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Principal Components (Eleven, River, Action/Adventure) Part 15
Main Post and Chapter Index
**
In the quiet of the med bay, with only the blips of monitors and the hum of the rejuvenated TARDIS in his ears, Rory was slowly starting to feel like himself again. He'd tossed his ruined clothes, found some towels and done his best to wash the rest of the blood and grime on his skin into the large surgical sink outside the operating theater. A search of the lockers along the far wall had uncovered a set of scrubs in his size, that even had the correct allotment of limbs. He had just pulled the clean shirt over his head when he heard a decisive beep from the containment web, and the whirr of the shell retracting.
River was still asleep. He stood at her bedside and studied her face, trying to reconcile the woman he'd known so briefly with the depth of connection and emotion that had swept through him back in the corridor. It hadn't felt like an echo memory, the way the Lone Centurion's history did. It had felt more like an integral part of himself, that he had no idea existed. Like something present but out of reach, waiting to be discovered. His chest still ached for it, but his head couldn't keep it all straight.
Maybe, he figured, it was just something that had to live in the heart and hands for now. He sat down, placing his hand carefully over hers and cradling her fingers in his own. He closed his eyes, and exhaustion overtook him.
He must have drifted off because he found himself stirring awake at the same time River did. Her hand twitched in his grasp and he sat up quickly when she groaned and shifted. He met her eyes and squeezed her hand.
"Don't try to get up," he said. "You're in the med bay."
She blinked at him, uncomprehending for a moment, and then closed her eyes. "What happened?"
"You were shot. Right as the TARDIS scooped us all up, I think."
She gave a huff of indignation that quickly turned to a grimace. "I never get shot. After Berlin, I made sure." Ignoring both the pain and Rory's warning, she pushed her hands into the mattress and tried to inch her way up the pillow to a more upright position.
"Careful. You lost a lot of blood. It's going to take some time to recover, even with everything this surgical web can do. Including . . . here." Rory found a positional adjuster and slowly angled the head of the bed upward at a pace she could tolerate without passing out. She sighed, a mix between cross and exhausted.
"I feel . . . strange," she finally admitted. "There was something else. I had a dream, or—no, that was before. But. . ."
"You’re healing. That’s what matters." As for everything that had taken place en route to the med bay, Rory kept it to himself for now. He didn’t understand it enough to give an explanation, and River was in no shape for one anyway. "What happened in Berlin?" he asked instead. "How do you 'make sure' to never get shot?"
"Ah, Berlin. Now there's a spoiler for you." She scanned the space from her new vantage point, gaining her bearings and forcing the fatigue from her voice. "As for the other, that's easy. You live a very dull and safe life."
Rory couldn't help the short laugh that came from him, considering the absurdity of that prospect in present company. Even so, that ache rekindled across his chest, and he wondered if he and Amy still had a small town life like that in their future, with jobs and a mortgage and kids. Present and out of reach, he thought again, and let the notion fade to the back of his mind. "Or?" he asked, because there was definitely an 'or'.
"Or, you shoot first." River's smile was almost all bravado. Just an hour on the flip side of 'nearly dead', and her defenses were already bristling. Rory could see the hints of sadness behind her eyes, but the flint in her gaze told him to leave well enough alone.
"Don't let the Doctor hear you say that," he said. "Either option, actually, he wouldn't--whoa, steady!"
He wasn't prepared for the look of pure anguish that crossed River's face at his words, nor for her to sit nearly straight up and whip her head round to see the rest of the room. "He's not here in the med bay with us?"
"The Doctor stayed behind in the control room," Rory said evenly. "Amy went to fetch him, and I stayed here to make sure you didn't wake up and do something stupid like try to get out of bed after losing nearly half your blood supply."
But River wasn't listening. She gripped his forearm and swung her legs half-way off the bed. "And you don't know what happened, do you? You don't know what they did to him, or--oh."
This time, Rory was prepared. River's eyelids fluttered, and her grip went slack. He circled her in his arms as best he could. Her head lolled forward and she passed out, slumping sideways into his chest. He laid her back down onto the pillow.
"Did I not say, 'don't try to get up'?" He smoothed her hair and tucked her feet back up under the synthesized sheets. "I'm pretty sure I did."
He was just sitting down again when a burst of static noise echoed through the room, startling him. Out cold, River didn't budge at the sound. He looked around and saw it was coming from a speaker in the nearby wall, part of an old intercom system.
"Is this thing working? Is this the med bay?"
Amy's voice. He made his way to the wall and pressed the reply button. "Amy? What's going on? Where are you?"
"I'm not sure." She sounded upset, the way she did when she was trying not to cry. "There's a control panel. I used the sonic to boost its intercom. I--I don't want to leave in case I can't find my way here again. Can you map the comms signal from the control room for me?"
"Yes, of course," Rory answered. "Is the Doctor with you? Is everything all right?"
"No," came the reply. To which question, he couldn't tell. "Rory, something's really, really wrong."
The Doctor wasn't in the control room. Or in the maintenance levels, galley, living quarters, or wardrobe. Amy sonicked open all the doors in between, only to peer into empty rooms. She was growing cross and frustrated. Her heart raced faster and faster the longer she searched, calling for him and receiving only silence in answer. Worry ate away at her anger until she felt like a coiled spring ready to snap. But she did her best to push those feelings aside. As long as she was just cross with the Doctor for wandering off, it meant everything was fine. She would fume at him and kick him in the shin when she found him, before hugging him within an inch of his life. He would hug her back and apologize for being distracted or having to tend to whatever had drawn him away. It would be fine.
She pulled the ornate library door shut behind her--another deserted, cavernous space--and had just turned to head back the way she'd come when a flicker in the light to the right of the doors caught her attention. The library corridor dead-ended at its massive doors, but the TARDIS wasn't entirely reliable when it came to keeping her internal maps consistent. When Amy took a few steps to see past the bulkhead at the side, she found a small alcove tucked away behind it. Within the alcove, a corridor continued along like it had always been there, sure of itself and certainly not using the same exact space that was filled with bookshelves on the other side of the library doors.
The lights flickered again. Amy got the message, and headed down the new path. It quickly started spiraling downward and soon, she could feel the strange weight in her mind that meant she was drawing close to the center of the TARDIS. The Doctor always called this the heart of the ship. He also generally told Amy and Rory to steer clear of it. But this was clearly where the TARDIS wanted her to go, so she pressed onward. The labyrinthine path twisted and turned. The corridor grew taller without getting any wider, accommodating scaffolds and pipes and the undersides of girders. The dark walls wavered from shadowed to pale gray under a progression of floodlights embedded in the ceiling.
She heard the Doctor before she saw him. Just snatches of his voice--an indistinct hum, echoing off of the metal walls before fading again. Amy sped up around a final turn, and had to stop to gain her bearings in the room in front of her.
The corridor emptied into a huge, round, central hub. Wide polymer walkways ringed the curved walls, which were lined with heavy, sealed doors. Here and there, a corridor broke through, like the one from which she'd come. There were railings guarding a long drop on the inner edge of this circular walk, and at the center, a few paths spoked inward several feet toward a giant cylinder of machinery--pipes, conduits, hoses, circuitry blinking red and white--that stretched far above the ceiling and far below the floor. Despite the size and the industrial look, it was eerily quiet. Amy’s footsteps made no sound on the solid walkway. A diffuse orange glow shone down from far above, giving the effect of twilight. The atmosphere was more like a snow-covered forest than a factory floor.
The Doctor’s humming had gained the semblance of an almost recognizable melody, but he stopped before Amy could pinpoint the tune. A one-sided argument started up, just as she caught sight of him at the far end of the room.
"Not very nice, changing the routes on me. I know you did. I know my way around my own ship!"
He was still dressed in his grimy scrubs from the desert. His back was turned toward her and he was slowly shuffling along the corridor, the fingers of one hand trailing along the doorways lining the outer wall. When he reached the edge of the next door he stopped, pressing his palm flat against its smooth surface. A glint of something on the back of his neck caught the twilight glow. He started his tune again—soft, questioning, off-key.
"I’m looking through you, where did you go? I thought I knew you, what did I know?"
Amy realized she wasn't cross anymore. Her fantasy reunion dissolved away into confusion and concern. "Doctor?" she called, tentative.
He didn't answer, only stopped again, palm flat upon the next door. "You don’t look different, but you have changed. I’m looking through you, you’re not—"
He stopped and turned, splaying his fingers across as much of the door as he could reach. Amy finally caught sight of his face when he pressed a cheek to the solid slab in front of him. His eyes were closed. He must not have seen her.
"Oh, clever girl," he muttered.
"Hey, Raggedy Man . . . " Amy said, reaching his side. But he didn’t acknowledge her at all, only kept talking to his ship.
"I said we could sort it afterward. I didn't mean immediately. First I have to know about River—“
When she laid her hand on his arm, the Doctor jumped and scrambled away like he'd been burnt. Amy yelped and flinched away herself from the shock, watching in horror as he crashed shoulder first back into the door, his knees buckling and sending him to the floor. She started toward him but stopped short of touching again, at a loss for what to do.
"Who’s there?” He steadied himself to one knee, leaning heavily against the door, and quested his free hand out blindly in front of him. "Amy? Rory?"
A roar set up in Amy's ears. Something twisted inside her; it was't that her touch had hurt him. It wasn't that; she'd just startled him, because he . . .
Desperately pushing that conclusion aside, she knelt down quickly in front of him and caught his hand in hers "It's just me," she said. "What's wrong? What's happened?"
This time, he seized her fingers and held on tight. He looked up, eyes darting back and forth over her face, examining something it seemed only he could see.
"Crack in your wall," he finally said. "Universe, pouring through your head. Hello, Amelia Pond." He gave her a quick smile, eyes almost focusing on her face, before trying to gain his feet. "Amy, I need you to—"
He fell back before he could finish, cutting off with a grimace. Amy shifted her position to his side, offering as much help as she could to get him upright and headed in the direction from which she’d come. Her hands were shaking, and she found herself unable to stop a flood of words despite the waver in her voice.
"C’mon, let's get you to the med bay. Whatever's gone wrong, we'll fix it," she told him. "That’s how it always works, right? We get through things and we patch up. We rebooted the entire universe together and got you back from the cracks in time, and now we just got you back again from one stupid military base, and there's no way that’s going to be harder than remembering you when you don’t exist yet, Doctor, because you're just impossible like that—"
She was so intent on getting the Doctor moving down the corridor, she didn’t realize that the unsteady gait she was fighting to help control was him, actively fighting her, until he nearly shouted at her.
"Amy, wait--no. Stop. Stop! I need—" Amy let up and he sagged, breathless, against the wall. He kept hold of her hand, and put his other on her cheek. "I need you to hold still for a moment."
Amy stilled. Dread for her best friend grew in the pit of her stomach. "You don’t want to go to the med bay?"
"Stop talking. Tell me about River."
"Tell you, without talking? How?" The world blurred; she couldn't keep her tears in check any longer. "You can't hear me, can you?"
"Yes or no." He guided her head to a nod or a shake, thumbing wetness from her cheek. Then he closed his eyes and squeezed her hand, speaking slowly and clearly through his exhaustion. "There's residual chronon energy in your timeline, and it's not all from your history. Were you near River when the TARDIS went into the Vortex?"
She set her jaw and nodded. Yes.
"And her timeline. Did you see . . . or," he frowned, searching for the right word. "Did you feel anything strange, like new but not, or—"
This time, she interrupted him. Yes.
"And otherwise, she's . . ." This time it was his voice that wavered with emotion. "I think she was bleeding. Did you make it to the med bay in time? She's breathing, she's all right?"
Yes. Yes. Yes. Amy nodded emphatically, bringing her own hand up to cover his. "Doctor, she's okay," she added. "She's going to be fine."
Relief flooded his features, taking the rest of his strength. Amy found herself pulling him forward into that reunion hug after all, if only to stop him from collapsing. He was barely standing, but returned her embrace as much as he could. Amy closed her eyes as his forehead came to rest on her shoulder. He was bone thin under the hospital scrubs.
"And what about you?" she half-whispered at his ear. "Are you going to be all right?"
He didn't reply, but a clang broke the silence, like the sound of a metal latch being undone. Amy blinked her eyes open and looked down the corridor behind them. The door where the Doctor had stopped before was now sitting half-open,a shaft of light spilling out in front of it into the shadowed hub space. The Doctor lifted his head, somehow sensing the change.
"Zero room," he said. "Please, Amy."
"That's where you need to go?" She gently shifted position until she was by the Doctor's side again, and turned them around. He stumbled slightly, but Amy steadied him. He held his hand out until his fingers brushed the wall, tracing the doorways as they made their way back in front of the open door. All Amy could see of the room beyond was an empty, blinding white. But the Doctor grasped the doorway and pulled himself toward it.
"You're right, of course," he mumbled at the floor. "We need to start now."
The door clanged shut as soon as he crossed the threshold, leaving Amy behind in the silent corridor.
**
Part 14| Part 16
**
In the quiet of the med bay, with only the blips of monitors and the hum of the rejuvenated TARDIS in his ears, Rory was slowly starting to feel like himself again. He'd tossed his ruined clothes, found some towels and done his best to wash the rest of the blood and grime on his skin into the large surgical sink outside the operating theater. A search of the lockers along the far wall had uncovered a set of scrubs in his size, that even had the correct allotment of limbs. He had just pulled the clean shirt over his head when he heard a decisive beep from the containment web, and the whirr of the shell retracting.
River was still asleep. He stood at her bedside and studied her face, trying to reconcile the woman he'd known so briefly with the depth of connection and emotion that had swept through him back in the corridor. It hadn't felt like an echo memory, the way the Lone Centurion's history did. It had felt more like an integral part of himself, that he had no idea existed. Like something present but out of reach, waiting to be discovered. His chest still ached for it, but his head couldn't keep it all straight.
Maybe, he figured, it was just something that had to live in the heart and hands for now. He sat down, placing his hand carefully over hers and cradling her fingers in his own. He closed his eyes, and exhaustion overtook him.
He must have drifted off because he found himself stirring awake at the same time River did. Her hand twitched in his grasp and he sat up quickly when she groaned and shifted. He met her eyes and squeezed her hand.
"Don't try to get up," he said. "You're in the med bay."
She blinked at him, uncomprehending for a moment, and then closed her eyes. "What happened?"
"You were shot. Right as the TARDIS scooped us all up, I think."
She gave a huff of indignation that quickly turned to a grimace. "I never get shot. After Berlin, I made sure." Ignoring both the pain and Rory's warning, she pushed her hands into the mattress and tried to inch her way up the pillow to a more upright position.
"Careful. You lost a lot of blood. It's going to take some time to recover, even with everything this surgical web can do. Including . . . here." Rory found a positional adjuster and slowly angled the head of the bed upward at a pace she could tolerate without passing out. She sighed, a mix between cross and exhausted.
"I feel . . . strange," she finally admitted. "There was something else. I had a dream, or—no, that was before. But. . ."
"You’re healing. That’s what matters." As for everything that had taken place en route to the med bay, Rory kept it to himself for now. He didn’t understand it enough to give an explanation, and River was in no shape for one anyway. "What happened in Berlin?" he asked instead. "How do you 'make sure' to never get shot?"
"Ah, Berlin. Now there's a spoiler for you." She scanned the space from her new vantage point, gaining her bearings and forcing the fatigue from her voice. "As for the other, that's easy. You live a very dull and safe life."
Rory couldn't help the short laugh that came from him, considering the absurdity of that prospect in present company. Even so, that ache rekindled across his chest, and he wondered if he and Amy still had a small town life like that in their future, with jobs and a mortgage and kids. Present and out of reach, he thought again, and let the notion fade to the back of his mind. "Or?" he asked, because there was definitely an 'or'.
"Or, you shoot first." River's smile was almost all bravado. Just an hour on the flip side of 'nearly dead', and her defenses were already bristling. Rory could see the hints of sadness behind her eyes, but the flint in her gaze told him to leave well enough alone.
"Don't let the Doctor hear you say that," he said. "Either option, actually, he wouldn't--whoa, steady!"
He wasn't prepared for the look of pure anguish that crossed River's face at his words, nor for her to sit nearly straight up and whip her head round to see the rest of the room. "He's not here in the med bay with us?"
"The Doctor stayed behind in the control room," Rory said evenly. "Amy went to fetch him, and I stayed here to make sure you didn't wake up and do something stupid like try to get out of bed after losing nearly half your blood supply."
But River wasn't listening. She gripped his forearm and swung her legs half-way off the bed. "And you don't know what happened, do you? You don't know what they did to him, or--oh."
This time, Rory was prepared. River's eyelids fluttered, and her grip went slack. He circled her in his arms as best he could. Her head lolled forward and she passed out, slumping sideways into his chest. He laid her back down onto the pillow.
"Did I not say, 'don't try to get up'?" He smoothed her hair and tucked her feet back up under the synthesized sheets. "I'm pretty sure I did."
He was just sitting down again when a burst of static noise echoed through the room, startling him. Out cold, River didn't budge at the sound. He looked around and saw it was coming from a speaker in the nearby wall, part of an old intercom system.
"Is this thing working? Is this the med bay?"
Amy's voice. He made his way to the wall and pressed the reply button. "Amy? What's going on? Where are you?"
"I'm not sure." She sounded upset, the way she did when she was trying not to cry. "There's a control panel. I used the sonic to boost its intercom. I--I don't want to leave in case I can't find my way here again. Can you map the comms signal from the control room for me?"
"Yes, of course," Rory answered. "Is the Doctor with you? Is everything all right?"
"No," came the reply. To which question, he couldn't tell. "Rory, something's really, really wrong."
The Doctor wasn't in the control room. Or in the maintenance levels, galley, living quarters, or wardrobe. Amy sonicked open all the doors in between, only to peer into empty rooms. She was growing cross and frustrated. Her heart raced faster and faster the longer she searched, calling for him and receiving only silence in answer. Worry ate away at her anger until she felt like a coiled spring ready to snap. But she did her best to push those feelings aside. As long as she was just cross with the Doctor for wandering off, it meant everything was fine. She would fume at him and kick him in the shin when she found him, before hugging him within an inch of his life. He would hug her back and apologize for being distracted or having to tend to whatever had drawn him away. It would be fine.
She pulled the ornate library door shut behind her--another deserted, cavernous space--and had just turned to head back the way she'd come when a flicker in the light to the right of the doors caught her attention. The library corridor dead-ended at its massive doors, but the TARDIS wasn't entirely reliable when it came to keeping her internal maps consistent. When Amy took a few steps to see past the bulkhead at the side, she found a small alcove tucked away behind it. Within the alcove, a corridor continued along like it had always been there, sure of itself and certainly not using the same exact space that was filled with bookshelves on the other side of the library doors.
The lights flickered again. Amy got the message, and headed down the new path. It quickly started spiraling downward and soon, she could feel the strange weight in her mind that meant she was drawing close to the center of the TARDIS. The Doctor always called this the heart of the ship. He also generally told Amy and Rory to steer clear of it. But this was clearly where the TARDIS wanted her to go, so she pressed onward. The labyrinthine path twisted and turned. The corridor grew taller without getting any wider, accommodating scaffolds and pipes and the undersides of girders. The dark walls wavered from shadowed to pale gray under a progression of floodlights embedded in the ceiling.
She heard the Doctor before she saw him. Just snatches of his voice--an indistinct hum, echoing off of the metal walls before fading again. Amy sped up around a final turn, and had to stop to gain her bearings in the room in front of her.
The corridor emptied into a huge, round, central hub. Wide polymer walkways ringed the curved walls, which were lined with heavy, sealed doors. Here and there, a corridor broke through, like the one from which she'd come. There were railings guarding a long drop on the inner edge of this circular walk, and at the center, a few paths spoked inward several feet toward a giant cylinder of machinery--pipes, conduits, hoses, circuitry blinking red and white--that stretched far above the ceiling and far below the floor. Despite the size and the industrial look, it was eerily quiet. Amy’s footsteps made no sound on the solid walkway. A diffuse orange glow shone down from far above, giving the effect of twilight. The atmosphere was more like a snow-covered forest than a factory floor.
The Doctor’s humming had gained the semblance of an almost recognizable melody, but he stopped before Amy could pinpoint the tune. A one-sided argument started up, just as she caught sight of him at the far end of the room.
"Not very nice, changing the routes on me. I know you did. I know my way around my own ship!"
He was still dressed in his grimy scrubs from the desert. His back was turned toward her and he was slowly shuffling along the corridor, the fingers of one hand trailing along the doorways lining the outer wall. When he reached the edge of the next door he stopped, pressing his palm flat against its smooth surface. A glint of something on the back of his neck caught the twilight glow. He started his tune again—soft, questioning, off-key.
"I’m looking through you, where did you go? I thought I knew you, what did I know?"
Amy realized she wasn't cross anymore. Her fantasy reunion dissolved away into confusion and concern. "Doctor?" she called, tentative.
He didn't answer, only stopped again, palm flat upon the next door. "You don’t look different, but you have changed. I’m looking through you, you’re not—"
He stopped and turned, splaying his fingers across as much of the door as he could reach. Amy finally caught sight of his face when he pressed a cheek to the solid slab in front of him. His eyes were closed. He must not have seen her.
"Oh, clever girl," he muttered.
"Hey, Raggedy Man . . . " Amy said, reaching his side. But he didn’t acknowledge her at all, only kept talking to his ship.
"I said we could sort it afterward. I didn't mean immediately. First I have to know about River—“
When she laid her hand on his arm, the Doctor jumped and scrambled away like he'd been burnt. Amy yelped and flinched away herself from the shock, watching in horror as he crashed shoulder first back into the door, his knees buckling and sending him to the floor. She started toward him but stopped short of touching again, at a loss for what to do.
"Who’s there?” He steadied himself to one knee, leaning heavily against the door, and quested his free hand out blindly in front of him. "Amy? Rory?"
A roar set up in Amy's ears. Something twisted inside her; it was't that her touch had hurt him. It wasn't that; she'd just startled him, because he . . .
Desperately pushing that conclusion aside, she knelt down quickly in front of him and caught his hand in hers "It's just me," she said. "What's wrong? What's happened?"
This time, he seized her fingers and held on tight. He looked up, eyes darting back and forth over her face, examining something it seemed only he could see.
"Crack in your wall," he finally said. "Universe, pouring through your head. Hello, Amelia Pond." He gave her a quick smile, eyes almost focusing on her face, before trying to gain his feet. "Amy, I need you to—"
He fell back before he could finish, cutting off with a grimace. Amy shifted her position to his side, offering as much help as she could to get him upright and headed in the direction from which she’d come. Her hands were shaking, and she found herself unable to stop a flood of words despite the waver in her voice.
"C’mon, let's get you to the med bay. Whatever's gone wrong, we'll fix it," she told him. "That’s how it always works, right? We get through things and we patch up. We rebooted the entire universe together and got you back from the cracks in time, and now we just got you back again from one stupid military base, and there's no way that’s going to be harder than remembering you when you don’t exist yet, Doctor, because you're just impossible like that—"
She was so intent on getting the Doctor moving down the corridor, she didn’t realize that the unsteady gait she was fighting to help control was him, actively fighting her, until he nearly shouted at her.
"Amy, wait--no. Stop. Stop! I need—" Amy let up and he sagged, breathless, against the wall. He kept hold of her hand, and put his other on her cheek. "I need you to hold still for a moment."
Amy stilled. Dread for her best friend grew in the pit of her stomach. "You don’t want to go to the med bay?"
"Stop talking. Tell me about River."
"Tell you, without talking? How?" The world blurred; she couldn't keep her tears in check any longer. "You can't hear me, can you?"
"Yes or no." He guided her head to a nod or a shake, thumbing wetness from her cheek. Then he closed his eyes and squeezed her hand, speaking slowly and clearly through his exhaustion. "There's residual chronon energy in your timeline, and it's not all from your history. Were you near River when the TARDIS went into the Vortex?"
She set her jaw and nodded. Yes.
"And her timeline. Did you see . . . or," he frowned, searching for the right word. "Did you feel anything strange, like new but not, or—"
This time, she interrupted him. Yes.
"And otherwise, she's . . ." This time it was his voice that wavered with emotion. "I think she was bleeding. Did you make it to the med bay in time? She's breathing, she's all right?"
Yes. Yes. Yes. Amy nodded emphatically, bringing her own hand up to cover his. "Doctor, she's okay," she added. "She's going to be fine."
Relief flooded his features, taking the rest of his strength. Amy found herself pulling him forward into that reunion hug after all, if only to stop him from collapsing. He was barely standing, but returned her embrace as much as he could. Amy closed her eyes as his forehead came to rest on her shoulder. He was bone thin under the hospital scrubs.
"And what about you?" she half-whispered at his ear. "Are you going to be all right?"
He didn't reply, but a clang broke the silence, like the sound of a metal latch being undone. Amy blinked her eyes open and looked down the corridor behind them. The door where the Doctor had stopped before was now sitting half-open,a shaft of light spilling out in front of it into the shadowed hub space. The Doctor lifted his head, somehow sensing the change.
"Zero room," he said. "Please, Amy."
"That's where you need to go?" She gently shifted position until she was by the Doctor's side again, and turned them around. He stumbled slightly, but Amy steadied him. He held his hand out until his fingers brushed the wall, tracing the doorways as they made their way back in front of the open door. All Amy could see of the room beyond was an empty, blinding white. But the Doctor grasped the doorway and pulled himself toward it.
"You're right, of course," he mumbled at the floor. "We need to start now."
The door clanged shut as soon as he crossed the threshold, leaving Amy behind in the silent corridor.
**
Part 14| Part 16