FicWad

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The Doctor could feel his organs and tissues settling uncomfortably into their proper arrangement. It was a sickening sensation, and the Doctor was eager to take his mind off it. "What did you do that for?" he asked.

"None of your concern at the moment," Goran dithered, turning back to his bank of monitors and buttons.

"Why did you collect my essence?" the Doctor pressed. Goran pressed a few buttons and squinted at a monitor screen, deliberately ignoring him. The Doctor's insides writhed a bit more and he broke out in a nauseous, cold sweat. "Those other containers-they've all got my essence in them, haven't they? You're taking it from all my selves. What's it for?" the Doctor wondered aloud. "And where are we?"

Goran shot him a furtive, unsettled glance, but said nothing.

"Now see, you've got this all backward. As the prisoner, I'm the one that's supposed to be refusing to talk. You, on the other hand, should be laughing maniacally and gloating-in explicit detail-about how cleverly evil and unstoppable your plan is," the Doctor prattled glibly to take his mind off his discomfort. "If you're going to do the part, you should at least get it right."

"Hm, I guess that's a change," Goran muttered.

"What is?"

"Your automatic assumption that I'm scheming up something evil. I didn't even get a platonic 'hello, I'm the Doctor,' like your others started with. I'm not completely sure cynicism suits you." Goran stopped poking at buttons and eyed the Doctor nearsightedly. "Unless you're just remembering me from those previous encounters?"

"Afraid it doesn't work like that."

"Oh, right. Yes. So you've told me..." Goran did a quick count-off on his fingers, "...four times now, I guess. Perhaps I should start believing you. Although it's still possible you just consulted with your others and got your story straight before I brought you here. I keep telling my supervisors that you should be transmatted directly here so you don't have the chance to scheme beforehand, but they don't seem to think it's a problem. Not like you could slip anything past them anyway, I guess."

"Supervisors?" the Doctor repeated, latching onto the scant piece of intelligence. "Who are they?" he asked. His faculties still felt slightly dulled; he hadn't quite got the hang of this temporal dimension yet.

"Individuals concerned with keeping their privacy, I guess you might say. Now hold still, please." Goran pressed a button and the interior of the Doctor's tube lit up with red light.

The Doctor winced, prepared for the worst, but all he felt was a light, prickly sensation on his exposed skin. The light turned off, and the prickly feeling went away. A spectral, full-body scan, apparently. "I'd just like to know what they want my essence for, not their credit card numbers or anything. Why can't you tell me that?" the Doctor asked.

"You know exactly why not," Goran harrumphed.

"If it's regeneration they're interested in, fair enough, but why collect so many of me? With this machine you've got, all you'd need is..."

"Give it a rest, Doctor, I can't tell you any of the things you really want to know, and you'll only exhaust yourself trying to fill in the blanks yourself. I'm as much a prisoner as you are, you know."

"So you've been kidnapped and tortured within an inch of your life as well? How did you like it?"

"Doctor-"

"Come on, let's compare notes! Or are you afraid of a little constructive criticism?"

"No! Look, we can trade quips all day, but it's not going to get you out of here any quicker, I guarantee." Goran-amazingly-kept his cool and pressed another button, releasing the Doctor's restraints.

The Doctor grinned knowingly and reached into his jacket pocket. "Who needs quips when you've got a-" he stopped short when he came up empty-handed.

"Got a what? A sonic screwdriver, maybe?" Goran finished for him, pulling the device out of the breast pocket of his lab coat and twirling it for the Doctor to see. "Yes, this would come in handy about now, wouldn't it?" He put the screwdriver back in his front pocket and picked up a clipboard from a supply cart. "I know about all your various little accessories. Speaking of, who'd you come with this time?"

"I don't understand," the Doctor lied quickly.

"Your little human assistants or girlfriends or whatever. I confess I'm a little confused about the nature of your relationship with them. But anyway, who are you with this time?"

"Nobody really worth mentioning," the Doctor answered indifferently. "You know humans, once you've seen one, you've-"

"Female? Young, old?" Goran's patience seemed to be straining a little.

The Doctor shrugged evasively. "I don't really pay attention to those kinds of details anymore. Too confusing at my age. After nine hundred years my memory's rubbish. I tried coming up with mnemonic devices, but it's like when you tie a string round your finger to remind you of something, but then forget what the string meant." Goran looked about to interrupt him again, so the Doctor cut to the chase: "Why do you want to know, anyway? I'm the real prize; humans don't regenerate."

Goran's face twitched in a way that could have meant pain, distaste or have simply been a tic. "Neither have you, if you noticed," the little alien commented, scribbling intently.

Anything to avoid eye contact, the Doctor noticed. "I don't regenerate just because somebody wants me to. Most of the time, I don't even want me to, but you can see how well I listen to me about that!" Suddenly the sludge that had been coating the Doctor's brain started to clear a bit and he quickly recalled what had just happened to him.

Goran had a point, he realized. In the end, he hadn't been able to hold himself back. He'd started to change, but something had interfered. And it wasn't the anesthetic. This had been a completely different sensation; the process seemed to suddenly decelerate and then stop, idle. And it was only then that Goran had cut the power, so his machine wasn't to blame.

The Doctor was growing slightly annoyed at his mind's sluggish behaviour. Goran chanced a cursory glance at the Doctor, and then resumed his note taking, waiting for the Doctor to figure it out. Rather impolite of him, the Doctor thought, since Goran had to know that he wasn't firing on all cylinders yet.

"I can't regenerate here, can I?" the Doctor concluded, "We're outside the fourth dimension, on some higher temporal plane. That's why it all feels so wrong. I'm cut off from my natural time stream, stuck the way I am," the Doctor realized. "That's why you need my other selves. You built this machine to take me to the brink of death, cause me to regenerate, but I can't." The Doctor began to grow excited as he saw the pieces fall into place. "So instead you've rigged the time corridor to bring in all my other bodies so you can work out the mechanisms by studying each individual version of me. Actually, that makes sense, come to think. When you don't have a calculator, you do the problem longhand, don't you?" The Doctor paused his musing long enough to address Goran directly, "Ingenious solution, well done. Still doesn't address the 'why' of it, though. Why me, and who are you working for?"

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Miranda's stomach hit her shoes. She stepped back from the hedge and partially dug grave, her eyes fixed on the weirdo's shovel. She wanted to check if there was anything lying around that she could use as a weapon if this lunatic suddenly decided to finish the job, but she didn't want to risk looking away from him and giving him an opening. So she just stood there and quietly began to sweat. "What do you mean, it's mine?" she asked warily.

"You're really not all that bright, are you?" the weirdo commented.

Before Miranda could figure out how to respond, a boisterous voice cut across the yard: "Ah! Here you are! I was starting to think you'd been picked up alrea-oh, no! Not again!" The pudgy man in the multicoloured jacket came strolling in from Miranda's peripheral vision and stopped between her and the weirdo, staring at the weirdo's handiwork with hands on his hips. "Haven't you got anything better to do? And where did you find a shovel?" he groused at the weirdo, highly agitated.

The weirdo drew himself up defensively. "She would have found out eventually."

"Excuse me, why is there a cemetery in your backyard?" Miranda tried to interject.

"Did you lose your manners along with your senses? That's hardly an excuse for scaring her to death! She's our guest!" the colourful jacket exclaimed and kicked at the disturbed grass. "And you've damaged the grounds again. Now those bloody androids will be all over the yard--!"

"How dare you speak that way to the Lord High President of Gallifrey!" the weirdo bellowed, gripping his shovel as if it were a regal sceptre.

"He was going to kill me!" Miranda directed her complaint at the colourful jacket, hoping to get his attention.

"Kill you? That's not like me at all. I was simply going to bury you," the weirdo said innocently.

Miranda stared at him in wordless, confused shock. She turned to the colourful jacket, hoping for some kind of explanation.

"You're not going to do anything except fill that hole back in before the damage alarm sounds off," the colourful jacket pronounced, wagging a finger at the weirdo. He put an arm around Miranda and started leading her back towards the manor. "Let's go in before it gets dark and I'll make a fresh pot of tea."

Miranda collected herself and planted her feet. Why did everyone think they could keep pacifying her so easily? "A simple question first: why are there dead people buried in the backyard?"

The colourful jacket stopped, looking somewhat surprised. "What? There's no one buried back here! Those are memorials."

Miranda blinked, processing. "But that guy--?"

"Sorry about him, he always acts up when newcomers arrive," the weirdo waved dismissively. "He's a bit of a nutter by now, I'm afraid."

"'Eccentric,' if you please," the weirdo chimed in behind Miranda.

"You've been a few Jelly Babies short of eccentric since before I got here," the colourful one derided.

"Really? I must remember to requisition another bag from the Castellan the next time I see him. Though they do get caught in my feathers something awful, naughty little sweets."

"You do that."

"So no one's died?" Miranda asked before the conversation could wander off again.

"Yes," the weirdo said. "No," the colourful one said at the same time.

"Yes and no," the weirdo added.

Miranda covered her face with a hand, exasperated almost beyond caring by this point. "Which is it?" she snapped.

"Sad to say, none of us knows definitively. The last time any of them were here with us, they were certainly alive; then one by one, Goran took them," the colourful one explained regretfully. "What became of them after that..." he shrugged with a distressing degree of hopelessness. He glanced at Miranda and smiled sadly. "I trust they're alright somewhere. Still, I suppose almost anything is better than sitting around here with nothing to do but wither away."

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The black android walked into sight and Goran gave the clipboard to it. The android took it, walked across the room and sat down at a computer and began typing.

"That's one of things I admire about you, Doctor. If I let you talk long enough, you eventually find the answers to your questions on your own. Wish I could do that. By the way, which regeneration are you?"

The Doctor took a moment to regroup. A tougher nut to crack than he'd expected, this Goran. "Well, I'll tell you something-"

Suddenly something began beeping. Goran jumped, a hand flying to his chest. "Oh!" He recovered himself and flew to a bank of monitors. The Doctor heard him bluster a huge sigh. "You again!" he said to the screen.

"What is it?" the Doctor asked.

"Nothing, nothing, just a damage alarm."

"Damage alarm?"

Goran shook his fuzzy head quickly. "Four's up to his old tricks again. Joy. You know my fur was green when I first came here?" he revealed, suddenly contemplative. "Each one of these grey hairs is as much your fault as anything else. I wish you'd just accept the fact that there's no escape and put up with this purgatory we've been dumped in."

The Doctor pulled his brows together, confused.

Goran appeared to shiver, then turned back to the Doctor. "I guess we might as well stop here for now anyway." Goran walked over to a bank of machinery next to the Doctor's tube and flipped a switch. The air vent inside the tube rumbled to life. He tabbed another control and the beeping of the damage alarm silenced.

The Doctor had a good idea what was coming and engaged his respiratory bypass. "Pity, I was just starting to get settled in."

"Don't worry about that, you'll have plenty of time to get used to how things work around here," Goran answered.

The Doctor was disturbed to feel a familiar tingling sensation in his throat and limbs. How was that possible? He shook himself, but already his mind was drifting away in a fog and his body was starting to go leaden. "How--?" he slurred quizzically.

Goran eyed him a moment and then chuckled. "I guess you're not so changed after all! Maybe I should have warned you; the anaesthesia is absorbed directly through your skin, so your respiratory bypass won't do anything. Sweet dreams, Doctor."

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Miranda heard the weirdo's shovel drop and she glanced over her shoulder to see him speaking to his hat again: "In fact, I did you a considerable favour, Brigadier. It was only because I'm the president that you were even allowed into the Matrix, so I would be a bit more appreciative...Nothing to do?! You should have thought of that before sacrificing yourself to the Skarasen...No, I didn't! What? Ahh, well, not even I get it right all the time, Brigadier..."

"How long have you been here?" Miranda turned and asked the colourful one.

"That's really the question, isn't it? You must have noticed by now that time moves differently here. I've known minutes to feel like hours and days to pass almost without a moment's notice. Bedevils my culinary efforts."

"I did experience a strange, slow-motion effect when the Doctor and I first arrived, but everything seems normal now."

"Is it? Check your watch," the colourful one suggested with an arched eyebrow.

Miranda looked at her timepiece and to her surprise saw the hands spinning wildly. She shook her wrist and the hands seemed to freeze for a split second, but then merely began moving backwards. "How come I don't feel that?"

"Because you're human," the Doctor cut in.

Miranda looked up and felt a huge weight slide off her shoulders as he strolled over to join them. She'd been so occupied that she must have missed the sound of the transmat. "You're alive!" she exclaimed stupidly.

"Humans aren't as sensitive to time as-obviously-a Timelord is. It's wired into the very fabric of our being, makes us more aware of everything," the Doctor continued, apparently in high spirits as he clapped Miranda on the back. "I'm fine, by the way."

"Oh! Of course, glad to hear it," Miranda sighed with relief. The Doctor's grin suddenly grew vacant and he unceremoniously began to slump to the ground. "Whoops!" Miranda grabbed him, but he was a lot of dead weight. Colours grabbed one of his arms and helped her pull him back up.

"Careful now, Doctor!" Colours grunted as he and Miranda sat him on the ground.

"Oof! Make that mostly fine," the Doctor winced, coming around.

"What happened?" Miranda asked, crouching next to him and glancing him over. His eyes looked fine and he had no obvious injuries that she could see. The panicky thought that he might end up incapacitated, leaving her alone to handle the situation, faded quickly, but she was surprised at how strong it had been.

The Doctor rubbed his temples and grimaced. "I met Goran."

"What did he-?"

SNAP! CRZZZ!

"Ow!" Miranda yelped as the transmat went off directly behind her, blasting her eardrums. She looked and saw a cloud of dissipating ozone where the weirdo had been standing with his shovel.

SNAP! CRZZZ!

Now blind as well as deaf, Miranda blinked away the spots and saw two black and silver humanoids appear out of the ozone cloud next to the disturbed hedgerow. She scrambled around the Doctor, putting some more space (and him) between her and the humanoids, just in case the transmat decided to go off again. They began poking around, picking up the pieces of turf that had been dug out.

"Right! Inside!" Colours announced.

Miranda couldn't suppress a sudden, amused chuckle. "Who called up the Power Rangers?"

"They're androids," the Doctor said. "So there's more than one?" he asked Colours.

"Substantially more, but it only takes one to put paid any ideas about interfering with them."

"Interfere? You mean something like this?" The Doctor stepped up behind the androids and tapped one on its chrome shoulder. "'Allo, mate-"

As soon as the Doctor's hand touched the android, it turned on him and landed an open palm against his chest with considerable force. The Doctor ended up sprawled at Miranda's feet, looking equally surprised and pained. "Please vacate the area," the android droned dispassionately, turning back to its partner.

"Wow," Miranda couldn't help muttering as she offered the Doctor a hand getting up.

"Superbly demonstrated, Doctor, however needlessly," sighed Colours.

"How is saying hello interfering? Just rude, you ask me," the Doctor grumbled. "Okay, so don't mess with the androids. Got it. How else have you tried escaping, Patches?"

Miranda took a liberal step back when one of the androids moved near her. "What say we move the chat indoors, Doctor?"

"Good thinking!" Colours effused.

"Not a bad idea," the Doctor agreed.

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Once back in the parlour, the door closed behind them, the Doctor felt a slight cosmic twinge and was startled to notice that it now appeared to be completely dark outside. Reflexively he checked his watch, but it was spinning pointlessly. Funny that he hadn't thought to look at it before. Glancing up, he saw the array of clocks on the mantle was doing largely the same thing, but they were all out of sync with each other.

He could sense the tiny rivulets of time drifting through space, wrenching the clocks, tugging at his body, spurring apotheosis and cell division in fits and starts and distorting motion in front of his eyes. He still felt depleted from Goran's ministrations, and the combined effect was fast growing extremely irritating. He looked over at Miranda, who was looking out the curtains, evidently noticing the sudden time change as well. She seemed perfectly acclimated. He felt a little envious of her for that.

"Ha! Check!"

The Doctor recognized the voice of his previous regeneration and noticed that he and his fifth incarnation were seated on opposite sides of a chessboard. A gramophone (not a Victrola) was playing /Mi tradi quell'alma ingrata/, Elvira's aria, from Mozart's /Don Giovanni/.

Cavalieri still sang it best, the Doctor opined to himself.

"Check? Impossible!" his fifth protested shrilly, popping on his spectacles and eyeing the chessboard in that nearsighted way the Doctor had hoped would make his preternaturally young face look more authoritative. Considering how aged he now appeared, it actually seemed natural.

"You have to watch for that /zwischenzug/," his eighth responded smugly.

"...Yes..." his fifth agreed disgustedly, hand suspended over the pieces.

"I'll put the kettle on," the Doctor's sixth self announced, walking on out of the room.

"So, who are these guys again?" Miranda asked him quietly.

The Doctor couldn't help startling just a bit. It was easy to forget how quiet she could be. "In a word, me." He watched her brow furrow thoughtfully.

"From the past?"

"Yup." He had to admit it was fun seeing the cogs grind away between her ears.

"As in, like, reincarnation?"

"Sort of, yeah." He watched her cross her arms and purse her lips thoughtfully. "You don't believe me," he concluded without surprise.

Miranda bit her lip, several emotions passing across her face before she answered. When she did, he could barely hear her: "So that's what John was talking about."

Her hazel eyes met his for just one, self-conscious second, but he found himself unable to match her gaze as the unwelcome memory boiled up from a corner of his mind:

"It's really a shame, Doctor, because I've got nothing against Miranda. Quite like her, in fact, yet now I'm going to have to kill her, all because of you."

"The only one to blame for your situation is you. Let her go."

"That's not how I remember it, although perhaps my memory isn't as complete as it should be, given this less-than-superior shell. A situation I hope to remedy, provided you give me what I need."

The Doctor remembered what it felt like, holding that gun, pointing it at Miranda, but aiming it at the ruthless killer standing behind her, wondering if he really had it in him to fire.

"I can't help you. But if you don't let her go, I swear I will hurt you."

"Are you going to move, or what?" the Doctor's eighth self demanded crossly, snapping the Doctor out of his brief reverie.

"I'm thinking," the fifth snapped, clearly stalling, hand still poised motionless over the board.

"What of? I'll have you checkmated my next move. You're only delaying the inevitable."

"I'm not sure of that!" the fifth squeaked.

"Well I'm your future, and I'm telling you, you've lost this one."

The Doctor's fifth self yanked off his spectacles and eyed the eighth in supreme annoyance.

"I used to play tic-tac-toe with myself," Miranda piped up suddenly. The Doctor looked at her. She appeared to be eyeing the chessboard critically, but then shot him a wry smirk. "It always ended up a tie game, though."

"You had a lonely childhood, didn't you?" the Doctor felt fit to jibe, "The other kids wouldn't play with you at recess?"

"Hot tea, coming through!" the Doctor's sixth persona strolled back into the parlour, bearing a loaded tray.

"Ah! Just the thing!" his fifth exclaimed, hopping up from his seat-without making a play-to get a teacup. His eighth sat back and flung his hands up in vexation.

"So, Miranda, how is it you take your tea?" the sixth asked.

"I don't really drink tea," she answered quickly, sliding into an armchair.

"Sugar, milk?"

"I don't need anything, thanks."

The Doctor glanced at his sixth self, who shot him a meaningful look. The Doctor smiled and shrugged. "She's a bit shy in crowds. Two sugars for me." His sixth self served him a teacup and the Doctor settled himself into an armchair opposite Miranda. He took a deep breath of the steam, feeling the free radicals and oxides permeate the membranes of his nose and begin easing his achiness. "So!" he stated emphatically, "This is it, eh? Tea, chess, and the occasional torture session with Goran? Doesn't it get boring?"

"One finds ways of occupying one's time," his sixth remarked airily, pulling out a kerchief to dust a few crumbs off the tea tray. He shot a glance at the fifth and eighth. "Some more constructively than others."

"Still thinking?" the eighth asked the fifth, resting his chin in his palm.

"Just a minute!" the fifth complained sharply, guarding his pieces.

"Oh, for the-!" the Doctor set down his mug, leaped out of his chair and walked over to the chessboard. He looked it over minutely, then grabbed his fifth persona's rook and moved it accordingly. "There! Now can we forget the stupid chess for a mo'? I'm trying to work out an escape plan, if you don't mind."

His fifth eyed the new arrangement of pieces on the board with glee. "Of course!"

The Doctor's eighth did likewise and calmly reached for his black bishop. Suddenly the Doctor realised that he'd made a bad move. He watched his eighth swap the bishop for the fifth's king. "And checkmate. Thank you, Doctor." The eighth grinned maniacally at the fifth. "I suggest you stick to cricket."

The Doctor's fifth shook his head. "I used to be much better at this game. I-"

The Doctor's own patience was very near the end. "Oy! Am I invisible? I just said the words 'escape plan,' and nobody seemed to care."

"It's nothing personal," his fifth remarked, resetting the chessboard, "but you must understand that by now it's not a very novel phrase round here. More likely to get you into trouble." He looked up at the Doctor and cocked an eyebrow somewhat oddly. "We could while away whatever it is that constitutes the hours in this place telling you of all our failed escapes, but that would be so depressing," he smiled boyishly, with another weird quirk of his brows.

"And we've already got depressing in spades," the Doctor's eighth added. The Doctor paid him a cursory glance and was startled to see this other incarnation also briefly manipulate his brows in a strange way. The Doctor stared at him a moment, perplexed. "Obviously," his eighth said awkwardly, repeating the bizarre facial tic.

The Doctor turned his gaze to his sixth version. "I suppose you're with them?" he asked.

"Oh, definitely," the sixth agreed with a nod. Then he too furrowed his brows absurdly.

The Doctor stalked to the nearest window, baffled and angry. He was having a very difficult time wrapping his mind around this. What could have happened to render his prior selves so docile? Even in his mildest forms he could never remembering being this indolent. No wonder Miranda couldn't accept them for who they were. He almost couldn't, either. It was inexplicably odd. Though not quite as odd as their twitchy foreheads.

Must be a side effect of Goran's experiments, the Doctor reasoned. He whirled around to face his pasts. "What's happened to all of you? There's a universe out there, remember?"

"And no way to reach it!" the sixth barked in obvious ill temper. "Believe me, our time has been well occupied in the effort! Between the spatial limitation field, the constant surveillance and our own diminished states our options are painfully few."

"Spatial limitation field?" the Doctor repeated, the glimmerings of a plan beginning to take shape in his brain. He looked back at Miranda, seated in her armchair, knees tucked up under her chin. She met his gaze firmly and nodded. "Right! Then we'll come up with something new," he announced.

"Oh, brilliant," the eighth version derided. The Doctor merely glared at him, then turned his attention to the whole room.

"Well, this time it'll work."

"What gives you that idea?" the fifth queried.

"Because right now you all have something you didn't have before. Coming, Miranda?"

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her uncurl herself from her chair and stretch. "Lead on, Doc," she yawned gamely.

"And what's that?" the sixth jabbed.

The Doctor flashed his bright, cheeky grin. "Me."

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Miranda let the Doctor usher her out into the front yard, where she remembered that it was now nighttime. At least the porch light was on, casting sickly orange beams across the murky blackness, but Miranda still couldn't see very much. "Er, Doc...?"

"All right, here it is: I'll start out here, you start round back, and we'll meet in the middle," the Doctor said quickly, obviously carried away with excitement.

"And what are we doing?" she asked calmly.

"Looking for a nexus point," the Doctor said, patting himself down quickly.

"You're gonna have to give me a little more."

"While I was getting tortured, it occurred to me that the technology Goran's using isn't all that refined. It's superior, don't get me wrong, but it's not top-of-the-line tech by any stretch. Tight budget, maybe. So I'll reckon the limitation field is probably the same way, meaning that the nexus point, where one end of the field connects to the other, most likely doesn't have any containment. Meaning," he barrelled on, evidently anticipating her next query, "It should be leaking all kinds of energy, and someone who's really clever should be able to breech it and escape."

"Let me guess, really clever like you, who also has a sonic screwdriver?" Miranda asked sarcastically. Now that she had a better idea of what was going on, it was easier to step back into the little "sidekick" routine she had with the Doctor.

"I don't need the sonic screwdriver. I'm just as brilliant by myself," he protested as he walked-empty handed, she noticed-towards the front gate.

"But it's dark! What am I supposed to be looking for?" she called after him. It was also very chilly.

"Energy. Energy's mostly light and heat, and right now it's dark and cold, so it should be pretty obvious when we find it, dontcha think? Now, are you going to help me, or you going to stand there and look stupid?"

In other words, Miranda translated, he didn't know exactly what they were looking for either, but she was too tired to be bothered about it and sick of asking to have things explained. "Out back, you said?" Well, she reasoned tiredly, what harm could it do to roam around pointlessly for a while on an inescapable estate in the middle of the night?

"Out back," the Doctor confirmed, trotting out towards the gate. "And mind the androids."

Miranda nodded and rounded the corner of the manor house. The back porch light was on as well (a nice courtesy, considering how otherwise unhelpful the other men were being), allowing Miranda to notice that the androids seemed to have gone. She saw the vague sparkles of the pond surface, but all else seemed quiet. She was sorely tempted to believe that it was as safe as it appeared to be. She'd been on edge all day and it was really starting to wear her down.

"Well, no point in standing here looking stupid, right?" she muttered to herself. Rubbing some warmth back into her arms, she headed for the back wall. Unfortunately, it was far enough from the back porch that the anaemic orange light wasn't enough to make anything really visible, so she resorted to the same method that had allowed her to find it in the first place: walking along the wall, feeling for the bars with her fingers.

WHUMP!

Miranda nearly jumped the wall in fright when she heard something land behind her. She spun around, fists up.

"First rule of escape, my dear," a familiar bass voice remarked, "Never try it 'til your captors think they've got you safe."

It was the weirdo, back and apparently none the worse for wear. He reached into his pocket, pulled out what sounded like his paper bag, and tossed it towards Miranda. She caught it and immediately realized it was no longer full of pebbles. She reluctantly reached inside it and pulled out a single, flat object. She brought it near her face for scrutiny, and suddenly it began to glow bright red and started to blink. "What is this?" she asked.

"Goodbye," the weirdo said.

The object sent an electric charge up Miranda's arm and through her body. She couldn't even cry out, because an instant later her body felt like it was being crushed on every side, and then all of her senses went dark.She felt like she was spinning a thousand miles an hour when the pressure let up and light exploded through her eyelids. For an exhilarating and disorienting moment she seemed to be in freefall. Reality finally hit her with the force of a solid, cold floor against her chest and a vise gripping her head. She stayed perfectly still and waited for the agony to subside. The Doctor was right; this transmat wasn't nearly as sophisticated as others she'd been through. Same basic head scrambling and stomach-twisting side effect, only a million times worse.

Over the buzzing in her ears, she heard what sounded like a sliding door being opened, and presently a trembling pair of hands touched her shoulders, endeavouring to pull her upright. Keeping her eyes squeezed shut to block as much of the painful illumination as possible, she complied and sat up, leaning against whoever it was for balance. The change in degree perturbed her stomach acid for a second, but she managed to keep everything down, except for an unseemly belch that caught her by surprise.

"Oops, sorry," she croaked. "I don't like transmats."

"No one does. Open your eyes and don't waste any more time," a raspy, nervous voice answered. Miranda tried, but seeing everything through her glasses only made her head hurt worse. She took them off and was then able to manage a squint. A grey, fuzzy blob crouched beside her, and there was a pile of black somethings on the floor with some shiny bits in. The fuzzy blob unceremoniously let her go, shuffled over the pile and began shoving it towards her frantically. "Quickly, get changed!"

"Why? What?" she slurred. She realized she was still holding the small flat thing that had been blinking. It looked deceptively plain and black, now. "What was this?" she asked.

"A transmat call device coded with your Doctor's bio-signature. All the androids have them built in so they can come and go as they please."

"But it's a transmat. Why-?"

The grey creature snatched it from her fingers. "It's programmed specifically to lock onto the Doctor and no one else, so he can't avoid it like he used to when the first of him got here. Then all I have to do is tell the system which one of them I want, and ZAP!, here he comes. Once I get to do my little scan, I can program the transmat with a more specific imprint. This one was tuned to your companion."

"So you...tricked the transmat?" Miranda supposed.

"It was the only way to bring you here unnoticed. A direct override of the bio-sig passkey would have triggered an alert and locked out the system. Only Doctors allowed in the transmat. Now please get dressed!"

Her head clearing, Miranda began to examine the pile of stuff. It felt disturbingly like pieces of a rubber and spandex bodysuit. Very heavy, though. She picked up a dazzling chrome breastplate. "What am I supp-?" She stopped suddenly and put her glasses back on, a terrible realisation dawning. "Are you...Goran?"

"Yes! Now would you stop stalling and put that on?" he hissed angrily.

An icy hand wrapped itself around Miranda's heart. She recalled the memorial plots. "What did you do to them?' she demanded, tensing herself in fear.

"To whom?"

"The other humans. Leela, Melanie..." -Predictably, Miranda's memory for names failed her- "Er, and the others? What are you going to do to me?" She was surprised to see a pained shadow fly across the rodent-like little alien's face.

"I'm doing for you what I wasn't able to do for them. I'm getting you out of here, hopefully alive."