As he stirred, Andrew found himself in darkness and with pain radiating from his right arm. A lot of pain, although he apparently could still move it. His eyes began to adjust to his surroundings. He remembered the wreck, and remembered Jenny... no, Morbius, it was Morbius... punching him repeatedly in the head. Then the explosion and...
That, at least, explained the broken arm, or at least he thought that it was broken. Getting up on uneasy feet, he glanced around at the destroyed tunnel. Far above, he could just barely make out the sky above and by its light the railing that had been destroyed by... something. How far had they fallen? Hundreds of feet, easily, but the exact amount, he wasn't sure. Nor was he sure what had caused the apparently 98% efficiency rate mine shaft to fail so catastrophically. Either way, he began to carefully look around for any sign of Bishop or Morbius or both. He finally did find the former, sprawled out on the ground. A quick press of two fingers to the man's neck revealed no pulse, no nothing. Also, no gun... though he found that a few moments later when the loud hum of the safety going off was came to Andrew's ears, and he turned around to find Morbius standing with the weapon pointed at him.
"Move." She ordered him.
"Or what?" Andrew asked, his body still stinging with pain. "You'll kill me?"
"I have my means to enter the TARDIS." Morbius spat at him. "I don't... need... you..." He saw her gun arm twitching, uneasy. "I said I don't need you."
"Shoot me, then." Andrew said, stepping forward.
"You think I won't?" Morbius asked. "I've killed thousands like you. You're nothing. Another worthless piece of scum crushed under the feet of Morbius!"
"You keep talking." Andrew said, walking and grabbing her hand, pulling her toward him, pressing the gun directly to his chest. A shot from the Alpha Meson would bore a hole right through his chest, even at its lowest setting. "Shoot me."
"I... I will kill you!" Morbius screamed, shaking furiously, but her finger did not approach the trigger. "I will kill you!"
"Are you sure Jenny will let you?"
Within the mind of the Time Lady, that blow to the head had done more damage than Morbius had thought. She watched as Jenny began to pull herself from the rubble.
"You can't!"
"I am." Jenny rose, meeting the mirror image of herself. "That bump on the head seems to have jostled me out of your little trap."
"That bump on the head must have jostled more of you than that if you think you stand any chance of stopping me!" Morbius spat at her.
"He seems to think that I do." Jenny said.
"What? Who? What are you talking about?" Morbius snorted.
"Jenny, please. You can fight him. I know you can. You have to. Take control from him."
"Wonder if I can." Jenny said, flashing Morbius a grin. The Time Lady looked... unamused.
"You... will never oust me from this body."
"And you will not overtake me again." Jenny said. "So I guess we'll be standing in that ruined mine shaft for the rest of forever, won't we?"
"You have to fight. Your Dad is going to want to see you again, remember? You have to fight! If you can't fight for you, fight for him!"
"You don't get it, don't you?" Morbius shot back. "I've won, you stupid girl! You aren't going to stop me! You aren't going to get away! And you are not going to ever find your Father! Ever!"
"We can go look for your Dad. We'll find him, Jenny. I'll help you, I swear. Whatever I can do. But you have to fight Morbius. Please!"
"Look at that! Help!" Jenny grinned. "And all I have to do is kick you out!"
"You can't!" Morbius insisted. Her skin began to twist, crack like china. The cracks grew, and Jenny was no longer looking at her face, but at a glass dome encasing a large, pulsating brain. "You can't!" The voice was no longer a replica of Jenny's, but was far... grittier, more guttural, sounding like an angry growl forced from an electronic grillwork. A hand raised as if to strike Jenny, but it too began to break down as a massive, green claw was burst from the previously unblemished flesh.
"Seems like you need to get a grip on yourself, Morbius!" Jenny taunted her opponent, watching as some sort of sickly, gangling bulk of a thing erupted from within the perfect duplicate of her body. The Gallifreyan robes ripping away and falling useless to the ground.
"I... cannot... no! No! NO!" Morbius's electronic voice screeched just before Jenny's fist connected with the glass dome not once, not twice, but three times. It shattered...
In the real world, Jenny gasped and fell back from Andrew, the Alpha Meson blaster falling from her hand and clattering to the ground.
"Jenny!" Andrew cried out as he moved forward, seeing Jenny fall flat onto her back on the ground. As Jenny gasped, he witnessed a sickly, black ichor erupt from her mouth, shooting up into the air and bolt away from them into the darkness. "Jenny! Jenny!" She wasn't moving, her eyes closed. "Oh, Jenny! You did it! You won! You got him out!" He, at least, assumed that was what he had seen. Andrew knelt down, wincing as he tried to use his broken arm and instead used the other to try and get her to sit up. "Jenny, please! Wake up! Please!"
"Ugh... my throat..." Jenny groaned, stirring from the unconscious state she'd been thrust into.
"Jenny, thank God!" Andrew exclaimed, his entire body releasing a tension it had been holding since he'd woken up in the remains of the mine cart. He moved back, giving her some room to sit up.
"You're hurt!" Jenny said, noticing the way he held his broken arm.
"It's nothing, really. Are you okay? That... whatever the hell Morbius is now... that was brutal."
"I'm fine, yes." Jenny said, standing and brushing down the front of her outfit, a brow quirking as she looked down at the outfit, the robes Morbius had changed into. "...this looks ridiculous!"
"Well, I'd offer you a change of clothes, but I have... mine." Andrew said. "That's about it."
"I'll manage." Jenny said, getting to her feet. "Come on, we have to get to that TARDIS. We have to get to it before he does."
"What? Why?" Andrew asked. "How do you know... any of that?"
"Morbius was inside my head, I think I must have been inside his, too. Just a little when we took that blow to the head." Jenny said, reaching into the neckline of her robes and pulling out a spade-like piece of metal. "And I have a key."
"That thing...that's a key?" The young human raised a skeptical brow at the strange piece of metal she showed him.
"Yep." Jenny nodded. "C'mon, let's go." She slipped the key back under her robes and started off down the wrecked corridor. "If Morbius was right, we ought to be close by."
It was further back down the remnants of the corridor that the reason why the mineshaft had collapsed so dramatically - namely the fact that the remnants of the Champlain had fallen into it with the speed that only a cargo vessel falling into a planet's atmosphere could have achieved, with the appropriate level of destruction that followed the impact.
Jones felt every bone in his body aching as he awoke against the crash webbing.
"Dah-Regg! You still with me?" He called out once the words came back to him. No reply came. "Dah-Regg?" He managed to turn, looking to see that the Crespallion had not answered him for a very good reason - he was dead. Unlike the Captain's webbing, Dah-Regg's had not deployed and from the look of it he had died upon impact with... some surface or another. Pulling himself from the webbing, Jones got to his feet and looked around. The bridge was completely destroyed and the ship itself was likely no better given how much of it had been damaged in all of the festivities of the day.
"Damn..." Jones sighed, taking that moment for his fallen crew, his broken ship. Those he would leave behind once he started again. The man sighed as he started for the rear hatch, grabbing both of the manual override latches and pulling them apart to pen the door.
"Captain-"
"Kraisem!" Jones caught the portly pilot as he slumped into the remnants of the bridge through the hatch. "Easy, easy, take it easy. Are you alright?"
"I woke up as we were falling... got into an impact suit." Po said. "They don't tell you how much the sudden stop at the end still hurts."
"Exactly." Jones said, leading him over to the only intact seat. "Is there anyone else? Did anyone else-?"
"No." Po shook his head. "No, I don't think so. I think... I think they're all-"
"I know, I know." Jones said. "We need to see if we can find Caitlinson and the girl."
"How do we know they're even alive?" Po asked.
"We don't, but our rescue plan went total FUBAR, so I'm improvising." Jones said, heading over to a storage locker and opening it, pulling out a pair of torches. "Catch." He said, tossing one to Po before cutting his on. "I feel a breeze, so we must be somewhere with air flow."
"You are correct... Mr. Jones..." A voice came from the broken viewport, Jones turning quickly and flashing his light on a bloodied and broken looking-
"Bishop? What the hell?" Jones demanded.
"Not Bishop..." Bishop said as he climbed into the remnants of the bridge. An impressive feat, considering it looked as though both of the man's arms were broken, and a particularly bloody gash had been opened up across his forehead. "Not anymore..."
"What the hell happened to you?" Jones asked.
"Not... Bishop... borrowed... skin..." Bishop lumbered toward the two men. "Need... stronger body..."
"Stay back!" Jones yelled, lifting his sidearm. Nevertheless, Bishop still approached. "I'm warning you!" The businessman lumbered onward and received three precise shots into his chest for his trouble, collapsing onto the floor.
"What the-?" Po asked after a moment to let the ringing in his ears stop, slowing his hands from them. "What the hell was-?"
"I don't know." Jones said. "I don't know, but we need to find the-" Bishop's body on the floor suddenly wrenched upward, coughing loudly. Jones whipped around, training his light and the gun upon the body. However, by the time he looked, Bishop was no longer moving. "... must have been death throes."
"I guess, yeah." Po said. "So... what are we gonna do?"
"Well, you're gonna stay right here." Jones said. "I'm gonna go see if I can find any sign of Jenny or Andrew."
"They may not have survived the wreck." Po said.
"Maybe not, but I have to try." Jones said, stepping through the shattered viewport and out into the tunnel.
"J-Jenny... what... what are we looking at?" Andrew stared in stunned awe at the room they had found themselves in. Outside, they had found naught by a silver metal canister with a doorway just tall enough for them to walk through built into it. The room that they were standing in, though, should not have remotely been able to fit within that canister.
"This is the inside of a TARDIS." Jenny said.
"It's bigger on the inside!" Andrew commented.
"The TARDIS is dimensionally transcendental." Jenny said.
"What does that mean?"
"No idea, it was a phrase running around in Morbius's thoughts when he was thinking about it." Jenny said. "If I had to take a guess, it means that it's bigger on the inside." She flashed him a grin.
"You don't seem... weirded out by this." Andrew said, noticing Jenny's overall demeanor.
"I dunno, yeah." Jenny said, looking around. "I just feel... calm. Centered, if that makes any sense? Like... like I belong here, or something." She smiled, glancing around the place. "It feels like... home." Andrew looked around. The place felt... strange to him, but also calming? It was... odd, frankly, a place that felt so alien and strange and yet felt like the safest place he'd ever been in.
"I... dunno..." Andrew said, fidgeting a bit on the spot.
"What the hell is this?" Jones' voice came from outside.
"Captain?!" Andrew exclaimed, rushing over to the open doors. "Captain, we're in here! We're in here!"
"Andrew, wait!" Jenny exclaimed. Alas, the words came too late to prevent Andrew from falling into the trap she had heard set, namely the hum of the safety being turned off on an Alpha Meson blaster. Andrew was suddenly thrown back into the console room with a loud bang. He fell back onto the floor and was still. "Andrew!"
"He'll live." Jones said as he entered the room, leveling the blaster at her. "Now, Jenny... we're going to play a little game called prime the Rassilon Imprimatur."
"Hello, Morbius." Jenny glared at the man.
"Recognize me, do you?" Morbius asked, his other hand running down the side of his latest stolen face. "Your captain was a great deal easier to possess than you were. His consciousness sank like a pebble into a lake. Humans... so frail..." Jenny, her glare burning across her face, stepped forward only to be stopped by the pointed weapon. "Oh, no, no... you move closer, I'll put a burst through just one of your hearts, that's all it will take."
"I don't care if you kill me." Jenny said. "You better not miss with that first shot, you won't get a second."
"Maybe not." Morbius said, turning his gun on Andrew. "Or maybe I'll just go for a less mobile target." Jenny hesitated. "The human is so weak, he may not even need the one shot." The girl relented, clearly still burning with that inner rage. "That's better. Now... you've seen in my head enough to know this. Activate the briode nebuliser..."
Several minutes passed from there as Morbius gave instructions, Jenny following them as she was able. Soon enough, there came a humming noise from within.
"What is-?"
"Listen, child." Morbius spoke through Jones' lips. "Listen to the sounds of the universe." There was a wheezing, a groaning, a rumbling from beneath them, as though something were waking up out of a long, long sleep. "The engines of the TARDIS are primed. She is ready for flight." He raised the blaster once more. "Well... goodbye, then."
"What are you doing?" Jenny backed away slightly.
"I don't need you anymore, girl. You've done the hard part." Morbius's finger slipped toward the trigger.
"Oh, my head!" Andrew groaned from the floor, distracting the faux Time Lord just long enough for Jenny to close the distance between them, kicking the blaster from the man's hand.
"You dare-!"
"Oh, I dare! I dare!" Jenny declared, hands raised to prepare to block and counter, unarmed combat training kicking in with the speed of instinct. "Lot of daring. You're not taking this TARDIS anywhere."
"The hell I'm not! It's my TARDIS!" Morbius snapped at her.
"Not sure you're in a position to do much of anything, pal." Andrew said, standing up again. "Now get out of our Captain and piss off!" Morbius turned to the young man, his glare suddenly turning into a manic smile.
"Yes! Yes, I will leave your Captain! This body is starting to decay, anyway..." Morbius said, opening his mouth and making a heaving noise... and nothing happening. "What... what the-?" He attempted to do whatever it was he was trying to do again, but likewise got no result.
"Was it something you ate?" Jenny suggested.
"Shut up!" Morbius snapped. "I can't leave this body! Why can't I leave this body?!"
"MORBIUS!" The image of a worn-looking man was suddenly projecting from the central column, the image a sparkling blue that still showed the lines of ages and the fullness of the man's face. A pair of eyes glared intensely at the possessed human. "You have found your way back to your TARDIS. Well done. Well done indeed."
"Who... who is that?" Andrew asked.
"I've seen him before." Jenny said, looking to Morbius. "In your head. Who is that?"
"Rassilon..." Morbius said, both noticing that the skin of Jones' face had become deathly pale. "It's Rassilon..." The name seemed important, though Jenny did not fully understand apart from knowing that Morbius was well and truly terrified.
"Unfortunately," the image of Rassilon continued, "we had no intention of you returning to society. You are just another disease that is to be expunged. Face your end with dignity, you who were once a Time Lord. This time, you will not return..." The image flickered out and a loud humming came from beneath their feet.
"What is going-?" Jenny started to ask, then suddenly she was hit by a beam of light that grabbed at her wrist, starting to pull her toward the console. "What the-? No! No!" Morbius began to laugh.
"What is it?!" Andrew demanded. "What is it doing?!"
"It's read her DNA as Time Lord!" Morbius cackled. "Oh, this is rich! Rassilon's last trick and it won't touch me!" Andrew balled up his fist and swung it, connecting with Morbius's jaw. The former Time Lord fell over, groaning in pain. "You little-"
Andrew grabbed the man's arm, yanking him to his feet. "MOVE!" He spat at him, pulling him toward the console.
"The hell I will!" Morbius struggled against him, nearly breaking away until all parties heard a sickening crack. "AHHH!" Morbius's arm snapped in Andrew's grip. "This body... it's..."
"Decaying." Andrew said, forcing him toward the console. "You already said!" Morbius struggled, but more cracks could be heard as more of Jones' body began to break down. Jenny, meanwhile, was trying to pull away from the console as much as possible, yet was still being ushered toward it by the light from within. Morbius was still trying to pull away as Andrew forced him forward, finally grasping the man by the back of his neck as it cracked. The former Time Lord screamed out in pain and it was amplified as Andrew slammed the man's head into the part of the TARDIS console that generated the light.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" Morbius screamed out as his body began to dissolve, the flesh burning away in the light. As he did so, the rumbling came again. Andrew looked up, thinking that the ceiling was coming down on them.
"Jenny! We need to go!" Andrew urged her, seeing her still staring at the console.
"But the TARDIS... we... we can find my dad..." She said, looking at it wistfully.
"Jenny! This entire place is going to come down! It's coming down right now!" The ceiling did seem to be coming down upon them. "We need to go!" The walls were beginning to push in. Who knew how long that door would remain? "Jenny! Please!" Andrew grabbed her hand, squeezing it to get her attention.
"I just... I thought..."
"I know, I know. I get it." Andrew said. "There are other time machines. We'll find one, somewhere. I said before, I'll help you. Whatever I can do. But we need to go. We need to go now!" Jenny paused, tears welling in her eyes. She blinked them back and nodded.
Her hand squeezed his back and the two took off running.
The two got out just as the doorway had begun to collapse. When they emerged, they looked back only to find the silver canister was now merely that. Andrew touched a hand inside of it and found only the back wall curving around to meet the front. Now, just a can... nothing more.
"I'm sorry, Jenny." Andrew said. "If we had had time to mess with the controls, maybe-"
"I know. I know." Jenny said, shaking her head. Her eyes were closed again, tears dripping before she reached up, wiping them away. She took a deep breath, holding it for a bit, then releasing. Seconds ticked by into minutes, the pair sitting in silence in the destroyed mine shaft.
"What are we going to do now?" Andrew asked.
"Find a way off this planet, I think." Jenny said. "However we can." A figure emerging from the nearby rubble came as the answer, a familiar humanoid pilot that they both knew.
"I think I can help with that." Po Kraisem said, holding up a small, glowing device he had salvaged from the remains of the ship - a distress beacon.
The Regulator, interestingly, picked the trio up without incident. As it turned out, not having Bishop onboard had seen the next person in the chain of command taking command: a far less stern human being by the name of Wickstrom, who apparently had been given no information on what Bishop had really been up to.
"Absolute cover up." Andrew said. "Complete cover up."
"It doesn't matter now." Po said. "It's... done. And we're luckily not getting charged anything for the damages."
"Pretty sure they'd have a fight on their hands if they tried." Andrew muttered.
"I mean, I suppose cleaning our stains off of the floor could count as a fight, sure." Po muttered.
"Either way, we have to decide what to do next." Jenny said. "Where do we go from here?"
"Well, the Champlain III is trashed, and so is everything that was aboard it." Po said.
"Everything?"
"I managed to save some personal belongings, but... yeah, for the most part, the wreck took everything."
"Probably the biggest reason we aren't getting charged with destruction of property. We've nothing for them to take from us." The doors of the small waiting area the trio had found themselves in opened, and Deputy Wickstrom entered.
"Please, come in, the three of you." He said, gesturing for them to follow. Soon enough, they were seated in a plush office that had presumably previously belonged to Mr. Bishop. On the desk, Wickstrom had a datapad with the screen shut off. Once they were all seated, he lifted the pad. "This is the last will and testament of Panegyric Jones, to be read upon the event of his death. Which, according to your eyewitness accounts, had indeed come to pass."
"Unfortunately, yes." Andrew said, glumly. Jones had been, for all his gruffness, a good man. A man who definitely had not deserved to be murdered by Morbius, much less to have been turned into a chemical soup by the insane Time Lord.
"Well, as you are the only three remaining members of the crew, it's contents are to be distributed evenly among you." Wickstrom said, flipping a switch that illuminated the screen. He began to read. "I, Panegyric Aurelius Parsnip Jones, do in the event of my death authorize the following distribution of my estate as it exists under Company regulations:
- My ship the Champlain III (or what remains of it) is to be given to my crew.
- My personal assets are to be distributed, 50% evenly split amongst my crew and the other half sent to the Foot of the Towers Orphanage on Darillium.
He set the pad down. "Well, there you are." He said. "You are now the owners of what remains of the Champlain and half the the total credits that Captain Jones had saved."
"How much is that?" Po asked.
"According to his account, sixty-eight thousand." Wickstrom said.
"Sixty-eight thousand?!"
"Each, yes." The three looked shocked between each other. "Captain Jones was apparently quite frugal, it seems."
"The ship was falling apart..." Andrew mused, stunned as he leaned over in his chair. "The ship was literally falling apart at the seams, and he had all that in his accounts."
"He must have had good reasons." Jenny said.
"Like trying to retire to Argolis, the rat bas-" Po began.
"I think," Wickstrom said, "that you three have things to discuss. I'll withdraw for a few moments to let you deliberate. He stood up, stepping around the desk and the three seated there and leaving the room. For a few moments, the three sat in stunned silence.
"Well... what do we do?" Andrew asked.
"Well, I need a ship, so I know where my portion is going." Jenny said. "My rocket's scrap and so is the Champlain."
"I guess you mean that's where our portions are going." Andrew said, getting a confused look from Jenny. "I said that I'd help you, didn't I?" He asked. "That we were going to go looking for your Dad, right?"
"Her Dad?" Po asked. "You mean that Doctor guy? That was legit?"
"Yes, that's him." Jenny said. "Or was. Or will be. Time is an odd thing, what little of it I understand." Jenny said. "It doesn't quite go in the right order."
"...I kind of want to meet him." Po said. "If we can, I mean."
"I'd be happy to introduce you just as soon as we find him, yes." Jenny said with a smile. "So... are we agreed, then? A new ship for the three of us?"
"And brand new adventures, too!" Andrew grinned. "I want to see what's out there!"
"Me, too!" Po nodded in agreement. "If you'll have us, Captain." Jenny laughed.
"Far be it from me to turn down a good pilot and an engineer." Jenny said. It made her smile, though. Her father had Donna and Martha on his travels, and now she had two... companions (that seemed the right word) of her own. The happy feelings took a bit of a pause, however, as she glanced at the window behind Wickstrom's desk and saw the image of an older woman in red robes.
She was... different. Odd, somehow, and not just because she seemed to be floating unassisted within the vacuum of space. Jenny felt as though she knew her... but couldn't place just how or why, seeing as she was likewise sure that she'd never met the woman before in her life. Still, there was something to it that Jenny could not shake. Just as quickly as the crone had appeared, though, she had vanished.
"Did... did either of you see that?" Jenny asked, standing up from her chair and glancing out into the stars.
"See what?" Po asked.
"Jenny... are you feeling alright?" Andrew asked, glancing between her and the now empty window that gazed out into oblivion.
"It's..." She began, but then stopped, shaking her head. "It's fine. Never mind it, it's fine." The Time Lady stood up. "Besides, we have a whole future to look forward to... and it's bright!"
THE END
JENNY AND HER CREW WILL RETURN
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