FIC: Tin Men - Chapter 1
May. 18th, 2009 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nentariTitle: Tin Men - Chapter 1
Author: Me
Beta-Reader:alouzon
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3816
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all its characters belong to the BBC. I own nothing - not even the Fourteenth Doctor.
Summary: Someone is kidnapping the Doctor's former companions. Who is behind all this... and why?
Author's note: An important warning on UNIT dating: No matter how hard a person might try, it will be impossible to combine all the evidence on dates and chronology of the UNIT years and make it coherent and non-paradoxal. The only way to make it work is either to omit any sort of reference to the year in which the fic is to take place or, when there's no way out from having to supply a date, to ignore some canon dating references in favour of others - and I'm afraid that, for Tin Man to work, I had to take the latter route. So, for this fic, I'm following a combination of the dates and ages provided in Invasion of the Dinosaurs (in which Sarah Jane says she's 23) and SJA's Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? (in which it's stated that Sarah Jane was born in 1951), thus setting the UNIT years in around the time the serials were broadcast, rather than putting them a few years ahead in the future. Taking this into consideration, Tin Men takes place in 1975, sometime between The Android Invasion and The Hand of Fear.
Chapter 1
Ben smiled indulgently at his daughter's cheerful chatter while he negotiated traffic. Her brothers were too busy eating their cotton candy to say anything, but Theresa had no problem interweaving that activity with the commentary (given in minute detail) of what she had enjoyed the most about their visit to the zoo.
"The sea lions smelled a bit," she chirped merrily, "but they were fun. And I thought it was funny when the monkey stole Alan's ice cream. Wasn't it funny, Alan?"
"No," her younger brother complained, his mouth full. Ben bought them the cotton candy after the incident with the escaped monkey, and Alan, in all his 5-year-old innocence, kept looking furtively around, as if afraid of another theft.
"Don't worry, mate," Ben said, looking at his son through the rear-view mirror. "There ain't any monkeys inside the car."
"I s'pose," the boy said, hesitantly, his words still muffled by the cotton candy.
"It's a shame Mummy couldn't come," Theresa continued. "She would have liked the penguins."
"Yeah," Ben agreed. He would have liked to have spent the day with the whole family, but with the nanny on holiday and Polly's current condition rendering long walks torturous, they had both agreed that it was probably for the best if she stayed home; she had some paperwork she brought from the office, and she could work on it, taking breaks as she needed. "But now you can tell her all about it, won't you, love?"
"I hadn't thought about it!" Theresa said in an excited tone. Ben looked through the rear-view mirror once again to see her brothers rolling their eyes and couldn't help but laugh. If there was something that his daughter loved, it was talking. This exasperated her poor suffering teacher, but Ben was glad to see her constant cheerfulness and excitement at everything around her; considering what the poor girl had gone through, it was a small miracle.
Theresa and Alan's biological parents had been killed five years before, on the day shop dummies came to life and started shooting at people. Ben and Polly had managed to convey the children and a few other survivors to safety and took care of the group until the danger had passed. Later, after discovering the two children had no living relatives, they adopted them. At the time, Alan had been just a tiny baby, but Theresa had been old enough to at least be aware of what had happened, even if she did not fully understand it. For a long time she had been prone to panic attacks and was unable to look at large dolls, let alone shop dummies, without bursting into tears.
"Hey, Dad," his oldest son asked, breaking in on Ben's thoughts, "What's going on?"
They had just arrived at the square where they lived, and Ben saw the front gates to his house were filled with people, both neighbours and men in army uniform. A wave of panic took over him. "Pol..." he whispered.
"What's wrong?" asked Theresa. "Where's Mummy?"
"I don't know, love," Ben admitted, as he stopped the car. He then turned to his oldest son. "Jamie, you stay in the car and look after your brother and sister."
"But, Dad-" Jamie complained, his brown eyes - Polly's eyes - pleading for him to take them with him.
"Don't argue, please," Ben said softly. "I'll be right back, all right? Sit tight. Don't worry."
"'Kay," Jamie said, looking nervously at the crowd outside, and locking the car door.
Ben got out of the car and moved towards the crowd - and the sense of dread he had been feeling increased when he looked through a gap in the throng and saw that the front door had been smashed to pieces.
"Polly!" he shouted. He ran to enter the house, but was stopped by one of the uniformed men.
"I'm sorry, sir. You can't pass."
"What do you mean, I can't pass?" he shouted in anguish. "That's my house!"
"Lieutenant Jackson?"
Ben turned and saw that he was being addressed by a fellow Navy Lieutenant, who looked at him appraisingly before letting out what looked to Ben as a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank heavens for that," he said in a posh voice. "I'm Lieutenant Sullivan." He turned and looked up at the other man (a warrant officer, according to his stripes, a very tall one). "That's all right, Benton. Let him through."
"Yes, sir," Benton said, leaving them and turning his attention to the group of busybodies.
"Sorry about that, Lieutenant," Sullivan said apologetically, "but we've been having some trouble with people trying to have a look inside and-"
"Look, never mind that now," Ben cut him off anxiously. "What's going on? Where's my wife?"
Sullivan's eyes widened in surprised concern, which made the knot in Ben's stomach tighten. "Your wife was in the house?"
"She ain't been well," Ben said in a near whisper. "We have a baby on the way."
Sullivan's expression changed from concern to dread, and he quickly re-consulted a clipboard. "Were your children with her?"
"No, mate, they're in the car. Look, what's happened to Polly?"
"I'm..." the other man hesitated. "I'm afraid someone took her. We have no idea who-"
Ben did not wait to hear for the rest, pushing past Sullivan and rushing inside. "Polly!" he called in a panicked, hoarse voice, even though he knew it was no use. In a frenzy, he searched through every room in the house, opening the wardrobes and cupboards in hope that she had managed to hide somewhere. "Polly!" Nothing. No sign of life whatsoever. In fact, apart from the smashed door and some broken crockery, the house looked as if Polly had just decided to go out with her mates.
With a defeated groan, Ben slumped in the doorway of Jamie's bedroom and stared blankly out the window, his mind whirling, looking for answers the investigators downstairs may have missed.
***
Alice is having a picnic with her father when she suddenly hears music. Intrigued, she stands up and decides to find out where it comes from.
Then she spots the white rabbit. It looks like any ordinary rabbit, except for the fact that it's wearing checked trousers and a frock coat. And it seems to be playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on a recorder.
It suddenly stops playing, looking rather alarmed. "Oh, I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date," the rabbit says. "Oh, my giddy aunt, I am really very late. Jamie will be cross."
Alice moves closer. Something tells her she must follow this very peculiar rabbit and find out where it's heading. As if her whole future depended on it.
It's then that she sees the rabbit go down the hole. Only this is in fact not a rabbit hole at all, but a blue wooden box.
"I must get in," she says to herself, seeing that the door was left open. From inside, she hears the sound of the recorder once more, this time mixed with - for some unexplainable reason - bagpipes.
"Curiouser and curiouser," she says, as she crosses the threshold... and falls down a hole.
Victoria woke up, feeling groggy.
"Oh, my head," she groaned. She hadn't felt so poorly since the time Kaftan drugged her coffee. Why was she thinking of that? Her eyes opened suddenly. Kaftan. Telos. She had been drugged again, but how...?
Suddenly, she remembered what happened after that... that thing broke into her house, the silver monstrosity pressing something against her throat, causing her to instantly lose consciousness. She reached for the itchy spot on her neck and her fingers encountered something plastic stuck to her skin. Carefully, she removed it and saw that it was a transparent adhesive.
Frowning, she sat up and looked around. She was lying on the top bunk of a bed made of black-frosted metal, which seemed to be the only piece of furniture in the small white room in which she now found herself. It vaguely reminded her of the small room in the refinery she and the Doctor escaped from using one of her hairpins (Jamie had insisted on crawling through the vent). The large window right next to her bed, showed her that she must be at least on the fourth floor of a factory or some other industrial location, in what she hoped was still 20th century England.
On the opposite side of the room from window she saw a door, as white as the walls. Climbing dizzily out of the bed, she rushed to it. "Let me out!" she shouted, banging on the door. "Let me out right now!" Composing herself, she tried to find a handle, in the futile hope that whoever had locked her in there might have left the door unlocked, but there was nothing.
"It only opens from the outside," a female voice said behind her. "I checked."
Victoria turned and saw a woman sitting on the lower bunk bed. She was older than Victoria, possibly in her early thirties, tall, blonde and with a certain ladylike, poised elegance that made Victoria instinctively warm up to her. She was also heavily pregnant. Victoria noticed there was another door to her left, the same colour of the walls and almost invisible - but this one with a handle. Swiftly, she rushed to it and opened it.
"It's no use," the woman said, sounding somewhat amused. "That's the bathroom."
And indeed, to Victoria's great disappointment, all she could find on the other side of the door was a much smaller room, equally white and impersonal with a toilet, a sink and a small shower; not even a window to try to escape from (if she had felt like risking it after having noticed the four-floor drop earlier). Feeling defeated, she closed the door and returned to what she felt she could now reliably call her cell.
"I woke up... oh, it must have been two hours ago," the woman continued, "and I've tried everything. Banging on the door, shouting, pleading... and nothing. In the end I gave up because I realized I was only putting on a show for them." She pointed at the door that led outside, and Victoria could see that above it was a strange half-sphere embedded in the wall, with a small blinking light right above it. It panned slowly across the room, and stopped on the two women, allowing her to see the small lens that glinted at the sphere's centre.
"Is that a camera?" she asked.
"Must be," the woman said with a sigh.
Victoria realized that despite the situation they were in, she was being rude, and moved to introduce herself. "My name is Victoria."
The woman gave her a faint smile. "I'm Polly."
Victoria looked at the camera and frowned. "Oh, what do those horrible things want from us?"
Polly looked worried. "I think I know what they want from me." She paused. "That... thing that broke into my house... I've met them before."
"Me too," Victoria said with a shudder. Her mind brought back memories of things she hoped had been left long behind her - the arid, desolate landscape of Telos, the tombs, and poor Toberman... Then her eyes widened, as she took in what Polly had just said. If the woman had met those things before...
"Mercy! You're Polly!" she exclaimed.
The woman looked at her in puzzlement. "Yes, I just said that. Maybe you should sit down if the sedative hasn't completely worn off yet." She moved over on her bunk to make room.
"No, no." Victoria realized just how silly she must have sounded and tried to explain. "I mean Jamie told me all about you. You used to travel with him and the Doctor!"
Polly gaped at her.
***
"All the same," said the Scarecrow, "I shall ask for brains instead of a heart; for a fool would not know what to do with a heart if he had one."
"I shall take the heart," returned the Tin Woodman, "for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world."
Dorothy did not say anything, for she was puzzled to know which of her two friends was
The room shook violently, and Hye looked up, alarmed. It took her a moment to acknowledge the fact that she was sitting in the console room of the TARDIS and not in the old, tiny bedroom she shared with Kim and Haneul at the back of Rosie's Bar, and that the tremor and the wheezing, groaning sound surrounding her were not caused by enemy shelling but by the ship materializing. It was all so fantastic. Just as fantastic as the book she was reading.
She looked at her two friends, who were circling the hexagonal console in the middle of the room - Jamie biting his nails and looking extremely anxious, and the Doctor running around, pressing buttons and pulling levers, and looking very pleased with herself.
"We've arrived," she announced, beaming.
Hye jumped off her chair, suddenly feeling as anxious as Jamie appeared. This was it. She would soon set foot on what was to become her new home - a country far away from Korea, and 24 years after her own time - and she was going to meet the woman that would help her get into medical school. Her dream would be fulfilled in a way more far-fetched than anything she could have imagined. But at the same time, and to Hye's surprise, she could not help but feel a bit disappointed that the journey had been so quick. Watching the opening ceremony of the 1988 Olympic Games had been a thrilling experience, and she wished she had managed to see more things before reaching her destination - or, at the very least, that she had had time to finish reading her book.
Hye found a first edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (with "To the Doctor, with kindest regards, L. Frank Baum" written on the first page) in the TARDIS library while waiting for the ship to leave 1988 Seoul and head to 1975 England, and started to flip through it. She watched part of the movie version at the 4077th a couple of months before, on one of their occasional "movie nights", the mess tent doubling as a cinema theatre; but the projector had broken down at the point Dorothy and her friends had arrived to the Emerald City and she never got to see how the story ended. And now, she had hardly reached the point in which the Tin Woodman had made his appearance and it was already time to go.
She wondered if the Doctor would let her borrow the book, but immediately decided not to ask. This strange, mysterious woman had already given her so much, and this copy was obviously a treasured gift... Hye would buy a copy for herself instead, as soon as she was settled in her new home.
"Are you sure we're in the right place, Doctor?" Jamie asked.
"Of course I'm sure," the Doctor huffed. "This isn't like it used to be, Jamie. I can go anywhere and anywhen I want, now."
"Like Thoros Beta?" Jamie retorted, giving her a look Hye could not decipher.
The Doctor grimaced. "Well, there are times when the TARDIS decides to take matters to her own hands, of course. But that's beside the point." She pressed a button, and a screen hanging on a wall suddenly came to life, revealing a row of houses rather different from the ones Hye was used to in 1951 Korea. "There you are, see?" the Doctor said triumphantly to Jamie, pointing at the house in the far left. "That's where Victoria lives."
These words caused Jamie to leap as if he had been hit by an electric shock. He worked the switch that activated the doors, and almost tripped in his haste as he raced from the console towards the exit. "Well, what are we waiting for, then?" he asked. "Let's go!"
"Not so fast, Jamie!" the Doctor admonished him as she grabbed a bright red cap that rested on the console. Placing it on her head, she turned to Hye. "Are you ready?"
The girl hesitated. "Well..."
Jamie looked at her with a concerned expression. "What's wrong?"
"Well, she is your friend," Hye said, "and I'm a complete stranger. I feel like I'm intruding."
"Nonsense," the Doctor told her, taking her arm. "I'm sure Victoria will enjoy meeting you. And we can call Liz while we're here."
"Yes, but..." Hye waffled, still feeling uncomfortable. "Shouldn't someone stay here and look after your ship?"
"Oh, don't worry, the TARDIS can look after herself." She gave the wall a gentle pat as they joined Jamie at the door. "Won't you, old girl?"
Hye felt the TARDIS' usual vibrations double in intensity for a second, in a way that reminded her of a purring cat. Realizing that even the ship (which she still struggled to accept as a living thing) was trying to encourage her to step outside, Hye shrugged and followed her friends.
The first thing Hye noticed when she stepped outside was that the air smelled of smoke - though it held a subtly different scent from the one she was used to back in her own time, which always carried an underlying tinge of gunpowder and decay. They approached the house of the girl they were going to visit, and Hye's efforts to keep her mouth close instead of gaping like an idiot became increasingly difficult. As the daughter of a doctor, she had grown up in a house that was one of the biggest in the village, and which had not lacked in luxury and opulence before her uncles' debts got out of hand, so this two-story, semi-detached yellow house and tiny flowery garden did not feel particularly big or rich.
Yet, there was something rather unnerving to Hye about the thought of someone living in this neighbourhood, a feeling she had also experienced in 1988 Seoul. It just felt so... alien. Yes, that was the word. Hye felt as if she had stepped onto another planet, a feeling enhanced by the people passing by them, dressed up in such garish and bizarre clothes that they could very well have been Martians. It was not an unpleasant feeling, but it was nevertheless strange. She quickly brushed aside these thoughts. It was just the nerves and the novelty of it all.
Jamie opened the gate and practically flew to the front door, pressing the doorbell and fidgeting on the spot. Hye and the Doctor caught up with the eager piper on the doorstep. While they waited for an answer, Hye thought of something.
"Has she always answered back?" she asked the Doctor, who was unabashedly trying to peer inside through the door's stained glass window.
"Who, dear?" muttered the Doctor distractedly.
"The TARDIS. You know, shaking and humming when you talk to her."
The Doctor thought about it for a moment. "Well, she has always been sentient, and she's always been able to respond, but she only began to do so with such clarity and so frequently for the past century or two," she admitted. "Or maybe she has been doing it all along and I only started to notice." She shrugged. "Whatever the case, sometimes she can be just as cheeky as Ja-"
"Och, what's taking her so long?" Jamie groaned, cutting her off abruptly.
"Give her time, Jamie," the Doctor admonished, as she took off her cap. "If I remember correctly, she was starting to teach around this time, so she's either still out, or is having a rest after getting back from her classes." She looked at the cap, giving it a small frown. "Graphology. I never understood her fascination with the subject, but if it makes her happy..."
With a put-upon sigh, Jamie knocked on the door - but the moment his knuckles connected with the wooden surface of the door, it creaked open, making all three of them stare. "Hey, it's not fast!" the Highlander commented.
"That's strange," the Doctor murmured aloud, pushing the door further open and peeking inside. "Victoria?" she called, getting no answer.
"Nobody's home," Hye concluded.
The Doctor was now inside the house, quickly followed by Jamie. "Victoria?" he called. "It's me - Jamie!"
"I really don't like the look of this..." the Doctor muttered. "She could be out, but then why leave the door unlocked?"
By now, Hye had also stepped inside, and looked appreciatively around. The house was cosy and tastefully decorated, but something did not feel right - and this time, Hye knew it had nothing to do with the sensation of being in a different time and place. Something felt very wrong, like an event in the house had left a lingering feeling of dread.
"Victoria?" Jamie moved further inside, bellowing loudly. Hye followed him as he walked through a door, and nearly bumped into him as he stopped in his tracks.
"Doctor!" he called, sounding panicked.
"What is it?" the Doctor asked, pelting down the hallway and narrowly avoiding colliding with Hye. The two women eventually managed to squeeze past the Highlander in the doorway so that they could see what Jamie was staring at.
"Oh my..." Hye gasped.
"Goodness."
They were in the kitchen, which looked almost as modern and well-equipped than the ones Hye remembered seeing depicted in Radar's comic books. However, the cleanliness and modernity of the place was jarringly contrasted by a real mess - there was broken glass on the floor, and a wooden statue with deep scratches marring its dark polish, as if it had been struck against something hard, lay discarded in the corner. Hye privately thought it looked like a struggle had taken place.
"Something very bad happened here..." Hye heard the Doctor mutter, while Jamie made a choked sound that might have been the beginning of a question.
Hye noticed something silvery lying on the floor right next to her foot. It looked like a large helmet made of metal. Curious, she picked it up, turning it over in her hands and saw that rather than a helmet, it was a big metal head, somewhat like that of the Tin Woodman, but with a blank, round-eyed expression. It was menacing. "Doctor, look at this," she said, showing the head to her friends, who gasped.
"Och, no," Jamie moaned, turning chalk-white and sinking into a chair, unable to support himself in his shock.
"What is it?" Hye asked, as the Doctor took the head from her with trembling hands.
"This is worse than I thought," the Time Lord said, looking at her. Hye could see that she was as pale as Jamie, and her dark eyes were filled with dread. "This is the head of a Cyberman."
Author: Me
Beta-Reader:
alouzonFandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3816
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all its characters belong to the BBC. I own nothing - not even the Fourteenth Doctor.
Summary: Someone is kidnapping the Doctor's former companions. Who is behind all this... and why?
Author's note: An important warning on UNIT dating: No matter how hard a person might try, it will be impossible to combine all the evidence on dates and chronology of the UNIT years and make it coherent and non-paradoxal. The only way to make it work is either to omit any sort of reference to the year in which the fic is to take place or, when there's no way out from having to supply a date, to ignore some canon dating references in favour of others - and I'm afraid that, for Tin Man to work, I had to take the latter route. So, for this fic, I'm following a combination of the dates and ages provided in Invasion of the Dinosaurs (in which Sarah Jane says she's 23) and SJA's Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? (in which it's stated that Sarah Jane was born in 1951), thus setting the UNIT years in around the time the serials were broadcast, rather than putting them a few years ahead in the future. Taking this into consideration, Tin Men takes place in 1975, sometime between The Android Invasion and The Hand of Fear.
Ben smiled indulgently at his daughter's cheerful chatter while he negotiated traffic. Her brothers were too busy eating their cotton candy to say anything, but Theresa had no problem interweaving that activity with the commentary (given in minute detail) of what she had enjoyed the most about their visit to the zoo.
"The sea lions smelled a bit," she chirped merrily, "but they were fun. And I thought it was funny when the monkey stole Alan's ice cream. Wasn't it funny, Alan?"
"No," her younger brother complained, his mouth full. Ben bought them the cotton candy after the incident with the escaped monkey, and Alan, in all his 5-year-old innocence, kept looking furtively around, as if afraid of another theft.
"Don't worry, mate," Ben said, looking at his son through the rear-view mirror. "There ain't any monkeys inside the car."
"I s'pose," the boy said, hesitantly, his words still muffled by the cotton candy.
"It's a shame Mummy couldn't come," Theresa continued. "She would have liked the penguins."
"Yeah," Ben agreed. He would have liked to have spent the day with the whole family, but with the nanny on holiday and Polly's current condition rendering long walks torturous, they had both agreed that it was probably for the best if she stayed home; she had some paperwork she brought from the office, and she could work on it, taking breaks as she needed. "But now you can tell her all about it, won't you, love?"
"I hadn't thought about it!" Theresa said in an excited tone. Ben looked through the rear-view mirror once again to see her brothers rolling their eyes and couldn't help but laugh. If there was something that his daughter loved, it was talking. This exasperated her poor suffering teacher, but Ben was glad to see her constant cheerfulness and excitement at everything around her; considering what the poor girl had gone through, it was a small miracle.
Theresa and Alan's biological parents had been killed five years before, on the day shop dummies came to life and started shooting at people. Ben and Polly had managed to convey the children and a few other survivors to safety and took care of the group until the danger had passed. Later, after discovering the two children had no living relatives, they adopted them. At the time, Alan had been just a tiny baby, but Theresa had been old enough to at least be aware of what had happened, even if she did not fully understand it. For a long time she had been prone to panic attacks and was unable to look at large dolls, let alone shop dummies, without bursting into tears.
"Hey, Dad," his oldest son asked, breaking in on Ben's thoughts, "What's going on?"
They had just arrived at the square where they lived, and Ben saw the front gates to his house were filled with people, both neighbours and men in army uniform. A wave of panic took over him. "Pol..." he whispered.
"What's wrong?" asked Theresa. "Where's Mummy?"
"I don't know, love," Ben admitted, as he stopped the car. He then turned to his oldest son. "Jamie, you stay in the car and look after your brother and sister."
"But, Dad-" Jamie complained, his brown eyes - Polly's eyes - pleading for him to take them with him.
"Don't argue, please," Ben said softly. "I'll be right back, all right? Sit tight. Don't worry."
"'Kay," Jamie said, looking nervously at the crowd outside, and locking the car door.
Ben got out of the car and moved towards the crowd - and the sense of dread he had been feeling increased when he looked through a gap in the throng and saw that the front door had been smashed to pieces.
"Polly!" he shouted. He ran to enter the house, but was stopped by one of the uniformed men.
"I'm sorry, sir. You can't pass."
"What do you mean, I can't pass?" he shouted in anguish. "That's my house!"
"Lieutenant Jackson?"
Ben turned and saw that he was being addressed by a fellow Navy Lieutenant, who looked at him appraisingly before letting out what looked to Ben as a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank heavens for that," he said in a posh voice. "I'm Lieutenant Sullivan." He turned and looked up at the other man (a warrant officer, according to his stripes, a very tall one). "That's all right, Benton. Let him through."
"Yes, sir," Benton said, leaving them and turning his attention to the group of busybodies.
"Sorry about that, Lieutenant," Sullivan said apologetically, "but we've been having some trouble with people trying to have a look inside and-"
"Look, never mind that now," Ben cut him off anxiously. "What's going on? Where's my wife?"
Sullivan's eyes widened in surprised concern, which made the knot in Ben's stomach tighten. "Your wife was in the house?"
"She ain't been well," Ben said in a near whisper. "We have a baby on the way."
Sullivan's expression changed from concern to dread, and he quickly re-consulted a clipboard. "Were your children with her?"
"No, mate, they're in the car. Look, what's happened to Polly?"
"I'm..." the other man hesitated. "I'm afraid someone took her. We have no idea who-"
Ben did not wait to hear for the rest, pushing past Sullivan and rushing inside. "Polly!" he called in a panicked, hoarse voice, even though he knew it was no use. In a frenzy, he searched through every room in the house, opening the wardrobes and cupboards in hope that she had managed to hide somewhere. "Polly!" Nothing. No sign of life whatsoever. In fact, apart from the smashed door and some broken crockery, the house looked as if Polly had just decided to go out with her mates.
With a defeated groan, Ben slumped in the doorway of Jamie's bedroom and stared blankly out the window, his mind whirling, looking for answers the investigators downstairs may have missed.
Alice is having a picnic with her father when she suddenly hears music. Intrigued, she stands up and decides to find out where it comes from.
Then she spots the white rabbit. It looks like any ordinary rabbit, except for the fact that it's wearing checked trousers and a frock coat. And it seems to be playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on a recorder.
It suddenly stops playing, looking rather alarmed. "Oh, I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date," the rabbit says. "Oh, my giddy aunt, I am really very late. Jamie will be cross."
Alice moves closer. Something tells her she must follow this very peculiar rabbit and find out where it's heading. As if her whole future depended on it.
It's then that she sees the rabbit go down the hole. Only this is in fact not a rabbit hole at all, but a blue wooden box.
"I must get in," she says to herself, seeing that the door was left open. From inside, she hears the sound of the recorder once more, this time mixed with - for some unexplainable reason - bagpipes.
"Curiouser and curiouser," she says, as she crosses the threshold... and falls down a hole.
Victoria woke up, feeling groggy.
"Oh, my head," she groaned. She hadn't felt so poorly since the time Kaftan drugged her coffee. Why was she thinking of that? Her eyes opened suddenly. Kaftan. Telos. She had been drugged again, but how...?
Suddenly, she remembered what happened after that... that thing broke into her house, the silver monstrosity pressing something against her throat, causing her to instantly lose consciousness. She reached for the itchy spot on her neck and her fingers encountered something plastic stuck to her skin. Carefully, she removed it and saw that it was a transparent adhesive.
Frowning, she sat up and looked around. She was lying on the top bunk of a bed made of black-frosted metal, which seemed to be the only piece of furniture in the small white room in which she now found herself. It vaguely reminded her of the small room in the refinery she and the Doctor escaped from using one of her hairpins (Jamie had insisted on crawling through the vent). The large window right next to her bed, showed her that she must be at least on the fourth floor of a factory or some other industrial location, in what she hoped was still 20th century England.
On the opposite side of the room from window she saw a door, as white as the walls. Climbing dizzily out of the bed, she rushed to it. "Let me out!" she shouted, banging on the door. "Let me out right now!" Composing herself, she tried to find a handle, in the futile hope that whoever had locked her in there might have left the door unlocked, but there was nothing.
"It only opens from the outside," a female voice said behind her. "I checked."
Victoria turned and saw a woman sitting on the lower bunk bed. She was older than Victoria, possibly in her early thirties, tall, blonde and with a certain ladylike, poised elegance that made Victoria instinctively warm up to her. She was also heavily pregnant. Victoria noticed there was another door to her left, the same colour of the walls and almost invisible - but this one with a handle. Swiftly, she rushed to it and opened it.
"It's no use," the woman said, sounding somewhat amused. "That's the bathroom."
And indeed, to Victoria's great disappointment, all she could find on the other side of the door was a much smaller room, equally white and impersonal with a toilet, a sink and a small shower; not even a window to try to escape from (if she had felt like risking it after having noticed the four-floor drop earlier). Feeling defeated, she closed the door and returned to what she felt she could now reliably call her cell.
"I woke up... oh, it must have been two hours ago," the woman continued, "and I've tried everything. Banging on the door, shouting, pleading... and nothing. In the end I gave up because I realized I was only putting on a show for them." She pointed at the door that led outside, and Victoria could see that above it was a strange half-sphere embedded in the wall, with a small blinking light right above it. It panned slowly across the room, and stopped on the two women, allowing her to see the small lens that glinted at the sphere's centre.
"Is that a camera?" she asked.
"Must be," the woman said with a sigh.
Victoria realized that despite the situation they were in, she was being rude, and moved to introduce herself. "My name is Victoria."
The woman gave her a faint smile. "I'm Polly."
Victoria looked at the camera and frowned. "Oh, what do those horrible things want from us?"
Polly looked worried. "I think I know what they want from me." She paused. "That... thing that broke into my house... I've met them before."
"Me too," Victoria said with a shudder. Her mind brought back memories of things she hoped had been left long behind her - the arid, desolate landscape of Telos, the tombs, and poor Toberman... Then her eyes widened, as she took in what Polly had just said. If the woman had met those things before...
"Mercy! You're Polly!" she exclaimed.
The woman looked at her in puzzlement. "Yes, I just said that. Maybe you should sit down if the sedative hasn't completely worn off yet." She moved over on her bunk to make room.
"No, no." Victoria realized just how silly she must have sounded and tried to explain. "I mean Jamie told me all about you. You used to travel with him and the Doctor!"
Polly gaped at her.
"All the same," said the Scarecrow, "I shall ask for brains instead of a heart; for a fool would not know what to do with a heart if he had one."
"I shall take the heart," returned the Tin Woodman, "for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world."
Dorothy did not say anything, for she was puzzled to know which of her two friends was
The room shook violently, and Hye looked up, alarmed. It took her a moment to acknowledge the fact that she was sitting in the console room of the TARDIS and not in the old, tiny bedroom she shared with Kim and Haneul at the back of Rosie's Bar, and that the tremor and the wheezing, groaning sound surrounding her were not caused by enemy shelling but by the ship materializing. It was all so fantastic. Just as fantastic as the book she was reading.
She looked at her two friends, who were circling the hexagonal console in the middle of the room - Jamie biting his nails and looking extremely anxious, and the Doctor running around, pressing buttons and pulling levers, and looking very pleased with herself.
"We've arrived," she announced, beaming.
Hye jumped off her chair, suddenly feeling as anxious as Jamie appeared. This was it. She would soon set foot on what was to become her new home - a country far away from Korea, and 24 years after her own time - and she was going to meet the woman that would help her get into medical school. Her dream would be fulfilled in a way more far-fetched than anything she could have imagined. But at the same time, and to Hye's surprise, she could not help but feel a bit disappointed that the journey had been so quick. Watching the opening ceremony of the 1988 Olympic Games had been a thrilling experience, and she wished she had managed to see more things before reaching her destination - or, at the very least, that she had had time to finish reading her book.
Hye found a first edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (with "To the Doctor, with kindest regards, L. Frank Baum" written on the first page) in the TARDIS library while waiting for the ship to leave 1988 Seoul and head to 1975 England, and started to flip through it. She watched part of the movie version at the 4077th a couple of months before, on one of their occasional "movie nights", the mess tent doubling as a cinema theatre; but the projector had broken down at the point Dorothy and her friends had arrived to the Emerald City and she never got to see how the story ended. And now, she had hardly reached the point in which the Tin Woodman had made his appearance and it was already time to go.
She wondered if the Doctor would let her borrow the book, but immediately decided not to ask. This strange, mysterious woman had already given her so much, and this copy was obviously a treasured gift... Hye would buy a copy for herself instead, as soon as she was settled in her new home.
"Are you sure we're in the right place, Doctor?" Jamie asked.
"Of course I'm sure," the Doctor huffed. "This isn't like it used to be, Jamie. I can go anywhere and anywhen I want, now."
"Like Thoros Beta?" Jamie retorted, giving her a look Hye could not decipher.
The Doctor grimaced. "Well, there are times when the TARDIS decides to take matters to her own hands, of course. But that's beside the point." She pressed a button, and a screen hanging on a wall suddenly came to life, revealing a row of houses rather different from the ones Hye was used to in 1951 Korea. "There you are, see?" the Doctor said triumphantly to Jamie, pointing at the house in the far left. "That's where Victoria lives."
These words caused Jamie to leap as if he had been hit by an electric shock. He worked the switch that activated the doors, and almost tripped in his haste as he raced from the console towards the exit. "Well, what are we waiting for, then?" he asked. "Let's go!"
"Not so fast, Jamie!" the Doctor admonished him as she grabbed a bright red cap that rested on the console. Placing it on her head, she turned to Hye. "Are you ready?"
The girl hesitated. "Well..."
Jamie looked at her with a concerned expression. "What's wrong?"
"Well, she is your friend," Hye said, "and I'm a complete stranger. I feel like I'm intruding."
"Nonsense," the Doctor told her, taking her arm. "I'm sure Victoria will enjoy meeting you. And we can call Liz while we're here."
"Yes, but..." Hye waffled, still feeling uncomfortable. "Shouldn't someone stay here and look after your ship?"
"Oh, don't worry, the TARDIS can look after herself." She gave the wall a gentle pat as they joined Jamie at the door. "Won't you, old girl?"
Hye felt the TARDIS' usual vibrations double in intensity for a second, in a way that reminded her of a purring cat. Realizing that even the ship (which she still struggled to accept as a living thing) was trying to encourage her to step outside, Hye shrugged and followed her friends.
The first thing Hye noticed when she stepped outside was that the air smelled of smoke - though it held a subtly different scent from the one she was used to back in her own time, which always carried an underlying tinge of gunpowder and decay. They approached the house of the girl they were going to visit, and Hye's efforts to keep her mouth close instead of gaping like an idiot became increasingly difficult. As the daughter of a doctor, she had grown up in a house that was one of the biggest in the village, and which had not lacked in luxury and opulence before her uncles' debts got out of hand, so this two-story, semi-detached yellow house and tiny flowery garden did not feel particularly big or rich.
Yet, there was something rather unnerving to Hye about the thought of someone living in this neighbourhood, a feeling she had also experienced in 1988 Seoul. It just felt so... alien. Yes, that was the word. Hye felt as if she had stepped onto another planet, a feeling enhanced by the people passing by them, dressed up in such garish and bizarre clothes that they could very well have been Martians. It was not an unpleasant feeling, but it was nevertheless strange. She quickly brushed aside these thoughts. It was just the nerves and the novelty of it all.
Jamie opened the gate and practically flew to the front door, pressing the doorbell and fidgeting on the spot. Hye and the Doctor caught up with the eager piper on the doorstep. While they waited for an answer, Hye thought of something.
"Has she always answered back?" she asked the Doctor, who was unabashedly trying to peer inside through the door's stained glass window.
"Who, dear?" muttered the Doctor distractedly.
"The TARDIS. You know, shaking and humming when you talk to her."
The Doctor thought about it for a moment. "Well, she has always been sentient, and she's always been able to respond, but she only began to do so with such clarity and so frequently for the past century or two," she admitted. "Or maybe she has been doing it all along and I only started to notice." She shrugged. "Whatever the case, sometimes she can be just as cheeky as Ja-"
"Och, what's taking her so long?" Jamie groaned, cutting her off abruptly.
"Give her time, Jamie," the Doctor admonished, as she took off her cap. "If I remember correctly, she was starting to teach around this time, so she's either still out, or is having a rest after getting back from her classes." She looked at the cap, giving it a small frown. "Graphology. I never understood her fascination with the subject, but if it makes her happy..."
With a put-upon sigh, Jamie knocked on the door - but the moment his knuckles connected with the wooden surface of the door, it creaked open, making all three of them stare. "Hey, it's not fast!" the Highlander commented.
"That's strange," the Doctor murmured aloud, pushing the door further open and peeking inside. "Victoria?" she called, getting no answer.
"Nobody's home," Hye concluded.
The Doctor was now inside the house, quickly followed by Jamie. "Victoria?" he called. "It's me - Jamie!"
"I really don't like the look of this..." the Doctor muttered. "She could be out, but then why leave the door unlocked?"
By now, Hye had also stepped inside, and looked appreciatively around. The house was cosy and tastefully decorated, but something did not feel right - and this time, Hye knew it had nothing to do with the sensation of being in a different time and place. Something felt very wrong, like an event in the house had left a lingering feeling of dread.
"Victoria?" Jamie moved further inside, bellowing loudly. Hye followed him as he walked through a door, and nearly bumped into him as he stopped in his tracks.
"Doctor!" he called, sounding panicked.
"What is it?" the Doctor asked, pelting down the hallway and narrowly avoiding colliding with Hye. The two women eventually managed to squeeze past the Highlander in the doorway so that they could see what Jamie was staring at.
"Oh my..." Hye gasped.
"Goodness."
They were in the kitchen, which looked almost as modern and well-equipped than the ones Hye remembered seeing depicted in Radar's comic books. However, the cleanliness and modernity of the place was jarringly contrasted by a real mess - there was broken glass on the floor, and a wooden statue with deep scratches marring its dark polish, as if it had been struck against something hard, lay discarded in the corner. Hye privately thought it looked like a struggle had taken place.
"Something very bad happened here..." Hye heard the Doctor mutter, while Jamie made a choked sound that might have been the beginning of a question.
Hye noticed something silvery lying on the floor right next to her foot. It looked like a large helmet made of metal. Curious, she picked it up, turning it over in her hands and saw that rather than a helmet, it was a big metal head, somewhat like that of the Tin Woodman, but with a blank, round-eyed expression. It was menacing. "Doctor, look at this," she said, showing the head to her friends, who gasped.
"Och, no," Jamie moaned, turning chalk-white and sinking into a chair, unable to support himself in his shock.
"What is it?" Hye asked, as the Doctor took the head from her with trembling hands.
"This is worse than I thought," the Time Lord said, looking at her. Hye could see that she was as pale as Jamie, and her dark eyes were filled with dread. "This is the head of a Cyberman."
