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[Two Fives]

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The Doctor wrenches open the TARDIS doors, a wind blowing in a tempest of wintry cold. As snow showers down inside the TARDIS interior, bone-chilling air currents work themselves throbbingly up the spine. Although the heat from the TARDIS engine wanes the cold, much if not all of it remains. The machinery underneath the console's linoleum flooring--turbines, motors, cogs--work with burning hot kinetics to make sleet-strewn puddles and pools of the snow heaps at their feet.

“Grab a coat,” The Doctor solemnly advises. “Freezing out here. Blimey. Grab two coats. No, no, no. Not for me. For you. Cold doesn't bother me. Should see mine during the winter seasons. Frostbite in ten seconds. Only ten, Rose. This is nothing. Trust me, I'll be fine. Get those coats, though. You'll need them. Meet me outside in, let's say, five?” With a smile, the heart-warming sort of smile that raises the cheekbones, The Doctor promises,
“Adventure awaits you.”

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Inspo​

 

[Two Fives]

“Hold on tight, Nova,” urges the Time Lady. She wrenches a lever on the TARDIS console and the world as they know it turns upside-down. After the earthquake, not of tectonic plates, but of whirring turbines beneath the linoleum, the TARDIS lands. “Here we are,” Rover says after a pause. Her voice is a whisper, an alluring whisper that, without a shadow of a doubt, would have any curious soul leaning ever so closer, ear-to-the-wall-with-a-glass close, not to miss a word.

 

[Noivian]

Gripping the console for stability, Nova feels her stance widen to keep her stable. Her vision swings through a bright purple gradient as her contacts move out of place slightly, and the girl fearlessly moves them back into place with the pad of her finger as they land. Instinctively, almost, she moves forwards to catch Rover's words. "Where are we?" she questions aloud, looking about the room as if it held the answers she was seeking.

 

[Two Fives]

“Some space station in the Gebleatine Galaxy. I locked onto a distress signal... It seems someone's in need of our help.”

The Time Lady walks out the TARDIS doors into a hallway. Metal surrounds them. When Rover approaches one of the walls and raps her knuckles against it, she determines the wall is an alloy of, “Draynese steel. Some iron. Crystalium? Yes, crystalium. Outdated for its time, mind you. Come along. Now, then. Where are these people?”

 

[Noivian]

Stepping out of the TARDIS and closing the door behind her, Nova looks about, confused. "Time? What time is this? Who are we supposed to be looking for? Like, what species sent the signal? Humans? Please tell me it's not some flying squid monster species. Or octopi. That'd be equally bad." She fidgeted with the edge of her sleeves as they walked along.

 

[Two Fives]

The TARDIS door shuts with a dull thunk of oak. “About four thousand years into your future,” the Time Lady explains. “Believe you me, much has changed.”

As she and Nova stride the hallways, Rover smells her hand. She holds it to her nose for a minute or so strangely, taking in whiffs of the metal's tangy residue. Shortly afterwards, she frowns, an expression that has the implication of bewilderment. She, however, makes no mention of it. “Humans. At least I think so. Speaking of flying squids, I dated one once. Don't ask. It was a phase.”

 

[Noivian]

"Four thousand," the modern girl echoed in disbelief. "This whole time travel thing is still throwing me for a loop... but yeah, pretty obvious a lot changed." She nudged at a wall with the toe of her black Vans shoes, stumbling a little as she lost her balance in the process. Giving a light jog, Nova quickly caught up with Rover. "Well, good thing I didn't really want to ask," she commented with a shiver. "Sounds way too slimy for my tastes." A short bought of silence later, and a look to the walls, Nova continued her blabber. "Hey, on space stations aren't there supposed to be control panels or something? To regulate something or other on the ship? Can't we use one of those for a map? Do humans in this year still speak English? Or did some other language take over?"

 

[Two Fives]

“Don't worry. Time travel is something you'll get used to,” the Time Lady tells her. She continues striding and the leather of her heels make a thud, thud, thud of the Draynese steel underfoot. “Actually, no... I lied. You really won't.”

“Slimy? Oh, Nova... You have no idea. Kissing was a nightmare. I'll let you wonder what the other stuff was like. Anyway... Control panels, yes. Let's search." After several minutes of searching, they find one and Rover, using a band on her finger, tries at activating the system. As she does this, she conversates with Nova. "They do speak English. You wouldn't understand it, though, if it wasn't for the TARDIS. Think in your time. Do you understand Shakespeare's English? That's what it's like. One century changes a language so much. This is four thousand years later."

 

[Two Fives]

The control panel interface shoots out streams of wan turquoise light. The intensity strengthens over time. In the centre of the open space is a hologram, a human face, presented in lurid brilliance like a projector's beam. “Help us,” the hologram yells. “Dear God. Help us. There's something... There's something in the walls.” Abruptly, the hologram zaps into non-existent static.

 

[Noivian]

Shivvering, Nova shook her head. "Yeah, please don't talk about dating giant squids again." The girl remained quiet, fingers twisting the hem of her dark grey T-shirt and idly flicking the open zipper of her jacket. "So I'm basically Shakespear to these people, or I would be if I weren't being auto-translated," she concluded after the message played, seemingly unperturbed by the dark nature of the message. "That's pretty damn cool. Also it looks like there's some serious danger here..." Nova noted, as if it didn't really occur to her what was going on. "Maybe tapping on the wall wasn't a good idea."

 

[Two Fives]

“Maybe a budget version,” adds the Time Lady wittily to Nova's comparison of herself to Shakespeare, “You should meet him. Shakespeare, I mean. Nothing like the pictures.”

With the transmission over with, an ominousity sets in. “Don't touch the walls, Nova,” warns the Time Lady forebodingly. “Whatever you do, stay away from those walls.”

She modifies the variables in her ring and, abruptly, more holograms appear from the control panel interface, more figures and faces, most human with the occasional phylum of Arthropoda materialising into view. All of them speak about the walls, the angry things that live in the walls.

 

[Noivian]

With a nod, Nova's facial expression deepens in concern as the various faces testify to the dangers of the walls. "So, distress signal, something in the walls... where's the crew?" she mused, more or less to herself. "I'd imagine even though it's far in the future, there'd be some kind of crew, right? Otherwise, there'd be no one to leave these messages." She looks to Rover for confirmation, all sense of playfulness that was once laced in Nova's tone now gone.

 

[Two Fives]

“Good question. There should be a crew,” The Rover replies. Her breath is a faint whisper under the in-and-out breathing of motor thrums. “Someone must be running this vessel. You can hear the engines, can't you? But... what if those aren't the engines?”

 

[Noivian]

"The walls...?" she asks, voice dropping. Her gaze turns to the walls, darting back and forth between them and the floor. "Whatever's in the walls, there's gotta be a lot of them if it sounds like engines. Is..." she gulps, grasping at threads and all but gasping for air, "Is the crew stuck in the walls, too?" The girl's all but hyperventilating now, the stress of potentially also being put into the walls getting to her. "It's impossible. There's no way, no way humans can live inside the walls... How thin are they? Aren't they just solid metal?"

 

[Two Fives]

“I don't think humans are in the walls. I might've encountered this species before,” explains The Rover, trying her hardest to console Nova, “In any case, I'll run a scan in the TARDIS. Check for all lifeforms on board. Before we leave, though, I need to check something.” The Rover uses the ring on her finger to bring up the dates of these distress signals in a holographic spreadsheet.

“Oh.”

 

[Noivian]

"'Oh'?" Nova echoes, breathlessly, and steps up beside Rover, looking over the screen as if she would understand what was being displayed on it. "What's 'oh'?"

 

[Two Fives]

A pause.

“These are old,” she laments. “These are so old. The most recent is about half a century old. The oldest, six. Constantly on repeat. Sorry. I'm so sorry. I couldn't save them.” The apology, the way The Rover delivers it, is chilling. The words come out of her mouth, which is a creased frown, like a doleful condolence. “They're all dead. They must be. These distress signals have been luring people here for a very long time. Like a cycle. A cycle of death. I imagine some don't even survive long enough to make a distress signal.”

 

[Noivian]

"Oh..." Nova echoes a second time with a shiver. "But if it's a lure, then this entire place is a trap. We're in a trap. We should leave..."

 

[Two Fives]

“Definitely. Come on, Nova. We can't hang around,” agrees the Time Lady. Before they leave, she configures her ring once more to disable the distress signals, all of them, once and for all, ensuring this space station will be nobody else's cemetery. “Run.”

 

[Noivian]

With a nod and a turn on her toes, Nova moves to sprint back the way they came.

 

[Two Fives]

They run down the hallways of space station Beta R-F. The Time Lady's coat catches the wind, her coattails bellying out like a streamlet made of cotton. Similarly, her hair frees itself from a bun, flowing out around either shoulder. "Don't slow down!" Her breath is a raw, raspy exhale.

 

[Two Fives]

Abruptly, the metal walls around them bubble up, alloys and all seemingly warping molten. Bolts and bars melt down the walls like rivulets after a cast of rainfall. These metals are simultaneously solid... yet liquid. Despite the subatomic changes in these metals, there doesn't seem to be any change in temperature. Before the Rover can even explain, a metal claw bursts out of from the wall, reaching for her and her companion. Several more claws follow in unison. They stretch out with aluminium arms impossibly long behind them, aggressively intent on having the two travellers in their clutches.

 

[Noivian]

Nova doesn't need to think twice, between Rover's call and the adrenaline pulsing in her veins. She leaps past many of the smaller arms, legs pushing with all the force they can to run as fast as the girl is capable of. With a final slide, her foot pushes open the door of the TARDIS and she pulls herself to the safety of its interior.

 

[Two Fives]

When The Rover sees them, she rumbles, “I know what they are! Anyone who came on this space station is most definitely dead,” A firm, final confirmation. She crouches low on her thighs, one of the arms passing her by overhead, and continues to sprint for the TARDIS after Nova.

 

[Two Fives]

The travellers manage to evade the claws. At worst, they leave shallow tears on their clothing's fabrics. When they turn a corridor, the TARDIS is in view. Try as they may, however, their footsteps never bring them closer. The metal walls twist and turn with horrific screeches of steel. The hallway stretches and stretches. So far does it stretch, in fact, that the TARDIS reduces to a size as small as a pencil's dot.