Archive of Our Own

If reality being gently nudged aside (and then nudged irritably back in the other direction) could have made a sound, it would probably have sounded like this:

A nondescript storage cupboard on a nondescript floor of a nondescript space station suddenly filled with the whine and moan of a bag of cats becoming faintly acquainted with several bag pipes. Sourceless wind howled. In the dimness, the vague outline of something that shouldn’t have been began to take halting, determined shape.

—

Inside the TARDIS, the liquid in Yaz’s mug was rippling.

“Er,” she said. “Doctor—”

The TARDIS rumbled with discontent and her tea slopped over the side of her mug onto her fingers.

The Doctor fluttered a hand in her direction. “It’s fine!” she insisted, which meant that it probably wasn’t. “I’ll sort it in a ‘mo, nothing to worry about.”

Out of the corner of Yaz’s eye, Graham took off his sun visor glumly. “We aren’t gonna make it to the sunny sands of Sandolovar 12, are we,” he muttered. “I had a picnic packed and everything.”

The Doctor’s head shot up. The wide-brimmed sun hat she’d been wearing flew off with the motion and landed somewhere behind her. “Yes, we are!” She went back to glaring down at the console. “And it’s going to be so much fun, I absolutely promise—”

Yaz took a hasty sip of her tea in between irritable jolts, unconvinced.

“We can still have your picnic,” she offered to Graham. “Wherever it is we end up. A sandwich is just as good when you’re on the run from angry space squid.”

The Doctor’s head popped up again. “I apologized for that.” She scowled. “And we’re going to Sandolovar 12, where the sun is always shining and where the sky is always bright, and we are going to eat ice creams on the beach.” She emphasized her last words with an uncharacteristic kick to the base of the console, still scowling. Somewhere along the way, a few stray hairs had wandered to the front of her face. The effect, Yaz noted mildly, was sort of charmingly deranged.

Ryan had already scavenged a pickle and cheese from Graham’s optimistic picnic hamper and was sprawled on the steps. The fingers of his other hand gripped the edge of the stairs, bracing himself.

“Don’t really seem like the TARDIS wants to take us there,” he pointed out in between bites.

“Got that, thanks, Ryan,” the Doctor hissed over the console.

Graham fretted up at the ceiling, visor still in hand.

“Only we could all use a proper vacation,” he said, half-imploring. Yaz swallowed back a smile. “If the TARDIS could see how pasty we all were—”

“Oi.”

“You especially, Doc—”

“Oi!”

“Well, maybe it just don’t understand how beneficial it could all be,” he continued, still gazing beseechingly up at the ceiling. “Y’know. Rest. Relaxation. The whole bit. It’s been a bit full keel, lately, Doc, I gotta say.”

Her head popped up again. She blew some of the hair out of her face, irritated. “Hence the vacation,” she said. “I do listen, sometimes. Reckoned I owed you all a do-over.”

“A do-over, right.”

The Doctor ignored the TARDIS’ fretful moaning for a moment, frowning at them all.

“Are you really that tired?” she asked, face twisting.

Ryan scoffed. “Aren’t you?” he threw back, more gently than Yaz would have. It was getting harder and harder to ignore the Doctor’s tendency to tilt wildly between extremes, lately. Either they were abandoned for days on end while she sunk her hands into what she insisted were repairs, left to fend for themselves—or lounge around—on alien tourist traps, or they were being dragged from planet to planet, adventure to adventure, like they were running out of time. No breaths in between.

Yaz frowned, out of view of the others. Not running out of time, maybe. That wasn’t quite right. But running all the same.

The Doctor’s face retreated into her neck in slight disgust. “No,” she said. “But—”

“Right,” Graham tried, skeptical, “only—”

Before he could finish, the TARDIS made a noise like an emergency brake in the midst of failing spectacularly, and the Doctor flung herself back over the console with a shout.

“No,” she said, banging a fist on the console irritably, “no, that’s not what I said, don’t—”

The TARDIS whorped belligerently, and a lever near where the Doctor’s other hand was resting sparked. She tore her fingers away and jammed them in her mouth. “Oi! Don’t be cheeky!”

“What’s going on, really?” Ryan ventured, glancing up at the ceiling. The TARDIS creaked and moaned. He grabbed hold of a column by the stairs absently. “Is the TARDIS pullin’ a mutiny?”

“No,” the Doctor protested. She removed her singed fingers from her mouth. “Well,” she said. “Maybe a bit.” Her nose wrinkled, irritated. “Message came in from Resus One. You remember, after the—”

“That time we almost got blown to pieces?”

She tilted her disapproving frown towards Graham. “Don’t have to go on about it!” Her back turned to them as she flipped a switch on the console passive-aggressively. The TARDIS moaned. “It’s an automated reminder. Yearly follow-up. Completely unnecessary,” she ground out, hands on her hips. She glared up at the ceiling. “Seeing as the TARDIS has a fully equipped medical suite that’s light years ahead of whatever they’ve got on Resus One. But the TARDIS—”

“Seems to disagree with you,” Yaz pointed out, hiding a smile. “It can’t hurt, can it? We could see how Mabli’s got on.”

“We could also text her,” the Doctor muttered darkly, flipping another switch in what Yaz was now recognizing as a vain attempt at resetting the coordinates. “She’ll be on tour, anyway.” But the TARDIS was having none of it. It whorped again in offense, lights flashing. The Doctor withdrew her fingers quickly, scowling. “Fine!” she snapped. The TARDIS, having won whatever invisible battle they’d just been waging, landed delicately, with only the slightest shudder and a wheeze.

Her coat whirled around her as she spun and stalked towards the door. “Quick in and out,” she said. “Only ‘cos the TARDIS won’t get rid of the notification and I can’t bear it. And then,” she scowled up at the ceiling, “you’re going to go where I’ve programmed you.”

They filed out after her. Graham patted a column consolingly as they left. The TARDIS creaked in what might have been appreciation.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “She talks to all of us like that, these days.”

—

“Well, this is a bit of alright, isn’t it,” Graham marvelled, gazing up at the skylight above them. Deep space glistened down into the lobby of Resus One. “We only got the view from A&E last time, thanks to you and that ectospleen, Doc.”

“You’re welcome,” the Doctor muttered, not sounding particularly thrilled about the reminder. She glanced over her shoulder at the maintenance cupboard the TARDIS had decided to park in, nose wrinkling.

“It is posh, this,” Yaz said. She paused beside Graham to glance up at the skylight, smiling. “Still not quite the beach, but it’ll do.”

“I’d put a gift shop.” The Doctor leaned between them, pointing to a wall behind the intake desk. “Right there. Just a little one. Love a little shop, me.” She elbowed her way through them, coat trailing behind. “Come on, fam.”

Yaz didn’t quite sigh.

“It’s alright, love,” Graham said, following. “We’ll get that beach.”

“Not the beach I’m worried about,” Yaz whispered, mindful of the Doctor just ahead of them. The woman had ears like a satellite when it suited her. Which was often, except when it wasn’t.

“Nothing new, though, is it,” Ryan said morosely through a mouthful of sandwich.

The three of them glanced at each other. As always, Graham was never quite sure what they were trying to say. They never seemed to find the time to actually say it. And in the meantime—well. He shrugged at them. All you could do was follow.

“Come on,” he said, falling back into step, admiring the shine on the floors. It certainly wasn’t the beach, but everywhere with the Doctor was an adventure—as long as you knew how to make the most of it. “And give me one of them sarnies I know you squirrelled away, while you’re at it.”

Ryan scowled and dug one out of his jacket.

“What?” Graham protested. “I made them, didn’t I?”

A smooth, impeccably polite voice interrupted them.

“Please be advised,” it said sweetly, “that no outside food or liquid is permitted on-board Resus One.”

Graham stopped. Graham goggled.

“Er,” he said, taking a miniature step back from the egg-shaped robot floating serenely in front of them. It had two blue pixelated eyes set into a black-screened visor for a face.

“Please enjoy your stay,” it said. “Please note that this being is equipped for audio and visual recording and your image and or likeness may be stored and collected by the relevant authorities at a later date.”

Ryan edged in closer, cramming the other sandwich back into his jacket pocket. “Sorry, Graham,” he told him solemnly. “Robot said I’m not allowed.”

Just past the robot, Graham could see the Doctor taking a space in the waiting queue, arms swinging impatiently. “Right,” he said, glancing back at the robot. He swallowed back a shiver. He’d never liked robots all that much. Not that he’d met very many of them, to be fair. “Well, um, we’d best be catching up with the Doc, anyway.”

The two of them inched away slowly, maneuvering around. The robot blinked at them placidly, swivelling to watch them as they joined up with the Doctor and Yaz in the line-up.

“If that don’t make your spine tingle,” Graham muttered. “Maybe this place is too posh for us. No outside food or drink? Does it think it’s the Royal Albert or something?”

“I dunno,” Ryan offered. “Thought it was a bit cute.”

“Ahh, mass surveillance,” the Doctor said, peering behind them at it as they finally caught up. “Already a feature of your century, Graham. At least this one’s got a map included.”

Graham shoved his hands in his pockets. “Well, that don’t exactly reassure me.”

“He’s just cross because it wouldn’t let him eat his sandwich.”

“Well, you would be too!”

“There’s still loads left in the picnic basket,” Ryan pointed out. “You can have one when we get back to the TARDIS.”

The queue in front of them crept forward. The woman in front of them yawned and idly flicked to the next page of the holographic magazine she was perusing. Graham felt his brow wrinkle. “Could be a while, son.”

The Doctor hummed in agreement, bouncing on her heels. She peered over the heads of the couple in front of them, neck craning, clearly doing some quick calculations—or planning something slightly illegal. Yaz frowned, anticipating.

“Hold on,” she said. “You’re not—”

But the Doctor was already pulling the psychic paper from her pocket, dangling it temptingly. “Come on,” she said, mischief warring with the irritation it was trying to cloak. “Unless you’d like to stand in line all day?”

She grinned and bounced ahead, coat trailing behind her. Yaz’s frown deepened but she followed. Ryan shrugged back at Graham and did the same, without glancing behind him to see if he was coming.

Graham shot one last nervous glance behind him, but the robot was nowhere to be seen. By the time he’d caught up to the three of them, the Doctor was already sweet-talking the receptionist. He edged tentatively in front of the irritable-looking man they’d budged in front of.

“—ever so urgent,” the Doctor was saying, eyebrows raised in what she must have thought was the picture of innocence. Maybe it did, if you didn’t know better. “The Earl will be terribly grateful.”

The receptionist clearly didn’t know any better. She leaned in, glasses slipping down her nose.

“Anything for the Earl,” she said, though she glanced hesitantly behind them at the throng of irritated people in the queue they’d just barged in front of. Graham felt his face flush, despite himself. It wasn’t quite the done thing, was it? Queue-jumping. “I’ll let her know you’ve arrived,” she said, typing faster than Graham could blink. She passed them four visitor’s badges. “Just take the lift up to Ward 3. And, uh,” she said, flustered. “Well, tell the Earl we so appreciate his financial support.”

The Doctor smiled tightly. “Of course,” she promised. “Come on, fam. See?” she whispered as they shuffled over to the lift, leaving the disgruntled remnants of the queue behind them. “Quick in and out, just like I promised.”

She passed them their badges and pressed the lift button with far too much relish.

“I love a good lift. Come on, get a shift on.”

Another swirl of her coat, and she was off again. 

“Doc,” Graham protested, edging into the lift with Ryan at his side, out of the vague—but growing more rational by the minute—fear that if he wasn’t fast enough she’d just leave him behind. “I thought Mabli was on tour.”

“Someone’s been promoted,” the Doctor told him, eyebrows raising, sounding faintly impressed. “Fast-tracked, too. I knew Mabli was a good one. She’s in charge of a whole ward, now.”

Graham hummed thoughtfully in reply, glancing up at the lift warily. It moved so smoothly it was hard to tell if you were moving at all. The back of his neck was prickling a bit, too. There were no cameras that he could see—but there was a feeling, nonetheless, that they were all being watched.

The lift dinged as they reached their destination, fourteen floors up. It would have made him a bit queasy, too, but he supposed heights didn’t matter so much when you were floating freely in space. Or locked in orbit. Or whatever. Truthfully, the science of it all was a bit beyond him. All that mattered, he told himself reassuringly, as they wandered out of the confines of the lift, was that it was safe. Even if it was floating in space. Even if it was a hospital, which tended not to be his favourite place to relax. Even centuries into the future, the sterile, antiseptic smell was exactly the same.

The Doctor plunged ahead of them. She’d become intolerant of dawdling, lately—at least when it came to places she didn’t want to be.

He sighed. Safe enough, anyway. Even if it wasn’t proving to be especially enjoyable, so far. Oh, well.

All you could do was follow.

—

They’d seen as little of Resus One as was humanly possible, last time. The Doctor had been too anxious to get back to the TARDIS for them to stick around. It must have been huge, though, even if the corridors felt a bit claustrophobic, the same way Tsuranga had. It was clearly built in the same style—or, Yaz supposed, it had been the other way round. White on white on white, and very few thoughts given to throwing up a sign or two. Slippery floors. But then, that was all hospitals, wasn’t it. Yaz wasn’t as intimately familiar with them as she knew Ryan was, as she knew Graham must have been. All she had were vague impressions from when she’d broken her arm as a kid, from when Nani had taken ill, a few years back.

She glanced at Graham. Under her watchful gaze, he cast a fretful look back in the direction of the lift, but to her keen eye that had more to do with the hamper full of sandwiches he’d been forced to abandon than anything else. She smiled faintly. It had been the same on the Tsuranga, hadn’t it? If he was upset by the reminder of it all, he didn’t show it.

Beside her, Ryan had shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket, but that could have meant anything. And his gaze was trained on the Doctor, always a few steps ahead. Yaz swallowed. They were all looking out for each other, in their own way. Eyes trained on each other’s backs. But did it mean anything, when all of it remained unspoken? Who watched the watchers, when they were too busy watching each other?

Ahead of them, the Doctor stumbled upon the entrance to the ward with a soft cry of delight.

“Oh, mind the decontamination,” the Doctor said as the doors closed behind them into an antechamber, a second too late. The three of them flinched as something harsh and antiseptic sprayed from four vents on the wall. Yaz squinted her eyes shut, wincing at the feel of the spray as it caught in her hair. When she wrenched her stinging eyes back open, the Doctor was shaking out her coat, unalarmed, and fixing her attention to a screen embedded in the door.

“How does it all work, then?“ Yaz wheezed, the inside of her nostrils burning, but the Doctor had already taken the sonic to it with further delight.

“Should be able to hack their personnel system,” she said, squinting. The flat, rectangular hologram flickered. “Figure out exactly where we need to go and avoid the administration.”

“Ain’t that the point of this, though?” Graham asked. His mouth was still twisted from the taste of the decontaminant. “Insurance and all that.”

The Doctor glanced at him over her shoulder. One of her eyebrows raised skeptically. “Do you want to spend all day in another queue?”

“Well, no.”

“I’m streamlining.”

“Queue-jumping,” Ryan muttered, but he was smiling. “Again.”

“Aha.” The doors shuddered to life. The Doctor pressed her visitor pass to the keypad and they opened with a pneumatic hiss onto the rest of the floor. “There, just a few corridors down, no directions needed. Two lefts, a right, another left. Someone remember that, ‘cos I won’t. Come on!” The doors closed behind them silently.

“Why,” Ryan wondered, as they trailed behind her, “are there no signs anywhere? How are people meant to know where they’re going? Tsuranga was small, but this place goes on forever.”

“Videographic interface that syncs with everyone’s ocular implants,” the Doctor said, dodging a white-clad orderly, who frowned at them as they passed. “Saves a lot of money on paint, maybe.”

Yaz shuddered. When they’d been trapped on Tsuranga, everything had flown by so fast, she’d never stopped to think about it all. “Does everyone have implants, in the future? Med-tags, ocular implants.”

“Unless you’re a hippy.” The Doctor threw a brief smile over her shoulder that was maybe meant to be reassuring. “It’s like having a smart phone, in this time period. Arguably good or bad, but—mostly just what everyone does because everyone does it.”

“Proper weird,” Ryan muttered. “I’d never want anyone messing about with my eyeballs.”

“It’s all a hop skip and a jump from your present,” the Doctor countered mildly, still careening ahead. “You’ll see things like it soon, popping up. Up to you to decide what to do with it, how to use it.” She nearly skidded past a windowless door, and then immediately backtracked. “Here we are!” She sonicked it open with a smile. “After you.”

“I’m still worried we should have queued,” Graham muttered, but he crept past her through the open door.

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Most days,” Yaz said dryly, following. The door slid shut behind them, closing them in a low-ceilinged office space, white and bright and cramped. She could smell coffee bubbling away, or whatever the equivalent was, this far into the future.

A figure with their back to them was fussing with the coffee maker. At their unmistakeable entrance, they turned, startled. “Oh—”

Mabli blinked at them owlishly.

“That door was locked,” she said, blinking again. “Didn’t someone escort you from the ward entrance?

“Was someone meant to?” Graham said, frowning, though he smiled reassuringly at her first. “Afraid we skipped through a few hoops to get here. But it’s nice to see you, cockle. When the TARDIS steered us here, we didn’t think we’d be running into you.”

“Well done, Mabli.” When Yaz glanced over at her, the Doctor was beaming. “Astos would be proud of you.”

The reminder brought a bittersweet smile to Mabli’s lips.

“After Tsuranga, they let me accelerate some of my training,” she said, stepping forward. As an afterthought, she twisted to put her coffee cup on the counter behind her. Her smile dimmed. “I see you got my message. Er, well—not my message, the automated yearly reminder, of course—”

“Congratulations, Mabli,” Yaz said, stepping forward to give her a hug. The other woman’s arms were tense, but when they parted she was still smiling. She almost looked relieved to see them. “It’s good to see you. Are you a proper doctor now?” she asked, grinning.

“Almost.” Mabli shifted. “I’m on my last year of training. I’ve been—I’ve been working in Ward 3, here. Running the admin. And, y’know, dealing with some smaller administrative matters. Like—” Her smile grew tight. “Yearly automated checkups. For, um. It’s insurance purposes, you see. I’m so glad you came.”

“We almost didn’t,” Ryan muttered under his breath.

“Insurance?” The Doctor had clearly grown impatient and was doing that thing she did where she bumbled around a bit but was actually snooping. She poked absently at the coffee maker.

Mabli eyed her warily. “New board of directors was sworn in last month. Things are, um. Well, they’re bit a different here, these days.”

The Doctor’s head snapped up. She raised an eyebrow. “Different how?”

The shift in the air was obvious. Yaz frowned as Mabli’s smile grew brighter and tighter around the edges. “Oh, you know,” she said. “It’s—it’s normal, isn’t it, a bit of changeover. Um, if you wouldn’t mind—there’s water and coffee and you can take off your coats. I have an examining room just to the left.” She worried at her lower lip. “I don’t suppose you checked in when you arrived on the floor.”

“No, in fact, we did everything we could to avoid it,” Graham said.

Mabli winced. “That’s fine!” she said. “Backend administration, I can—I can have you fill out the right forms later. You don’t have med-tags anyway,” she muttered, more to herself, “so I suppose it doesn’t really—um, this way.” She gestured to her left, looking scattered. Yaz frowned again. There was a small arch connecting the bright, cramped office to what looked like an equally cramped examining room. Yaz’s eyes caught the same wave-like bed Tsuranga had been equipped with. It took up the entire length of the room. Equipment was scattered behind it, crammed in and crushed up against the wall, hung above the examining table.

Resus One might have been larger and better equipped than the rescue ships that got sent out, Yaz thought mildly, but it certainly didn’t seem to have an economy of space. At least not on Ward 3, anyway.

Yaz glanced over her shoulder to where the Doctor was spooning a truly alarming amount of sugar into the coffee she’d helped herself to. She raised her eyebrows encouragingly.

“Go on, then,” she said, tilting her head. Still irritated, if you knew where to look. Still strange, but Yaz never quite knew what to say about it. There was nothing in her gaze that invited any questions. Nothing about her at all, lately, that invited any questions, ever since that night in the console room. “I’ll be along.”

Which sounded like a lie, but Yaz wasn’t in the mood to push the issue. She gave the Doctor’s coffee one last exasperated glance and then turned to face the examining room.

“One at a time, then?” she wondered, curious.

“It’s just a quick check-up,” Mabli said, nodding. “Quality assurance. Who wants to go first?”

No one wanted to go first, as it turned out, but Ryan finally relented when he lost rock, paper, scissors two times in a row.

There wasn’t a question of the Doctor going first, of course. She lurked outside the small room while Mabli ran them one by one through the paces, which mostly consisted of questions like ‘and have you felt your organs moving about at all lately?’ and Mabli scribbling things down absently on the holographic tablet she kept glued to herself. She was brisk and professional. Yaz was proud to see that there was very little left of the hesitance that had so defined her on the Tsuranga. She’d clearly done some growing of her own in the year or so since they’d last met. They moved on from things so quickly, it was nice to see the lasting impact, for once. In the wake of the scorched earth they’d left behind on Orphan 55, it was reassuring to see tangible proof they’d left somewhere better than they’d found it.

Still. Yaz frowned as she watched Mabli give Graham a clean bill of health. There was a nervous edge to her smile.

“Well, that’s a relief,” Graham said, sliding gingerly off the table. “Though I will say—”

“Nothing the TARDIS couldn’t have told you,” the Doctor interjected finally, filling the doorframe, arms crossed. She was smiling, but it was only skin-deep. “She’s got medical facilities that your lot won’t see for centuries.”

Mabli blinked again in mild confusion but clearly knew better than to ask too many questions.

“Quality assurance for insurance purposes can’t be completed by a third-party,” she said firmly. She glanced beyond the Doctor briefly, into the office beyond. Nervously, Yaz thought, and tucked away another frown. “Doctor? You’re the last one.”

The Doctor opened her mouth, on the verge of protest, but the three of them glanced to her, eyebrows raised. Ryan crossed his arms, mirroring her.

“Least you didn’t have to play rock, paper, scissors for it,” he told her, and it rang earnest enough that Yaz thought it might actually work. “It’s only fair, right?”

The Doctor was a hard sell these days, though, and Yaz caught that same flinty irritation creep into the slant of her shoulders, the lines of her eyes. Her mouth twisted in disagreement. It was Ryan asking, though, and somehow that made all the difference. She uncrossed her arms. “Fine,” she relented, shifting past them awkwardly through the cramped space to reach the table. She sat stiffly.

“Mabli,” Yaz asked, now they were all in closer quarters. There was something about the outside, some indefinable safety about the closeness of the exam room. “Is everything okay?”

In the dimness of the examining room, Mabli’s newfound confidence took on a more solemn air. She swallowed as she set up the same scan she’d performed on the three of them previously. It ran with a soothing hum in the background.

“Of course,” Mabli said, smiling. “It’s nice to see you all again. And I’m so sorry about the—well, about the yearly reminder, only—” She swallowed again. “It’s the patient confidentiality, you see. I don’t need to record anything for training purposes anymore, which means as long as we’re in here, we’re protected.”

The back of Yaz’s neck prickled. “Protected?” she asked.

Mabli shook her head, reaching above to end the scan. “Sorry, poor choice of words. I just mean, there’s no one listening. Or watching.”

The Doctor shifted. The first hint of genuine interest that Yaz had seen in days gleamed in the back of her eyes. “Are you being watched, Mabli?” she asked, straining forward.

“No,” she said, too quickly. “Well, we all are, all the time, of course. I just—” She cast a nervous glance beyond the door again, past Graham and Ryan. Ryan shifted uncomfortably, shooting a glance behind him in solidarity. “I need your help,” she admitted, bringing up the holographic screen again, going through the motions by rote.

“Here to help, that’s us,” the Doctor said insistently, suddenly looking a bit like she’d won the lottery. She sat up straighter. “I knew we were right to come.” Yaz shot her a disapproving look over Mabli’s head. Ryan scoffed quietly. “Tell us exactly what’s wrong.”

“Well,” Mabli said. “It’s just—”

She paused, frowning. One finger tapped her screen, repeatedly.

“What is it?” Yaz asked, stepping forward.

“Er,” Mabli stalled, dragging another screen from above the table towards her with a deepening frown. “Just let me—now, that can’t be—”

The equipment beeped and Mabli turned off the source of the noise with her free hand absently, absorbed.

“Amazing,” she breathed, distracted. “Your cells have completely regenerated. There’s not even a sign of the original injury. How is that—?”

The Doctor smiled tightly. “Call it a talent. Am I done now?” She made to scoot off the table.

Mabli glanced to her, finally breaking away from her readings. “But—but I’ve never—” Her holographic tablet beeped again, sounding irritated. She swiped, and then paused. Her frown returned. “Er. Hold on a minute. Doctor, is everything alright?”

The Doctor raised her eyebrows. “Yes?”

“Have you been experiencing any symptoms?”

“No.”

“Restlessness, irritability—”

Ryan coughed pointedly.

“No,” the Doctor insisted, irritably.

“It’s just—” Mabli swiped at her screen again, brow wrinkling. She cast the chart to the larger screen, looking perplexed. “Cell regeneration aside, I took a baseline of your biodata the last time you were admitted and these readings don’t—”

The Doctor swung her legs off the table, expression flattening. “You don’t have my species on file,” she reminded her. “You have no idea what’s normal.”

Mabli’s frown didn’t budge. “I don’t even know what your species is. But I took a baseline, and I’m more than capable of extrapolating—”

“Well, you can’t extrapolate me.”

“I don’t have to extrapolate,” Mabli said firmly, with more confidence than Yaz had ever seen in her before, “to know that these readings are suggesting a high level of self-neglect. Dehydration, malnutrition, clinical exhaustion—”

“Doctor,” Yaz interjected incredulously.

“—not to mention the high blood pressure,” Mabli continued. “Is everything alright?”

The Doctor glared at them all mutinously, as if daring them to say anything. “Yes,” she insisted. “Everything’s fine.”

“These readings would suggest otherwise.”

“Well, these readings,” the Doctor said, shoulders hunching, “are wrong.”

Mabli stared her down for a moment, still frowning. “No,” she said quietly, searching the Doctor’s face. Yaz wondered what she was seeing. “I don’t think they are.” She put the portable screen down and wrung her hands together, in a gesture that felt far more familiar—and much less steely. “I can’t ask for your help, not like this.”

At her hesitation, the Doctor straightened, nose wrinkling. “Hold on,” she protested. “I’m fine. Tell us what’s been happening. Here to help, remember?”

Mabli shook her head minutely. “But I—” She pressed her lips together, clearly thinking furiously. “I was worried about how I was going to sneak you into the ward,” she muttered, more to herself than to them. “But—well, in some ways—”

The Doctor raised her eyebrows. “Why d’you need us in the ward, Mabli? What’s going on?”

Mabli shook her head again, clearly conflicted. Her earrings glinted in the dim light.

“The Doctor’s right,” Yaz said, stepping forward. She eyed the Doctor, swallowing back her frustration—for now. “We came here to help. The four of us, we’re a good team. Remember?”

“I remember,” Mabli said softly. She took in a breath again, hesitant. “No one else will believe me. I’ve filed reports, I’ve tried to access security footage, I’ve tried to put in for access to information requests, nothing goes through.” She swallowed. “But there’s something going on in my ward. Excess deaths, for weeks now, but none of the reports have been properly delivered, or there’d be an investigation. And—” she hesitated. “Anecdotal evidence, from some of my patients. Word-of-mouth only, and nothing that I could verify myself, but—well,” she glanced away sheepishly, “some of them seem to think the ward is being haunted.”

The Doctor sat up straighter. “Haunted?” she said, eyes gleaming. Yaz leaned over to swat her gently on the arm.

“How much excess death?” she asked, reaching for Mabli’s hand sympathetically.

Mabli shook her head. “Too much,” she said quietly. “I have a responsibility, to my patients and their families. Even if the higher-ups won’t pursue, I have to figure out what’s going on.” She glanced up, hopefully. “That’s where you come in.” But her face twisted int a frown again, as she looked worriedly to the Doctor. “But I can’t in good conscience ask for your help.”

The Doctor hopped spryly off the examination table. “Yes, you can,” she said. “I told you, nothing to worry about.”

“It’s nothing to make light of,” Mabli insisted. “If you were anyone else, I’d be recommending you for—admission.” She paused again. She tilted her head.

The Doctor soured, following the thought. “Oh, no,” she protested. “Absolutely not.”

Yaz crossed her arms. “It’s not a bad idea,” she ventured.

“Mabli’s got a point,” Ryan said.

“Definitely,” Graham agreed, nodding. He frowned. “What point is that, exactly?”

Ryan knocked him on the arm, gently. “We needed an excuse to get into the ward, right? No better excuse than bein’ an actual patient.”

The Doctor’s nose had wrinkled. “But—”

“Come on, Doctor, even you have to admit it’s a solid infiltration plan,” Yaz pressed.

The Doctor’s wrinkled nose devolved into a scowl. “Someone else should be the patient,” she protested. “Trust me, I make a terrible one, last time I was in hospital it got teleported to the moon. Time before that, I regenerated in the morgue, caused a huge mess. Then there was that business with the plague and the cat nuns—”

“Doctor,” Ryan interrupted.

She paused. Swallowed. “What about Graham?” One last ditch effort, panic crawling across her face. “He’s old.” She jabbed a thumb in his direction.

A series of shrill beeps began to emanate from Mabli’s tablet. Mabli raised an eyebrow.

“Blood pressure alert,” she said, straight-faced.

The Doctor’s lips pressed together. “I don’t do initials,” she said firmly. “Or hospitals, or waiting rooms, or bus stops.”

“Doctor,” Yaz muttered.

The slant of her shoulders lessened. “But when people need help,” she admitted grudgingly, “I never refuse.”

She sighed, and rolled up her sleeves.

“So where do I sign?” she asked.

—

Ryan had never liked hospitals. He’d never been able to shake the irrational belief that they were where people went to die, no matter how old he got.

He wondered if the Doctor felt the same.

“I still think it should have been Graham,” she told them, shoulders hunched up to her ears, arms crossed in the pin-striped hospital pyjamas that Mabli’d had to fight to get her to wear. Her earrings were out, though she’d insisted on keeping the sonic in a pyjama pocket. It was almost funny.

Still, he thought, as she shifted uncomfortably. She looked washed-out under the unforgiving lights of the patient pod. Coatless, bootless, bereft of all the things that made her look—well, Doctor-ish. He had to admit, there was something strange about seeing her so weirdly vulnerable. He hardly ever saw her without her coat, and honestly, he was having a hard time remembering the last time he’d even seen her so much as properly sit down, let alone lie down. She always had her hands in the console, lately. Messing about. Moving around. Ever since O.

It was odd, though, now he thought about it. You didn’t notice so much when she was moving, protesting, running about, but still against the starkness behind her, she did look a bit—raggedy. Like maybe a bit of a lie-in wasn’t such a bad idea after all, no matter what she said about Mabli not having a clue. Ryan swallowed, feeling faintly uneasy.

“Think I’ve had enough of hospitals, thanks very much,” Graham pointed out, from where he’d perched on the end of the bed. To her credit, the Doctor winced. “It won’t be so bad, Doc,” he went on, not bothered in the slightest. “Look, a night or two in a proper bed won’t kill you, now, will it?”

The Doctor hunched further, always on the edge of protest.

“Might do, in this ward,” she muttered. “On that note—”

Yaz, leaned against the back corner of the cramped little room with her arms crossed, frowned. “Hold on. Are we really not gonna talk about this?” she demanded quietly, peeling herself from the wall.

The Doctor blinked, guileless. The hunch of her shoulders lessened. “Talk about what?”

Wrong answer. Ryan winced as Yaz broiled behind him, stalking closer.

“This,” she said, gesturing emphatically to the vitals screen on the wall behind the bed. The hurt that had been twisting her mouth ever since they’d left Mabli’s office leaked through, poorly sealed. “Were you really not gonna say anything? How long have you been—?”

“It’s nothing,” the Doctor protested. When Yaz didn’t budge, her expression darkened into a more familiar scowl. “It’s personal,” she said, quieter, colder. “And I told you—”

“—Mabli don’t know what she’s talking about,” Yaz finished grimly. “Only I don’t think that’s true, ‘cos only a while ago you were going on about how brilliant she was.”

“You do look a bit peaky, mate,” Ryan pointed out gently, although the truth of it was only just becoming apparent. They’d all missed it somehow, he thought, shifting uneasily. Some friends. Only it was just that she made it so easy to miss. Even now, she was straightening her shoulders, ironing the wrinkle from between her brows, loosening her hands until they were free in her lap.

“I’m fine,” she insisted. Lightly, now, eyebrows raised like she couldn’t believe they were implying otherwise. Like maybe she’d realized she wouldn’t be able to scowl her way out. “I promise. Now, let’s put our heads together, and—”

A sharp rap on the glass of the patient pod interrupted her. Mabli crept in quietly with a tray in hand, still looking so nervous about the whole thing that Ryan was half-convinced she’d blow it before they could even investigate properly.

“Settled in?” she asked, smiling. She closed the door behind her with a swallow. “All the admin’s sorted. As far as anyone is concerned, you’re a registered patient. Sorry about the space, but to be honest, you’re lucky it’s a private room at all.” Mabli’s ever-present smile lost some of its shine again. The Doctor, Ryan noted with a frown, wasn’t the only one who looked tired. “Those can be hard to come by, in Ward 3.”

The scowl was fighting for a comeback. The Doctor’s smile stretched over it. “Oh, good,” she said. “Now, Mabli—”

“I was thinking we could speak more in the morning,” Mabli said firmly, bowling right over her. Ryan took a step back from the bed, impressed. “I still have to show your friends to their accommodation, and you should rest.”

The Doctor blinked, mouth left hanging. She closed it, as an afterthought. “Right,” she tried, genially. “But your ghost problem—”

“Won’t be solved unless we maintain proper cover.” Mabli smiled in a way that wasn’t threatening in the slightest, but somehow still managed to wordlessly imply that pressing the discussion further wouldn’t end well. Ryan caught Yaz’s lips twitch, out of the corner of his eye, even as the Doctor’s scowl crept slowly back in. “Now,” Mabli said, brisk and professional once more, reaching for the Doctor’s hand, “take one of these,” and she peeled the sticker off a patch waiting on the tray she’d brought in and slapped it gently to the back of the Doctor’s wrist, “one of these,” another patch, on the other wrist, “and catch a good eight hours of sleep. Skin-soluble nutrients, they take a while to absorb.”

“Eight—” The Doctor spluttered, rising onto an elbow. Her nose wrinkled in protest.

“Water on the tray, if the patch isn’t enough,” Mabli said kindly, backing away. She set the tray on the bedside table. “There’s a call button on the screen beside you. I’ll just help your friends to the guest accommodation wing, and we can talk in the morning.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any hope of a sandwich, Mabli, love, is there?” Graham wondered, rising from his perch, eyes lighting up.

“A sandwich?” Mabli tilted her head in confusion. “What’s a sandwich?” Ryan tuned out the resulting discussion (and the shock and horror on Graham’s part) as they headed for the door, the Doctor still half-heartedly spluttering in their wake.

“But—” she protested. “You’re just gonna—you’re not just going to—”

“‘Night, Doctor,” Ryan said over his shoulder, waving. Yaz waved too, as they followed Mabli out. “See you in the morning, I guess, yeah?”

The lights dimmed as they exited, gleaming off the glass warmly. The Doctor stilled, the fight seeping out of her. There was tension still caught in her shoulders, the sharp curve of her mouth.

“Goodnight,” she told him, looking hurt. And a bit—well, betrayed.

Ryan swallowed, something trying hard to be guilt clamouring for attention in the pit of his stomach. The Doctor was an alien, he reminded himself. An alien who for all they knew was far older than she looked, and far more capable than the rest of them put together. It weren’t abandonment. It was for a perfectly good reason.

Still though, he thought, as the glass shifted closed behind them, trapping her in. He hoped morning wouldn’t be too long. For all their sakes.

—

Out of respect for her friends and Mabli, the Doctor waited a good thirty seconds before throwing off the sheets. A solid twenty-five seconds. Twenty. Well, so maybe it ended up being more like fifteen, but really, who was keeping count? Certainly not the Doctor.

If she had been keeping count, she would have told herself sternly that fifteen seconds were entirely too many seconds to be left doing absolutely nothing, at which point she would have agreed with herself, and hopped out of bed anyway. So maybe it didn’t matter. Regardless, the consensus was that waiting around was boring, sleep was for tortoises, and hospitals were rubbish.

Ghosts, on the other hand, were brilliant.

She went through the list as she crept towards the door cautiously, in case they’d dawdled. Real ghosts, of course, were out of the question for now. Temporal echoes were possible—or it could have been something like the Mara, or a nascent god like Huitzilin. There were all manner of psychic vampires out there, roaming the universe. All sorts of things that lived in the shadows, in the corner of people’s eyes.

Or, she thought, eyebrows raising in appeasement. It could have been nothing at all. Or nothing of the sort. It never did to go in with too many expectations, she reminded herself, as she slipped through the door quietly. The universe would always surprise you.

In every sense of the word, she thought tiredly, the universe would always surprise you.

Her friends were long gone by the time she ventured out of the patient pod, drawn away by the promise of not-sandwiches and a good night’s rest. Maybe she couldn’t blame them for that, though. A good night’s rest was hard to come by in the TARDIS, these days, and that was her fault, probably. It was just that her tolerance for the in-between bits had dwindled, lately. There was so much universe out there, and too much of the familiar in there. What else could she do but keep moving forward? Keep everyone busy, keep everyone happy. Keep the less savoury bits close to her chest. There was nothing wrong with keeping certain facts about herself on a need-to-know basis, she thought firmly, and if the notion rose slightly defensive up her throat, she didn’t make a note of it. It was safer for everyone that way, really. Her friends hadn’t signed up for anything except a fun adventure, no matter what they’d promised, and it was up to her to keep it the way. Her sleepless nights and endless searching weren’t their purview. Or their business.

Or Mabli’s business, for that matter, even if she was just trying to help.

“The old insomnia, eh?” a jovial voice interrupted. With a start, the Doctor realized she’d only made it a few steps down the corridor before she’d ground to a halt, half-leaning against the glass. Eyes gritty. She’d forgotten, hadn’t she. How much fun it wasn’t, exploring on your own. “I know how that is.”

She turned, peeling herself away from the wall. Just behind her, a large older man in a robe and pyjamas was regarding her shrewdly, bent over a hovering walker.

“Wandering aimlessly is all well and good,” he told her, eyes twinkling, “but you could always give us a game of holo-chess instead.”

The Doctor smiled and fell into step.

—

The man’s name was Horus Gelft, he had broken his hip, and he was excellent at holo-chess.

(Not excellent enough to beat the Doctor, of course, but excellent enough to give her brains a run for their money, for once.)

The chess set laid out in the ward’s only recreation sector was ancient and flickered like a candle about to go out. So did the lights above them, dimmed for the hour. An ancient coffee-maker and a pile of paper books and toys lined the table behind them, beside a dusty, rusted-out window onto the space beyond them. Stars flickered gently in the distance. At least the view was the same, no matter which ward you were in.

It was becoming blindingly obvious, however, that for all of Resus One’s shine and polish, Ward 3 wasn’t the face the hospital showed to outsiders. It was as clean as could be, excepting the windows, but you couldn’t walk a step without running into something that had been neglected or shoddily repaired. The floors and the lighting system were decades out of date. The Doctor wondered pessimistically if the medical equipment was, too.

“Retired early,” Horus told her genially, as he came close to beating her again. The Doctor had never been a brilliant conversationalist in this body to begin with, and time and tide had only scattered her thoughts further and turned them rather surly. Horus, she surmised quickly, wasn’t picky about his conversation partners, though. In the middle of the night, you had to take who you could get, maybe. “I was a teacher, see. Loved it, but I wanted to spend out the years with the wife, my grandkids. Poor timing, though,” he said ruefully, reaping one of her knights without remorse, “on account of the system banks failing the next day. A whole solar system, can you imagine? Bankrupt, overnight. We do alright now, but it’s not enough for a room up in Ward 4, now, is it.”

“This ward is publicly-funded?” the Doctor asked. She moved her rook forward, distracted.  Her head was beginning to pound, dully. Or maybe it was just that she’d finally slowed down long enough to notice it. 

Horus raised an eyebrow, across from her. “Didn’t you know that coming in, love? If you could afford private, you’d be there.”

“Er,” the Doctor said. “Don’t pay much attention to these things. Bit of a flaw of mine.”

Horus smiled forgivingly. “Oh, you’re a dreamer. I see. Let the missus handle the financial end of things, is it?”

The Doctor cleared her throat, flushing. “Something like that.” It wasn’t technically wrong, really. The TARDIS tended to make sure her pockets were filled with the right sort of things. Whether those things were bananas or currency depended on the day—and her mood.

She fingered a crack in the table thoughtfully. “They don’t waste much of their resources down here, do they,” she pondered, feeling a bit slow. Horus was two moves away from check-mate, and she couldn’t seem to figure out how to stop him. “Centuries of tax-funded healthcare, you’d think they’d have finally got it right.”

“We’re not a priority,” Horus agreed. Bishop, swiped. The Doctor frowned down at the holographic board. “Still, it’s better than the alternative. And Mabli’s wonderful. Without her keeping an eye on things, who knows what it would all be like? As long as there’s someone looking out for you, there’s nothing in the world can harm you, no matter how insignificant you are.”

“You’re not insignificant,” the Doctor protested, glancing up. “You’re far from insignificant. Horus, you’re entirely important.”

He was still smiling gently. “Maybe to my wife,” he said. “Only she couldn’t afford the guest accommodation, see. She’s still planet-bound, waiting. And the service is terrible up here, I can’t afford a holo-call, neither.”

The sonic was burning a hole in her pocket. A dull kind of anger was burning a hole in her stomach lining, but that was a given, these days. She stood abruptly and switched off the board before she could lose.

“Let me see what I can do about that,” she said.

—

“There’s no holo-calls allowed after ten o’clock,” Horus was saying at her back, struggling to keep up. She slowed her pace to accommodate, wincing. She didn’t like feeling careless. Humans were terribly fragile, though. This entire space station should have served as enough reminder.

“Oh, now, don’t look at me like that,” he chided gently, catching her up. The hovering walker hummed faintly. A closer look told her that it was also years and years behind the technology Resus One was capable of procuring, and the knowledge soured in her stomach. “This is a sight better than it was before. Mabli says in a week or two, once the replacement properly integrates, it’ll be as good as new. Better, even, on account of the replacement hip is shatter-proof.” He winked. “But I’m telling you, there’s no holo-calls this late.”

The Doctor smiled, fishing the sonic from her pocket. “Not with that attitude, there’s not.”

“Ah,” he said, as they resumed their journey down the night-dimmed hallway. “A dreamer and a troublemaker. What are you in for, anyway, love? And how exactly does a doctor end up in the public ward?”

“Doctor’s just a title,” she said absently. “Or a promise, I suppose.”

“So you’re not a real doctor.”

“Of course I am!”

Out of the corner of her eye, Horus shook his head fondly. “Sounds like trouble to me.”

“I hope so,” she said. “And I’m only here because—”

She twisted her face in thought.

“Because I’m doing somebody a favour,” she decided. “That’s what I do. Cause trouble and do people favours.”

Horus nodded agreeably. “And what is this, then?” he inquired. “A favour, or causing trouble?”

The holo-call booth loomed ahead, where it stuck out from the wall, looking remarkably like a telephone booth from the early twenty-first century might have looked, once upon a time. Humans were funny like that. They kept having the same good ideas over again. And the same bad ones. The Doctor grinned, eyebrows raising. “Yes,” she said, diving in with the sonic. “Now go on, keep a look out.”

Horus dutifully peered out into the dim, warm corridor while she had the sonic make some adjustments—and while she made some adjustments of her own. With her fists. There was nothing better for technology than some good old-fashioned physical recalibration, when it all came down to it.

“Here you are, Horus,” she said when she was done, retreating from the booth. “All yours, for as long as you need it. No charge.” She waved the sonic, grinning.

He crept forward, ruddy eyebrows raised in astonishment. “Just like that,” he marvelled. “You know, Doctor, you’re by far the best person I’ve ever run into in the middle of the night.”

“I do tend to be,” she admitted graciously, nose wrinkling. “Go on, then. I know it’s late, but I’m sure your family will be glad to hear from you.”

“Yes,” he said, already plugging in the directory coordinates. “Yes, I hope so.”

She stepped away while he spoke, drifting towards another dust-covered window into the space beyond. Stars twinkled invitingly. She leaned her head against the cool glass, wishing.

She was good at wishing. She’d been good at it ever since she’d been a little boy, staring up at a burnt orange sky. Counting stars, memorizing constellations. Kasterborous’ neighbours, within reach of her small hands.

The constellations were different at the end of the universe. When she lay in the scalded grass, peering at the sky through the smoke in the air, there was nothing familiar left. Even the sky she’d known had been scoured away.

She ground her fingers into her forehead, scowling. This was why waiting around was no good. All roads in her brains led to Rome, and Rome was burning. All she could do was try to keep ahead of the flames and keep her friends out of the shadows they cast. Stewing around in it all was no good. There were still plenty of stars, right in front of her, if she could only—if she could only—

Hot breath on her neck. Acrid char under her nose.

She spun around, hearts in her throat, finding empty air in front of her. The hallway gaped. Horus stepped out from the call booth, beaming.

“Thank you, Doctor,” he said, grabbing hold of the hover-walker, moving towards her. His ruddy hair, greying at the temples, caught the light dully. “Truly, thank you. Trouble or not,” he said, still beaming, “I’m grateful for you. Is there anything I can do in thanks?”

“Horus,” she said, neck prickling. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen anything weird around here, lately?”

His brows knit together.

“Weird?” She watched his face relax into a smile again. “I hate to say it, love, but you’re the strangest thing I’ve run across yet.”

She smiled reflexively. “Oh, yeah. Well. I do try.” She glanced down at the sonic. On a hunch, held it straight in front of her, a beacon down the hallway, the trill comforting in her ears. Nothing.

Well. Nothing with a trace. She scowled down at it briefly, before she stowed it away in her pyjama pocket.

“Come on, Horus,” she said, leading the way down the corridor they’d come from. “Shall we play another game?” The stars blinked solemnly behind her, passing the time in ways that humans didn’t have words for. “There’s still a few hours until morning.”

“Oh, yes,” he said agreeably, content. “Yes, that’s true, isn’t it.”

—

A rather befuddled goat in a white coat regarded the Doctor in a rather befuddled manner, from behind the glare of the spectacles perched on the end of his nose.

“My dear,” he said, sounding befuddled enough that the Doctor couldn’t even find it in herself to wrinkle her nose at the term of endearment. “Forgive my directness, but may I ask what species you happen to be?”

The goat was called Doctor Minst, and he looked as though he wasn’t quite sure what he was doing there. In retrospect, the Doctor considered blearily, he probably wasn’t actually a goat, as that was quite improbable. Of course, it wasn’t out of the question. Many goats had evacuated the Earth as refugees during the Woolly Rebellion, and so—

Mabli cleared her throat. “Tellerian. You’ll notice the, uh, binary vascular system.”

Doctor Minst hummed absently. “Oh, yes, of course.” His impressive brow wrinkled. “Pardon me, but don’t Tellerians have, y’know, the, er,” he gestured fruitlessly to his forehead. “Antennae?”

The Doctor plastered on a smile.

“Childhood accident,” she said sourly. “Bit rude of you to point it out, if I’m bein’ honest.”

Doctor Minst seemed unbothered by this. “Oh, yes,” he hmmed. “Yes, very good. Er, and no med-tag?”

“What can I say?” the Doctor said, deadpan. Goat or not, she was hoping he would leave soon. She’d only just scooted back into bed before Mabli had wandered in, and she wanted to get a chance to speak with her before her friends returned from breakfast. “I’m a hippy.”

He hummed in what might have been disapproval, but just as easily might have been acknowledgement. He turned to Mabli, hooves clicking on the polished floor. The Doctor swallowed back a wince. The ambient light had turned colder with artificial morning, and it hadn’t done anything for the ache at the back of her head.

“Well done as always, Mabli,” he said. “I don’t know why they send me down here anymore, to be quite frank, you know. You’ve got it all, er, well in hoof. Hand.”

Mabli smiled, genuine enough that her eyes crinkled with it. “Thank you, Doctor Minst. It’s always nice to see a friendly face.”

“Oh, yes, well,” he hummed warmly, and tottered out of the room, hooves clicking. Mabli shook her head fondly in his wake.

“He’s a good doctor,” she said quietly, once he’d left. “Or he was, twenty years ago. No one ever seems to have the heart to ask him to retire. They keep him on as part of the review board.”

“I know how that is,” the Doctor offered without context. Mabli smiled, confused. The Doctor liked that about her. People who smiled when they didn’t understand something were rare, in this universe. Precious, even.

The Doctor felt her own smile drop.

Perhaps sensing the change in mood, Mabli sobered. “You’re not Tellerian, though,” she said quietly, perching on the end of the bed. She averted her gaze, looking almost pensive. “Are you?”

The Doctor watched her warily. “No,” she said. “I’m not.”

“But the binary vascular system,” Mabli continued reluctantly. “The extra brain stems. They’re not terribly common features.” She swallowed. “I didn’t put it together, the first time we met, but the cell regeneration I saw—”

“Where is this going, Mabli?” The Doctor watched her shoulders tighten in fear at her tone and felt a twinge of regret. But Mabli plunged on, braver than she’d been before, fingers whitening in the starched sheets.

“Do your friends know?” she asked, quickly, quietly. “What you are, I mean.”

The irritation in the pit of her stomach turned briefly, irrationally, to fear, and then settled into something far more resigned. Mabli was sharp, and this corner of the universe was very fond of stories. It had only been a matter of time, really.

“They don’t know what it means,” was all she said, eventually.

Mabli still wouldn’t look at her.

“The stories say,” she breathed, “that the Time Lords were wiped out. That they were scattered into ash, across the universe and time.”

The Doctor swallowed and glanced down at her hands. Bloodless, by mere chance. She remembered the smoothness of that phantom button, the pungent smell of twisting, changing timelines under her nose, but none of it had mattered in the end, had it? She might as well have pushed the button, a bitter, furious voice at the back of her head pointed out. Or left Gallifrey hanging on the wall, preserved in oil. Trapped behind a crack in time. At least then she’d only have lost everything once. “They were,” she said shortly. “By a war, and then a lunatic.” She’d wondered often if saying it aloud might help. It didn’t. “It’s just me.”

At least in this dimension, she thought privately, head throbbing at the reminder, worry tugging at her stomach.

“Oh,” Mabli said. And the set of her shoulders and the hitch in her breath were—what? Sad, the Doctor decided, and couldn’t bear the kindness of it. “And your friends, they don’t know.” The idea seemed to distress her, but her eyes were still in her lap. The Doctor frowned.

They wouldn’t understand, she almost said. But it wasn’t quite true. I’m trying to protect them, she settled on next, but it still didn’t sit right. The truth was the same as it had always been, after all. She’d had to dig it up where it had been buried, but it held fast, after all this time. There was a rhyme and a reason to the running, to the lying. There always had been.

“I like to pretend, sometimes,” she whispered finally. “That’s all.”

Mabli looked up at her, eyes wide and wet.

“I won’t tell them,” she promised. “I won’t tell anyone. But—”

Don’t you think you should?

The rest of the sentence was swallowed. Her eyes caught on the vitals screen above the bed and she sighed.

“How did you sleep?” she asked.

“Like a baby,” the Doctor lied.

Mabli frowned.

“You really can’t keep on like this,” Mabli said. She stood, shoulders squaring. “Nobody could. You need to sleep.”

“I’m not just anybody.” The Doctor straightened tiredly. “Tell me about the ghosts.”

Mabli’s frown deepened, reluctance crawling across her face, but before she could say anything further the door to the patient pod slid open and her friends spilled through, triumphant.

“How come we’ve never been to this part of the future before?” Ryan demanded, grinning. “All the food is cubes.”

“Morning, Doc,” Graham said from behind him, looking much less thrilled about this fact. “Sleep well? Though to be quite honest with you,” he said, sotto voce, “I’d give my left arm for a sandwich.”

Some things never changed, the Doctor thought, smiling wearily in acknowledgement.

“What’s the game-plan, then?” Ryan bounded forward carefully so he didn’t bang his shins on the bed.

“Ryan,” Yaz hissed, closing the door behind them.

He clasped his hands together sheepishly. “Game-plan?” he whispered, cowed.

“Mabli,” the Doctor said, brightening through a force of will, surprised by how delighted she was by the return of their company, “was just about to tell us. About the ghosts. Right, Mabli?”

Mabli pressed her lips together uncomfortably and shifted where she stood. Her eyes strayed nervously to the vitals screen. “Right,” she said finally. “Yes. The ghosts.”

Graham raised his eyebrows encouragingly. Clearly having read the room a bit more accurately, Yaz resumed her position in the corner of the room, arms crossed, on the brink of a scowl. The Doctor swallowed back her own, plastering over it all with a smile. If this was the game, she was going to win it. She was going to win it, and take her friends back to the TARDIS when this was all over and done with, and then to the beach like it had never even happened, and there would be loads of smiles and absolutely no questions, and—

A quiet beeping cut through the sudden, awkward tension.

“Er,” Mabli interrupted, clearing her throat. “That would be the blood pressure alarm.”

The Doctor’s smile tightened. The bio-readings were all calibrated remotely, so there was nothing she could rip out of her arm or off her person in disgust. “Right. Well.” She spared a brief moment to tell her heart rates to get a grip on themselves. The beeping ceased, rather reluctantly. “Mabli. Ghosts?”

“Ghosts,” Mabli said, a bit miserably. She glanced up at Yaz and Ryan in the corner, Graham where he’d inched closer to the bed. When no one said anything, he sat tentatively, hands resting in his lap. He flashed the Doctor a brief, reassuring smile.

“Er,” Mabli continued. “Well, I’ve come up with a list of all the deaths in the past three weeks. That’s when I first noticed what was happening.”

She made to pass over her tablet to the Doctor, but Yaz stepped away from the wall to intercept it with a smile before the Doctor could even reach for it.

“What made you notice there was something going on?” she asked, ignoring the Doctor’s half-hearted scowl sunnily.

“Usually the algorithm notifies me and Quality Assurance when the ward is experiences excess death. Er, well, more deaths than would be statistically expected. Which isn’t very many,” Mabli was quick to point out, brow pinching. “We have a high standard of care throughout the entire hospital, it’s just—well, a certain amount of mortality is to be expected. But the algorithm didn’t alert me,” she said. She swallowed. “I only noticed because a few of the patients’ families reached out to me. That’s when I started keeping track myself. Within a few standard deviations, this list contains almost three times the acceptable mortality rate for this ward within this time frame. And what’s more, quite a few of them strike me as—well, unusual. Patients on the mend, patients with minor complaints. Not the sort of mortalities you’d expect. Originally I suspected a chemical problem, or—or maybe something in the building, or some sort of pathological explanation, but—”

She took the pad back from Yaz and finally passed it over to the Doctor, who took it smartly. The names she scrolled through were unfamiliar, but numerous. Each with a family, each with a life, and a story. Her lips tightened.

“But you don’t think it’s a virus,” she said, glancing up at Mabli, eyebrow quirked.

Mabli shook her head. “Unless it’s one that causes mass hallucinations,” she said. “That’s what convinced me to contact you. People are seeing things.”

The Doctor set the tablet down beside her. “What sort of things?”

“That’s the question,” she said. “I’d like to know, too. Ghosts.” She worried at her lower lip, troubled. “That’s what I’ve heard, anyway. Apparitions, voices, that sort of thing.”

“Were you there for any of the deaths?” Ryan asked, but Mabli shook her head again.

The Doctor brought her knees up to her chest and rested her chin, contemplating.

“First things first,” she said, frowning. She kept her chin on her knees and her hands around her legs, though they itched to grind into her aching temple. She clenched her fists in the cool sheets instead. “We need to rule some things out. That means trying to understand what we’re dealing with. If it’s something we can touch and see, or something sneakier.” Her eyebrows raised. “Which means…”

Graham blinked back at her, placidly.

“Er,” Ryan said.

Yaz crossed her arms again. “It means we need to try to find a recording or a technological trace of whatever people are seeing.”

“Five points!” She pointed at Yaz, proud despite herself. “And how do we do that?”

Yaz stepped away from the wall, scowl lightening at the praise. “Get our hands on a body and see if we can get hold of their ocular implants?”

“And a gold star.”

Ryan grimaced. “I’m not loving the sound of that.”

“How are we gonna get our hands on a recently deceased body from this ward specifically?” Graham wondered, also looking vaguely uncomfortably with the idea. The Doctor couldn’t blame him, exactly. This was all a far cry from the sunny sands of Sandolovar 12.

“We lost a patient two days ago,” Mabli offered, subdued. “They should still be in the morgue, the autopsy hasn’t been performed yet. It’s in the sub-basement. I can take you there, but I don’t have—”

The Doctor fished the psychic paper out of her pyjama pocket, flapping it triumphantly. “Don’t worry about that. Between this and the sonic, we should—”

“Hold on, though,” Yaz interjected. “You’re not coming. It’ll be hard enough explaining the four of us down there, and we don’t look like patients.”

Mentally, the Doctor rescinded the gold star. “I’m very inconspicuous!” She frowned. “Besides, the sonic—”

“Works by pointing and thinking. Pretty sure I can get it to unlock any doors we might need,” Yaz said, extending a hand. She raised an eyebrow. “Unless you don’t trust us.”

There was an edge to her words that was more than just worry. The Doctor thought of the way she’d looked in the tunnels of the orphan planet, betrayal splashed across her face. Shock and horror. Another test that she’d failed, in the Master’s wake.

The Doctor passed over the sonic and the psychic paper, lips pressing together.

“Fine,” she said. “Of course I do. Look at you three, perfectly capable. Just—”

She swallowed back the faint taste of abandonment at the back of her throat.

“Be careful,” she said. “We still don’t know what’s happening, here.”

“Always are, cockle,” Graham said. “Besides, maybe one of us should stay up with you, while Mabli and the kids investigate.” His eyebrows raised hopefully. “Scope out the ward? Get a feel for the old place?”

Out of respect, the Doctor declined to tell him that she’d already had a pretty good look for herself.

“I’m not sure—” she tried.

“Maybe we could take a com-dot, just in case,” Yaz suggested, far too reasonably, before she could finish.

“I have extras.” Mabli fished around in the pockets of her futuristic scrubs, seemingly in on—or at least willing to go along with—the conspiracy that seemed determined to keep the Doctor from doing anything remotely fun. Or useful. She felt the scowl creeping back, despite herself. “Here.”

One for Mabli, one for the Doctor, who hid it behind her hair reluctantly. It felt cold against her skin. Normally she could have ignored the sensation easily, but today it sat and stewed, crawled across her neck.

“Fine,” she said, though it was decidedly not. Her fam were brilliant, but not as brilliant as her. The rancid thought was growing, that on her own, without the scrutiny and the silent, smothering concern, that she could have the whole thing over and done with in an afternoon. This was taking far longer than she’d expected when she’d capitulated in the TARDIS. Every second she spent away was a second that he might be freeing himself to wreak more havoc, and this time there would be even less question of whose fault it would be.

“Nice work, team,” she said, tightly. Now the thought had occurred to her, she couldn’t quite shake it. When people need help, she reminded herself. In the shadow of the Master, it all rang a bit hollow. “Meet back here at lunch, safe and sound?”

Yaz smiled, a worrying gleam of something the Doctor didn’t want to notice glinting at the back of her eyes as she tucked the sonic and the paper into her jacket pocket. A problem for later, like everything was, lately. Worry sat queasily in the pit of her stomach.

“Safe and sound,” Yaz promised.

  —

“So,” Ryan ventured, in the tone of voice that meant he was either desperately bored or trying to flirt. Yaz occasionally thought of pointing out the fact that she couldn’t always tell the difference to him, but had so far never managed to find the right moment. She raised her eyebrows at him incredulously, across the floor of the lift. “How does a space station go about having a sub-basement? Only I thought a basement had to have, y’know. A ground to be under.”

He raised his eyebrows back at her, clueless. Or indignant. Or both.

Mabli shifted nervously, blind to the silent miscommunication happening before her eyes.

“It’s just the vernacular,” she said, shifting again, washed out in the brightness of the lift. “I expect. It’s below the main level, so I suppose it still counts as a sort of basement, doesn’t it?” She stilled for a moment, gripped by the thought. “I’ve never been in a real one.”

“Never been in a basement?” Ryan frowned.

She shook her head. “I was born off-planet. I don’t get down there very often. I don’t get down anywhere very often, to be honest.” A nervous smile crept across her face, just briefly, as the lift came to a quiet, seamless halt. “Real gravity makes me dizzy.”

“Proper weird,” Ryan marvelled quietly. They followed her out, down the narrow, twisting corridors. The sub-basement was just as light and bright as the rest of the space station, stark and clean. No windows, though, Yaz noted. She supposed the dead didn’t need a view.

The smell, though, was unmistakably different. Formaldehyde, bitter under her nose. Some things didn’t change.

“I’m really not meant to be down here,” Mabli fretted quietly, though she was still cautiously leading them down the corridor. “If it’s not—”

She swallowed harshly, cutting herself off. They’d reached a door at the end of the hall, perfectly innocuous. Mabli wrinkled her nose worriedly and glanced to Yaz.

The sonic was cold in her hand. With barely a thought—she’d learned from watching (and pointing, and laughing) that sometimes thinking too hard about what you wanted to do led to what the Doctor very optimistically referred to as ‘overcompensation’—she pointed it at the door, which opened quietly.

Mabli’s shoulders relaxed. They crept through, cautiously, but the room was deserted.

“I’ll get written up for this,” Mabli said, as she bustled over to what Yaz assumed was some sort of holographic filing system. Her fingers flicked quickly through ethereal pages, too fast for Yaz to see. “When they do my monthly review, they’ll see what I’ve done, but it’s—it’ll be worth it,” she said, more to herself than to them. “It’ll be worth it.”

“It will be,” Ryan said, gazing around uneasily. Yaz couldn’t blame him, though she wasn’t quite as spooked. The morgue was long, and white, and looked utterly empty—though of course it couldn’t be.

“The bodies,” she started to ask, but Mabli plucked something intangible from the filing, glowing in her hand.

“349,” she said, eyebrows raising nervously. “It’s quite a hike. The bodies,” she said, taking off down the narrow room’s length, “are in the walls. Cold, cryogenic storage, for—for an optimal post-mortem standard of care.”

“Is that what the brochure says?” Ryan wondered, shuddering.

“Yes.” Mabli glanced over her shoulder as they walked, puzzled. “Didn’t you get one, the last time you were here?”

“We were a bit busy,” Yaz said, smiling at the reminder of their chaotic arrival at Resus One, what felt like a lifetime ago. She sobered. Things had changed since then. Or maybe they hadn’t, so much. In some ways, the Doctor felt just as unknowable now as she had then, just as impenetrable. And some of the things Yaz had carefully catalogued and tucked away—the Doctor’s single-minded focus on the TARDIS, her inability to be still—were just the same. If anything, the odd, sharp, panicked edge to her that Yaz had first noticed in the bowels of the Tsuranga had only grown sharper and more ragged, since.

She glanced at Ryan, troubled. He caught her gaze, and for a moment she thought she could see some of her own worry reflected there, cold and gleaming in the harsh light. But none of them could ever seem to get the right words out. They were afraid, Yaz thought. Afraid to pierce the veil, afraid to put ripples in the pond.

It was much easier, she knew with an intimate, uncomfortable certainty, when you could just pretend.

“Here we are.” Mabli drew to a stop, placing the thin, ethereal rectangle in her hand onto the wall. The wall absorbed it with a quiet chime, and with a click, an area in the approximate shape of a drawer drew away from the wall. Mabli pressed her lips together grimly and pulled it open.

Ryan shuddered, grimacing. Yaz only breathed out slowly, undisturbed, but—respectful. The dead deserved respect. That was why they were here, after all. To put things right, and to keep it all from happening again.

“Fern Longus, “Mabli said, peering at the holographic card that accompanied the drawer. She drew the sheet covering the body back gingerly, revealing a woman grey and frost-tipped. “They haven’t determined a cause of death yet, she’s still in processing.”

“So, uh,” Ryan said, swallowing uncomfortably. The woman’s face was trapped in an unmistakeable rictus of despair. “How do we get a look at her eyeballs?”

“Her ocular implants will have been removed already, “Mabli said, searching. He sagged in relief. “We should be able to access—here.”

Another screen popped up above the body, fuzzy around the edges.

“They extract the data,” Mabli said. “Pass it along to the family, sometimes to the authorities. Shall we—?”

No one seemed especially enthusiastic about the idea, Yaz noted with a fair bit of exasperation. “Let’s get it done,” she said firmly. “Find out what’s going on, then leave this woman to rest.”

“Here we go.” Mabli swiped her way across the screen, hunting. “These are the last few moments of her life.”

A grainy image of a cramped, shared patient pod filled the screen, dim and warm with evening light that reflected cozily off the glass. The three of them watched, tense, as the view shifted and shook with the woman’s movements, growing more and more agitated as the seconds went on—but they were looking at nothing. Nothing at all, nothing but empty air. She’d died alone, in distress.

“I don’t see anything,” Ryan said quietly, still watching intently. “But she’s moving about a lot.”

Mabli shook her head, disappointed. “There’s nothing to see,” she said in despair.

“Yes, there is,” Yaz insisted, eyes catching on the barest, slightest— “Pause it,” she ordered. “There.” She pointed. “In the glass. Look at the reflection.”

Caught in the window, there was the slightest blur. It was more the suggestion of a shape than it was anything else, but it was better than nothing, she thought grimly. And maybe the Doctor would be able to make something of it, at least.

“That could be anything,” Ryan pointed out, crossing his arms. “Looks like a shadow. It could be whoever’s in the bed beside her.”

“It could be,” Mabli agreed, peering closer. “But I don’t think the angles are right.” She glanced to Yaz. “But what could cast a shadow without leaving any other trace?”

“The Doctor will know,” Yaz said, with a confidence she didn’t necessarily feel. If she’d learned anything over the past few weeks, it was that there was plenty the Doctor didn’t know—and plenty to put them in danger. “We should get back upstairs, before someone comes.”

Mabli threw the sheet carefully back over the body and gently pressed the drawer back into the wall. It disappeared silently, lines evaporating into seamless white.

“What happens to her?” Ryan asked quietly. “Has she got family?”

Mabli pressed her lips together. “If she had family, they’d be here,” she said gently. “If she had anyone, they’d be here. Unclaimed bodies are kept for a few days, but—”

She trailed off.

“We have a limited amount of space,” she said finally. “And it’s expensive, shipping bodies planetside. They get cremated, eventually. Sent back into the stars.”

Ryan’s brow had furrowed. “Do you see that a lot? Patients with no one?”

“In Ward 3?” Mabli glanced down at her feet, uncomfortable. “More often than I’d like,” she admitted. “But that’s why I do what I do. Being there for people that don’t have anyone, caring for people that aren’t often cared for, it’s—it’s important work. Even if not everyone sees it that way.” She looked up at them, a newfound steeliness in her eyes. “That’s why I need your help. No one will help these people, if I don’t. And they deserve better.” Her gaze turned to the blank wall where the drawer had disappeared. “I should have been there,” she said quietly. “That’s my job.”

“You can’t be there for everyone,” Ryan comforted. “It’s a big ward. And it’s like you said, isn’t it? No one else even noticed what was goin’ on. Or worse, they did notice and they didn’t do anything about it.”

“We’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Yaz said firmly. “Together. It’s not just you, on your own.”

There was a strange look in Mabli’s eye, but she smiled all the same.

“Good advice,” she said softly. “Now let’s leave, so you can keep on giving it.”

—

Graham was older, sure, and he would have been the first to admit that he had a tendency to drift (in mind and body, at least when the spectre of lunch was involved)—but he wasn’t stupid.

“Doc,” he sighed, watching her peer around yet another corner with overly-enthusiastic eyebrows, “you’ve already cased the joint, haven’t you.”

“What?’ she demanded immediately, head snapping to him. “No, I haven’t. ‘Course I haven’t.”

“Terrible liar,” he pointed out. “Always have been, right from the start. Your forehead wrinkles.”

Her forehead wrinkled.

“You don’t have to pretend with me, you know,” he said, surprised to find that he wasn’t even cross. It was hard to be cross with the Doc, lately, even though she certainly gave them plenty of reasons, from day to day. It was that hunch to her shoulders, he thought uncomfortably. That glaze across her eyes, like she’d seen summat she couldn’t forget. It made all the crossness melt away into worry, only then when you tried to say something about how you were worried, she’d either grin so wide it made you question your own senses, or—

“I’m not,” she protested, wide-eyed, guileless. But the hairs on the back of his neck raised. There was a sharpness to that wide-eyed gaze that made his stomach drop. This, he narrated to no-one, was a perfect illustration of what he referred to privately as his Doctor Principle. The principle of the Principle was that the surface of the Doc was like a lake, if lakes happened to enjoy custard creams, righting wrongs, and causing a bit of chaos. If you poked the surface with a stick, though—well. You’d never reach the bottom, he thought uneasily. And the ripples would spread quietly and quietly and quietly, across the surface and all the way down to infinity.

All of which was to say that there was more to her than what she seemed, was all. And that lately, sometimes, only in the quiet dark, he was sometimes on the edge of afraid.

That was the thing about family, though, he thought. None of it mattered, not really. Whether he was nearly afraid of her or not, she was his friend and his family and as close to a grandchild as an ancient time-travelling alien who could change her face at will could be. And the fact of the matter was—and he was prepared to get all up in a righteous, indignant huff about it—she did look dreadfully tired. It had been so easy to miss, before. In the harsh light of the hospital, though, she looked drawn and sallow and uncomfortably human. At least until you reached the edges of her.

He crossed his arms and ignored the hairs on the back of his neck.

“Honestly!” She rolled her eyes and her neck to the sky, arms swinging as she turned away from him. “So what if I had a nip ‘round while you were sleeping? You all need so much of it, do you have any idea how many seconds are in eight whole hours? It’s—”

Honestly, when it came to sleep, he far preferred a solid ten hours, but he wasn’t about to say anything about it.

“It’s important,” he said firmly. “For us, and for you, I reckon.” He let his arms free to hang by his sides. Sometimes it paid to be more open. “Doc. Come on. I know this ain’t normal, none of it. Ever since—”

Careful, Graham, son, he thought to himself. You’re skating awfully close to direct. Too close, maybe. Her lips pressed together.

“It’s nothing,” she said flatly, and he was losing her, every time. When they tried to reach out, she only pushed off further from shore. “It’s—”

She trailed off, eyes fixing just beyond his shoulder. Graham twisted, following her line of sight. The corridor behind them loomed, white, empty.

“Doc,” he tried again, turning back to her, but she was still squinting down the hallway, a strange look on her face. The back of his neck startled prickling again. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” she said again, lightly, but she still wasn’t looking at him. Her face, already pale, had drained of what little colour was left. The line of her jaw had tensed. “Probably. Probably nothing. Oh—”

She gave up with a scrunch of her nose and slammed a palm against the pocket of her pyjamas, searching, but the sonic was miles beneath them. She scowled at the realization.

“I didn’t see anything, Doc,” he said, frowning, but she was already taking off without him, slippered feet flip-flopping against the smooth floor. He sighed and started trudging behind her, as quickly as he could manage. Stars glinted by in the windows. “Doc,” he panted in protest. “Would you just—”

When he caught up to her, she was half-sagging against the wall, nose wrinkled in confusion. His hands hovered, outstretched, though he was panting so hard himself that he wasn’t sure what help he might be. But she didn’t fall, or slide, or do any of the alarming things that the pallor of her face suggested she might.

“Gone,” she breathed, frustrated. “If it was even here.”

Graham frowned. “What did you see?”

She swallowed. Her eyes flicked to him, then away. Her forehead wrinkled. “Not sure,” she lied. At his glare, her face devolved into a more familiar scowl. “I thought I saw—it doesn’t matter. What matters,” she mused, deflecting, “is that you didn’t see it. How come?”

It was a valid question, he had to admit.

“I don’t know,” he said. No gold stars in his future, he was far too out of his depth. “But—”

Before he could finish, she slapped a hand to the side of her neck, frowning. The com-dot, he realized next.

“Nothing?” she said, sounding rather indignant about it. She grimaced at whatever she heard in return. “Well, of course it’s not your fault.”

He raised an eyebrow in askance but she shook her head at him, irritably.

“Fine,” she told Yaz. “See you soon.” She glanced up. “They’re coming back,” she said to him.

“I take it the morgue wasn’t a winner,” he ventured. She shook her head again, eyes fixed on the opposite wall. “If it ain’t something a computer can see, neither, then what is it?”

“Could be loads of things,” she said, shrugging, though as always she warmed to a question, straightening herself against the wall, shoulders squaring.

Graham didn’t budge. “But you’ve seen it,” he said, swallowing nervously. The emptiness of the hallway felt all of a sudden like a very clever ruse. Of course, he supposed uneasily, it was to begin with, anyway. Computers and robots and all sorts of rubbish were trapped behind the walls, watching. What was one more ghost, invisible to the eye? “It were just here.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not.”

“You was just chasing after nothing, then,” he said dryly. “I see.”

She rolled her eyes to the sky again, exasperated. “I told you, I don’t know what I saw,” she insisted. “And I’m not sure what it is. What I am sure of,” she said, “is that I don’t like it.”

“Well, that’s you and me both.” He offered her an elbow.

It was a testament to all the things she wasn’t saying, he thought, that she took it without much complaint.

—

It was a long way up, from the sub-basement. In the meantime, the Doctor and Graham waited.

“What would you have done?” he asked, pondering over the flickering rook in his grasp. Well, as much as something holographic could be in your grasp, he supposed. There was probably some sort of scientific principle behind the workings of the whole thing, but it wasn’t going to be on him to ask about it. “If Mabli hadn’t said anything, if we hadn’t come here. I mean, you was ill and you were still gonna take us to the beach, for goodness’ sake.”

“I’m not—” When he glanced up, she was looking back at him, exasperated. “It’s my job to worry about you,” she said firmly. “Not the other way round.”

“You never thought to wonder whether it goes both ways?” he shot back, moving his rook. He shook his head, frustrated. Painfully aware that he was nearing the edge of what he would be permitted to say. “It don’t need to be like this, Doc.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said lightly. A knight captured one of his pawns, gripped in her boney fingers. Graham leaned back in his uncomfortable plastic chair, frowning.

“I’m about to have you beat,” he said, half in wonder. “Check-mate, Doc.”

She scoffed in disbelief. “You haven’t.”

“No, really, I—”

“I see you’ve found another holo-chess victim.”

Graham glanced up, alarmed. There was no good reason, though. The Doctor was smiling in greeting out of the corner of his eye, and the larger fellow beaming down at them had eyes that crinkled kindly and a ruddy moustache to rival the very best. Graham relaxed, forcibly.

“Horus,” the Doctor said, still smiling. “Come for a rematch?”

“I know better, now,” he said. “I can only assume you’re an even worthier opponent, in the light of day.”

“Lots of nighttime chess, is it, Doc?” Graham wondered pointedly. The Doctor ignored him sunnily.

“You put up more than a good fight,” she protested. “Most humans are terrible. Three-dimensional brains, they make for lacklustre strategizing.”

If Horus was surprised that she wasn’t human herself, he didn’t show it. He had the look of a man who should have been red-cheeked and jolly, Graham thought, but he was pallid, in the washed-out light. His smile was thin. Though maybe in a hospital that should’t have been surprising.

“I did almost win, the once,” he agreed. His hands shifted, white-knuckled around the hovering walker in front of him.

Graham frowned.

“You lost to him, too?”

The Doctor’s smile caught. “No,” she said, with a minute shake of her head. “Definitely not.” She avoided Graham’s gaze, kept her eyes focused on Horus. Her expression sobered, as she took him in. “Are you alright, Horus?” she asked. “Did you want to speak with your wife again?”

A fleeting grimace crossed his face, but Graham didn’t know what to make of it.

“No, no,” he said quietly. “That’s quite alright. Thank you, though. I’m fine.”

The Doctor nodded, but gestured to her pyjama pocket, currently empty. “If you need anything—”

He cut her off with a smile. “It’s fine, Doctor. Really. Thank you.” His gaze floated beyond her, to the hallway behind. “I must—I must see to Annabelle.”

“Annabelle?” The Doctor’s eyebrows raised. “Who’s Annabelle?”

But he was already making his way laboriously out of the recreation sector, faster than Graham would have thought possible. The Doctor rose from her seat, clearly about to follow.

“Doc,” Graham said, not even quite sure why he was protesting. But—

The Doctor slapped a hand to the side of her neck, where the com-dot was nestled, wincing spectacularly.

“Yep,” she strangled out, replying to words he couldn’t hear. “Great. Fine.”

She ripped it off and dropped it to the empty table with a clatter, breathing hard.

“Loud?” Graham said, knowing better than to reach across as she slunk back into the chair, head sinking into her fingers, elbows resting on the table.

“No,” she lied, muffled, face hidden behind her sleeves.

He gave her a moment, unsure what he could do. It was so easy to see what she wanted you to see. He didn’t always feel equipped for the moments when what she wanted you to see fell away. There’s probably a pill for that headache, he wanted to say, but didn’t.

“You never lose,” he said instead, when the silence had stretched on long enough, when her breathing had turned a hair less harsh.

One eye glistened darkly between the cracks of her fingers.

“Can’t win every time,” she said.

Graham shuddered.

“Lunch,” Ryan announced gleefully, startling him half out of his seat. Yaz and Mabli congealed behind him, smiling in greeting. “Cube for you,” he said, setting one in front of Graham with a clatter that wasn’t his fault. “Cube for the Doctor,” and when Graham glanced over, she was sitting up straight, beaming. Though her nose wrinkled at the cube.

“Think I’m good on cubes, thanks,” she said pointedly.

Ryan crept gingerly around the table and sat in the seat by the wall, while Yaz pulled up a few extra chairs so she and Mabli could squeeze in.

“The cubes are nutritionally complete,” Mabli said encouragingly. “You’re deficient in—”

The Doctor took a bite, probably just to shut her up. She chewed thoughtfully, mouth twisting.

“You’d think by now you lot would have thought to put it in a biscuit,” she said. She glanced to Yaz. “What did you find in the morgue?”

Graham poked morosely at his own cube, thinking longingly of the picnic basket full of sandwiches, a few floors out of reach. Oh, well. Lunch was still lunch. He’d learned to take what he could get. There was never a guarantee of anything coming next.

“Just what I already told you,” Yaz admitted, looking rather put out by the fact. “Ocular recording didn’t catch it, whatever it is.

“How can it not have shown up?” Ryan wondered from across the table. Yaz settled into the smooth plastic chair across from him, frowning.

“There was one thing. It cast a shadow, or something. We caught a glimpse in the mirror.”

The recreation sector was nearly deserted, now. Just the four of them, at the table by the window. The lights above them were flickering. It threw the blank walls and shiny floors into sallow relief.

The Doctor poked absently at her cube, nose wrinkling slightly.

“It’s something beyond the visual spectrum,” she said, musing. “But not beyond the light spectrum. So the human eye can see the shadow, but not what’s casting it.” Her frown deepened. “But that’s not quite right, either. Some people can see it. And some people can’t.”

“What does that mean?” Ryan’s brow wrinkled. “It decides who gets to see it?”

“Means there’s a psychic dimension, too,” the Doctor said, sounding troubled. She pushed the plated cube in front of her away with a scrape to lean her elbows on the table. “It gets in the heads of its victims, but stays invisible to the eye of anyone who might be watching. But why these victims in particular? They must have something in common. What have the victims died from?”

“All sorts of things.” Mabli crossed her arms, shifting uncomfortably. “Heart attacks, organ failure. Stroke, a few of them. They were unexpected deaths, some of them, but not unusual. That’s why I couldn’t get anyone to look into it.”

“Peaceful?”

Mabli paused. Graham watched Yaz and Ryan go very still, and found himself very glad he hadn’t accompanied them down to the morgue. “No,” Mabli said quietly. “Not peaceful at all.”

“So people die in pain and fear,” the Doctor said, leaning back in her chair. “After being stalked and haunted by something that doesn’t show up on camera and is only sometimes visible. You know what that is?”

“Terrifyin’,” Ryan offered.

“Awfully convenient,” she said. “Hard to prove. Especially if no one’s watching. Resus One is meant to be one of the most well-renowned medical institutions this side of the galaxy, why isn’t anyone paying attention?”

“Except for Mabli,” Graham interjected. The Doctor nodded, as an afterthought, still looking grim.

“Ward 3 doesn’t tend to attract much attention,” Mabli said quietly. “The station is committed to a high standard of care for all of its patients, but—”

“Don’t need the speech.” The Doctor cut her off. “I’ve done my poking around. Ward 3 is publicly funded, and clearly not very well.” She glanced up at the flickering lights to make her point. “Tell me what you really think.”

Mabli looked down. “No one pays to be here,” she said. “And you’re right, there’s very little outside funding that goes into this ward. It’s not considered lucrative. There’s no research, no development. All the money goes to other wards.”

“Common knowledge?”

“It’s always been like this.” Mabli shifted again. “When I was transferred here after the Tsuranga, my colleagues said it was a career death sentence, but—but I didn’t fight it. I didn’t think I could, at first, and then—and then I realized how much I enjoyed it. It’s real work that gets done here,” she insisted quietly. “But no one wants to see it.”

“I think you’ve been targeted deliberately,” the Doctor said grimly. “Whatever this thing is, it wants to keep doing what it’s doing, so it picked a place to eat that wouldn’t arouse suspicion. That means it’s smart.” Her nose wrinkled. “Also means it’s got access to information, to an extent. How long has this been going on, again?”

“A few weeks,” Mabli said. “Maybe a month, now.”

Across the table, Yaz drew in a breath, brows knitting together.

“Mabli,” she said, sounding hesitant. “Your new board of directors—”

The Doctor snapped in her direction. “Take another ten points,” she said approvingly. Yaz’s shoulders straightened minutely.

Mabli shook her head in dismay. “Oh, but—” She swallowed. “The timing is odd, isn’t it,” she admitted. “They’re behind a lot of the recent cuts to the ward, too. Less oversight, fewer management committees.”

She glanced upwards nervously.

“But we shouldn’t—”

The Doctor held out her hand wordlessly. Yaz dropped the sonic into her palm. It whirred comfortingly.

“No one’s listenin’,” she reassured. “No one who shouldn’t be, anyway.”

“We need to find out how they’re involved,” Mabli said miserably. “Don’t we.”

The Doctor smiled. “Bingo.”

“Which means going to the top floor.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Breaking into their offices.”

“Almost definitely.”

“Not getting caught.”

“That would defeat the purpose, yeah.”

Mabli’s lips pressed together, troubled. “I have a duty to my patients,” she said. “I’m already behind, today. I want to solve this, for their sake, but I’m not sure I have time to investigate more.”

“So Ryan and I can go,” Yaz interjected. “We’ll use the psychic paper. We’re brilliant at undercover.”

Ryan’s face wasn’t precisely in agreement.

“Last time we were undercover, you got zapped to an alien dimension,” he pointed out dryly. Yaz scowled at the reminder.

“Only for a minute,” she protested.

“I’ll go with Yaz, this time,” Graham offered. Ryan still looked uncertain, and there was only so much Graham could do to ease it, these days. This was one thing. “Ryan, you can stay back with the Doc.”

“Stay back?” The Doctor was scowling at them again. “You’re not—”

Leaving me behind again, she was probably going to say. A twinge of sympathy settled in Graham’s gut, but it was largely overpowered by a rather vindictive sense of ‘well, see how you like it’.

“Yes, we are,” Yaz said, standing. Her chair scraped across the floor. The Doctor hid a wince, poorly. “Nothing’s changed since this morning. Honestly, you look a bit worse.”

The Doctor took offence, nose wrinkling. “That’s—”

“Give it a rest, mate,” Ryan said quietly. “It’s not an argument you’re gonna win.”

For a moment, Graham wondered if she’d press the issue anyway. You couldn’t always tell with the Doc, these days. And he was fairly certain, anyway, that if she truly wanted to do something, she’d do it regardless of what they thought. Their flat team structure, he thought tiredly, was starting to feel increasingly flimsy. It was a feeling that came with the uncomfortable knowledge that the Doctor didn’t always tell them everything. About herself, about the situation.

Even now, he knew she wasn’t being entirely honest. But she finally settled back into her chair mutinously.

“Whatever this is, it’s dangerous,” she said.

“I know,” Yaz said, toeing the line between careful and insubordinate. “Better give us the sonic, then.” She held her hand out.

The Doctor glanced away, irritated, but she placed the sonic back into Yaz’s hand.

“Be careful,” she warned, still not looking. “Especially you. Look before you leap, Yasmin Khan.”

“Don’t worry, Doc,” Graham said. He sighed and rose from his chair, wincing at the creak in his knees. “I’ll keep us on the coward’s route.”

She glared at him miserably, resting her chin in the palm of her hand.

“I won’t do anything you wouldn’t do,” Yaz promised instead.

“That,” the Doctor said pointedly, “is exactly what I’m afraid of.”

—

“So, uh,” Ryan ventured, fiddling with the holographic knight in his hand. He didn’t know how to play chess, and the Doctor’s half-hearted and incredibly confusing attempt to teach him the basics had fizzled out.

The lights flickered overhead again. She’d been right, he was realizing. About this ward. It wasn’t very well cared for. At least, not by anyone who wasn’t Mabli. She’d slipped away to finish her rounds with Yaz and Graham, lips still pressed together worriedly, and left the two of them to wait.

His foot, despite his very best efforts, was starting to tap a bit desperately against the floor. In hindsight, waiting wasn’t exactly a strong suit of his.

He glanced across at the Doctor, who had begun to systematically dismantle the holographic chess set with her bare hands.

It wasn’t exactly a strong suit of hers, either.

“Uh,” he tried again, watching as she squinted into the chess set. She flipped the board upside down and wrenched open an electric panel on the bottom. “Doctor, what are you—?“

“Nothing on this floor works,” she muttered, slapping the side of the board with the flat of her palm. The piece in Ryan’s hand flickered and then steadied into something a little more solid than it had been. Mission accomplished, she set the board down and began to eye the shuddering light above their heads with a hungry gleam.

It reminded him a bit of the way she looked at the console, these days. Like she couldn’t quite bear the thought of being without something to do, not even for a second.

“I don’t think the people that run this place are gonna like you messing about with it too much,” he said, though she was already scrambling to stand on her chair. He winced and resisted the urge to put his hands out, in case she fell. The Doctor always looked a little bit tippy, he reminded himself. Lopsided. Elbows out, moving at an angle.

This was a different sort of wobbliness, though. He took in her sallow face with a grimace.

“You don’t even have any tools,” he protested, to no avail.

“Don’t need tools,” she said, glancing down at him indignantly. She gave the ceiling a similar open-palmed slap, and the light stopped flickering. She grinned. “See? Besides,” she said, lowering herself back down to sit in the chair she’d been standing on. “No one’s watching us here. That’s deliberate, but it’ll be their mistake.”

“If they’re not watching us here, then doesn’t that mean they are watching everywhere else?” he wondered, crossing his arms. His foot started tapping again. “If they catch Yaz and Graham—“

“That’ll bring eyes here,” the Doctor agreed, an eyebrow raising. “Unless it doesn’t. We can’t do anything until we know more about what we’re dealing with. I need to know how far up this goes. If it’s the Board, is it one member or all of them? Do the people underneath know? Do the people above? What about the other people working on this ward?”

Her eyebrow stayed up, expectantly.

Ryan slouched further down in his chair. “You’re sayin’ we should—“

Her other eyebrow raised to join it. “—take another squiz around? Couldn’t have said it better myself, ten points, Ryan.” She placed her palms on the table and stood abruptly. It was almost convincing. “Come on, then. No time to waste. You take the south corridor, I’ll take the east wing.”

“Oh, no way are we splitting up,” he protested, getting to his feet reluctantly. “Doctor—“

“I’m fine,” she insisted. “Don’t let the pyjamas fool you. I saved the whole planet from the mighty Sycorax in pyjamas, once.”

“It’s not the pyjamas,” he said, though his thoughts from earlier were creeping back in. Would they have even noticed, if Mabli hadn’t?

“Isn’t it?” she wondered, echoing his thoughts without judgement. She spun away from him without another word. “Come on, then, we can both take the east wing.”

“Doctor—“ he said again, but it was a rote protest at this point. There was no point. All he could do was follow. She’d been waiting for this, he thought uncharitably. Waiting for the right moment. “Alright, but I want another five points. And if Yaz asks, none of it were my idea.”

“Take ten!” she shot over her shoulder. “Besides, it wasn’t your idea.”

He shook his head miserably and trailed her out of the patient lounge. “It is a bit weird,” he conceded. “Y’know, that Mabli didn’t say anything about the staff. Hasn’t she talked to them about this?”

“She’s afraid,” the Doctor said, slowing her pace so he could catch up. She glanced at him sideways. “And she doesn’t know who to trust.”

“Right,” he said. “Or, y’know. Maybe she’s worried about botherin’ other people with her problems.”

The Doctor’s expression was almost painfully earnest, which told him she was missing the point completely. “Could be,” she agreed.

“But,” he went on, as they continued down the corridor. “It’s hard to solve a problem on your own, right? So maybe if she talked to her friends about all of it—“

The Doctor’s nose wrinkled. “The staff on this ward are on constant rotation, Ryan, I don’t think she has time to be friends with anyone.”

He paused. “Right. That’s not quite—“ He sighed, as she barrelled on without him. “Not quite where I was going,” he muttered, jogging to catch up.

“Still,” she said, pressing Ryan’s visitor badge against the door at the end of the corridor. It opened to the east wing with a pneumatic hiss. “I have a hunch it’s not the rotating staff at fault, here. But maybe they’ve seen something useful. Only one way to find out.” She flashed him a cheeky grin. Again, it was almost convincing. There was still a strange gleam in her eye. “Shall we?”

She went through the door without waiting for an answer.

He followed sourly, already having regrets. The east wing looked exactly like whichever wing they’d just come from. Windows on the side of the corridor, looking out to the stars beyond, and stark white in front of them, stretching out to the intersection at the end.

“There’ll be a nurses’ station,” the Doctor said confidently, pointing. “Or another lounge. Down there.”

Ryan frowned. “How d’you know?” he wondered, but she was already on the move again, past the windows, down the intersection. They started passing rooms on the right, but most of the blinds were drawn. He caught the odd hum of quiet conversation, machines beeping, and tried not to shudder. He still hated hospitals. “Doctor—“ he started again, not quite sure where he was headed, but determined to keep trying. But he nearly collided with her shoulder, as she ground to a halt in the middle of the corridor. He frowned. “Doctor?”

She ignored him. He followed her line of sight down the looming, empty hallway. There was nothing there. The back of his neck prickled.

“Doctor?” He touched her lightly on the elbow, reluctantly, and she wrenched her gaze away, eyes wide. She took a step back from him, bristling.

“Let’s get a shift on,” she said accusingly, as if he had been the one stopping dead in the middle of the hallway like some kind of zombie, and made to take off down the hall again. But her face had drained of whatever colour had been in it and the line of her mouth was tense.

“But—“ he protested, hand still hovering by her elbow.

“It’s nothing,” she protested in turn, avoiding his gaze.

“You’re seeing things.” He didn’t grab her elbow this time, but he ground to a halt himself, arms crossing. “The ghosts, you’re seeing ‘em too.”

She scowled and dragged her eyes to the ceiling. “I’m not seein’ anything.”

“Nah,” he said, shaking his head, heart pounding. “Don’t lie to me, not about this. If you’re seeing them, too, then you’re—“

“—perfectly fine.” She finally bothered to look at him, arms crossing in a mirror of his own stance. “Not human, remember? I could eat a psychic vampire for breakfast, Ryan. If that’s what this is. Which it might not be. But it’s probably something very like a psychic vampire, so my point still stands. I’ve got the Fort Knox of brains,” she reassured, tapping her skull pointedly.

“Not really at your best, though, are you,” he pointed out, brow furrowing. Her expression soured, but before she could interrupt, he continued. “Maybe—“ he said, one hand raising as the thought tried desperately to crystallize. This wasn’t exactly his strong suit, either, but— “What’s the connection between the victims?” he asked. “Why do some people see the ghosts, but not others? Whatever you just saw, I didn’t see. How come? It’s like you said, the whole ward’s left to its own devices. They could be knockin’ off the visitors, too, so why don’t they?”

The Doctor was looking at him strangely.

“Not just convenience, then,” she said quietly. “Which means—it’s probably something to do with biology. Natural selection. They physically can’t feed off just anyone, they need—“ She swallowed, nose wrinkling.

Ryan raised his eyebrows.

Her nose wrinkled further. “—the infirm,” she said, eventually. She slapped the com-dot on the side of her neck abruptly. “Yaz,” she said, eyebrows knitting together, avoiding Ryan’s gaze. “New game plan. Be very, very careful.” She shuddered with disgust. “And keep an eye out for anything…snakey.”

Ryan gulped. “Snakey?” he demanded. “Doctor—“

“Just a hunch!” she interrupted. “Don’t pay too much mind to it.” Her face scrunched with thought. “It’s not quite right, still. I’m missing something. What am I missing? Stupid Doctor—”

“Excuse me,” a new voice interrupted. The both of them startled.

“There are regulations,” a sour-faced nurse told them frostily, hands on her hips, where she had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, “about volume in the corridors. Other patients are resting.”

“Sorry,” the Doctor said, pivoting. “No implants, couldn’t see the signs. A bunch of hippies, aren’t we, Ryan?”

“Oh, yeah,” he agreed reflexively.

The nurse grabbed the Doctor’s wrist without asking—earning her a glower that she didn’t seem to care much about—and frowned. “Wristband says your patient pod is back in the south hall,” she said, growing frostier still. “There are regulations about wandering—“

“My fault,” the Doctor said, wrenching her wrist out of the other woman’s grasp, flattening her scowl with effort. “Got a bit turned around, didn’t we, Ryan?”

“Right,” he agreed again, swallowing uncomfortably. That was their investigation, thwarted.“Yeah. Turned around.”

“On account of the confusion,” she went on.

He nodded. “Right, yeah, the confusion.”

“We were looking for recreation,” she said. “And maybe a glass of water?”

“Well, there’s your trouble,” the nurse said, exasperated. “Refreshment is nowhere near Recreation. I’ll take you.”

“I’ll catch up,” the Doctor said brightly, gesturing to Ryan with her eyebrows. He frowned back at her, shaking his head minutely, stomach sinking. She wrinkled her nose at him emphatically in response. What else are we meant to do? “Have to pop to the little boys’ room. Little girls’ room. Well, whatever, you know what I mean,” she scrambled, when the nurse eyed the two of them suspiciously. “Meet you back in the patient lounge? I really could do with a glass of water,” she told Ryan pointedly.

He sighed. He knew a set-up when he saw one. He didn’t know precisely how he was meant to get out of this one, though.

“Okay, but don’t be long,” he said, glaring over his shoulder as he began to follow the sour-faced nurse back down where they’d come from. “And be careful!” he hissed.

“Snakes,” she mouthed at him, eyebrows raising, and that was the last glimpse of her before the doors shut behind him.

—

“Snakes?” Yaz said, frowning. But the Doctor didn’t bother clarifying any further. Her hand dropped from the com-dot.

Beside her in the lift, Graham blanched. “Snakes?” he demanded. “Oh, no, cockle, I don’t think—“

“Calm down,” she said. “She didn’t say for sure, she just said to keep an eye out.”

“For snakes? On a bloomin’ space station?”

“Now that’s one movie I could do without,” she said, as the doors to the lift slid open silently. “Come on. Coast’s clear,” she whispered, sticking her head out the lift doors. “For now.”

“That’s what it looks like,” he said nervously, tugging at his shirt collar.

Yaz shook her head fondly and stepped out of the lift, unconcerned. “We’re guests of the Earl, remember? He funds practically the entire hospital, no one’ll risk getting on his bad side.”

“That’s assuming no one bothers to fact check the flimsy piece of psychic paper standing between us and being thrown out the airlock,” he hissed back at her.

“Fact-checking takes time,” Yaz pointed out, guiding them round the corner. At the end of the corridor, a set of glass-paned double doors loomed. The room behind them was empty. “So we’d be plenty safe, at least for a while.”

Graham groaned quietly, but set his chin a little more firmly. “Eventually,” he said grimly, glancing at the sonic in Yaz’s hand, “someone on this station is gonna notice that all their fancy lift security is being bypassed. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not nearly as fast a talker as the Doc. I don’t have the slightest clue how well I’d be able to lie my way out of something like that.”

“The trick to a good lie,” Yaz said, without having to think about it much, “is making sure it’s got a bit of the truth in it. Either that, or being so good at misdirection that you end up not having to lie in the first place.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Graham’s face fell. They were on the edge of the same thing they hadn’t been talking about for weeks.

There still wasn’t quite the time for it. Yaz glanced behind her to make sure the coast was still clear, and aimed the sonic subtly at the doors, which unlocked with a click. She pointed the sonic at the ceiling for good measure and hit the setting that she was fairly sure would put a stop to any cameras that might be hidden in the walls.

The doors swung open soundlessly at her touch, and she stifled a gasp as the full scope of the view just beyond them became clear. The windows of the board-room were floor-to-ceiling. Space gleamed invitingly before them.

“One hell of a view,” Graham breathed, his trepidation momentarily forgotten. He stepped closer.

“Not as good as the one from the TARDIS,” Yaz said, but she was smiling. It was beautiful. She thought of the cramped, perfunctory windows that lined Ward 3 and frowned. “Come on,” she said, tearing herself away from the view. The rest of the board-room was deceptively minimalist, but there had to be something. “Let’s have a look ‘round.”

But to her disappointment, the board-room was empty of anything even slightly interesting, except for its remarkable views. None of the walls opened into secret compartments, and the sleek table and chairs at the centre proved exceptionally ordinary. There was nothing under the rug, and nothing but expensive alcohol squirrelled away in the cupboards.

“This is too impersonal,” she said eventually. “We need into an office.”

Graham glanced up, from where he was examining one of the chairs. “Mabli said most of the board members kept their offices off-station.”

“Yeah, but they must get some work done here.” Yaz shook her head, thinking. “The board chair, they must have some sort of office. Some place to work, some place where people can find them. And what about a place to entertain? They must need posh places to put people like the Earl, when they visit. What’s the point of a top floor that’s this massive if there’s nothing to fill it? We’re missing something.” She thumped the table with her fist in frustration, and nearly jumped out of her skin as a console rose from it in reaction. “Oh,” she said, blinking in surprise. “Result.”

PASSCODE?

The holographic interface blinked up at her placidly.

Graham frowned. “Now that’s a question for the ages,” he said, but Yaz was already pointing the sonic at it, screwing her eyes shut in concentration. “Or not,” he amended, as the interface let her in with a calm rushing noise.

“Keep an eye out for me?” Yaz asked him, as she bent over the hologram. He moved to the edge of the table, where he could better see the corridor through the glass. “There must be some way—ah,” she said, scrolling until her eyes caught on what looked like schematics.

“Uh, Yaz,” Graham said.

“It’s all hidden in the walls,” she said wonderingly, squinting down at the interface. “Question is, which door leads to what?” What would the Doctor do? The answer, she suspected, was ‘hit buttons at random until you find the right one’.

“Yaz,” Graham said, more insistently. “We’ve got company, love.”

“This had better be the right button, then,” she said, and pressed at random. The wall behind her slid open silently. “Come on!”

She swiped the interface back to the home setting and darted towards the opening, Graham at her heels. She leveraged it closed with the sonic, just as the sound of footsteps broached the board-room.

With a silent shudder, she realized that the hidden rooms in the walls also had hidden windows. Someone could have been watching them the whole time. She pressed her nose closer to the wall, watching the suited silhouette of a man come to a stop in front of the board table. He glanced around, frowning, and closed the interface.

Then, he pressed what must have been a com-dot at his neck. “I appreciate the concern for security, Maks,” he said, in a low, clear voice. “But it’s simply a computer malfunction. Have tech come take a look at it.” He shifted his weight, in what looked like irritation. “That’s impossible. No one could have opened it without the passcode. I don’t have time for these sorts of disruptions, Maks. I was in the middle,” he shuddered faintly, “of lunch.”

His hand dropped from his neck, and he glanced in the direction of the hidden door, expression mild. If it hadn’t been impossible, Yaz thought, he was almost looking her dead in the eye. His gaze was very cold.

She swallowed uneasily. And ever so slightly…red.

But in the next moment, he sighed, in a way that seemed greatly inconvenienced, and strode out of the boardroom, shoes clicking across the floor.

Graham exhaled. “Well, that was a near thing,” he breathed, shuddering.

“We’re alright,” Yaz said, smiling at him reassuringly. “And—I think we’ve found what we’re looking for.”

The office behind the hidden door was nearly as grand as the board-room, now that she had the time to appreciate it. There was another floor-to-ceiling window at the back, and a shiny desk plopped in the middle of the room. A desk, she noted, heart pounding, with drawers.

“You take the left side, I’ll take the right,” she said, rounding the desk. The drawers weren’t even locked, though her heart sank as she pulled hers open. All but empty, except for a holographic photograph and a handkerchief. She set aside the photograph—a woman and child, beaming up at the camera—and reached for it, frowning. It was covering a very small mirror.

She looked up. “I don’t think there’s anything—“ she started. Graham met her gaze. All the blood had leeched from his face.

“Not so sure about that,” he said gingerly.

In his hands, a small, jewelled statue of a snake eyed them menacingly.

—

In fairness to Ryan, the request for a glass of water had been genuine. Her mouth was incredibly dry.

Besides that, the Doctor couldn’t help the faint twinge of guilt in the pit of her stomach, as she made her way unsteadily down the east wing’s corridor. She didn’t enjoy misdirecting her friends, especially when they were only trying to help, but it hadn’t really been misdirection. It made sense to split up. They could cover more ground this way. She could cover more ground this way.

She took a deep breath and tried not to pick at the nutrient patch still stuck to the front of her hand. It was just that she was faster on her own. Faster without anyone trying to look after her. Faster without hands at her elbow and questions she didn’t know how to answer.

Besides that, she hadn’t lied to Ryan about the capacity of her brains to hold their own against psychic invaders. Whenever she caught up with this one, she was fairly certain it would have no idea what to do with her. She could use the surprise to get the jump on it, and then she could figure out exactly what they were dealing with.

In the meantime, they had both only caught the edges of each other. It was enough, she thought, pressing onwards, that she could sense it faintly now. The psychic energy, gathering. It was feeding.

It was feeding nearby.

She forced her legs to move faster, one hand trailing against the wall for balance. That was the other advantage, to being alone—there was no one to pretend for but herself.

“Brave heart,” she whispered, and rounded one last corner. The corridor opened onto another small patient lounge—and Horus, sunk down into one of the chairs. Alone.

From a distance, his stance was almost innocuous, but his face was twisted with pain. His walker was abandoned beside him, on its side. The only sound was the agonizing whistle of his breath.

“Horus,” she breathed in horror, darting towards him. The mire of psychic energy became thicker, as she approached. Stickier. But whatever Horus was seeing was his own personal hell—the space in front of him was empty to the naked eye. “Horus, it’s me.”

“Annabelle,” he rasped, a tear leaking from the corner of his eye. That was enough.

“What are you?” the Doctor wondered coldly, pressing her fingers to Horus’ temple. She closed her eyes, searching. “What kind of psychevore? Fendahl? The Mara?”

She felt the weight of the being’s attention fall to her.

“Let him go,” she told it, her fingers still white against Horus’ head. “And you can have me instead.”

It obliged.

—

It was depressing sometimes, Ryan thought, as he traipsed his way back from the refreshment centre. The way things circled back, the way some things never seemed to change, no matter how far into the future they all went. The sour-faced nurse that had dragged him from the east wing was called Shel, and she had told him nothing useful, except that she clearly didn’t want to be here.

The Doctor had been right, after all—the nurses in Ward 3 worked on rotation, and not very happily. There were no favours to be granted here. No money coming in, and no big reason to go beyond the basic call of duty, for patients with such empty pockets. It left a sour taste in his mouth. His nan had always treated every patient she met so kindly. She’d cared about them as people. She’d hated the red-tape that had sometimes kept them from getting the care they deserved. The truth was, even in a system where money wasn’t supposed to matter, it still did.

What would she have thought, he wondered, of a future like this? Where people like her and Mabli were still the only people holding the line? Where people like him were still given the stink-eye for the crime of, what—not being rich enough to afford the floor just above them?

He sighed down at the plastic plate in his hand and the wiggling, gelatinous square in the middle. That was different, at least. Everything in the future came in cubes. Even the water. He was holding out the faint hope that maybe it being cube-shaped would be enough to get the Doctor to actually drink it—but he needed to find her, first.

Preferably before Yaz and Graham got back. Assuming they did get back. Which they would. He swallowed back another sigh. He should have known better than to let them all get split up. At the very least, he should have asked for another com-dot.

The problem was that every corridor on Resus One looked exactly the same, and he had enough problems navigating to begin with. He trailed a hand against the wall as he rounded a corner, glancing back behind him furtively. He’d just passed the south wing patient lounge (no Doctor in sight, even though she’d promised to meet him there), so the east wing must have been forward, right?

He pressed his visitor badge to the door, uneasy. The corridor beyond the doors loomed, stark white and empty. The worst part was, if the Doctor was right, then there could be a ghost or whatever a metre in front of him and he wouldn’t even be able to see it. All he could do was keep walking, he supposed with a shudder. And hope that whatever it was they were looking for was otherwise occupied.

“Okay,” he muttered, fingers tight around the plastic plate in his hand. “If I was the Doctor, where would I have gone?”

Well, that was an easy answer—‘wherever there was the most trouble’. But in the absence of trouble, he figured wherever there were more people to talk to was a good bet, which meant going further into the east wing.

Maybe, he thought optimistically, she’d made it to the nurses’ station and gotten distracted.

Or maybe—

He stopped dead as he rounded the corner to the east wing’s patient lounge. The plate he’d been holding crashed to the ground dully. The cube of water wobbled across the tile.

Maybe she’d never made it at all.

—

She wasn’t quite dreaming.

Dreams had a shape and a purpose and a meaning. This was more of an in-between space—a waiting room. A purgatory, if she was being grim about it, which maybe she was. She hadn’t decided yet.

Come on, Horus, she whispered. Let me in.

Fragile little human minds. He didn’t even struggle, really. He wouldn’t have known how. He folded under her slight touch and she left purgatory behind.

His mind was well organized, like she expected a teacher’s to be. She caught flashes of it as whatever was holding him switched its attention, brief glimpses of colourful binders and books and pens. A weathered, smiling woman that must have been his wife. And a young girl—beaming up at him, hair the same ruddy colour as his glinting in the sunlight. She caught a name—Annabelle.

And a grave.

Ah, she thought, sobering, the image fleeting and fast. She tried to leave Horus with some faint comfort as she was wrenched out of his mind. Absently, she felt her fingers leave his head, felt her knees fold underneath her, as whatever had a hold of him put its teeth in her instead.

Sharp teeth. Lucky for her, she was tough. Not so lucky for it, whatever it was.

“You never answered my question,” she said, opening her eyes to endless black. “What are you?”

The void didn’t answer. That was the thing about voids, she thought irritably. They often didn’t.

“I know what you do,” she said, sticking her hands in the pockets of her pyjama trousers, spinning idly. Hopefully, she looked more nonchalant than she felt. “You go prying. You find the weak and infirm and you go digging in their brains until you find something juicy. Then you drag it out in front of them.” Her nonchalance devolved into something angrier. “What is it, though? What do you eat? Fear? Pain? Grief?”

The void remained silent. Then, gently, it spoke. The words didn’t echo so much as they simply filled the space, her ears, her head.

“Yes,” it said. It paused.

The Doctor swallowed nervously.

“Which is it, then?”

“Yes,” it said again, insistent. “Fear. Pain. Grief.” There was another pause. “And there is plenty here. You would sustain us for an eternity.”

“It’s not yours to take,” she whispered.

“Would you not care to be relieved of it? Is it not a burden?”

“What you provide,” she hissed, “is not relief.”

“Death is a relief,” the voice said, very sensibly. “A relief from the burden of life. Fear, pain, grief. And then nothing.”

Disgust roiled in her.

“You’re a parasite,” she said. “I’ve known your sort before. Answer my question properly. What are you? Show yourself. Or are you that shy?”

The darkness rippled. Then, it hissed. Two red eyes—larger than life—blinked at her slowly. Sometimes, when you gazed into the abyss, what gazed back was actually a bit snakey. Nietzsche hadn’t taken that feedback very well at all, bless him.

“We have had many names. Once, perhaps, we were the Mara,” it said languidly. “The universe changes. We change with the universe. Our memory is unreliable. We are new. We are different.”

“And what are you now?” she wondered, skin prickling.

“Hungry,” it said simply.

Its jaws closed in. Its jaws weren’t jaws at all, but the dark expanse of the universe and the smell of burning. Darkness gave way to marmalade. She glanced down at her hands and watched them flake away into red dust.

“Try harder,” she said, nonplussed. “There’s nothing you can think of that I haven’t already thought of myself.”

“That is what makes you the perfect meal,” it said. “Even a fraction of your agony is worth more than what most species have to give in a lifetime.”

“See, this is where you’re losing me,” she said dryly. “Is this your only goal? A nice lunch? The Mara I knew were way more ambitious. Not to mention even snakier. Is this retirement? Is that what you’ve done, have you gone and retired? Settled down with a family?” She tilted her head, lip curling. “Are you the breadwinner? Is that what this is?”

“You will not interfere with our work, Doctor.”

“Oh, I think I will, thanks.” She crossed her arms. Gallifrey burned behind her eyelids. It could just as easily have been the product of her own mind as a psychic trick. “The people of this ward are innocent. Go elsewhere, or I’ll make sure you never go anywhere, ever again.”

“You underestimate us. You overestimate yourself. You are weak. You are the easiest of targets. You are a fine meal,” it hissed, “to be savoured slowly.”

“I told you already. I’m not afraid of you. There’s nothing for you to pry up that isn’t already there.”

“Precisely.” Those red eyes blinked at her placidly. “You haunt yourself. The truth is, Doctor, we haven’t laid a finger on you.”

She uncrossed her arms and moved them to her hips, lips pressing together.

“I think we’re done talking,” she said. “Get out of my head. Leave here.”

“We have not touched you. We have not had to.”

“Get,” she hissed, “out.”

“If you insist.” The eyes grew to encompass the blackness, the marmalade sky, rushed towards her and through her. Ah, she had time to think, flaking away like dust, feeling her body react distantly. Hearts pounding, blood rushing. Under attack. Alright, so maybe she’d misjudged slightly. There was still time to get it right.

And there was enough anger in her, she thought, bringing all her psychic defences to bear, to keep it out of the deepest parts of her. Mind over matter. Well, mind over mind, when it came to the Mara. Or whatever this was. Discount Mara. Mara, forty percent off at Woolworth’s. Was Woolworth’s still around, actually? Well, no matter. She had a time machine.

“We will wear you away like stone, Doctor,” it whispered. “Drip by drip.”

Through the maelstrom, red dust and marmalade, she caught a glimpse of him. Red-shadowed silhouette. Flames crackling. Dogging her steps, her every thought.

“Ask me why,” he told her tenderly, stepping through the storm. He placed his hands at her cheekbones, his fingertips like brands of iron. Contact. “Go on, Doctor. Ask. Me. Why.”

She tore herself away, stumbling. Marmalade gave way to infinite darkness. In the darkness, there was only the sound of her blood pounding. No stars. No planets. Void, again.

“You haunt yourself,” the void hissed. “It is all so near the surface. Gallifrey. The Timeless Child. Ripples in your lake. We will travel on them, Doctor. We will feast upon them.”

“Out!” she screamed, incensed. The darkness closed in, relentless. She cast her mind back to the Academy. Lessons in the tall, red grass. There was always one surefire way of psychically ridding yourself of something that ought not to have been there. If you weren’t a coward. Or especially smart. Luckily, on a good day, she was neither.

She grinned.

“Tell you what,” she said gleefully. She cast herself forward—forward, forward. To the very end. To a very particular future. “You like death so much? Chew on this!”

The darkness swallowed the words—and her slowing hearts, her absent breaths. The stench of future death. She had plenty to choose from. It ought to have been a comfort, but of course, it wasn’t.

The darkness fled.

—

The Doctor opened her eyes one at a time, nose wrinkling.

“Oh,” she groaned. “Ow. Who’s been learning percussion on my chest?”

Dim light resolved into the fuzzy shapes of a glorified patient pod. At the foot of the cot, Mabli was perched, tablet in hand. Even in the gloom, she looked terribly pale.

“That would be me,” she said quietly. Her gaze flicked warily up to the monitor above. It was beeping quietly but steadily. Probably, that was a good thing.

“Ah. Well, thanks, I suppose. Night out with Charlemagne,” the Doctor croaked. “That’s what I’m being reminded of. Those Carolingian Franks loved a party.”

“I don’t know what a Carolingian Frank is,” Mabli said.

“And just as well.”

“Do you remember where you are?”

“No. Yes.” With a start, the Doctor rose onto her elbows. “Is Horus alright?” she demanded.

Mabli’s lips flattened. “He’s in a coma,” she admitted, setting the tablet gingerly down on the end of the cot.

The Doctor sagged back against the pillows. “I thought it would leave him alone,” she muttered.

“It did.” Mabli shifted uncomfortably. “But it’s possible it was already too late. Or that it went back for him, when—“ She swallowed. “When it was finished with you,” she said delicately.

The Doctor shot back onto her elbows again, fuelled by a strange kind of insistence. “No,” she said firmly. “When I was finished with it.”

Mabli blinked back at her. “Doctor—“ she tried.

“It tried to eat me, but look who’s still standing?” the Doctor retorted. “It won’t stay away forever, but I sent it packing, for now.”

“Doctor,” Mabli said skeptically. “It stopped your hearts.”

“That wasn’t it, that was me,” she said incredulously. “Obviously. And I didn’t die, which means that I won. Score, Doctor: 1, Terrifyin’ Psychic Entity Plaguing Your Hospital: 0.”

She crossed her arms matter of factly.

Mabli seemed unconvinced. Actually, she seemed rather more alarmed than reassured.

“It was a Time Lord trick,” the Doctor explained tightly. “All in the mind, usually, but I had to give it a bit of welly. Psychic parasites tend to leave right smart when they think you’re about to die. They get this funny idea you might take them with you.”

Mabli’s alarmed expression didn’t waver.

“Your friends aren’t very happy,” she said.

“Are they alright?”

“Waiting in the patient lounge. I tried to get them to go back to the visitor accommodation, but…” she trailed off. “It was hard enough getting them to wait in the lounge. I thought perhaps you’d be better off with just me, to start.”

“Bring them in,” the Doctor said, steeling herself. “We don’t have much time. I’ll tell you all what I know.”

Mabli inched closer, tentatively. The starched sheets underneath wrinkled as she moved. She knew better than to reach for a hand, hopefully.

“Doctor,” she said firmly. “They care about you.”

“And I care about them! Which is why you should bring them in, quick smart, so I can sort your haunting—it’s not a haunting, by the way, more of a psychic infestation—but don’t worry, I’ve got experience—and get us all back to—back to—”

The blood pressure alarm sounded shrilly. Mabli simply reached over and grimly unplugged it from the monitor.

“Back to normal?” she wondered softly, settling back with her hands in her lap.

“Back to normal,” the Doctor said quietly.

Mabli shook her head, earrings glinting. “I shouldn’t have brought you here,” she said. “Or—or when I saw those readings, I should have—I should have found some other way—”

“Mabli,” the Doctor said. “This isn’t your fault. None of this is. If you hadn’t asked for our help, this might have gone on for much longer.”

“I don’t mean that, I mean—”

“What? Mean what?” she pressed.

“Doctor,” Mabli said, lips trembling. “You’re not well. You’re not fit for this.”

“I told you,” she said lowly, feeling a bit stung. “I won. And I now feel very well informed.”

“That thing almost killed you,” Mabli said starkly. “Or worse. And you don’t even care. Your friends—” To the Doctor’s horror, her eyes filled with tears. “What would I have told them? What do I tell them?”

“Tell them I’m fine,” the Doctor said, keeping her face very still. “It’s the truth.”

“You’re reckless,” Mabli said stubbornly, eyes still gleaming. “And you’re not fine. You’re not how I remember you.”

“People change,” the Doctor said. “That’s just life.”

“Not like this.”

“You asked,” the Doctor whispered, “for my help.”

“And I was wrong to,” Mabli said, trembling. “You should leave. I’ll—I’ll find some other way—”

“Mabli.” The Doctor grasped her wrist, hot human skin under her fingers. Her mind recoiled. She held fast, anyway. “This is not a problem you’re equipped for. I won’t abandon this place. Believe whatever you like of me,” she went on. She took a deep breath and sat up, ribs aching. Her elbows shook embarrassingly. Mabli’s trembling wrist was scalding under her thumb. “But I won’t abandon you either, Mabli. When people need help, I never refuse. Stop wasting time worrying about me. I’ve got this well in hand.”

Mabli shook her head again.

“But you don’t,” she said miserably. “Doctor, I can’t in good conscience let you continue.”

“I know what you’re up against,” the Doctor insisted. “And I can fight it. I already have.”

Mabli gazed across at her, unconvinced.

“It’s not fair,” she said quietly. “All this. You think you’re being quiet about it, but it’s as loud as anything. Nobody suffers alone, not really. It’s not just you. It’s them. It’s me. It’s this ward. When I asked for your help,” she said shakily, “I thought—”

She looked down into her lap. She slipped her wrist gently from the Doctor’s grasp.

“I thought it would be different,” she said. “I thought—I’m not sure what I thought. All I knew was that I had to help my patients. They’re my responsibility. That includes you, now.”

“This wasn’t a promotion,” the Doctor said quietly. “Was it.”

Mabli kept her eyes on her hands in her lap. “No,” she said, eventually. “It wasn’t.”

“The right thing,” the Doctor said, “isn’t always the easy thing.”

“No,” Mabli replied. “It’s not.”

“So let me help you. Bring in my friends and let’s finish this.”

Mabli looked up.

“Promise me,” she said. “Promise me you won’t go doing something like that again.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You do. You’re just pretending that you don’t. I think that’s probably worse.”

“Mabli,” the Doctor breathed. “Please.”

Mabli closed her eyes. She took a deep breath. She shook her head, one last time.

“Fine,” she said softly. “Fine, okay. I’ll fetch them.”

The cot creaked as she stood. Rusted, old. This place was so derelict it was a wonder any good medicine happened here at all. The Doctor sank back as Mabli left, exhausted. In a moment, she would have to pretend again. Put a good foot forward. For just this minute, she let herself feel as derelict and rusted out as her surroundings. Burnt out. Beaten down. Unwatched.

The snakey darkness had been wrong, though. There would be no relief in death. Not for her. Maybe not ever. The only option was forwards, forwards, forwards. Towards Rome, burning. Towards her own kind of haunting. Towards whatever lay beyond. That was the trick. That was what kept her running. This darkness wouldn’t last. One day, she would pass it. One day, she would walk through it. Step by step. That was the only secret. That was all she had to cling to. That, and the pretending.

With another creak of the doors, her friends filed through grimly. They looked tired, too, she noted with a twinge of guilt. She owed them that beach. Maybe two beaches.

More than that. She averted her gaze lightly.

“Fam,” she acknowledged, righting herself. Spine straight, smile plastered on. Who, exactly, was she trying to fool? Only it was far too late for questions like that. She’d been playing the game for too long. “Everyone alright?”

“Gave us a right scare, Doc,” Graham said mildly. “Think we should be askin’ you that.”

“Wouldn’t get a proper answer, anyway,” Ryan muttered.

“Moving right along,” the Doctor said, “the good news is, I know what’s going on! The bad news,” she continued, “is that Mabli’s new Board of Directors isn’t a Board of Directors at all, it’s an empathic psychovore—psychovores?—from the dawn of the universe feeding off of your patients’ fear and grief. I sent them packing for now, but they’ll be back once they’ve recovered. We haven’t got long.”

“Oh,” Mabli said. “I’m not quite sure HR are equipped to handle that sort of thing.”

“Luckily, that’s what you’ve for us for.”

“Doctor,” Yaz said. Frustrated, by the twist of her mouth. She knew when to look the other way, though. She knew when to put things aside for later. “Graham and I found this upstairs. Is it important?”

She fished something gingerly out of her jacket pocket and placed it in the Doctor’s waiting hand. A small, jewelled snake figurine gleamed up at her.

“Eugh,” the Doctor said. “Well, that confirms it. Discount Mara.”

“Mara? What’s a Mara?” Yaz asked, brows pulling together.

“Once, the Mara were a sort of psychic entity,” the Doctor explained. “An ancient evil from the dark places of the mind. They lived in nightmares, but they wanted corporeality. They would set up shop in people’s consciousness. Make it all a bit snakey. Exert their influence.” She shook her head. “Something’s different. It told me they’d changed.”

“What I saw weren’t a nightmare, it was a proper bloke,” Yaz pointed out. “Looked like he had a wife. A daughter.”

“A host body,” the Doctor said. “Or maybe a new form entirely. But if they’ve finally achieved corporeality, they’ll need fuel. Massive amounts of psychic energy to maintain their material form. Maybe that’s why they’re here.”

“Picking off patients, forever,” Graham said with a shudder. “God, that’s grim.”

“Never mind all that,” Ryan said quietly. “How do we stop them? This has already been goin’ on for too long.”

“Tried a few things over the years,” the Doctor mused. She peered down into the figurine thoughtfully. “This might be the key. I reckon,” she lifted it nearer to her face and squinted at it, “this is a sort of psychic focus. A way of manifesting their material form.” At their hopeful looks, she shook her head, nose wrinkling. “No good destroying it,” she said. “Not until we’ve also dealt with the psychic end of things. The Mara exist in the mind and the body. That’s how they survive. That’s why they cast a shadow.” She tilted her head. “But between this and a good mirror or two—”

“Mirror?” Yaz frowned. “Why a mirror?”

“Something that full of fear and pain, the only thing it can’t bear to look at—” she started.

Yaz’s frown only deepened. “Is what?”

The Doctor swallowed. “—is its own reflection,” she said quietly. “Right. I’ve got a plan.”

“A safe plan,” Mabli said, already looking uncomfortable. “A plan that puts nobody in danger and definitely wouldn’t give the hospital ethics board a migraine.”

“Oh, Mabli,” the Doctor grinned. “I’ve been giving ethics boards migraines since before you were a speck in the eye of the universe.”

“You’re gonna lure it with your mind,” Yaz said grimly, “and then destroy it, probably with a weird cobbled-together mirror contraption, an ocular implant, and that statue.”

“Another gold star for Yasmin Khan!”

“I’d rather do without it,” she said sternly.

“It’s coming back for me anyway,” the Doctor said steadily. She raised her eyebrows. “I know too much. So do all of you, for that matter. Besides, it got a taste and now it wants the four-course dinner. We might as well use that to our advantage. It would be foolish not to.”

Mabli’s eyes bored into her forehead, but she didn’t meet her gaze. The cold, unimpressed silence ticked on.

“If anyone else has a better idea,” she said, hardening. “Be my guest.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said eventually. He put his hands in his trouser pockets. “Yeah, I guess not. What do you need?”

“Mirrors. Lots of them.”

He nodded. “Right. I’m on it. Must be some in the toilets, right?”

“The gift shop as well,” Mabli said. “It’s open twenty-four hours.”

“Got it.”

He left without another word.

“Love a gift shop,” the Doctor muttered. “Must have missed it on the way in.”

“If they’re onto you,” Mabli said, “in the morning, they might try other ways of dealing with all of this. Administratively.”

Yaz crossed her arms. The frown had never really left her. “I’m thinking,” she offered, “overnight systems outage? Total communications meltdown. Wouldn’t be a surprise, since everything here’s so old.”

Mabli smiled weakly. “Exactly my thinking.”

“Might slow things down. At the very least, it’ll give us time to deal with things on our terms. Go on, you two,” the Doctor said. She took a deep breath and swung her legs over the side of the cot. “Graham, you and I can find a good spot to lay our trap.”

“Sure thing, Doc,” he said. He stayed where he was as she struggled to her feet. It wasn’t a struggle, she thought fiercely, fingers scraping at the wall. Anyone would be a bit wobbly. That was the natural price you paid, she reckoned, for committing to the bit.

“Be careful,” Yaz said, glaring at her. She slipped through the door, Mabli at her heels.

“That’s my line,” the Doctor said, a beat too late. She sagged into the wall, nose wrinkling again. The snake figurine dug into the flesh of her palm. Her forehead clunked against the plaster.

From his spot near the door, Graham met her gaze very steadily.

“Between you and me, Doc, that grandson of mine,” he said softly, “walked in on his own mum, dead on the floor. How d’you think it was for him, finding you the same?”

“It was only for a second,” she protested, before she could think better of it. Graham’s gaze hardened. She closed her eyes, momentarily disgusted with herself. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll apologize.”

“He’d say there’s nothing to apologize for.”

“I’ll apologize anyway,” she breathed.

“I don’t think you even know what you’re apologizing for,” Graham said mildly. “Doc, we’re meant to be friends. Family.”

“You are my family,” she ground out. She opened her eyes.

“So act like it,” he said. Palms open towards her. The lines on his face ran deep, in this light. “Tell us what’s bothering you. I’m worried, cockle. This ain’t right.” He swallowed. “None of this is right.”

She could only look at him. If the words for it even existed, they wouldn’t come.

“Come on,” she said, rallying. She straightened her spine. “Let’s get a shift on.”

—

Ward 3 was worse at night. By now, Ryan was well familiar with it. The flickering lights dimmed. The heating turned low. It was quiet, except for all the ways it wasn’t.

When people died, he knew, better than most, they died mostly at night.

He came to a tired stop in front of the south wing toilets.

“Stealing mirrors from bathrooms,” he muttered to himself. “Not that heroic, is it.”

He pushed his way in, the five small pocket mirrors in his front pocket digging into his chest. The gift shop had been a bit of a bust, if he was honest. Hopefully he’d have better luck here. As he shuffled in, the lights flickered halfheartedly to life. Four large mirrors glinted promisingly. He sighed in relief. Even in the far future, you couldn’t do better than a simple mirror. At least, not in Ward 3.

He’d never been much for petty vandalism, despite the pressures put on him by society at large and the odd troublemaking friend. His nan would never have stood for it. Still—he was pretty sure it wouldn’t take much to tear these off the wall, so long as the south wing’s intimidating duty nurse didn’t catch on. He stuck his fingers carefully around the corners of the one on the very left and pulled.

It came off way easier than he expected. For a moment, slippery in his grasp, he almost dropped it. He slammed his lips closed around a muffled shout and tightened his grip. And why, he wondered angrily, had she sent the guy with the motor-coordination problems to handle the mirrors?

“Come on, brain,” he hissed. “Come on, fingers.”

He leaned the first mirror carefully against the wall, breathing heavily.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, okay. One down. I can do this.”

She’d sent him ‘cos she believed in him. In his heart, he knew it was as simple as that. She believed in him.

She didn’t trust him, though. She didn’t trust any of them. That was all pretty clear. Getting clearer every day, really.

He moved to the second mirror, working slow. Working careful. As he approached, he caught a glimpse of his own face in the dim light and the greasy glass—and something else, out of the corner of his eye.

He turned, heart pounding. His elbow brushed the side of the mirror. It clattered noisily against the wall and he gritted his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut. He waited—one second, two second. Nobody came. Maybe the scary duty nurse was asleep.

The smell of burning chips and washing-up liquid filled his nose. He didn’t open his eyes.

“No, no,” he breathed. “Not getting me that easy. I’m knackered,” he admitted. “And I’m worried. But I’m not weak. You hear me?” He swallowed. “I’m not weak. I’m not afraid. You don’t get to use her like that. I loved her.”

When he opened his eyes, the bathroom was empty and the lights were flickering faintly. Nothing out of place. The smell of burning chips was gone. It was just antiseptic and damp.

He swallowed again and turned back to the mirror. He rolled up his sleeves.

“I’m gonna take that,” he muttered “as a sign to hurry up.”

He got to work.

—

Yaz rubbed at her eyes with a shirt sleeve, breathed in deep through her nose. She was used to the night shift. She’d spent way too many hours in Sheffield crunched behind the wheel, inhaling coffee like water while she waited for dawn or for somebody to leave their car in a no-parking zone—whichever came first.

The coffee in the future only came in cubes, and in Ward 3, there was no dawn to speak of. There was the start of a tension headache threatening the space between her eyebrows.

“Nearly got it,” Mabli said, half-hidden behind the massive control panel in her cramped administrative zone. “Should take out the lifts, too, if we’re lucky. Who knew doing all this by accident before would come in handy?”

Yaz smiled at her, propping a cheek up on the bottom of her palm. She’d taken the receptionist’s desk—empty at this hour—as their staging ground, but so far, they hadn’t really needed it. Mabli was surprisingly knowledgable about the inner workings of the ward. Well, and how best to break them.

“Just one more,” Mabli muttered, foot skidding across the tile as she reached a little further. There was a small popping sound, a spark, a shriek, and sudden darkness. “…Oops.”

“Everything okay?” Yaz wondered.

“Worked a little too well. One moment.”

Yaz heard faint shuffling, presumably as Mabli unwedged herself from behind the control panel. She waited, unalarmed, for her eyes to adjust and smothered another yawn behind her sleeve. Her chair swivelled towards the doorway at the front of the small office. Faint light from the corridor trickled through.

She paused, boots squeaking on the tile. She rubbed at her eyes again. Blinked furiously. You couldn’t trust your eyes in the dark. You couldn’t—

There was another popping sound and the overhead lights flickered back on with a faint buzz. Mabli sighed behind her.

“Sorry about that,” she said.

Do it right this time, the shape in the doorway whispered. Yaz blinked it away. She turned, lips pressed together into a smile.

“All good,” she said. “Shall we?”

—

The Doctor sat in the centre of the recreation room, surrounded by mirrors. Big ones, little ones. Doctors upon Doctors, cross-legged on the floor. Eyes closed. Eyelid flickering. Lights off.

It was sleep that drew it in best, she’d told them. The lure of an unconscious, defenceless mind. Only she had a trick, apparently. A way of being asleep and awake at the same time, which honestly hadn’t surprised Graham one bit.

The little snake was in front of her, catching what little light there was in its beady little eyes.

“It’s circling in,” the Doctor said, eyes still shut. Her right hand extended towards the little snake, but she didn’t touch. Not yet. “Swooping.”

“It was trying it on, earlier,” Ryan admitted to him quietly, shuffling closer. “In the toilets, I think I saw it.”

Graham clasped his shoulder.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” he said.

Ryan smiled at him in the gloom.

“Couldn’t get me,” he said. “Sent it running.”

“Meditating,” the Doctor said flatly. Her tone, ever since she’d closed her eyes, was oddly devoid of any emotion. Still, she managed to sound a bit cross. “Haven’t done this for a few centuries, you lot are making it hard.”

“Only you could be mardy and asleep at the same time,” Yaz said.

“And it is actually quite difficult,” the Doctor said, “so do shut up.”

On the other side of the room, positioned carefully so she didn’t block the mirrors, Mabli was fiddling nervously with Fern Longus’ ocular implant.

“I liked this plan better when it was just a plan,” she whispered. “What if it doesn’t work?”

“It will work,” the Doctor said flatly. “Lure it down here, force it to take material form with the little snake, trap it with the mirrors, force it into the ocular interface. I could do it with my eyes closed. As a matter of fact, I am.”

“Oh,” Graham moaned quietly, “for the love of God, Doc, don’t get cocky.”

Mabli sighed.

“I have no idea how I’m to go about the paperwork for this one.”

“The ocular interface picked up the shadows,” Yaz said carefully. “Are you sure it can hold the real thing?”

“Yes,” the Doctor hissed. She tilted her head. A few straggly bits of hair fell onto her cheek, but she didn’t move them. “And shut up. It’s coming. It’s here.”

She stiffened. Her hand strained, caught just above the figurine, cramping painfully. To Graham’s horror, she cried out. He held Ryan back from her with an arm, heart pounding in his chest.

The Doctor’s shoulders heaved. Her face, which had been eerily calm, twisted into a grimace.

“Got you,” she rasped. “Just have to…hold you.”

With another cry she grasped the figurine. Her eyes snapped open. The lights of the recreation room flared to life, then dimmed with a crackle. In the centre of the circle of mirrors, the silhouette of a suited man began to take halting shape. He was just as ambiguously formed as he had been in the executive suite, Graham noted, skin prickling. There was almost nothing you could say about him. He was man-shaped and dressed in black. The rest of him blended away. Your brain filled in the blanks for you, but for those terrible hideous eyes. Little red rubies, gleaming from all directions.

The man-shaped thing hissed as it materialized in full.

“You,” it whispered, “were very kind to save me the walk down from the top floor.”

It tried to take a step and hissed again in rage when it couldn’t. The Doc had been right, Graham thought in relief, arms dropping from Ryan’s chest. The mirrors had made it stuck.

The Doctor breathed heavily, still cross-legged on the floor, sweat curling the hair on her forehead. She was gripping the snake figurine so tightly her knuckles were white.

“You just couldn’t resist coming back for seconds,” she said, lips pulled back into a snarl. “Also—and I’m not complaining—I can’t help but notice that you’re not a giant snake.”

“Was it meant to be a giant flipping snake?” Graham hissed. “You didn’t mention that bit!”

The silhouette twisted its neck.

“I told you,” it said smoothly. “We have changed. We are different. We evolved.”

“Not enough,” the Doctor spat. “If you’d really changed, you’d find a different way to survive. You’re still a parasite.”

“You would destroy us,” it hissed, “for the crime of existence.”

“For your cruelty,” she said, straining. “For your hatred of life.”

“I am not alone, Doctor,” it said. “Destroy me, and you leave behind others in the places between and in the dark of the mind. My family. My children. You will never be rid of us.”

“No,” she agreed solemnly. “But I can try. Mabli!”

She pulled the sonic out of her pyjama pocket and aimed it at the ocular implant. Mabli held it out gingerly, releasing it to the sonic’s hold. She cupped her hands under it nervously, eyes darting to the Doctor.

“Er,” Ryan said, shifting uncomfortably. “Doctor. Isn’t this meant to be working?”

“Thanks,” she said in a furious whisper, “for pointing that out!”

She closed her eyes, bone white.

“It’s resisting. It’s—it’s—”

Her hand shook around the figurine.

“Get,” she said, “out. How many times do I have to say it?”

“It’s feeding off her,” Yaz said insistently. The mirrors clattered alarmingly. There was an awful lot of wind, suddenly, for a hospital in the middle of space. “It’s trying to break free!”

“Well, don’t let it!” Graham cried. “Doc, what do we do?”

“Nothing,” she spat, trembling. The shape in the mirrors laughed. Before Graham’s eyes, it seemed to grow. The red of its eyes intensified. “I’ve got a handle on it! I—I just—”

A tear leaked slowly down her cheek.

“I need a still place,” she muttered fitfully. “A still place in the mind’s eye. But I have none,” she whispered tiredly. Her grip on the figurine was weakening. “I have none.”

“I do,” Yaz said fiercely, grabbing onto her hand over the figure without a second thought.

“So do I,” Ryan said. He stepped forward and took Yaz’s hand in his own.

Graham grabbed hold of his other.

“Me too,” he said. “Well, some days, at least.”

“And me,” Mabli whispered, slipping her hand into his. She kept her other tentatively underneath the ocular implant, still suspended in midair. The Doctor was so good at multitasking, Graham thought a bit hysterically, that she could even have multiple crises at once.

“Go on,” Yaz said gently, over the phantom wind and the hissing of the shape still trapped in the mirrors. “Let us in.”

With a sigh, the Doctor did.

Well, and no wonder she was having trouble. There was no stillness in her to be found, even at the edges, even at the very horizon of what she would let them see. Heat broiled across his skin. He’d never be cold again. He looked up into a red-tinged sky and where there should have been stars found only darkness. The Master’s voice echoed across the landscape like a terrible song.

Those terrible red eyes blinked at him from the void.

Now, Graham thought determinedly. None of that nonsense.

Their hands in his own, he felt the others, too. Looking for calm and finding none here. Looking inside, instead. He thought of Grace on the train. Ryan on his bike in the green. Sun setting. There was all sorts of peace, if you knew where to look. He sat in that peace on purpose, Ryan’s hand warm against his palm.

For a moment, the landscape rippled. He saw midland hills and smelled dry grass. Neon yellow vest, washing into another sunset. Burning pakora and the telly on in the background. Stars twinkling outside the TARDIS. The sound of a basketball bouncing against pavement. Pure focus, as it hit the net.

“May all the saints, in all the constellations,” Mabli said softly, “…all the saints…”

“Thank you,” whispered the Doctor.

Like a switch flipped, her mind closed. Graham opened his eyes abruptly to the sound of the sonic, the sibilant wail of the shape in the mirror. It screeched and clawed and burst from its silhouette into writhing, snake-like shadows, some of the mirrors cracking spectacularly—until it was sucked perfunctorily into the ocular implant, which dropped nicely into Mabli’s waiting palm. In tandem, the Doctor shot to her feet and stamped the figurine under the foot of her hospital slippers with gusto until it was faintly sparkling dust.

In the aftermath, she stared down at it, hair in her face, hands at her hips.

“Well,” she said. “Right. Think that’s done it. Possibly. Might want to get a hoover down here. And then eject that hoover into the cold vacuum of space. Just to be sure.” She glanced up with a smile, eyebrows raised. “Nice work, fam. That includes you, Mabli, to be clear.”

Mabli smiled at her tentatively. She held the implant out gingerly.

“Er,” she said. “And what about this?”

The Doctor stared at it for a moment, smile fading. She extended her hand.

“I’ll take it off you,” she said mildly. “Put it somewhere safe.”

Mabli stepped forward to drop it into her waiting palm. The Doctor whisked it away into a pocket like a magician. Then, she paused. She swallowed queasily.

“Sorry,” she said faintly, swaying on the spot. Absolutely chalky, Graham noted uneasily. Sweat still plastering her hair to her forehead. “I—”

Yaz had always had a better instinct for that sort of thing. She swept forward before she could fall and caught her by the elbows. The Doctor bowed her head into Yaz’s shoulder.

“I don’t,” she muttered, knees folding. Yaz lowered her to the ground, mindful of the shattered snake and glass. Her fingers clutched fruitlessly at Yaz’s sleeves. “I don’t feel—”

“Mabli,” Yaz said sharply. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Myocardial infarction,” Mabli diagnosed, springing into action. She crouched beside them, holographic tablet already glowing beside her. Her earrings glinted in the light from the mirrors. “Not on purpose, this time. It’s the left. Just a small one. It’s okay,” she said gently. “It’ll be fine. Try to stay awake, and let’s get out of this house of mirrors.”

Ryan knelt amidst the shards of snake and glass and took the Doctor’s other side. They lifted her together, carefully, so she was balanced between them.

“No aspirin,” the Doctor mumbled into Yaz’s shirt, eyes squeezed shut.

“I don’t think that even exists anymore, mate,” Ryan pointed out.

“…never be too careful,” she muttered. With no warning whatsoever she went limp, sliding Yaz-ward. Yaz buckled under the sudden weight. She shifted for a better grip. She closed her eyes for just a moment, chin tucked over that straggly mop of hair.

“Come on,” she said, jaw working. She slung the Doctor’s arm around her shoulder and started toward the corridor. Her boots crunched on the glass. The Doctor’s slippers dragged through it. She would have found it all a bit undignified, probably, if she’d been awake. “Ryan, give me a hand.”

“It’s not the giant snake bloke still, is it?” Graham fretted, following behind. “I thought we was done with that.” They were leaving a terrible mess in their wake, but he supposed that could be another problem for the morning.

“No,” Mabli said, glancing behind her. She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. The small movement gleamed in the shattered remains. “No.” The room as they left was perfectly still. Mabli’s voice was small again. Her hand dropped from his shoulder. “It’s not the giant snake.”

—

The Doctor asleep was odd, if only because in all the brief time she’d known her, Mabli had hardly seen her still. Fleeting moments of unconsciousness on Tsuranga, before she’d been on her feet and speeding ahead, hardly stopping for a breath. A hair away from a rampage. She’d thought then of the little birds on the station greenhouse of her childhood, flitting flower to flower, tree to tree. She’d never seen one asleep. At night, they’d hidden themselves away in the folds of trees. Quiet little things, in darkness.

Even asleep, still was an overstatement. And it wasn’t really sleep, when it was this chemical. There was only so much medicine, when the real problem was rest. And there was only so much you could do, Mabli thought, perching herself on the side of the cot, when that rest wouldn’t come.

“I thought now the snake thing was gone, she’d be better,” Ryan had said earlier, watching her fitful sleep. Two days of shifting eyelids and muttering. Mabli’s prescription, only she’d regretted its prescribing almost immediately.

Graham had bowed his head, catching her eye.

“Don’t think the snake ever had much to do with it,” he’d said quietly.

There was no stillness to be found here. That was the real problem. There was no sleep in the universe that would solve it.

Well, excepting one.

Mabli watched the vitals monitor as she peeled the last of the sedatives from the Doctor’s inner wrist. It wouldn’t take much. A metabolism that lightning fast—

“We have got to stop meeting like this,” the Doctor told her raspily, eyes flickering open blearily.

“Nothing would make me happier,” Mabli answered.

“Can I please go now?”

“You could have left at any time,” Mabli said softly. “But you didn’t. Thank you.”

The Doctor smiled weakly.

“When people need help,” she said.

“You never refuse. I know. I think that’s probably what makes you a doctor.” She glanced back up at the vitals monitor. “If you were anyone else, I’d make you stay for further observation,” she said. “Or at least send you off with some medicine. But since your ship is so technologically advanced—”

“She is!”

“—and since you’re so terribly intelligent—”

“I am!”

“—I’ll discharge you,” she said. “If you’re ready.”

The Doctor gazed at her steadily, more awake by the minute.

“I am,” she said. “Is Horus alright? What about the rest of the ward? Any hospital fallout?”

“The chairman of the Board mysteriously disappeared a few days ago,” Mabli told her, mouth twitching into a nervous smile. “Ryan helped with the, uh, clean-up. Ejected the hoover into space. Ever since, we seem to be back to normal. Horus is fine. Another week or so and I’ll discharge him, too.”

The Doctor sighed in relief.

“Good. My friends?”

“Raiding the gift shop. I told them you’d be joining them soon. They’ve been cramped up in here for days, you know. Worried about you.”

“Oh, I do love a little shop.” Her nose wrinkled. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“To be fair, you picked an excellent place to have a very small heart attack.”

“Very small?” she demanded, sounding faintly offended, raising up onto her elbows. In the next second, she sank back down. “To be fair,” she admitted, “I’ve had much larger ones and not enjoyed them very much. Perils of having more than one heart, and occasionally getting quite old. I say occasionally—”

“Doctor,” Mabli said gently.

She closed her mouth with some apparent difficulty. Her hair had dried in waves where it met her forehead. She looked pale and unkempt and still, somehow, the most alien. It was in the eyes, Mabli thought. You got the impression, under certain lights, that they were much older than her face.

“Two things, before you go. Your friends will take good care of you, if you let them,” said Mabli. “You should let them.”

The Doctor stared across at her.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I know.”

“And when you leave,” Mabli said steadily. “I’ll make sure there’s an accident. No data left behind.”

“Thank you,” the Doctor whispered.

“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling that it was terribly inadequate. There had been a wave of awful heat that had broiled across her face when she’d taken that hand in the room of mirrors. Red ash and no stars. Loss like a hole in the chest. She’d have wanted to pretend, too. Or she’d have wanted that particular kind of rest. Maybe it was only that—a choice between the two. You could run forever or you could only be still. Was it easy or hard? She didn’t dare ask.

“Don’t be,” the Doctor said. She smiled. “Oh—and by the way. We were here as guests of the Earl of Fairfax Four, or at least, that’s what I told your lovely receptionist. Think you might find that in gratitude for our excellent treatment, he’s made a sizeable donation to Ward 3. Recurring, in perpetuity. Don’t worry, he won’t miss it. Don’t ask him about it, though, just in case.”

Mabli’s eyes filled with tears.

“I wish I could fix this,” the Doctor said quietly. "All of it.”

“Me too,” Mabli whispered. “But the right thing isn’t always the easy thing. That’s not why we do it.”

“Astos would be proud of you,” the Doctor told her solemnly. “Keep trusting your instincts, Mabli. They’re good ones.”

Mabli smiled, finally.

“I hope that’s true,” she breathed. “But just in case,” she said, extending her hand. The Doctor took it and rose to her feet. Stronger every second. Forward, and forward. “I’ll keep your number in my administrative file.”