snap your fingers in front of their face for a while and it became clear that while it had initially appeared that he had been focusing on the Doctor, he had in fact been focusing on nothing. It was just that that nothing had been focused a foot or so from his face.

"The TARDIS broke up." Jamie repeated.

The Doctor slowly walked away from Jamie, nudging Marion on the shoulder to follow him.

"They're not real." The Doctor said, in that tone of voice that was more him speaking out loud than anything. "They've been turned into fiction."

"I worried." Marion sighed, "I'm sorry about that Doc. I did do my best."

"No, it's quite alright." The Doctor shook his head, "You did as much as could be expected of you. And you did give them time to run off. It's not your fault what happened. And besides, they might go back to normal on their own."

Marion blinked.

"Oh?"

"Ah, yes. Perhaps. I can't dismiss the possibility."

"I suppose not…" Marion trailed off.

"Oh, what's that?" the Doctor looked down into a skylight. The Doctor cleared away the soot covering the glass with a handkerchief and he looked down.

"The master tape! I wonder. Perhaps if I were to create a few immortal words of fiction of my own. Yes, it's worth trying." The Doctor grabbed the sides of the frame and yanked at it repeatedly. It didn't move at all. "Marion, do you think that you could get it to budge?"

"Yeah," Marion nodded, "Sure, give me a moment."

Marion found a place under the edge for purpose. She flexed her wrists and yanked upwards sharply. It was rusted in place, it was just incredibly heavy, but not for long.

"I'm going to set this down, watch your toes." Marion dropped the skylight cover. It fell to the ground with a loud crack.

"Oh-oh no,"

"Doctor, what's, What-?"

Before, while Jamie and Zoe had been only just barely passing as real people, they still were passing. And the cracks in the facade mostly came from her knowing vaguely how they were supposed to act and them not acting that way.

Right now, Jamie and Zoe were standing side by side. Their eyes were staring off into nothing and their blinking was too regular and they were barely breathing at all. They reminded Marion of dolls. Set aside because someone was done playing with them.

The Doctor ran up to them and tried shaking them both and calling out their names.

"You're being controlled!" he snapped his fingers once more, "Listen! LISTEN!" The Doctor turned away, rejected. "Oh, I don't understand why it's so difficult to snap them out of it!" The Doctor paced back to the skylight.

Marion glanced at the Doctor, and then glanced over at the Zoe and Jamie-shaped puppets standing side by side.

"If I'm being honest, I'm not quite sure that there's anything for them to snap out of. Those two might literally not be Zoe or Jamie. Just a couple of beings that look like them."

"Do you mean like the being at the base of the castle, the thing that looked like me but…"

"Wrong?"

"That is a good way of putting it yes?"

"No- well- I don't THINK so." Marion thought for a moment, "I don't think so. I don't exactly know so though."

Marion dug her hand into her purse and retrieved a long bit of rope and glanced down the window. She sent enough rope to hit the ground and then some, and then she rigged something with the prybar and the edge of the opening so that it wouldn't fall.

"You go down." Marion said, "I'll stay up here so that I can pull you up in a hurry if you need to."

"Yes, that should work."

"One moment!" the Doctor called down! And then he was descending. A few moments later, his feet touched the ground.

The Doctor sat down in front of the typewriter as Marion looked over what had already been written. There were the words "Just as they were sure that they had gotten away they were ambushed by a party of white robots and overpowered". Further up from there was a mess.

It looked like a paragraph had been written on a single line layer after layer until there was nothing more strip of garbled ink making whatever had been written there completely illegible. Marion thought that she saw an M at the start, but there was also a K and a R and P and a G and she could not fathom which had been written first or what letters might have continued afterward. The paper began to move and Marion looked over to see the Doctor starting to type.

"The enemy had been finally defeated by the-."

Wait. Shit.

"Hold it!" Marion shouted.

"What now?"

"What were you about to type?"

"Oh just that the enemy was defeated by the Doctor and Marion." The Doctor froze. He suddenly stood up and practically threw himself away from the chair. "Oh dear. I nearly fell for it, didn't I? Another two seconds and I would have turned myself into fiction! And you as well!" The Doctor wrung his hands together, "Oh dear."

Marion glanced at the keys. "Do you want to try again, but with the use of extremely passive voice? There are plenty of ways that you can describe things happening without mentioning who did it. Journalists do it all of the time!"

The Doctor shook his head, "I don't think that we should mess around with this typewriter. Unless you've got an idea for how exactly to word it-," Something out of the corner of the Doctor's eyes made him jump. Marion turned to see what he was looking at.

She wondered if the reason why she wasn't getting the same danger sense as she had been previously was because everything was fiction and not technically real. All fabrications. She had felt uneasy around the Master, but the Master was real, or at the very least, more real than anything else. There was a tin soldier standing there who's bayonet didn't look at all like a toy.

"Oh dear." the Doctor said slowly.

"You need to get up here."

As they moved, the soldier's neck twisted to follow them.

"Smile," said Marion, not taking her eyes off. "You're on camera."

The tin soldier started to move. Marion grabbed the rope and took a stance.

"You climb and I'll pull and you'll be up in a few moments."

"Yes," the Doctor replied, not taking his eyes off the tin soldier.

Marion felt the quick tugs from the Doctor grabbing on and then she started to pull.

Marion grabbed the Doctor by the wrist to pull him up the rest of the way and then once his feet were firmly on solid ground, she put the prybar and the rope back into her bag. Meanwhile, the Doctor started looking around the roof.

"Marion, where'd Zoe and Jamie go? They were just here! Weren't they?"

"You know-" Marion said, "I'm not quite sure."

"You sound rather calm about that."

"Doctor, I have no reason to believe that they're not fine."

"Well then where are they!"

"They had to make a departure!" Gulliver was back.

Again.

Marion was wondering if the man was as useless as he appeared or if it was a complex act designed to actively hinder her.

Gulliver came accompanied by a dozen or so children with the youngest of them appearing to be about six-ish and the oldest MAYBE thirteen or fourteen. She might've been older. She had one of those faces and outfits that made it difficult to tell.

"Why." the Doctor asked.

And then all of the children began speaking at once in a way that seemed tailor-made to give Marion a migraine. Judging by the way he covered his ears, Marion didn't imagine that the Doctor was fairing much better.

"Please, please. I must think." the Doctor cried, "There must be some way out of this. There's just got to be."

Marion brought her fingers to her lips and let out a loud, sharp whistle. The type of whistle that upon hearing it, anyone, especially a child, would be compelled to stop speaking for a moment, if only to hear what the whistler had whistled at them for.

"Yes?" said one child.

"What is it?" said another.

"Please lower your voices and don't speak over one another." she tried to sound as much like a character in an old book as she could, "It's rather impolite! You were raised better than that surely? What would your mothers say?" Marion wasn't sure exactly which book these children were from as nothing about their appearances narrowed them down to anything more than the fact they were likely from a children's book targeted towards children who were just old enough for books that only had a single picture or two per longly worded chapter. And were likely a part of a large group of children that went around being clever and finding treasure and solving problems.

She was hoping that whatever book they came from they had living parents.

Although maybe them not having living parents might work in her favor.

Marion sat down on the edge of the battlements near the Doctor, trying to tune out the sounds of the children continuing to shout at each other as they played ring around the rosie while screeching in the highest pitch imaginable. The actual plague might be less painful.

She needed to make a purpose of going through the TARDIS medicine cupboards until she could find some ibuprofen. She'd take acetaminophen. She had taken so much care to always have some in her bag. But the ONE time she was out she went on a walk she never got back from.

She heard the sound of someone sitting on the other side of her.

Gulliver.

"I take it you are not very fond of children."

"I don't mind children. I'm not fond of feeling like my skull is getting battered by shouting."

These particular kids however seemed insistent battering her skull. She wondered if that was intentional.

"Oh, that's just the sound of children making merry. A lovely noise."

Marion turned to look at the man with narrow eyes "I can say from experience that decapitation is less painful than the noises those children are making at this second,"

"Oh, you jest!"

Marion pulled down the collar of her sweater just enough for the line of discolored flesh to be visible. "I most certainly do not."

"Marion?"

The Doctor was staring at her, or more specifically her neck.

"Doctor, I told you about this didn't I?"

"I don't recall-" the Doctor's brow furrowed, "No. No wait. I think I remember. Just before Susan left. When you appeared in the TARDIS covered in blood."

"Yeah."

"You never told me exactly how that happened."

"You're right!" Marion replied, "I did not. You'll find out when you find out. Assuming that you ever remember this conversation."

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Well, it's pretty far off in your future."

"How far off?"

"A while."

"And how long is a while?"

Marion thought for a moment, "Centuries I suppose."

"Centuries?" the Doctor thought for a moment, "How, far exactly in my future have you been?"

"Have I answered that question before?"

"Not in any specific way."

"Well, I'm afraid I can't tell you yet?"

"Why not?"

"Because I already told you. A slightly older you."

"How much older?"

"Ask me the next time you see me. Honestly, shouldn't be too long from now. I think you guys had just left the Land of Fiction."

"So there's a way for us to leave."

"Well yeah,"

The Doctor looked up for a moment, "Ah! Look at that! There it is!"

Marion stood up and stared at it.

"Doctor…" Marion said slowly, "I'm not sure that that's right."

The Doctor, who was standing right in front of the "ship", turned sound and stared at her. "What do you mean you're not sure that that's right! It's the TARDIS, how could it be wrong?"

The children stopped playing their games and started to crowd around the TARDIS.

"Well, for one thing, it could be something not the TARDIS. Plus it's not like we could leave now, We haven't found Zoe or Jamie yet!"

As if summoned (and perhaps that had been what happened) Jamie and Zoe emerged from inside of the blue box.

"Doctor, are you ready?"

"The time has come!"

"The time?" the Doctor asked?

"To leave!"

The two grabbed a hold of the Doctor's arms in a way that might've seemed excited if not for the fact that Marion felt inherently distrustful of them. She glared.

"Doctor," Marion said, walking and trying to gently push back the children who now seemed to insist on being underfoot.

"But how did you find the TARDIS?" the Doctor asked.

"Oh, we'll explain all that later." Jamie said pushing open the TARDIS door.

How did the Doctor not notice how dark it was inside?

"Come on, we must get away," Zoe added.

"Yes! Yes of course we must."

"No no no no no!" Marion said firmly. She was starting to expect the children's placement was more purposeful than she had originally suspected. "You're going to explain right now exactly how you got away from the Master where you two found the TARDIS and how you managed to pilot it here and until you do that the Doctor isn't going anywhere."

Jamie stared at Marion for a moment and then two things happened more or less simultaneously.

Gulliver suddenly grabbed Marion's wrist and Jamie shoved the Doctor through the open TARDIS door and pulled the door shut.

"Get off!" Marion shoved her free elbow into Gulliver's stomach and then shoved herself forward towards the door.

"My lady."

"I'm not your anything!"

Marion pushed past Jamie and Zoe (or the beings that looked like Jamie and Zoe) as they giggled amongst themselves.

"Marion!"

Marion could feel the Doctor pounding on the door on the other side. The wood outside felt dead.

"I'm trying!" Marion called back.

Marion rummaged through her bag until she finally found the pocket where she had slipped the TARDIS key. She took the rounded bit of metal and held it between her fingers and started to feel around the front of the panel looking for the keyhole. But the whole box felt oddly flat. Marion frantically around the whole panel.

She lightly pushed herself away, and as she stepped back, something fell on her.

Behind her, "Jamie" and "Zoe" laughed louder.

"Fuck" Marion said under her breath.

"Marion!" the Doctor called.

When Marion stepped back, and the walls of the TARDIS started to fall apart as if they had been made of painted cardboard all along revealing a clear glass box about the size that the TARDIS appeared to be on the outside.

Marion swore again. The children crowded around the glass box to press their faces on the box and laugh while Marion slammed her fist into the side over and over again hoping to crack it.

And then, under her fist the box started to fade away with the Doctor fading away along with it.

"Marion! What's happen-"

And then the Doctor was gone. Marion stared blankly at the spot where he had been.

She brought her hand to her hair and tugged lightly as she tried to tune out the sound of high-pitched children's laughter.

"F-!" Marion cut herself off. And then she remembered that none of the children that she was standing around were real. "FUCK!" she shouted. "GODDAMNIT!"

And yeah, sure this was another case in which she knew that there was a high chance that the Doctor would be fine.

But still.

"Fuck!"

"Such vulgar language for such a young lady."

"Shut the hell your mouth." Marion let out the kind of nervous manic laugh."Such vulgar language for such a young lady." Marion repeated mockingly. Gulliver opened his mouth as if to speak "Shut up!" He closed it again.

The fake Zoe and the fake Jamie had already stopped acting as emotive as they had before and started to wander away.

She needed to go after the Doctor, or at the very least go after Zoe and Jamie (the real Zoe and Jamie) and then they could all find the Doctor together. She turned on her heel and ran back the way that she and the Doctor had originally come.

"Where is it. Where is it. Where is it. Where is- ah ha!" found the vent that she was pretty sure she and the Doctor climbed out of. It was located in the right place and unlike the other openings she could see, the panel had been shoved aside.

Marion stared down the vent for a while, and then she retrieved her rope. She tied a rope around the crowbar and braced it on the outer side of the vent and then she tossed the rope.

Marion moved to lower herself down the side, but she heard voices talking to each other just below which made her pause.

"Oh Jamie, look! A rope! We could use this to climb up!"

"I don't know Zoe, it could be a trap."

"The robots are right behind us!"

Marion ducked her head down the vent. "Zoe? Jamie?"

"Marion!" Zoe called up, "Is that you? With the rope?"

"Yes?" Marion called back down. Marion stood and looked back. The fake Jamie and the fake Zoe were gone. If Marion was remembering correctly, they had disappeared when the real Jamie and Zoe had. Then, now that she was thinking about it, hadn't the fake Jamie and Zoe just sort of turned into the real Jamie and Zoe all of a sudden? Oh but things could change couldn't they? Jamie and Zoe had ended up someplace other than the book after all.

"I'm me, are you you?" she finally said.

"What do you mean are we we? Of course, we're we!" Jamie shouted, "You ran the robots off and told us to run. And then we heard your screaming. And then when we went back to find you, the robots caught up to us again."

"You should have kept running."

"Marion-"

"Jamie! More robots are coming! Now is not the time for you too to argue. We need to get out of here.."

Marion thought for a moment, and it was only a moment. And in this moment, she considered the fact that for all she knew, these were fakes. And then she also considered the fact that the Doctor had already been taken, so the only person's safety she had to be worried about was here. If she helped them and they weren't the real Jamie and Zoe, what were they going to do? Kill her?

But if they were the real Jamie and Zoe and she didn't help her, then, well, they'd be the real Jamie and Zoe and she wouldn't have helped them.

Unacceptable.

"Grab on the rope," Marion called down. "You can climb, or I can pull you up, or both. Get up here!"

Marion remained vigilant for any signs of the Master's nonsense. Ropes fraying, random attacks. In the distance, she heard a steady creaky noise. Marion turned her head and saw a group of tin soldiers hobbling towards them.

They were slow, but they were steady.

"Marion, what's that?"

"Uh…" Marion repeated, "Bad news."

"What bad news?"

"Soldiers."

"Soldiers?"

"Yeah," Marion looked down. Jamie and Zoe looked close enough. "Right, I'm going to need to pull you up the rest of the way. We don't have time to climb, hold on."

Marion looped the rope around her foot and stomped down in order to hold the rope into face. She leaned down and grabbed the rope and started to pull. Marion pulled them up and grabbed Zoe by the arm as she pulled her up along with the rope and then, once her feet were securely on the ground, and Jamie managed to pull himself up the rest of the way.

"Marion! You're visible again!"

"Yes! I don't know how. And I'm not sure why. But now is not the time to worry about that now is it! Now is the time to move!"

"Right!" Marion said, she shoved Zoe and Jamie behind her (or she tried to shove Jamie behind her. He wasn't exactly willing and ended up more next to her than anything) and started to step backward pulling the rope with her as she left; pulling the strands the length of her arms and tossing them over her shoulder. Just so that it would be organized and that it wouldn't be tangled if she suddenly needed to access it quickly. She didn't think that she was going to need to scale down the side of the castle. And frankly, she didn't know that her rope was long enough on both sides to do that.

Still, it gave her something to do with her hands as she backed up.

And it was tricking trying to figure out which direction to back up. She was backing Jamie and Zoe up in the direction of Guillver and the children and God knows what else, but the thing was that she was standing in between Jamie and Zoe and a bunch of tin soldiers.

And like, more than most of the companions, Jamie was able to defend himself. He had fought in a war after all.

But still, she vaguely remembered him getting shot (that would be later today for him, wouldn't it) and so she knew for certain that he could not heal the way that she could.

Marion stopped when she realized that she was back in the area with Guilliver and the children and the soldiers were still approaching. Marion folded the rope and put it back into her bag, and not knowing what else to do, palmed her knife.

"Back, Zoe."

Marion saw movement out of the corner of her eye. Jamie was standing next to her both of them in front of Zoe.

"Can't you help us?" Zoe pleaded to Gulliver.

"We obey our creator. That is all that is expected of any character unless the Master bids us otherwise."

"Of course!" Marion replied. "God forbid you be good for something after all!"

"Marion, what do we do?"

"A-" Marion hummed, "A- so," Marion realized that the Doctor hadn't seen the Karkus. And that he in fact had only seen the weird stretched-out copy of himself. Because he had gone with her, and not Zoe.

Shit.

"Marion?"

"I'm thinking."

Mostly repetitive expletives, but that surely counted as thoughts.

And then Marion heard a loud noise from off to the side. The first of the robots collapsed, a small smoking hole where its heart might have been if it had been made of flesh and bone. Marion turned her head to see that Gulliver had stepped off to the side and was holding up a slightly smoking musket that he was very quickly reloading. Another loud wince-inducing boom. A second tin soldier fell to the ground with a matching hole.

Marion, gently pushed Zoe behind her and stared at the man.

"Huh…" Marion said after a moment. "Well what do you know?"

"Gulliver's shooting at the soldiers!"

The third, and the fourth and final soldiers were swiftly downed.

"It appears so, Zoe" Marion replied.

Zoe stepped forward and Marion quickly swung out an arm to stop her. "No, no, no dear. Wait a moment."

With the four of them fallen to the ground, Guilliver was silent for a moment. And then suddenly he turned on his heels and faced them aiming the gun.

"What's he doing?" cried Jamie. He shoved the two of them down behind one of the battlements. "Duck!"

The gun never fired. Instead, Marion heard the persistent clicking sound of an empty gun and didn't hear the sound of it being reloaded.

"Phew,"

"Marion, what's going on?"

"The Master forced the Doctor into his computer, and in doing so, gave the Doctor just enough control to fight back. So the two of them are basically having a battle of wits."

Marion suddenly heard the clanging of metal on metal, and she looked up to see two men fencing with each other. Their rapiers seemed to produce sparks.

"We need to go back the way you came." Marion quickly said. "Before one of them-" Marion gestures towards the two combatants, "Win and we have something more to deal with."

"Back the way we came? For what?"

"For the control room," Marion replied, "and the Doctor!"

Marion needed to get down there to make sure the coast was clear and she needed to get down there quickly. She fixed the rope against the edge of the vent and then didn't use it herself. She unrolled her sweater sleeves so that her arms were completely covered, and turned her head to look at Jamie and Zoe.

"Don't do what I'm about to do."

And then before Jamie or Zoe could ask her what she meant, Marion was hurtling down the ventilation using her sweater as a surface to provide just the right amount of friction to make her decent somewhat controlled, and only burning her skin a little bit.

The bookshelf that had been there before unfortunately was not. She fell an unexpected eight feet on her back, a sharp pain in her chest and the momentary feeling of something wet in the back of her throat. She leaned on her side, coughed pointlessly, and then carefully got to her feet lightly pressing against her sternum as she gingerly pressed her fingertips to her chest and breathed in and out carefully until she stopped feeling what was probably a broken rib.

Marion double-checked that the rope that she was following down was actually touching the floor, and once she was sure, she stepped backwards and looked upwards.

"Ok!" Marion called up. She looked around, and saw none of the white robots. "All clear!"

Jamie slid down the rope, quickly followed by Zoe and once the two of them were safely back in the library, Marion grabbed ahold of the rope and whipped it, sending her prybar and the rope that it was tied to falling. Marion stepped out of the way of the falling metal, and then retrieved it to tuck it back into her bag.

"Right." Marion said firmly, "To mainframe, we go!"

Navigating through the library maze to get back to the central room with the computer wasn't as difficult as you might imagine. Sure, the library was a maze, and climbing on top of the shelves (the ones that hadn't fallen over at least) barely made that anything better, but there was a specific direction that had a certain energy to it. It was difficult to put it into words. Keeping in that direction made it feel like she was getting closer and closer to something. Something heavy that did not want her there.

Naturally, she knew that she had to be there.

She imagined that the thing she was feeling as something that Jamie and Zoe felt too. Or at the very least, they trusted her when she said that she knew where she was going and what they ought to be doing because they didn't question her direction. They were back in the main room with the controller in barely more than a couple of minutes. The brain was flashing wildly and chiming with the bubbly sound of the advanced technological equivalent of clockwork.

She looked at it and she felt anger bubbling.

She could hear the Master's voice speaking in a robotic sort of way that showed that it was the computer speaking through her more than the original man himself.

"The Doctor is expendable. Expendable. He will be destroyed."

And then his tone switched into sounding more like himself.

"Oh. Oh, no, no. He's the only person. There's nobody else. The woman was unsuitable remember? I can't go on forever. Oh, please, please give me another chance."

"You have failed. The Master Brain must be protected against overloading. Robot force will deal with him."

"Change robot weapon to destructor beam."

"Remove him!" the computer ordered.

"Oh. Oh my goodness. As the White Robots advanced on the Doc-" the Doctor cut himself off moments before Marion had to, "No, I can't say that. I can't say that."

The computer was apparently real enough that intense pressure was forming in her chest. Marion stared at the brain.

She imagined herself grabbing ahold of the panels and tearing them away. Gripping ahold of the wires that made it up and tearing them out like ripping hair. Taking what was left and crushing it under her fists.

"Marion?" Jamie asked, "What do we do?"

Marion was shaken out of her imagining and absentmindedly rubbed at her chest as she spoke. It didn't help much, but the motion did make her feel a little bit better.

"I'll run a distraction," she said quickly, "and then why don't you just go over there and press random buttons."

"What good'll that do!"

Zoe nodded, and grabbed Jamie's shoulder. "The computer, it must control everything here, the robots included. And the Master said it must be protected against overloading."

"You do that." Marion nodded. She reached into her bag and pulled out the mallet and held it behind her back. And then she stood up and causally walked out from behind the desk she had been crouched behind and very cheerfully stepped forward with her hands behind her.

"It is a pity that we have to destroy such an intelligent mind as yours, Doctor, but you leave us no-"

"Hello!" Marion said loudly interrupting the order with a wave. Jamie and Zoe crept around the edge and towards the main computer. "Doctor!" She said, nodding towards the Doctor. "You." She said, nodding towards the other man.

"Marion!" the Doctor shouted.

"Ah," the man's voice sounded robotic. Clearly he wasn't in control.

"Are you here to witness the Doctor's demise? Are you here to offer to take his place?"

"Oh. No and No." Marion shook her head. "Plus I've been told I was unsuitable. No." Marion stepped closer until she was standing on the other side of the table close enough that if she leaned forward she could headbutt him. "I was curious about this machine of yours. There was something really important I wanted to ask."

"And what on earth would that be?"

"Is this stuff important?" And with that Marion slammed the mallet down on the table. She wasn't sure what she hit, but there was a dent and something was sparking. At the same time, she heard the low clack from Jamie and Zoe hitting random buttons. Marion slammed down the mallet again, a cackling laugh emerged from her throat. And she could hear the sound of the robot's computer getting louder and louder and she could feel the heat from where she stood. Not a dangerous heat that made her worry that it might explode, mind you. But the heat of a computer that's running more things than it should.

"Stop this!" the computer ordered.

"Zoe, let's get out of here and... Duck!"

The robots froze in place. The Doctor stared at them for a moment, and then backed away slowly, and then ran towards Marion and the console. The Doctor ran towards the panel where the Master, removed the wires from his forehead then pulled them both down. Marion launched herself over the landing on her hands in a roll. She tucked the hammer back into her bag. She crouched down and covered her ears as the robots fired without end at the computer's control panel. Things started to explode.

"Oh my goodness!" the Doctor exclaimed.

"Shouldn't we get out of here?" Zoe asked as she and Jamie ran over to them.

"Yes! We should! Absolutely!"

The Doctor tossed one of the fallen man's arms over his shoulder, and Marion grabbed ahold of his other arm.

"What do you want to bring him for?"

"Jamie" Marion said firmly. "It's fine, don't worry about it. All five of us need to get out. So let's get out."

The sounds of the white robot's explosions boomed in the distance as they ran through the "exit" and emerged back into the odd blackness.

Marion kept her eyes focused on her hands lest they disappear. The fact that she was in a dark room while her own self was completely visible made her feel uneasy. She was just thankful that she wasn't alone. The place looked empty and black with the exception of faint wisps of smoke. The smoke wisped around in a way that showed what were clearly walls and doors, and so the five of them made sure to stick together, as the only thing easier to get lost inside of than a maze is a maze where you can't see the walls or through them.

"I don't see why we had to bring him," Jamie remarked as the man slowly steadied himself without needing Marion for the Doctor's help. "He's the one that's caused all this trouble."

"Jamie!" Marion said firmly, "It's fine. Don't worry about it. I don't think he remembers any of it anyway."

"And that makes it alright then?"

"It's complicated."

The man in question started to blink slowly.

"Are you all right, sir?" the Doctor asked him carefully.

"I'm not altogether sure where I am. Is this the office of the Ensign magazine?"

"He's fine," Marion said, lightly patting him on the shoulder.

"You were kidnapped," the Doctor explained "Just like we were. They've been using your mind."

"Well, what happens to us now?" Zoe asked.

"That depends how efficient the White Robots are. Their last order was to destroy. Let's just hope they're destroying one another."

"Well, what about the Karkus and Gulliver and all our friends out there?"

Friends was a bit of a stretch. But maybe they had had better interactions than she had. "They're mainly made up of ideas, stories. You can't kill them in a way that matters. They'll be fine."

"Well, we'll just have to hope that the destruction of the computer returns us all to reality. And you, my dear sir."

"Oh, do you mean I'm going home?" the man asked.

"Yeah," Marion said. She held out a hand and nearly missed pumping nose first into a wall. She turned her head and the monotone black was broken up by a huge splash of blue.

Marion spun the key on her finger and slid it into the ship. The door hummed cheerfully under her fingertips and then the door cracked open.

"Ah HA!" Marion laughed. "What is it?" the Doctor asked, "Marion, where are you?"

"Oh dear, is she invisible again?"

"Oh Marion!" Zoe exclaimed, "You found the TARDIS?"

"Yup! "Doctor. Thi-" Then she took another step, and as if something had suddenly grabbed her leg she tripped forward.

Marion supposed THAT was why they had been so worried.

Next Chapter: Whoops! Uh Oh. Uh- uh oh

The Doctor: Marion are you feeling alright?

Marion, standing over the shredded remains of a robot with no real memory of how she got there: Yeah. Yeah? Yeah!

Hi gamers. For reason in particular, I think that if you haven't you should make it so you get alerts for the collection of side stories in time for Halloween 2024. And if it's past Halloween 2024, I think you should look at chapter 8 (and possibly the chapters after that).