Doctor Who: Panic Moon Rising Ch. 02

But that could change...

He opened the door carefully, peered into a room he was unsurprised to see empty. The multiform must have a way to sense things approaching the door, it had to be hiding. Which made this room a rather unpleasant prospect to have to enter, but sometimes big plans require bold steps...

'I'm here to speak with prisoner zero,' Sander cast his eyes around the darkened corners of the room, knowing even as he did so that the alien's slithering form was probably just outside of his vision at all times, mouthful of fangs at the ready. Still, he persisted, 'Come on, I know you're in here. Just come on out. This is about the Atraxi.'

He heard the hiss, grinning. That got a reaction...

'Who are you?' Zero said, and Sander could feel it moving right behind him. Experience told him it would kill him if he saw it directly. Criminals... 'How did you know I was hiding here?'

'I'm a time traveler, and I've been watching this show for a while,' Sander forced himself not to turn around. 'I'm about a thousand years out of my way, but I know who you are, and I know one thing we have in common. We're both stranded here.'

'That's nice. But it's not a reason to let you live now that you've found me out...'

'This is, though: in five year's time you're going to be killed, and I know how. I also know a way of getting you off of this rock.'

'... I'm listening.'

Sander turned, suddenly face to face with the ungodly offspring of an angler fish and a boa constrictor. It hung from the ceiling, but he had better sense than to follow the sinuous length of its body with his eyes. Instead, he kept eye contact with the multiform, forcing confidence into his gaze while staring down his imminent perforation.

'Five years from now the Doctor will return here,' He began. 'When he does he'll attract the attention of the Atraxi, who'll come in all guns blazing and threaten to incinerate the planet with you on it. I know you don't care about that, but you don't know the Doctor. He'll stop that from happening, turn you over to the Atraxi and then tell them off for good measure. You'll die. I'm offering you a way out.'

'That's charitable of you,' Though Zero's mouth opened wide, it spoke without ever needing to use it. The act was merely one of intimidation, though Sander knew better than to flinch, 'Why?'

'A trade. You have something I want, and I have something you want.'

'What do you have that I want, human? You say you're stranded, what can you possibly have to tempt me?'

'You came here through a crack in time, but now you're stranded because you have no ship,' Sander said, reaching into his back pocket. Zero hissed and reared back, apparently more used to people drawing guns on it than Sander realized, but it relaxed when it saw the object in question, 'You can find one with this. Signal beacon. Just point and click. Hitch a ride, hijack one, I don't care. Just you need to leave.'

Prisoner zero examined the small, metallic device Sander had brought with him from the future, then the man himself. His expression of flat confidence remained, even though his heart was racing. He was no fool, he was well aware he was in a room with a dangerous criminal; it was entirely possible that he could die here in this dingy, cobweb filled room in this backwater town. That could happen.

'And what do you want in return for this?' The alien said finally. 'You said trade.'

'Just leave the perception filter on this room when you go,' Sander said. 'I need a place to hide myself, and this will do just fine. The Atraxi will follow your trail offworld, but you'll have a five year head start, and there's a lot of ground you can cover in that amount of time. You'll be home free, right out of their jurisdiction.'

'And right into the Shadow Proclamation's,' Zero mused. 'I could kill you now and take the beacon from your corpse. It would eliminate a witness, and I am a criminal, you know.'

'So am I,' He replied. 'I'm Sander Hackett.'

'Really now?' The multiform drew back, silver-grey skin glistening wetly in the sunlight. 'All the way out here? How interesting... Big fan, by the way...'

'Yeah, I figured you might be. So, do we have a deal?' Sander looked away, carefully leaving out the part about him being innocent of most of the crime's he was accused of. One does not look a gift horse in the mouth, and he was going to pry every advantage he could get from this particular horse, no matter how uncomfortable this particular lie made him.

'Yes, I think we do,' Zero nodded, the gesture odd looking on a creature without a conventional body. It blurred for a moment, form shifting and changing, coming out the other end of the process in the form of a young woman; Sander realized that he was only familiar with the forms the alien could take five years from now. Those comatose folks were probably inaccessible to it now, 'The perception filter extends some distance into the hallway. The people here won't even think of walking toward the door.'

A human woman held out her hand expectantly, but everything about the way it moved indicated that Zero was not at home in a human body. The woman moved like a marionette, fingers curling awkwardly around the beacon as Sander pressed it into Zero's palm. The creature looked at him like it was waiting for something to happen.

'And now you need to go,' Sander said, gesturing to the door. 'Escape. I don't want to see you around here anymore.'

'Very well,' It stepped on strangely heavy feet out into the hall, moving down the hall as though it owned the place. 'See you around...'

'I hope not,' Sander lilted, closing the door on the alien. He could count on the multiform to take care of itself; it would be out of here as soon as it could. Leadworth was safe enough... well, as safe as any town featuring a tear in the fabric of space and time could be. And when the Atraxi finally arrived, the Doctor would have to figure something else out, if those big snowflakes weren't smart enough to figure out that prisoner zero was no longer here.

He turned back into his new base of operations... and even as a broke, homeless vagrant he thought he could do better. Years of only having one alien occupant had taken their toll on the place, filling it with cobwebs and grime. Aside from a single table there was no furniture, and the walls echoed with depression and neglect.

'Alright this is going to require a bit of work,' He said, clasping his hands together. He waited silently for a moment, allowing the psychotic alien criminal to get some distance on him, before he went for the door. ************

An hour later, he had at least made the abandoned room livable. Normally, he would have thought the actions he had taken to get to this point to be rather shameful, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

So, he had done what he had to do. It wouldn't have been the first time, and at least here on Earth... nobody had gotten hurt. He had left the room, snuck through the house with Amy sleeping upstairs, and... taken what he needed.

The kitchen had yielded a number of cans of food, mostly small things filled with tuna, or cans of beans- which Sander had found rather amusing. A broom leaning against a wall outside had allowed him to clean up his impromptu living space adequately enough, and devoid of dust the place had begun looking less like a tomb. A hall closet upstairs had gifted him a change of clothes, perhaps the only set of men's clothes inside an otherwise decidedly feminine house. And most importantly, the bathroom cabinet had provided him with a spare toothbrush and tube of toothpaste, that he employed by the window of his new home, vigorously.

He was still dangerously out of his element, penniless and essentially in a holding pattern until something changed, but at least he could survive like this for a while.

'Alright!' He said to no one in particular. 'Got myself a hobo-base... In a secret room in somebody else's house.'

After a pause, he sighed and turned to the door, ready to greet Leadworth anew.

'Yeah, nothing creepy about this at all...'

To be continued...