Doctor Who: Panic Moon Ch. 23

'Yeah, I'm all torn up about it,' Though the words themselves conformed to the standards of sarcasm, there was a generous seam of truth underpinning them. Notably, Sander never stopped frowning, 'Now open the damn door and reset the system. I want to head in. Oh, and give my friends here visitor status, they're with me. Then, log off.'

'Working... Completed. Please enjoy your stay, Master Hackett and visitors. Logging off...'

'Who was that?' Amy couldn't help but pipe up, endlessly fascinated by the conveniences of the future that those who lived there took for granted.

'Not a who. Jericho's a who, that's a what,' Sander said. 'A dumb A.I, limited cognitive functions. It's only been designed to run Hackett House, it has no mind of its own.'

'How do you tell the difference?' She replied. 'I mean, it seemed pretty-'

'Kepson-Turing tests, mostly,' Sander cut in. 'But do you really want me to go into the history of A.I theory? No? I didn't think so. Come on.'

With the interface now onside, the door swung open at Sander's approach, without any outside influence. As a series of lights flickered on, the interior beckoned, and after a moment of hesitation Sander stepped forward.

Though expansive and well furnished, there was a certain abandoned quality to the foyer that made it seem vaguely unsettling; the carpets had the rough quality of one that had laid uncleaned for far too long, and every surface was speckled grey with dust. Even for artificial sunlight, whatever light filtered in through the windows had a dead tone to it.

'Nice place,' Mara deadpanned, scuffing her foot on the floor.

'Well, what do you expect?' Sander rolled his eyes. 'Time was, this place was filled with Hacketts all year round. That was before the Doctor got a hold of us, though. It's been over a decade since anyone's set foot in this place, we're lucky the air scrubbers are still operational.'

'Yeah, I feel real lucky, wandering into this abandoned mansion. Remember how you made me live in a prefabricated installation on an asteroid for twelve years?' Mara poked him. 'Would have been nice to have a mansion then, just saying. Hey Interface, can we do something about the cleaning routines, over here?'

'Executing...'

The air was suffused with the sound of mechanisms waking from their decade long slumber, beginning the long process of making the house presentable again. Mara seemed pleased with this, but in truth Sander couldn't care less; he doubted he would ever come back here again, after today. Too many memories.

Everywhere he cast his eye there was some new facet of his past to send a twinge of helpless guilt and sadness through him, some sense memory or stolen childhood moment to remind him that he could never reclaim it. Here in the corner of the foyer was the spot where he would sit with his elder sister Nicole and read, on the days when their parents were out of the house. The silence between them had always felt so comfortable, like no words had ever needed to be said.

He led Mara and Amy down a certain hallway, only to encounter the room that had once been Cohen's, in which his elder brother had taught him how to reprogram the Interface to ignore certain actions their father would never have approved of. And out the window was the patch of lawn by the side of the house where he used to play soccer with his younger brother, back when he had been just a kid. Of course, he had still been a kid on Vesperia, really...

This place was a monument to Sander Hackett's failure. And the greatest proof Sander could provide of the Doctor's unthinking wickedness.

He picked up his pace, unwilling to expose himself to things that would only make him miserable. Mara and Amy kept up, but at least on Amy's part there was a noticeable hesitance; she had been more the victim of Sander's gloomy moods than anyone else. She seemed torn between two desires; she kept up because she didn't want to attract attention from the angry man with the ability to manipulate her Collar, but the need to get away pounded stronger in her head than ever before. It was the same feeling she always got when out in a more public setting with these two; she knew it would be a pointless effort to run, given that she knew nothing of the planet she found herself on, nor anything about her immediate location, yet it still persisted. She could only imagine how strong it must be in one like Christina.

At least Amy felt somewhat invisible; Sander's attention was buried deep within his own mind, and Mara's was, in turn, focused on him. Concern was written plainly on the blonde's face, as every step seemed to turn Sander into the angry, bitter bundle of neuroses that he had been three years ago. All her good work, everything they had done to become stable, seemed to be fading away right in front of her. His past had always been something of an unspoken threat to their life on Trismestigius, but here and now it loomed large.

'This place used to be so busy...' He spoke up into the silence, his voice soft, possibly only for himself, but it snapped both Mara and Amy to attention. 'We moved years ago, when my father got the contract to develop Vesperia, so I guess it makes sense that it's deserted now... It wouldn't be so bad, if there wasn't a house exactly as deserted there, too.'

'Sander...' Mara struggled to vocalize any kind of support for her boyfriend. Anything she could think of seemed inadequate, but then, what could ever possibly make this better?

'It's okay, Mara,' Sander stopped, turned to her. 'Well, no it's not, but that's the point. All this time away, with you and the guys... it's been easy to forget why I started all this in the first place. I needed the reminder.'

He gave her a look that she remembered from the old days, on those long nights in years past, when some critical component of his plan had failed him, or some mental block stopped him from reaching the next breakthrough; it was a look of black, terrible bitterness, laced with the kind of anger only Sander could ever really produce. It was frustration at a misguided universe made flesh, and if it hadn't been for his hand on her shoulder, Mara could easily have believed that she had lost him to revenge again.

But he gave her a gentle squeeze before returning to the business at hand, as if to reassure her, and she knew it would be okay. She followed him with a tad more conviction, as he gestured at the large door at the end of the corridor.

'And this is where it all began,' He said, with a frown. 'My father's study. God, I used to be so afraid of this place... he used to go berserk if we got anywhere near it. But then, his work always was more important. Mara, don't say anything, I seriously do get the irony there, you don't need to help me.'

She giggled suddenly, the sudden divergence from her boyfriend becoming a release valve for her; all the concern and worry that had been building in her since they arrived flooded out in that one little compressed fragment of emotion. She found herself able to smile, something that Sander seemed to find strange, judging from his answering expression. Her grin only widened when he turned back to the door, especially at his familiar tut of frustration as it refused to open for him.

'Interface, what's the deal? I have administrator privileges, don't I? Open the door,' His knowledge of the house came to the fore once more, as Sander swung his gaze to the concealed projection aperture before the hologram even activated.

'You have been granted Administrator status as per my latest registry update, Master Hackett,' The Interface's cogwheeled avatar bloomed into being beside him. 'However, the former Administrator ordered that access to his study be restricted to all but a pre-approved list upon his leaving the facility. Being a priority directive, I cannot countermand it without his express authorization.'

'But he's dead,' Always willing to drill down to the heart of the issue, Sander leapt immediately to the point.

'I am sorry for your loss.'

'No you're not,' Sander sighed. 'Nobody is sorry that he's gone. Log off, Interface. I guess we'll need to go down to the bluebox and employ a more hands on method. Mara, I need you to stay here. Amy, come on.'

'Whoa whoa, wait, why am I sticking around here alone?' Mara piped up. 'Why are you taking Amy but not me?'

'Because the door probably won't stay open forever no matter what I do to it,' Sander said. 'Dad was like that. So I need someone here to jump through when it opens to unlock it from the other side, since the Interface is too stupid a program to stop you from inside. It has no eyes inside that room, so don't speak and you shouldn't trigger security. That's also why I'm taking Amy, someone needs to take her and there's a greater danger of things screwing up in there than at the bluebox.'

'Well, promise me you won't be long,' Mara pouted, only semi-joking. 'Try not to have any more depressing memories without me, okay?'

'I promise,' He said immediately, allowing her into his arms for the length of time it took for her to plant a soft kiss on his lips, but no more. He was hardly in the mood- or the place- for displays of affection like that. For a moment, he realized just how much his father would have disapproved of his son dating someone like Mara; the thought was vaguely pleasant to him.

The thought occurred to him that this might be the perfect opportunity to give the old man something to fume over in whatever warmed over pit his soul had ended up in, but it was quickly quashed; this was the closest Sander had to a grave marker for his family, after all. Sure, there was probably some vastly denigrated headstone in some little cemetery on Vesperia, but he was hardly able to return there no matter how much that idea turned his stomach. Hackett House was the only remnant of the Hackett family that he could reach; even if just for personal comfort, such an idea would be disrespectful.

So he let her go, giving her the warmest smile he could muster in return; he could see how this place might worry her, after all. When he turned, Amy made sure to keep up with him; it struck him as amusing that, compared to Mara, he was the most stable human to be with right now.

The bluebox could theoretically be accessed from his old room, after he and Cohen had surreptitiously moved a few lines of code in the security system and nudged the wireless access points some, but Sander would be damned if he was taking Amy there. Instead he opted to head downstairs, taking Amy out of the living areas of the house and into the underbelly, where everything was cast in steely grey, and exposed cables lined the walls. It was a more grim scene, and in many ways reminded him of the interior of Trismestigius.

As he slipped down lower, and the lights became harsher up above, Sander couldn't help but reminisce. He had snuck in here either alone or with his brother so many times, tweaking the base code of their home to be more accommodating to them. Suddenly, their curfew was lifted, the security systems no longer logged their comings and goings quite as accurately, and the security cameras had decided to go dead as they passed. It had been more than enough freedom to get into plenty of trouble; in retrospect it couldn't have done much to improve his father's mood, but that had hardly mattered given the old man's generally dour demeanor.

It was funny how much more freedom he had now, and yet this house continued to exert its pull on him...

'He'll end up emptying your house like he did mine, you know,' Sander said without looking back, as they travelled deeper. 'The Doctor, I mean.'

'He filled my house, Sander,' Amy replied without thinking, defending the Time Lord as if on automatic. 'It was just me and my aunt before I met him. He brought my parents back.'

'I hardly think repairing the damage counts, Pond,' He said. 'Why did your parents disappear in the first place? Because of the cracks in time, made by the TARDIS exploding, because the Doctor's enemies were targeting him again. You and your parents were just crossfire, but then, bringing them back hardly makes up for the childhood you spent without them, now does it?'

Amy opened her mouth to speak, but found she had nothing to say. If she was being honest, her mind was a wreck since she had started travelling with the Doctor; two timelines competed for real estate in her memories, two lives throbbing in her head every moment of the day. Whenever she brought it up the Doctor was never interested, he seemed to actually avoid discussing the subject, but that didn't change the fact that it had happened. She remembered it all as clearly as yesterday; years of loneliness, absent of parents, ostracized because of her Raggedy Doctor... what had it all been for?

'This is what he does,' Sander continued without stopping, breaking Amy away from her thoughts. 'He charms you, then chews up your life until he gets bored or you come to your senses. But he's got you wrapped around his little finger... I wonder what you'll have to lose before you start rethinking things?'

The allusion made Sander remember that Amy herself wasn't the issue here. He could never bring himself to hate Amy; when he looked at her he saw a victim, just like him. Someone who'd had to sacrifice whole swathes of her family on the blue box's altar, just for the dubious privilege of watching the last child of Gallifrey show off. Only her circumstances were different, and Sander knew precisely the things that would need to happen for Amy to hate the Doctor. He had seen it, at Two Streams; yet another timeline that had been left aborted. How many do-overs did the Doctor need, to get Amy Pond right?

With nothing further to say, the pair continued in silence, keeping up a constant pace to avoid leaving Mara waiting. It was clear just by looking that the disrepair that had befallen the rest of the house did not extend to the tech hub below it; the maintenance protocols paid much more attention to the parts of the house that kept them alive. The walls were made of a fine blue metal, cool to the touch and glossy enough to reflect the minimal track lighting that bordered the path down enough to keep everything perfectly clear. Sander knew that Hackett House was, in actuality, a microcosm of his Trismestigius home; a domestic framework placed atop a rather vast collection of networked computing hubs and artificial intelligence drives.

He felt proud of that, like he had one upped his old man.

Amy seemed mostly content to stay behind Sander as he led the way, but he could certainly feel her gaze on his back as they walked. When he looked back at her- something he felt he needed to do every now and then just to ensure she hadn't run off somewhere- he could easily see the tenseness in her form, and he recognized it well; this was an Amy struggling to stop herself from saying something harsh. He simply turned back and waited, making internal bets as to how long she would be able to keep her mouth shut.

As it turned out, Amy could only hold off for as long as the stairs continued; as Sander palmed open the sole door at the bottom, the redhead began to speak.

'So... what?' Her Scottish accent twanged through the silence. 'Your answer to the problems you have with the Doctor is to kidnap and rape me? To say nothing of everyone else you've hurt? You don't see the problem with that?'

'I would suggest that the only things that have any success fighting the Doctor are monsters,' Sander answered, acid edging his voice. He absolutely did not need to be dealing with this right now, 'It takes a monster to fight a monster, after all.'

'But you're not fighting the Doctor!' Amy persisted, flying on wings of audacity by now. She had been plenty happy just to sit tight and wait out Sander's... odd mood, but the moment he mentioned the Doctor, he had reminded her just how bad an idea that was. Sander didn't need to be tolerated, not if she wanted to be able to look the Doctor in the eye ever again, and that was even ignoring Rory...

'You're just taking out your frustrations on a series of effigies!' She continued. 'What do I have to do with what happened to your family? What does Sally, or Lorna, or Christina?'

'What did my family have to do with my actions on Vesperia?' Sander snapped. 'Amy, do not go there, I'm warning you...'

'I know, the truth hurts!' Amy scowled, unwilling to give up her momentum now that she'd finally got some back. 'You aren't some downtrodden hero, Sander! You're no resistance fighter, you're just a rapist.'

Of course, Sander knew this. He had long ago committed himself to doing whatever was necessary... and with no small measure of enjoyment, either. He could admit it. But there was something about having it so starkly revealed here, of all places... the sound of her voice seemed to ring through the halls where his family had once lived. In this place, hearing Amy lecture him about suffering made his mechanical parts itch.

'You know, you can complain about how I treat you all you want, but I just find it all pretty rich,' He growled, turning fully around to stalk after her, giving Amy the kind of glare that made her step back, until her back was pressed against the cold steel wall, and still he didn't back off. He walked right into her personal space without hesitation, until they were eye to eye, 'Or did you think I'd somehow neglected to look into your past so much, Amelia Pond? You think I didn't know? That little thing you haven't even told Rory? Your Raggedy Doctor wasn't the only reason you were sent to therapy, now was it?'

Amy's eyes snapped open, as wide as they would go, hands balling into impotent fists at her side; only the Collar around her neck, and Sander's relative strength, stopped her from lashing out at him. Gnawing fear opened up a pit in her stomach; of course, it would have been too much to ask for him to have ignored that...

'Truth is, you've always liked this stuff,' Sander continued, voice filled with infuriating, liquid confidence. Amy truly got the feeling he was employing his trump card, here, 'Kinky little girl, hiding it away under layers of repression, so afraid to show any other sign of abnormality... because the first time you did, you got rejected. But your aunt caught you... experimenting once, didn't she? That wasn't the only time, but it's the one you remember...'

All at once, he forced a hand between Amy's legs, up under the folds of her skirt, her soft skin pressing against him as he touched her with shocking intimacy. Amy couldn't help but gasp, and try to wriggle away, but Sander would not allow her to resist.

'Why do you think I chose you first?' He said smoothly, eyes glinting. 'Your Doctor's regeneration is two forms too late for me, but you... I watched you, and all you gave me was ideas. The first time I saw you all on your lonesome, fucking yourself with clothespins on your nipples, I knew it had to be you...'

Amy opened her mouth to respond, her tongue tripping over the words as they came to mind, the sound coming out as closer to a high, reedy whimper than anything cogent. Besides, Sander's expression had taken on a steely hardness that told her speaking now would just be a terrible idea. Even so, there was knowledge between them now that Amy was desperate to address, the fact that he knew hung over her head like a guillotine.

'That's-' She began, stopping with a yelp as Sander slammed a palm into the wall beside her head, hard enough for the clang to resound through the metal, vibrations tracing across her skin where she leaned against the wall.