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‘Hello?’ Is there anybody down here?’
Charley’s voice echoed down the corridor, far louder than she’d thought it would be, and she couldn’t help but shiver. She’d been walking for hours, now, and still there was no sign of the Doctor. He’d promised that he’d be close by- double checking some of the old girl’s systems, nothing to worry about, I’ll be within shouting distance of the console room the whole time- but she really should have known better than to try and track him down in these corridors. They all looked the same at the best of times, and lit only by emergency lighting does not count as the best of times.
It had gotten cold, though. She’d been waiting in the console room, curled up in an armchair with a battered Sherlock Holmes novel, when the temperature started dropping. And dropping. And dropping, until she could see her own breath forming clouds in the air in front of her.
She’d gotten up to get a blanket, at first, and then the lights had gone, and the time rotor had juddered in a way that never means anything good. The only reason Charley hadn’t completely freaked out there and then was that the cloister bell remained perfectly silent, meaning- she assumed- that the present circumstances, whatever they might be, were not imminently dangerous to any of them.
Still. She’d decided her best course of action was to find the Doctor, and set off thusly for what really should have been a short trek through the corridors. What feels like several hours later, though, there’s still no sign of him and she can’t help but feel she’s going in circles.
‘Doctor?’ she tries again, shivering slightly when an impossible gust of wind is the only answer. She’s not sure where she is anymore. At first, she’d stuck to the areas of the ship she knew- those short stretches of corridor down to the bedroom she’d claimed, the route to the library, the aquarium full of squid-like things that glowed purple under torchlight and the Doctor swore up and down he had no recollection of obtaining. There had been no sign of him, though, so she’d extended her search out a little further. Not long after, she’d had a spark of inspiration: surely, if the Doctor was checking mechanical systems, he’d be near the console room- perhaps even underneath it!
No sooner had the thought occurred to her than she turned a corner and found a spiral staircase winding downwards. It was very convenient. Too convenient, one might say, with the benefit of hindsight. Now she was hopelessly lost. The staircase had led nowhere useful, and she knew the chances of retracing her steps were practically zero- and that was assuming the corridors hadn’t rearranged themselves behind her.
And it was still cold. It felt like a silly complaint, on top of everything else, but Charley is absolutely certain that her current predicament wouldn’t feel quite so dire if she’d remembered to pick up an extra jumper.
She finds herself approaching an intersection. The metal panelling of the corridor she’s currently in continues towards the left, ominously bathed in mauve light from a source she can’t identify. To her right, it peters out within mere feet, turning to worn flagstones and the concept of lit braziers casting flickering shadows onto the walls, even if the light sources in question are entirely absent from view.
Charley sighs, digs in her pockets for a coin, and flips it. Tails. She turns left.
There aren’t many actual rooms down here, is perhaps the oddest thing. Charley knows she’s barely scratched the surface of exploring this place, but most of the areas she’s searched have been practically overflowing with doors, and what lay behind each sat on a scale of “mind-numbingly boring” to “plain bizarre”. She’d found more artlessly decorated bedrooms than she’d needed to see in a lifetime; two dozen wardrobes full of everything from bright orange spacesuits to period-accurate Victorian regalia; a newspaper stand dated to the 13th of July 1951, complete with dozens of copies of the same paper; what looked like a Medieval torture chamber (thankfully lacking in people); and more besides… and all of that was on the way to the library!
Down here, there is practically nothing, just the endless corridors. It means fewer rooms to search, but it also means fewer places to rest her aching legs, or puzzling artefacts to derail her spiralling thoughts.
Another intersection approaches. No real difference in corridor style at this one. Charley turns right.
Despite her best efforts to remain positive, Charley can’t help but wonder what happens if she gets lost down her permanently. How long will she wander before collapsing from exhaustion? Will the ship take pity on her, providing a bed and food and everything she needs to stay comfortable? Or will she die relatively quickly, throat parched with no water in sight? Which one would actually be kinder, in the end, if she’s truly stuck here alone?
How long will it take the Doctor to find her? How long until he realises he needs to come looking?
A path off to the right, quickly narrowing until the metal grates lining each side would be brushing her shoulders. She ignores it.
The Doctor would come. Of course he would, even if it might take a while for him to realise that something is wrong. Especially if he’s busy with repairs- he could lose hours, maybe even days, if she’s not there to remind him that there’s more to life than his machines.
A path to the left that ends in a dead end. A T-junction, cold metal slowly shifting to a colder, almost coral-like structure no matter what way she turns, even back towards where she came from.
Charley continues forwards.
If the situation wasn’t quite so spooky, she’d probably be excited. If the Doctor was here with her, she’d certainly be excited. He doesn’t have anything to fear from these walls- this is his ship, after all, his oldest friend. If he was here, they’d be gawping at the almost biological growths on the walls around her, and he’d say something witty about crystal structures or fractals or something. She’d run her hands along the protuberances that appear with more and more frequency as they progress deeper. Eventually he’d be so excited he wouldn’t pay attention to his surroundings and he’d bang his head on the ceiling, and she’d laugh, and he’d laugh, and he’d take her hand and pull her onwards.
It’d be an adventure.
But the Doctor isn’t here, so Charley ducks her head and hunches her shoulders and tries very, very hard not to brush against the walls, even as they close in tighter.
‘Please, I’m just looking for the Doctor,’ she says, when it becomes clear that the passage is small enough that she’s going to have to start crawling. ‘I know you can rearrange your rooms, you know, and if you could arrange to take me to him quickly, I’d be very grateful.’
Talking to the ship has never worked for her before, but it does work for the Doctor, so maybe if she asks politely enough…
Oh, who is she kidding. This ship hates her. She never should’ve left the console room.
The not-coral digs into her palms but doesn’t quite manage to break skin. She can feel it against her knees, too, tearing at her trousers, and something tells her that letting it draw blood either way is probably a bad idea. There’s not a whole lot she can do about it, though, so she keeps her head down and focuses on moving forwards. The world around her is silent, ominously so. The sound of her own breathing seems to be swallowed up by this place, and she’s not sure where any of the light is coming from, but the word bioluminescence lodges in her head and refuses to leave. The walls get narrower, closer, ceiling scrapes against her back. It’s too close, far too close, crushing and choking and the panic lodges in her lungs and doesn’t leave, what if she gets stuck here, oh god is she even going to be able to get out-
Charley falls.
Or rather she doesn’t fall, as the case may be, because the room (cavern) she emerges into doesn’t seem to have any gravity.
It’s disorienting in a way she wishes she wasn’t quite so familiar with. Spacewalks are… an experience, sure, and one she’s far more familiar with than she’d ever expected to be, even in her wildest dreams. That experience is the only thing that prevents her from completely panicking when she finds herself suspended in midair, staring out over what looks to be a planetarium.
It is a planetarium, she realises a moment later, when she’s dragged her legs out of the tunnel and is clinging onto the wall in an illusory attempt at safety. She’s staring at a model of her own solar system.
The sun is down the other end of the room, an impossible ball of light as large as she is that gives off the heat of a bonfire. The rest of the planets are spread out, in order, suspended in the air at what she supposes are the scale-model distances appropriate for them. She’s currently above the main axis of the planets, but about parallel to Jupiter in the line-up.
Despite the circumstances, Charley can’t help but grin. Angling herself carefully, she pushes off the wall and glides over to the model of Earth. It’s a good one, the sort of picture one would get from a satellite image. She can’t place the time period instantly, but the number of lights scattered across the world- marking out a network of the major European cities that she knows, and a similar pattern across the United States- suggests it’s probably relatively modern. Well. Modern for her, at least. It could be well into her future, for all she knows.
And it doesn’t move when she bumps into it, halting her momentum nicely.
Deciding that the physics of that particular problem can be a puzzle for another time, Charley looks around the room, searching for exits. There’s a floor below her. She’d estimate it to be about fifteen feet away, and manoeuvring herself around model-earth reveals no less than four doors set into the walls of the chamber.
Feeling a little bit silly, Charley kicks off the moon and shoots through the air towards one at random. The sudden reintroduction of gravity once she’s within six feet of the floor is a bit of a disappointment. Also, slight cause for panic since she was travelling headfirst. She manages to flip herself upright quickly enough, but the impact is still slightly painful on her knees. Could have been far worse, though.
Straightening up with as much dignity as she can muster- never mind that there’s no one around to see her- Charley sweeps out the door.
And stops.
These corridors are human-sized, at least, which is a significant improvement over the last ones. They even look familiar, in a way- she’s sure she’s seen those wood panels in one of the many reading nooks hidden in the library, and the carpet beneath her feet is almost identical to the one in her bedroom. There are even proper lights, what appear to be actual gas lamps flickering on the walls. By all rights, this should be a significant improvement.
Except, of course, she’s standing upside down.
‘All right, this is a little disorienting,’ she says, strained, fighting back a bubble of hysterical laughter.
The TARDIS does not respond in any way Charley can understand, but she can’t quite shake the feeling it finds this whole situation funny.
Charley clenches her jaw and cautiously takes a step forward, even when the thought of lifting her feet leaves her nearly paralysed with fear. What if she falls, what if gravity moves, what if what if-
Her feet move easily enough once she tells them to. One step forward, then another.
For some absurd reason, she can hear opera music.
It gets easier, after a while. The world is still upside down and wrong in a way that sends her stomach lurching, to say nothing of the way her blood has rushed to her head, making her dizzy. But she slowly begins to trust that her feet will actually go where she tells them to, and she won’t be sent plummeting when she moves. The music continues, distant and muffled like a gramophone playing several rooms away, and she can’t tell if she’s getting closer to it or further away. Once or twice she sees passageways running off to the side, but none of them look promising. If she was in a sensible building and not walking upside down in an eldritch affront to the concept of architecture, she’d call them servant’s passageways, while she was walking down the main hall.
Eventually, the “hallway” opens up into a “foyer”, complete with a grandiose marble staircase. As soon as she approaches it, she can actively feel gravity shifting around her, beginning to return to something approaches a sensible arrangement.
‘Thank you,’ she says, once she’s managed to navigate her way down the stairs (with only minimal clinging onto the banister as the world shifted around her). Nothing in her surroundings changes- not even the opera music, which she still can’t find the source of- but she gets a distinct feeling of satisfied amusement regardless.
‘Now that I’ve gone through some of your bizarre obstacle courses, I don’t suppose you’d be willing to point me towards the Doctor?’
Much to her surprise, one of the doors swings open.
Charley frowns, a little, but stands and makes her way over.
It’s… a ladder. It’s a door to a storage closet, but instead of a set of shelves is a ladder, rungs embedded into the wall. It stretches up, and up, and up, until she looses sight of it entirely. She thinks the top might open to blue sky. If she’s really lucky, that’s going to be the butterfly room or somewhere else that she actually knows. Far more likely, it’s yet another step in this endless scavenger hunt.
‘This is going to take a while,’ she groans, even as she begins to climb.