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The acid vapour stings her eyes, its bitter tang sticking in her throat. The air has begun to thicken with sour curls of white smoke that snake out of cracks in the piping. Dark liquid pools at her feet, licks at the soles of her shoes, and the faint smell of burning rubber fills the air. She walks faster.
The hall seems to stretch on infinitely; the piping that winds along the wall throws odd, dark shapes across her path. Amy lifts the torch. Its halo of light hovers at her chest, casting garish shadows over the lines of her face. She squints into the darkness. Her chest is tight; panic grasps at her with icy fingers, winding its way around her ribs, heart, lungs. “Breathe,” the Doctor had said. She exhales.
“Rory!”
There is only silence and the quavering echo of her own voice, then a hiss as a spray of acid comes down near her shoulder. She jumps as a drop catches on her shirt, scorches through to the skin. Amy swallows down a cough that wells up in her throat. It’s becoming hard to breathe in the narrow hall. Behind her, another pipe splits down its centre with a groan, black bile heaving out onto the floor. Well, she thinks, there’s no turning back now.
“Rory!”
Amy’s eyes dart about the tunnel, searching the deepening blackness around each corner. A chill ghosts its way down her neck and prickles along her shoulders. The sunken eyes of the other Jennifer, the not-Jennifer, flash in her mind’s eye. Its skin is milky, shapeless, shifting. It has a wild expression, veins criss-crossing in sickly tangles near the mouth that opens on a scream.
“You gave them your lives. Human lives are amazing. Are you surprised they walked off with them?” The Doctor’s words echo in her mind as she quickens her pace, one hand holding the torch away from her body, lighting up watery reflections in the dark pools. No, she supposes she’s not at all surprised. But that doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make those things human or real. A copy isn’t the same, can’t be the same.
“Rory!”
The circle of light catches on a door at the end of the tunnel. Amy lengthens her stride. It may not lead her to Rory, but the air is growing heavy, oppressive. She has to get out. The door opens on solid darkness. Then there is a strange noise, like the cover of a grate being pulled away, or a stone rolled back from a cave.
A panel of light appears, and from within a woman looks out at her, face stretched into a smile that betrays neither warmth nor kindness. Amy shivers. The woman nods, a loose curl sliding over the patch across her right eye. She slides the panel shut with the same slow, scraping sound, and the light disappears. Amy slams the door shut.
Her heart lurches underneath her breastbone. “Breathe,” the Doctor had said. This time, it’s a struggle.