Time Storm

Sara scooped up the wine cork and corkscrew without breaking stride, because they looked like they'd perhaps prove useful in time, and shoved them in her pockets before taking the lighter from the Bachelor.

"I cannot possibly make a lighter shoot fire. Do you have a- I don't know, anything that could shoot water?" she asked. If she had to, a bottle with a hole in it would work, but it was more risky.

The Bachelor rummaged around in his pockets- the man seemed to have a dozen of them at least, and finally said, "Aha!" and pulled out a very obnoxiously neon green water gun.

“Like this?” he asked and Sara took it and shoved it into the pocket with the wine cork and corkscrew. The lighter she stuck in a back pocket, where nothing would hopefully bump it and cause it to light and burn her. She'd deal with all that later, when they weren't running around.

“So we’re chasing something that eats people, but it’ll be alright because your older brother… just happens to be able to fix this sort of thing? Sorry, but it’s a giant monster that eats people. How can he possibly just fix that?” Sara asked as kept pace with the others.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying! He does this sort of thing all the time,” the Bachelor replied, sounding as if he was surprised that Sara didn’t somehow already know this. They came to a t-shaped turn in the hall and everyone stopped to listen for the retreating sounds of the monster and the man who’d attacked him.

“Left. Turn left,” Sara said after a split second as a clanging and clattering came from down the hall to the left. It was unnecessary to say, really, because as soon as the sound had reached them, everyone had turned and the Doctor had run off that direction. They all followed.

The clanking and clattering soon revealed itself to be a ceiling grate hanging on its hinges. The monster and his assailant had disappeared, presumably up the grate, and they all stood and looked up at it and paused to think for a collective moment. The armed guards, or whatever they were, were at least all aiming their guns at the vent. The Doctor was staring up at it contemplatively, and the Bachelor was glancing from his brother to the vent with something like confusion.

“So uh… somebody gonna go after that guy? Or is he some kind of galactic big game hunter who’ll smother the life right outta that thing with his bare hands?” Sara asked, and the Bachelor shrugged uncertainly, the only one to give any immediate indication that he’d heard what Sara was saying.

When Nikki looked up from helping the wounded, she realised that both the Doctor and Jamie were gone. She spun around, slightly panicked, but thankfully the guards were more interested in the wounded than in keeping an eye on her.

What now?

Staying here didn’t feel like a good idea. The better choice was to follow the Doctor, not that she knew him much better, but he seemed nicer than the scientists and their guards. But there was no scene in running blindly after them. Nikki had no idea where they were for starters. As she looked around the lab she had an idea.

There was a small palm computer, actually a number of them, scattered around the labs. She sifted through them until she found one that was linked to the security system. A few moments later, she had access to the bases security scanners. They might not track down the creature, but they could help her find the Doctor and Jamie.

Of all the reading she was getting, two were interesting. There was a single blip in the ventilation system, and a group of three down a couple of corridors not far away. She followed the group, it was the most likely place.

“After him? We don’t even know where Jamie is now!” Nikki heard someone say as she caught up with the group. She saw the Doctor, the trouser-less man, and a young woman. They were staring at a smashed vent. That explained the vent blip.

“Jamie is 20 meters ahead and one corridor over,” Nikki spoke up. They spun round to face Nikki. She waved the small palm computer at them, smiled, then tried to find something else to look at as the kept staring at her. Her shoes looked interesting.

Jamie had plowed on after the beastie, into a wee hole in the wall he was surprised it could even fit through. It bled a sort of dark green, and Jamie followed this trail. It would have been nice to have collected one of those laser guns, see what those could do, but the Doctor would probably only be cross with him and make him give it back so it was hardly any use, now, was it?

Jamie wasn't as fast on all fours as the creature was, so he heard it getting far, far ahead of him. Luckily, though, he had the blood trail to follow.

Or...so he thought.

"Em," he said, as the trail ran out at a crossroads. His voice echoed a bit too loudly for his comfort, and he froze, straining to listen, but he caught no sign of the beastie.

And it was definitely beginning to get a bit spooky in here.

Still. It wouldn't hurt to have a poke round. It probably kept charging ahead--that's what Jamie would do, and that way, anyway, he'd be sure not to get lost. So. Forward!

It seemed a very long time, of creeping slowly, silently along, that Jamie began to hear the snuffling and shifting of an animal up ahead. He slowed his pace, straining to see up ahead of him in the near-dark, crawling ever closer on hands and knees until he was sure he'd gone too far and it definitely wasn't safe and he should go back before--

Without warning, a tunnel opened up beside him, and a rush of air with it. That wasn't the problem, though. Various winds and twists and extra pipes often came out of this main vent, opening up all around him on either side. No, that didn't concern him.

What concerned him was the hot, rank breath that huffed against him.

Jamie turned his head slowly, oh, so slowly, hardly moving, hardly daring to breathe. The monster was there, not five feet from Jamie, well within clawing range, he reckoned. It's eyes were shut, though, and it was curled up, breathing heavily. Not doing well, but certainly not doing badly enough that Jamie felt safe with the idea of finishing it off with a fruit-knife! In fact, it really seemed to be--

Healing? Right before his very eyes? Maybe it was a trick of the--no! That wound, it just closed right up! Like a blinking eye!

Jamie gasped in surprise and alarm.

The beastie opened its eye.

Jamie darted back just as a claw struck out, and the beastie roared ferociously to come up empty handed. Jamie, too, cried out, in alarm, and staggered back. He darted down a side-tunnel as the beastie rushed past, heedless. Jamie was just stumbling back, further, further, and the tunnel grew brighter, brighter, and just as he realized the floor was beginning to wobble underneath him, it actually gave out underneath him.

Jamie fell only a few feet before he smacked onto hard floor flat on his back amidst a pile of rubble.

"Jamie?!"

Jamie looked up, blinking through the dust, at the Doctor, Nikki, and two new companions--a man wearing very revealing breeches and a tall girl with black hair.

"Ye shoulda seen the one what got away!" Jamie said cheerfully.

"Not a galactic big game hunter, then," Sara commented calmly as a man wearing a... surely that was not a skirt, but some other manner of clothing... fell right out of the ceiling and landed in front of them, speaking in that nearly incomprehensible accent again. He was not exactly unattractive, especially grinning like a fool the way he was, her brain insisted on noting, and she about rolled her eyes at herself. His name was Jamie, apparently, if the Doctor's astonished exclamation was anything to go by. Sara looked down at him a little suspiciously, if for no other reason than she couldn't quite tell what he was saying, plus he'd just fallen out of a ceiling. Still, he seemed nice enough, and no one else seemed at all bothered by him. She shrugged, apparently having concluded that he was not a suspect a character as she was inclined to think of any new person. Also, there were more important things to worry about. Monsters, for example.

There was no sign of the monster, Sara realized as she listened for the approaching sounds of large-creature-in-ceiling. She assumed it wasn't dead, given the lack of blood on Jamie, and the fact that he'd just said it'd gotten away.

"It got away?" she asked, "Where'd it get away to? And were you really gonna fight that thing with a... butterknife, or whatever that is?"

"A butterknife?" Jamie looked at the wee instrument clutched in his hand. "Och, no, this wouldnae harm a fly, much less that great beastie. Leastwise I only really meant tae follow it back to it's lair..."

"Don't be ridiculous, Jamie, a thing such as this, taken as it was out of its own time and space, wouldn't have a 'lair'," the Doctor scolded, helping Jamie to his feet.

"And something else," Jamie continued--he knew when to simply ignore the Doctor, for his own sake-- "it's hardly damaged. I think it was fair wounded when it ran off, but I-I think it can heal itself." The Doctor was frowning now, so Jamie went on. "Aye, it sort of, the wounds just closed up, before ma very eyes! Strange. At any rate, we're going tae need weapons a fair sight bigger than what we've got tae reckon wi' that thing again...Doctor?" Jame also knew when not to ignore the Doctor.

"Yes, and a higher metabolic rate would explain why it's constantly hunting..." the Doctor was murmuring.

"Eh?" Jamie said.

"Hm?" the Doctor replied. "Oh, nothing. At least, nothing we can help. So! Come along now, everyone been introduced, Jamie, Sara, Bachelor, and Nikki, keep up, we've got a beastie to find, a timeline to right, a research facility to save, and an experiment to stop, who's coming?" the Doctor rambled on, leading the way back down the corridor they had come.

Nikki was extremely glad for Jamie’s impromptu arrival. Mainly because it meant everyone else had stopped staring at her. As the Doctor headed off everyone hurried behind, but on the way the Doctor slowed his pace until he was level with the Bachelor.

“Bachelor? I… How did you…? Nevermind, it’s good to see you again.” For an instant it seemed to Nikki that the Doctor’s comical persona vanished, but them the moment past and they were hurrying down the corridor again. They reached the lab doors and the Doctor thrust both open, making as grand an entrance as possible.

The lab was empty. It was the wrong lab.

Almost without breaking his stride the Doctor spun back into the corridor and to the original lab, repeating the performance with the doors.

“Ok everyone. You’ve got less than twenty two hours to shut down these experiments. Maybe even less than two, I haven’t had a chance to properly examine them yet. Otherwise they’ll start tearing Time apart at the seams. Oh stop look at me like that! You’ve already seen some of the effects, haven’t you? Time running at different speeds through the base? People occasionally frozen in place?”

Almost all the personnel, at least those who were conscious, shifted uncomfortably. Most cast glances towards the pile of dust and the science uniform that no one had cleaned up yet. It took Nikki a few moments to realise just what it had once been.

“We should get out of here. Now!”

“And how do you plan to do that? I don’t think they’re going to let us leave,” Nikki replied to the voice in her head.

“Maybe it would have been better to let the Cybermen capture us?”

“Don’t you ever say that again,” Nikki hissed.

“You’d rather get turned into a little heap of powder?”

“I’d rather not die at all, thank you very much.”

“So where does the monster fit into this?” asked Kemble, sitting up painfully from the surgical bed.

“Ah yes, the monster. Known as a Nihill on its home planet, which almost literally translates as ‘heatless one’. Thing is, usually they only hunt and kill once a week, which is about 5 and a quarter days elsewhere. This one’s particularly hungry because of how it arrived here.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Nikki piped up.

“Everything, especially its behaviour. The time portal affected its metabolism, effectively speeding it up. Which means it’s constantly hungry. Very, very hungry.” A sudden thought occurred to the Doctor and he spun round on the spot, addressing his companions.

“You’ve all passed through the same kind of portals. Any of you feeling unusually hungry? Or unusually unhungry?”

Jamie's eyes grew wide and rubbed his stomach. "Well, I'm hungry!" he said anxiously. The Bachelor nodded--he could get used to that guy!

"Not very hungry, but I am feeling a bit thirsty," the Bachelor admitted, elbowing Sara playfully in the ribs. "I forsee a couple of beers in our near future."

Sara raised her eyebrows. "How do you know there's beer here?"

The Bachelor raised his eyebrows as well. "Its a *research* facility! Of *course* there's going to be beer somewhere!"

"They haven't started importing beer onto Gamma Sigma yet, Bach," the Doctor said. He sounded distracted.

"That's not right," the Bachelor replied. "You must be thinking of Gamma Delta!"

"Now, little brother, would I get a fact like that wrong in front of you?"

"But they send beer off with all their research expeditions!" the Bachelor insisted. "I mean--I may not be right about some things--a lot of things--but I do know my galactic beverageology!"

"Bever--what??" Sara said, mystified.

"You know, the study of beverages." He scratched his scruffy beard. "To take a leaf from your book, big brother, 'Something's very wrong.'"

"The time portals may very well be altering the galaxy's temporo endothelial sublayer."

"Eh?" Jamie asked.

"Er--the fine-tuning of the galaxy. Like a photograph that's a little out of focus, or a pair of fraying trousers. Nothing to worry about."

"Aye, but what if it keeps going on like this?" Jamie asked.

The Doctor glanced at the Bachelor. "Well, it would destroy the very definition of time and space itself, distorting the fabric of reality beyond repair. Wouldn't you agree, Bach?"

The Bachelor looked up. "Oh--sorry, I got distracted once you mentioned trousers. They came across a locker in the hallway which the Bachelor thought looked like it might have clothes in it, and he threw it open.

"Sweet! Astronaut pants!" the Bachelor pulled them out. "*Real* ones!" He quickly pulled them on excitedly. "What do you think?"

"I think you're going to make the time warp worse," the Doctor said uncertainly.

"Hey! At least I'm not wearing a bow tie!"

"Bow ties are cool!" the Doctor said heatedly.

"Yeah, for old men!"

"Like you would know, frat boy!"

"Hipster!"

"BOYS!"

The Doctor and the Bachelor turned as Sara shouted at them. She glared hard at them, her hands on her hips. "Would you please stop bickering like--like siblings and explain what you mean by destroying the fabric of reality?"

“What do I mean? Take a look around, look at where we are.”

“The Gamma Sigma station.”

“I meant more specifically,” replied the Doctor,

“A corridor, what does it look like?” Sara replied exasperated. Then realisation slowly dawned on the group, that something had gone badly wrong.

“Wait! A second ago we were talking to the scientists in the lab! Why are we now walking towards the lab where we were?” Nikki blurted out.

“How did that happen?” exclaimed Sara.

“That’s what I mean by destroying the fabric of reality,” The Doctor spoke, his voice grave. “Things are much worse than I thought.”

Jamie looked down both corridors, somehow expecting them to look the same, or else to catch sight of the back of his own head or something, but they appeared to be safe for now. He grasped absently at the Doctor's coat just in case.

"So what do we do now?" Jamie asked, just as his favorite person rounded a corner.

"There they are!" Kemble shouted. The guards rushed toward them, and on instinct Jamie took a defensive stance, but their weapons were not raised. "We've been looking everywhere for you!" Kemble continued, sounding now more like they were bosom companions than guards and prisoners.

"Yes, I suppose you've got lost, too?" the Doctor said, in his patient coaxing-a-confession-out-of-a-small-child-who's-been-in-the-Christmas-pudding way.

"Yeah. It's insane around here!" Kemble gestured wildly. "I'm sorry for misjudging you. We're on our way to central control, if we can bloody find the place. I think you'd better come along," he added, though less forcefully than he had been before.

Jamie had moved back, letting the grown-ups talk, when he felt a nudge at his elbow. He turned to find a guard--helmeted, they all looked the same to Jamie--offering up his dirk and sgian dubh, hilt-first.

"Och, thanks!" Jamie grinned broadly, returning the knives to their proper place.

"And I thought you might like one of these." The guard held up one of the rifles: a fallen guard's, perhaps? There were certainly fewer of the men about after the battle with the beastie.

Jamie nodded, taking the weapon reverently and carefully. He slung the strap around his shoulder and kept the barrel pointed down. "I'll just have tae hope the Doctor disnae notice," Jamie joked, jogging the man in the arm.

"Huh?"

Oh, of course. He didn't know the Doctor like Jamie did.

"Em...never mind."

“Strange, I thought it would much harder than this.” Kemble looked round the communications room. They had arrived with no strange occurrences on the way. Wilson and Roberts were waiting for them, as well as a couple of other technicians. There was no sign of Dr Smith.

“The further away from the main laboratory we get the less the effect becomes,” The Doctor replied. “Which means we have some good news!” The Doctors face broke into a goofy grin.

“How can any of this be good news?” asked Sara.

“Because the effects is still localised in a small area. Big distortions, small radius. It means we still have a chance. We just need to get back to the lab.”

“We can’t get to the labs. Every time we try we end up back where we started,” interjected Wilson.

“Hmm, I could use my TARDIS to stabilize the distortions so we can get close but it’s parked to close to the lab to reach. Bach, where did you leave your TARDIS?” The Doctor asked.

“Inside the lab,” The Bachelor replied in an amused tone that didn’t quite suit the situation.

“Ok, new plan. Once I think of one.” The Doctor started pacing but had barely gone a few steps when a klaxon blared noisily.

“It’s the rocket alert. Somebody’s trying to fire it up without the access codes. If they don’t have the codes to release the docking clamps they’ll blow up themselves and half the station.” There was a pause as everyone looked at each other, then a sudden whirl of activity as people rushed into action. Some hurried to radios, some to security monitors. When there was no relpy on the radio, there was a scramble to the main door to try and reach the rocket. Followed by a pile-up when the door refused to open. At the front of the rush, The Doctor started hammering on the open button, but nothing happened.

“Someone must have triggered a lockdown. What idiot pulled that stunt?” exclaimed Kemble with an infuriated growl.

“I did,” spoke a harsh voice from the other doorway. Williams strode into the room, a harsh glare on her face. “So you thought you’d get the rocket prepped and flee did you? Well that’s not going to happen. No one is leaving this facility until the experiments are completed. So call Holden and tell him to shut off the rocket, because none of you are going to meet him there.”

Holden’s voice thundered over the radio. “I’m not shutting down. I’m going to leave this damn outpost before I end up dead like everyone else.”

“You’re going to die unless you power down,” protested Wilson.

“No, I’m going to get away!” Holden blurted out, ignoring Wilsons pleas.

“Tell him to shut down,” interjected Williams as she pulled out a gun, “or I start shooting the newcomers.”

“What will that accomplish?”

“Because they are the ones who’ve been sabotaging this project. And the ones who have been behind the murders.”

“They aren’t saboteurs. They’re as trapped here as we are,” pointed out Roberts.

“Of course they are trapped here. I stopped their accomplice in the rocket.” Williams’ voice rang with certitude.

“You’re crazy!” exclaimed Wilson.

“No. I just haven’t been taken in by them. Now tell Holden the game is up and to power down, or I start shooting his accomplices.”

CRASH!

Williams slumped to the floor. Behind her Nikki through down the chair. Unlike the others, Nikki hadn’t rushed to the door, and had been out of Williams’ sight. While most of the observers looked shocked, The Doctor had a disappointed look on his face. But Nikki wasn’t paying attention to them.

“You just knocked her out? With a chair?” shrieked the AI.

“Yes,” replied Nikki matter-of-factly.

“That’s just gonna get us in trouble. What did you do that for?”

“I didn’t hear you come up with any better suggestions,” replied Nikki.

“I’ll save the lecture for later,” The Doctor cut across Nikki’s monolog, “because right now we really need to stop that rocket. Without the access codes we either need to power the rocket down, or release the docking clamps manually.”

The Doctor looked round, sizing up his companions.

“Bach,” once again the pained expression appeared momentarily on the Doctors face, “There’s no way I’m letting you out of my sight. We’re going to get to that rocket. Sara, you look technically minded, come with us, we might need some help. Jamie, take Nikki with you and release the docking clamps. Shouldn’t be too difficult, just some levers.”

“But the doors are still locked,” pointed out Nikki.

“Ah, yes. The doors. I assume our friends passcodes will work on most of the doors, even if they can’t lift the lockdown.”

Was everyone on this bloody boat daft? Including the Doctor?

Oh, wait, that's right: yes...

But at least now Jamie had direction (sort of), and it included him not dying (probably), and that was good enough (for now).

He took Nikki's hand and smiled at her, for she looked a little nervous. "Nice shot with the chair!" he whispered as the others sorted themselves out. Then he lowered his voice further. "You reckon ye ken what these wee 'docking clamps' look like? Just point me in the right direction, we can take care of this, two shakes. Yeah?"

She frowned, but nodded.

"Problem with the Doctor is," he went on, his voice still lowered, but ultimately loud enough, "is that when he says he's got a 'simple' plan, it's usually anything but."

"I heard that," the Doctor snapped.

"Aye, I wanted ye to!" Jamie winked at the Doctor and together, he and Nikki took off down a corridor.

“What do you mean ‘I’m not letting you out of my sight’?” The Bachelor said, quite hurt. “I can look after myself—“

The Doctor rolled his eyes. “Oh, of course I meant I need you to protect me. Now come on!”

They ran from door to door, with the Doctor opening each one with a passcode as they got to it. Blast doors disappeared before them as they neared the rocket. There was still one access ramp attached to the rocket, the one that Holden had used to board. But the passcode wouldn’t open the door. They could see Holden through the little glass window, and though they shouted at the tops of their lungs to get his attention, he either could not or would not hear them.

“We’ll have to hack the rocket’s main computer,” The Doctor said. He, to whom common sense and the obvious were foreign concepts, fumbled unsuccessfully with the control panel cover. Typical time lord, The Bachelor thought to himself—a brain the size of a planet, and he couldn’t remove the battery from a mobile phone….

“I got this,” the Bachelor said, grinning as he shoved his brother out of the way. For the Bachelor, who had played more video games and used more remote controls than he was willing to admit, removing the control panel cover was easy. What met him on the other side was a little more unfamiliar—a skeleton circuit board with switches, buttons, lights and gauges, set on a veritable rat’s nest of multi-colored wires. The Doctor and Sara leered intently over his shoulders.

“Oh, it’s just a standard photonic conduit interface,” the Bachelor said, thinking that sounded pretty technical. He tried to ignore the look that he knew the Doctor and Sara were making behind his back. “Right.” He majored in electrical engineering, anyway. Well, took a class in it, anyway. Well, went to a lecture, anyway. Well, heard someone talk about it while they were drunk, anyway.

Still! This couldn’t be too hard.

He flipped a switch and pulled out a red wire. The thing sparked and half of the buttons went out. Sara sighed dramatically behind him. Not willing to back down, he pulled another wire, but that only succeeded in making the rocket’s siren turn on. “Emm….”

“Oh, for goodness sake! Let me do it.” Sara ducked under his arms and jabbed him in the solar plexus with her elbow, sending him stumbling back. “Boys and their toys. Give me some room! Quick, Doctor—how long is the vector for the baryon flow?”

The Bachelor stood back, rubbing his solar plexus with a grin on his face. “Don’t worry, Sara, it’s not the length of the vector that counts—“

“Bach, don’t say it.” the Doctor warned.

“It’s not the length of the vector—“

“BACH.”

“It’s not the length of the vector—It’s how you apply the force.”

Sara blushed, the Doctor facepalmed. The Bachelor just grinned.

Apparently, it was the most amusing thing in the world that Sara turned bright red, because the Bachelor’s grin turned into a laugh when Sara turned back to the control panel fell across her face.

“Ha! You’re bright red!” he laughed, and she glared at him to absolutely no effect.

“It happens all the time,” she grumbled as she picked apart wires, trying to understand what exactly was going on here. All of the labels on the circuit board were in shorthand, which would have been fine if she’d known exactly what the shorthand stood for. It took her precious moments to translate them in her head, although once she’d done that…

“Oh, I get it,” she said suddenly, surprising the Bachelor and the Doctor both, who she thought had been bickering again while she concentrated on the circuit board.

“You can fix it?” the Doctor asked, looking over her shoulder. Sara nodded, unplugged two wires, and a stillness fell over the area around the control panel, as if a background noise previously unnoticed had suddenly stopped.

“What was that?” the Bachelor asked, looking around to see if he could find the source of the non-sound.

“Those were the cooling fans for the rocket engine. I shut it down, so the fans went off,” she said, and then glanced a little uncertainly at the control panel. Why was the fuel gauge still moving? She checked the wires again- the rocket was certainly off, she was absolutely certain. Besides, if it hadn’t been, they’d already have felt a temperature change as uncooled engines rapidly overheated. The Bachelor, looking at the board to see if he could tell what Sara had done, tapped the gauge with a finger.

“If it’s off, why is that still moving?” he asked. Sara made a frustrated noise and crouched down on the floor to get a look under the access door to the engines. There was a spreading puddle, already flowing sluggishly in the direction of the rocket’s cockpit, where Holden was still resolutely ignoring everything going on outside.

“Because the rocket fuel is leaking out,” Sara said grimly. That rocket fuel gave off deadly fumes, practically unnoticeable in odor until too late to do anything about it. And Holden wasn’t paying attention.

“Crap, crap, crap,” Sara said, looking frantically around. She could easily get into the little access room to the leaking fuel, and she could easily hold her breath long enough to get a look at what was going on and try to fix it, but it was probably freezing in there, beyond freezing. She needed a jacket, at least, and preferably insulated pants to pull on over her own clothes. The multiple layers would at least keep her from instant hypothermia, if she wasn’t in there too long.

“Doctor, I need your jacket,” she said, and he started shrugging out of it without asking why, because she was clearly all in a tizzy about something, and she was the one who knew about rockets, here. Then she turned to the Bachelor, who was still wearing those horrible insulated space pants he’d picked up to wear over the equally horrible boxers he’d been wearing.

“And I need those pants,” she said, regretting the words even before she’d said them. He started to say something clever about Sara just trying to get him out of his pants, and she and the Doctor both glared at him.

“I’m not kidding, and shut up. Please,” Sara said. Perhaps realizing that now was not the time for levity, the Bachelor kicked the pants off and handed them over, and stood there looking ridiculous in his palm tree boxers, again.

“Try and get his attention while I fix this,” Sara said, and jumped down the stairs to the access door, and disappeared into the frigid cold of the engine room. Holding her breath, she went straight to the fuel tank, and saw a gash through it. Not even the fix-all, shiny silver tape stored on one of the shelves in the little room could fix that. And if there was the slightest spark…

She practically threw herself out of the room, remembering the lighter in her pocket. As she came hurtling up the stairs, she crashed right into the Doctor, and would have knocked him down if the Bachelor hadn’t grabbed them both and steadied them.

“There’s no way to fix it, the tank is damaged,” she said, and looked to see if Holden had yet been made to leave the rocket. He had not. They shouted, they banged on the door, they turned the alarm on the rocket back on, on purpose this time, all to no avail. They all watched, unable to do a single thing, as he started coughing, and then realized what was happening and tried to stumble to his own control panel. He went down as he stood from the chair he’d been sitting in.

“Dammit,” Sara said, and the Doctor gave the door to the rocket one last kick, as if that would make it open. It didn’t. They stood there and all stared at each other for a minute, Sara perhaps looking a little more shocked for the realization that she’d seen more people die today than she had in her whole life (and she knew that, as soon as she thought it, though she wasn’t sure how she knew it).

“We have to find another way out of here,” the Doctor said, finally, with a last regretful look at the rocket and the body inside it. The Bachelor opened his mouth to say something, but he was cut off by a scream from well off down the hall, from the direction somewhere near the others had gone. They all jumped and looked that direction, and without a word, the Doctor ran off. He seemed to do that a lot. Both the Bachelor and Sara scrambled after him.

Nikki felt, there was no other word for it, awkward. She wasn’t used to anyone taking her hand like that, it was a little uncomfortable. Nevertheless, she didn’t pull her hand away.

Then Professor Roberts spoke up.

“I’ll come with you. You need my passcode to get through the doors.” Nikki was relieved that someone else was coming, but a little part of her flashed with annoyance at the idea.

They moved through the base altering between running through corridors and catching their breath as Roberts opened the doors. Finally, they reach a large round room around the base of the rocket.

“The docking clamps should be behind that panel.”

“We better not stay here, if that rocket starts to take off…” Nikki left the sentence unfinished. As Jamie pulled the panel off the wall, Nikki went over to an expanding pool on the floor. She knelt down to examine it and Jamie walked over to join her.

“Fuel from the rocket!” Nikki exclaimed. “We really don’t want to hang around now. The fumes could kill us, never mind the risk of explosion.”

“Ok, let’s see…” mumbled Professor Roberts from inside the open panel.

There was a sudden thump and the sound of someone clattering to the floor. Both Nikki and Jamie spun round to see Dr Smith standing over the unconscious body of Professor Roberts, a length of pipe in his hands.

“No, no, no,” he murmured, “We must not escape. We must all face punishment for what we have done.”

As Smith advanced Nikki heard an intense beeping coming from her pocket. The pocket where she had put the computer linked to the motion sensors.

Jamie raised his hands in a sign of peace at the deranged Smith, until he remembered, with no little embarrassment, that he was holding a gun.

Which was grand, because now he could give the lunatic a piece of his mind instead of pretending to be his friend long enough to disarm him, which had been his first plan.

"Drop it, ye daftie," Jamie said, swinging the gun around and pointing it at Smith. "I dinna ken what ye're on about, but--"

The beastie took them all by surprise. Jamie cried out as the thing rushed past him like a freight train, slamming into Smith and the console and proceeding to devour the hapless madman, leaving a bloody smear across the wall. It swallowed him in two or three huge gulps, and then turned a hungry eye on Jamie and Nikki.

"Back for more, are ye?" Jamie taunted, raising the gun up and flicking the safety off without losing eye contact with it. The beastie seemed to struggle with this a moment--presumably not only Jamie remembered their last encounter--sizing him up in comparison to its hunger.

But its hunger won out, and it lunged forward. One shot connected, but the second went wild, and then it was bowling Jamie over and launching itself past him at--

"Nikki!"

Nikki tried to tear her eyes away from the sight of Smith being devoured, but she couldn’t. There were two things she wanted desperately to do; run and throw up. But she wasn’t able to do either. Suddenly she was aware of the creature coming straight at her, claws outstretched.

Nikki raised her arm in a feeble attempt to ward off the blow. The claws struck heavily across her forearm and Nikki screamed in pain. But oddly, it wasn’t her arm that hurt. More like someone had stabbed directly into her brain. Her vision was flooded with rapidly moving streams of numbers.

The force of the blow had buckled her over. The creature loomed over her, but before it could launch another attack a shot from Jamie slammed into its shoulder. Jamie had managed to recover his weapon and footing. The monster turned to face the new threat, growling dangerously as it did so. With a sudden explosive burst of movement it leapt towards the Scotsman. But Jamie was expecting this and threw himself to the side as it leapt. It landed ungainly in the pool of rocket fuel, struggling to regain its footing.

Jamie turned back towards Nikki and saw her cradling her arm. There was far less blood than he’d expected. Underneath Nikki’s fingers covering the wound he saw gleaming metal, implants that Jamie had seen before.

Jamie was...confused? Conflicted? Not good at dealing with this much stimuli at once?

Later, when he'd had time to sort it all out, he cursed himself for being too slow with the next shot, for surely the rocket fuel would have been keen stuff to boil the beastie in! But he missed the chance, allowing it to scrabble away and circle them, because Jamie was too busy looking at--

Nikki, who had been injured. She screamed and clutched at her arm where the creature had attacked her, and Jamie cursed himself that he'd allowed such a thing. "Nikki, are you?--"

But there was no blood. Just a mess of...circuits? Wires and, and things Jamie had forgotten the name for, but it was a mess of silver gold and lit up and was sparking and--

And he recognized it. For all Jamie's little experience with technology, there was one kind he could smell at fifty paces. Why had he not noticed before?

"A Cyberman?" he managed. His voice cracked.

Jamie was dumbfounded as to what to do. Should he point his weapon at her? Should be protect her from the beastie? Should he try and get out of here alive? Was that even possible? Why wasn't she attacking him if he knew her secret? Where had that damned beastie gotten to?

His mouth flapped. "How did--what are you--?" but none of the questions seemed really appropriate to what he wanted to know just now. Where was the Doctor when he needed him? Jamie wasn't good for big decisions like this. He was good for running, jumping, punching things, heavy lifting, shouting "Craeg an tuire" at baddies and cutting them down, and then usually somehow managing to end up getting himself shot, that was the usual way, that was what he'd signed up for. The Doctor was supposed to deal with everything else.

Ah, well. Let it be written on his tombstone that he was kind before he was smart.

"Are you all right?" he asked, holding out for her an outstretched hand.

The Bachelor, Sara and the Doctor all ran back the way they came and arrived just in time to see the creature rear its ugly head over the prone Nikki. The Bachelor tackled Sara to the ground as the creature roared at them.

"What are you doing?" Sara shouted.

"I was--you know. Protecting you. In case it breathes fire or something!"

"Well it doesn't, and you're heavy!"

The Bachelor scrambled off her. "Hey! Speaking of fire--have you managed to build a gun out of that stuff I gave you, yet? Maybe we can get that thing now!" He ducked as the creature swatted at him with a menacing claw. "I mean--now would be a good time, right?"

Yes, in fact, now seemed like it would be a really good time for that flamethrower. Sara dug in her pockets and came up with what the Bachelor had given her earlier. Water gun, lighter in the shape of a pistol, corkscrew, corks, and for some weird reason, that tiny umbrella made of paper. She held them in her open palms and glared at them, deep in thought, trying to ignore the raging beast that was rebounding off the walls and climbing around like an oversized gecko. The whole room still smelled of jet fuel, in addition to the growing puddle of it on the floor, though luckily that was over to one side and none of them were standing in it at the moment. But the fumes… they’d go up in flames the second she lit anything.

“Hey, see that switch over there? It’s for the fans. Turn it on or we’ll all fry in here,” she said, turning to look at the Bachelor over her shoulder, since he’d been hovering anxiously, watching her stare at the odds and ends dug from her pocket. As he bounded off across the room to flip the fans on, she dropped all but the water gun and corkscrew, and stuck the muzzle of the lighter through a belt loop. Then she drilled a hole in the water chamber of the water gun and looked around for the fuel hose, or one of the accessory hoses. There was a suitably sized one off to her left, so she dodged over there, avoiding an errant swing by the monster as it recoiled from someone else’s attack, and crouched by the line. Knife… knife… she had no knife. So she stabbed the line with the corkscrew and tugged until it tore in half, and took the end coming from the main tanks to fill the rocket, shoving it haphazardly into the hole she’d made in the water gun.

“What are you-“ the Bachelor started to ask, and then apparently noted the fuel line leading into the water gun, “A flamethrower out of a water gun. Brilliant!” His exclamation got the monster’s attention, though, and it lumbered over and they both had to duck as it took another swing. It was fast.

“Hurryuphurryuphurryup,” the Bachelor was saying, still hovering over Sara’s shoulder, and she turned and gave him a look.

“You’re not really helping,” she said, and stood, taking the hose with her and stepping away from the side of the room, more toward the middle. She hoped no one minded that she was about to barbeque that thing before it killed someone, because she wasn’t much in the mood for being yelled at, but something had to be done. Jamie was already seeing to an apparently-injured Nikki off to one side, though Sara couldn’t tell from where she was standing exactly what was wrong.

“Duck!” shouted the Bachelor suddenly, from behind to the right of her, and Sara did so without thinking, at the same time pulling the trigger on the water gun and yanking the lighter from her belt loop. She brought it up and hurriedly lit the fuel, then dropped the lighter in surprise as the resulting fireball melted off the entire end of the water pistol, allowing more fuel to escape. It brushed back over her hand, but she didn’t really notice, since the resulting force of a fireball going off between her and the monster knocked her further off balance. As the Bachelor caught her and pushed her back to her feet, she thought I’m really going to get a reputation for clumsiness if I don’t keep running into people and things. The monster, soaked with the jet fuel, shrieked and fell over, and very shortly stopped moving. Stunned, Sara set the watergun down and took the tube out of it, stopping up the leaking end with one of the corks from her pocket. That had worked more efficiently than even she’d guessed it would. Quite frankly, it was a little embarrassing how efficiently it’d worked. Without thinking, she shoved her hands in her pockets, belatedly realized it hurt to shove a burned hand into a pocket, and stood there awkwardly with one hand stuffed in a pocket and the other behind her back.

“Sorry…” she said to the mostly-quiet room. The fan was still humming, removing toxic jet fuel fumes from the room, and there was still an audible drip as the fuel leaked into the puddle on the very far side of the room. Probably they were very lucky the monster hadn’t gone flailing over that direction. That had really been quite a stupid idea, lighting it on fire, even if it’d worked out. Sara looked around at the others and shrugged one shoulder.

“Should we maybe… get out of here?” she asked, finally.

’Nonononono!’

It wasn’t fair. Nikki had finally found somewhere where people didn’t know what had happened to her. Where they weren’t afraid she’d suddenly transform into a deranged killer, or just looked at her as some kind of experiment. But now it was out, in less than an hour.

Another part of her brain chastised her for being more worried about that than the monster still leaping around. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Jamie when he asked if she was alright, those took his proffered hand.

“I… I don’t know.” That at least was true. Her implants hadn’t taken damage before, she had no idea how badly or even if they’d been affected. Nikki tried moving her fingers. They moved, but there was no sensation, not that they felt numb, more disconnected somehow. It was unnerving to say the least.

A wave of heat washed over her and she staggered back in shock. The monster lay sizzling, and only now did Nikki realise that Sara, Bach and the Doctor had joined them.

“Is it dead?”

“I think so, it doesn’t seem to be moving anymore,” Nikki replied to the AI’s question.

“Good. Now, can you stop doing stupid things that will get you killed?”

“I’m helping to save people by doing these ‘stupid’ things.”

“It’s not going to help anyone if you get killed in the process, or eaten.”

“So you would rather I waited around and got blown to bits by an exploding rocket?”

“But you didn’t do anything to stop the rocket exploding.”

“Instead of arguing why don’t you try and work out how bad the damage is?” Nikki replied with irritation.

“That’s not my job!” the AI exclaimed in annoyance.

“Tough. Do it.” Nikki then raised her eyebrow in surprise at the AI’s muttered response. Where had it learned those words?

The Doctor's eyes flicked over each of them, assessing the damage quickly. "Can you run?" he asked his companions.

"Aye."

"Yes."

"Yeah."

"Huh?"

"Good. Then run!"

This seemed to be the Doctor's favorite game. Jamie ran along, keeping a hand near Nikki and an eye on Sara in case either girl stumbled, as they both appeared to be injured. Getting down on your game, McCrimmon, he scolded himself, letting the lassies be hurt!

"Where are we going?" Sara asked the Doctor.

"We've got to shut down the time experiments and get out of here!"

The Bachelor stopped dead in the corridor, yanking Jamie back by the collar so that he nearly choked.

"We've got to get out of here!" the failed Time Lord repeated dumbly, as Jamie tried to shake him off.

"Em...aye, that's why we're running towards the TARDIS?..." Jamie tried to speak slow and clear to the man in case he was simple.

"But I have a TARDIS, too!" the Bachelor insisted.

"Well, fine, we'll take them both!" Jamie tried once more to follow after the Doctor and the girls, who had disappeared round a bend ahead, but the Bachelor was very persistent.

"We can't! Mine's broken! We'll have to put it inside the Doctor's TARDIS."

Jamie began to suspect where this was going. He brightened. Heavy lifting was definitely more in his job description!

"Aye, well why didnae ye say so? Come on!"

The Bachelor figured he was the one getting off easy. After all, he was going in the opposite direction of danger, and with someone who knew how to use a gun--that was helpful.

"So you're from Scotland?" The Bachelor said to make conversation as they ran back to the lab where his TARDIS was.

"Eh? Oh, aye," Jamie said.

This was somewhat enigmatic, because the Bachelor didn't see what three vowels had to do with anything. The Bachelor tried again. "You drink scotch, then?"

"Eh? What's that, then?"

"Scotch--scotch whiskey."

"Oh, is that what they call it in the future! Aye, I've had a dram or two in ma day. Mind you, not very much. Doctor says its not good for my liver. But I reckon that if I dinnae feel it, it cannae be that bad!"

The Bachelor raised his eyebrows. "Huh. Never thought of it that way!"

They chatted as they dragged the refrigerator out toward where the TARDIS was, mainly along the lines of "lift it over this way" and "I'll go first down these stairs" and so on. The Bachelor felt very good and blokeish doing so. But when they tried to fit the refrigerator in the TARDIS doors, that's when the conversation got a bit heated.

"Alright, you ready? One more time. One. Two. Three. Ok--alright, alright--"

"Eh--eh--ok--"

"Whoa, whoa, hold it, hold it, hold it!"

"--Eh?--"

"--Stop!--Stop! Just stop!--"

"--What?--"

"--No, no, twist it!--"

"I am!"

"Nonononono!"

"What?"

"You're twisting it the wrong way!"

"What do you want me to do?"

"Just--just look down--look at me, look what I'm doing. Alright, you see the say I'm twisting it? Alright, turn it that way, but from your end, alright? Nononononono! Alright, just drop it, put it down, just put it down, alright?"

"Alright."

"Alright." The Bachelor straightened and ran a hand through his hair. "Let's just--hang on and figure this out."

"Well you've gotten it in before, didn't you?"

"Er…"

Jamie sighed, and the Bachelor winced as he got ready to be yelled at. But at that moment he heard shouts coming from down the hall, and suddenly the Bachelor saw Nikki, Sara and the Doctor running toward them.

"Out of the way!" the Doctor shouted.

The Bachelor gave his refrigerator a tug. "It won't budge!"

"Yes, it will!" the Doctor shouted, getting nearer at a worrying pace.

"No, it--wait, nononono THE PAINT JOB!!!!!"

There was a tremendous screech as the Doctor, Sara and Nikki ran with full force into the refrigerator, forcing it through the TARDIS doors. As the Bachelor lamented the huge scrape marks across the sides of his TARDIS Jamie disentangled himself from the pile of people and declared, "Ah, see, you fretted over nothing! It fits perfect."

“We need to get everyone out of… here?” There was no reply as the Doctor and his companions crashed into the room where everyone was gathered. No one even turned to look as the Doctors announcement tailed off in surprise. Everyone in the room was frozen like a statue.

“What’s happened to them?” asked Sara from the doorway.

“It the effects of the Time experiments. It’s thrown all of Time in this base out of joint. Unless we stop these experiments the whole universe could end up in this state,” replied the Doctor as he waved his hand in the unmoving face of Kemble.

“So why haven’t we been affected?” asked Nikki.

Instead of a reply there was a strange electric whistling sound. Nikki spun round to see the Doctor waving a tubular device with a large green light over one of the immobile technicians, before studying it intently. But Nikki was convinced that the Doctor had been waving it at her just before she spun around. Without looking at Nikki the Doctor replied to her question in the same way a parent would explaining a simple concept to a slow child.

“We’ve all travelled in Time. This means that we’re affected differently when time throws a hissy fit like this one.”

The Doctor started pacing back and forth, weaving a route through the frozen people.

“But if we head any deeper into the base we could find ourselves stuck as well. We need to get back to the TARDIS. I might be able to set up some kind of Temporal Regulating Field from there. Come on.”

They set off at a run. Rounding a corner they saw, ahead, Jamie and the Bachelor struggling to fit a green fridge inside the blue wooden box. Taking one quick look at the situation ahead, the Doctor started flexing his legs, a mischievous grin appearing.

“Take a run at it, we’ll push it through.” The Doctor immediately started sprinting. Without having time to ask how the fridge was meant to fit inside the blue box, Nikki and Sara took off after him. They slammed into the fridge sending it crashing inside with surprising force and distance.

Nikki picked herself up off the ground, blinked several times, then shock her head, not believing what she was seeing. She turned around, the wooden doors were still open showing the corridor outside. Stepping out, she turned back to face the wooden box, looing though the doors into the cavernous space within, all staircases and crazy lights.

Trying to grasp what she was seeing, Nikki stood in the doorway, one arm reaching around the wooden outside, the other along the interior wall. Both arms should have been touching, but they weren’t.

With one last look at the oddly still room full of people, Sara turned and let the door shut and went after the Doctor and Nikki, who were running again. It wasn't that she necessarily had anything against running, but it had already been a long day and running didn't exactly give her any time to think. So she jogged along behind them and didn't even bother thinking, except to pause as she caught sight of that horrible green fridge lodged in the door of a blue box with "POLICE CALL BOX" emblazoned around the top. She was not terribly surprised to see that the Bachelor and Jamie were trying to fit it all the way through the door despite the fact that it clearly wasn't going to fit.

Then she realized that she was standing all by herself and sprinted to catch up with the other two, reaching them just as they crashed into the fridge, trying to skid to a stop before she could run them over, but failing entirely and ending up in the confused heap of fridge and multiple people which should, if she wasn't going completely insane, have more than cluttered up the inside of the box. Except, she found as she scrambled back to her feet, there was definitely more room in here than she thought. So clearly she was going crazy? At least Nikki also looked confused, standing in the doorway with one hand on either side as if trying to figure out what had suddenly gone horribly wrong with the laws of physics.

"Is this..." she said thoughtfully, half to herself, and shaking her still-sore hand reflexively (she'd landed practically on it, and it stung) she stepped more toward the center of the room. Wearing a thoroughly perplexed half-frown, she turned in a circle. The console nearby caught her eyes, all buttons and shiney things and dials and levers, but she kept turning until she'd gone a full circle.

"What in the world is going with this thing's internal and external dimensions? How did you make it be bigger inside than outside?" she asked finally, glancing from the Doctor to the Bachelor.