"Doctor!" Peyton cries, throwing her arms up in front of her face in disgust. "How many times have I told you to project your clothes onto my brain?"
The Doctor doesn't answer, but a passive-aggressive whir of his sonic lets Peyton know its safe to lower her arms. "Better?"
"Yes, obviously," Peyton rolls her eyes, storming up to the flight deck, her arms folded around her middle. She still isn't used to the holographic clothes around her body and feels a little awkward.
She had never actually been to the Church of the Papal Mainframe, she'd heard of it of course in dusty old books and in the Doctor's ramblings. The fact that they were able to take a hold of the situation before the Doctor did was cause for concern for the two of them. But the Doctor trusted them, surprising Peyton as he didn't seem the religious type.
She looks up to the monitor and the millions of life forms registering amongst the thousands of ships in orbit around the shielded planet. Everyone's here, why?
Her gaze travels down to the desktop and the cyborg head mounted on it. "I feel like it's looking at me," Peyton complains, shifting away from it and still covering her body self consciously.
"I no longer contain a visual cortex," the broken Cyberman says in its monotone voice, not quite the chilling timbre of the cyber race but a strange distorted version.
"Handles is harmless," the Doctor says, flapping a hand in the air as he types furiously with the other. "Now, what should be our priority is getting closer to the planet, find out why everyone's here."
"Maybe they're just here for the same we are," Peyton says matter of factly, walking around the console to lean back against it beside him. The Doctor looks down at her with a quizzical face, expecting her to elaborate. She leans forward, smirking up at him. "Curiosity."
"Nice thought," the Doctor says, walking away from her and around the console. "But the scan definitely shows Cyber ships, Dalek ships, Sontaran ship. I have never met a curious Sontaran."
"Worth a try," Peyton shrugs. She looks up to the ceiling and the rotating mechanism above her. "We're not going to get any closer in here, the shields are too tight."
"That's why we're not going!"
Peyton hadn't noticed that while her back was turned the Doctor had wandered off beneath the Tardis flight deck.
She walks over to the railing and leans over it with her arms folded, elbows resting on the metal. "And your plan is?"
The Doctor emerges into view with a wine red cape latched around his shoulders and holding a Dalek eyestalk in a hand held high above his head. His face is half taken up by a goofy grin. "I'm going to make some friends."
Peyton raises an eyebrow. "Is the cape really necessary?"
"Yes."
• • •
As Peyton slams the button to teleport the Doctor back onto the ship, he appears right where he disappeared at the bottom of the stairs. This was the seventh attempt at finding out who was around, the Doctor beamed over to a nearby ship to try and peacefully talk. Their neighbours had other ideas.
"Every ship I go on, they just shoot at me," the Doctor says, throwing off the cape in a huff, leaving it in a pile as he climbs the stairs. "I said, 'put me on a ship'. I didn't say 'put me on a Dalek ship'. Don't put me on a Dalek ship, when I'm holding a bit of broken Dalek!"
YOU ARE READING
The Time Lord's Apprentice
Fanfiction"But, you're impossible!" "Yeah, and the world is ending, I don't think now is the time." Peyton is an orphan, taken from her mother as an infant by the Unified Intelligence Taskforce. She is raised separately from other children because she is spec...
