The Planet on its Side, Chapter 2
Title: The Planet on its Side
Author: Prairie Dawn
Characters: Ten, Alex (OC) buncha guest OCs
Time Period: For Ten, after Voyage of the Damned, for Alex, after The Elephant in the Room
Rating: K+
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and the universe he inhabits, not mine. Alex and Tempest, mine.
Genre/Warnings: After School Special, Person versus Nature, gratuitous pie, preteen angst. National Weather Service recommends this story be read in a basement.
Previous chapter at a Teaspoon and an Open Mind: http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=35891&chapter=1
The TARDIS rematerialized inside a Quonset hut full of scratched and dented small craft. A thin whistling sound permeated the building, punctuated by a sound like distant thunder as the corrugated metal hemisphere that formed the walls and ceiling rattled in the wind. Carity walked out into an open space a little way in front of the TARDIS and cupped a hand to her mouth. "Echo, echo, echo!" she shouted. Her words reverberated around the interior of the large, corrugated metal building for several seconds. "This way," she beckoned to Alex and the Doctor, then ducked around a dented blue and silver ship and out of sight. The Doctor turned to face her. "Keep your eyes open and don't get lost. It could be nothing, but..."
"But it's not." Alex interrupted.
"Exactly." He started off in the direction Carity had gone.
Alex ran to catch up. "Hey, um, could you maybe not say anything about me and the, you know, thing?" she waved her hand vaguely at her head.
"Don’t worry, I won't say anything unless your safety is at stake. Just stay out of trouble." They ducked under the wing of a little flyer and out a door helpfully marked "EXIT."
The wind almost blew them over. Carity and a teenaged boy were waving to them across the space between buildings. Pink fluff and tiny bits of stem and stick, some of it sharp, whipped through air grown much colder even in the few minutes they had been in the TARDIS. Alex turned her head to the south, where clouds too dark for snow made a threatening line on the horizon. When they were almost at the building Carity and the boy stood in front of, the boy shook his head and pointed at a domed building a hundred meters away. Confused, Alex ran in slow motion, hindered by her increased weight and the buffeting wind. The Doctor caught her arm to drag her along.
They reached a clear, low, domed building. "Down the stairs unless you want to learn to fly," the boy shouted over the rattling of the dome. Alex and Carity stumbled down a narrow flight of stairs, followed by the Doctor. The boy stayed behind, holding the door closed with both hands wrapped around the handle and his body cantilevered over the stairwell. “We’ll wait for your parents before we barricade the door,” he called down to Carity once they had reached the foot of the stairs.
Alex found herself in a basement cafeteria, or at least a reasonable facsimile of one. A dozen people bustled about inside the large room, setting up chairs and folding tables. A grandfatherly man with a cane sat on a carpet remnant, minding a baby and toddler. She tried to fade back toward the edge of the room, where it was less busy.
Carity ran across the room to a tall young man with long dreadlocks who was counting boxes in a corner and making notes on a palm computer. She grabbed his arm, almost knocking the computer from his grasp and started yelling at him and pointing toward the door. He was leading Carity to a chair when the Doctor hurried over, blocking Alex's view.
"You all right?" he asked. Alex nodded. "Well, come on then, work to be done! Stick by me, I don't want to lose you." He studied the room for a moment, then made a beeline for a couple standing by the stairwell.
He interrupted whatever conversation they might have been having to interject, "Hello, I'm the Doctor, just visiting this really interesting planet you've got here. I've been hearing about some technical problems you're having and I wondered if I might make myself useful."
The man turned to the Doctor with an irritated expression. "We have a jet stream inversion likely to hit us in ninety minutes. Winds may hit 200 klicks per hour, and that's if we're not hit by any tornadoes. We do not have time for tourists."
"Seems to me like you need every pair of hands you can get," the Doctor continued smoothly, ratcheting up the charm. She could actually see him shining a little brighter in her mind's eye. She wondered if that was an altogether fair way to behave. "And if you don't mind my asking, why did you have a team out collecting research platforms with a storm like that coming on? With a baby, no less?"
The woman answered him this time. "We couldn't see the storm coming. A solar flare took out our weather and communications satellites, which means no forecasts, no TransMat, and no ability to get a distress signal out. Snow down could start as soon as tomorrow, which means we have to move twenty people, twenty-two with you and your little girl, 2000 klicks sunward in flitters tonight as soon as the weather breaks. If the weather breaks our way."
"And if it doesn't?"
She glanced at Alex and bit off whatever she had been about to say. "The weather had better break our way," she said instead.
"Well," he said, "I can fly a flitter, I can fix almost anything...not while it's in orbit, mind, but anything I can get to, and I have my own ship." He put a heavy emphasis on the last five words.
The door at the top of the stairs banged open. Lila, Van, and Mallena thumped down the stairs covered in half the prairie, followed by the boy who had been holding the door for them. The tall man with the dreadlocks sprinted up the stairs along with a burly woman, both of them carrying large plastic panels.
"Doctor!" Lila shouted, too loudly for the room. She rubbed her ears. "Sorry, it's getting loud out there," she said more quietly. "I'm glad to see you made it here safely." She scanned the room until her eyes lit on Carity, then settled into a more relaxed posture.
She turned to the woman at the foot of the stairs. "Janeane, windspeed's up to 100 kph, and I could see a well formed wall cloud. Is everyone below ground now?"
The woman, Janeane, nodded.
"Did we get the research platforms stowed?" the man at the foot of the stairs asked anxiously.
"Five of nine," Lila replied. "We had to abandon the last four when the wind picked up. Doctor, would you come with me for a moment? The girls are old enough to make themselves useful. I'd like to get them started putting together supper while we discuss the situation in more detail." If that wasn’t a transparent attempt to get rid of her and Carity, Alex didn’t know what was.
"Oh, absolutely. Come on then, Alex," he said cheerfully, then added to Lila, "My ship will easily accomodate a couple of dozen people, drop you off wherever you like."
"Your ship?" Lila said, a little dubiously.
Carity caught up with them. "We'll all fit, mom," she said. "It's a class four nested manifold with a tesseract integrated into it somehow."
Lila quirked an eyebrow at the Doctor, who confirmed Carity’s statement with a nod. The Doctor muttered an aside to Alex, "I think I like it better when they just say it's bigger on the inside."
"That too," Carity said, overhearing them. A bass rumble overhead brought silence to the room. Everyone shared nervous stares for a few heartbeats, then the chatter and bustle resumed. Alex shivered.
"Here we are." Lila opened a door into a small galley, where a pot of chili was bubbling. Cornbread sat cooling in pans on the counter. "You girls make up the plates and bring them out. Nobody is going to want to eat much, but we all need to. Fill the bowls with chili and put a slice of cornbread on the side. There's apple pie to pass out later for dessert. And don't forget to eat something yourselves."
"Okay," Carity said. She started pulling out plates and bowls and setting them on trays. Lila and the Doctor turned to leave.
"I'll fill, you carry," Alex said. She was not about to try carrying hot chili through a gauntlet of milling people, not by a long shot.
"Good idea, Alex, make like an assembly line," the Doctor said as he left them in the galley.
“What do you think they’re talking about that they don’t want us to hear?” Alex said.
Carity found a knife and started to slice the cornbread into squares. “We should have left last week. Winter’s coming early this year, and with the satellites out of commission, we’ve been moving the whole camp a little bit at a time in flitters. If we don’t get out, we’re dead.”
“But the TARDIS can travel in any kind of weather.” At least, Alex couldn’t see any reason why a storm would stop it. She found a stool to climb on and started spooning chili into bowls with one of those giant spoons with the long handles. Carity sliced cornbread and tucked one slice onto each plate, under the rim of the bowl. "You can help carry trays out when you're done filling up the bowls," Carity said, bustling back and forth behind Alex to gather silverware and napkins. The room swayed gently in time with her movements, as though Alex were on a boat.
"I shouldn't. I'll spill chili all over the place." It was taking Alex's entire concentration just to fill the bowls neatly, although that may have just been because filling bowls neatly with a spoon that long would be difficult for anybody, especially anybody short enough to have to stand on a stool to reach the soup pot. "I'm really clumsy."
"Be right back," Carity said, leaving with two trays, one in each hand, the showoff.
Alex hurried to finish filling the bowls while she was gone. She didn't want Carity to bump into her and make her tip the scalding pot over both of them. She was about half done when Carity returned for the next pair of trays. "Mom's right, nobody's eating. I'll threaten them some this trip." This time Carity was gone long enough for Alex to finish. She stepped down off the stool and carefully pushed the large, slightly scary pot of hot chili to the back burner.
Carity reappeared to collect the next set of trays. "Come on, you only have to take one if you don't want to do two."
"I really shouldn't.” She looked around for another job she could do in the kitchen and came up blank. “I'm not really just clumsy,” she admitted, “I have a problem with balancing. I fall down all the time."
"Oh." She looked at the floor for a moment, chewing her lip. "Is that why you walk funny?"
"I walk funny?" Alex felt her cheeks begin to flush. The Doctor had not told her that there was anything obviously wrong with the way she walked.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. My mom always says my mouth gets me into trouble." Now Carity was reddening, her embarrassment heightening Alex's own.
Alex looked for something to say to smooth things over. "No, it’s okay, its good you told me.” She found herself acutely aware of her arm resting on the counter. Would she be doing that if she trusted her sense of balance? Did it look weird? “Walk like me. I want to see,” she said.
"Seriously?"
"I promise I won't get mad. Just show me."
"Okay, let me think." She walked into the hallway and shook her body out like an actress getting into a role. Then she took a few steps. Her arms were held out a little from her body, as if she were balancing on a beam, and her feet were spread a little too far apart. The steps were in an odd rhythm, as if she were avoiding invisible obstacles. "It's not quite that weird, really," she said when she turned around and caught Alex's appalled expression.
Lila was hurrying toward Carity, a stern look on her face. "Quick, back inside," Carity said. They backed into the galley. "I had better carry out some more trays," Carity said, "You make up the pie plates."
Alex slid pieces of pumpkin pie onto plates and vowed she would never walk again, which was stupid, but she might as well wear a big sign around her neck that said "weirdo". She had thought she could pass for normal. Apparently, she couldn’t.
Carity came and went a few more times, until all of the trays were delivered. When she finished, she sprawled on a chair. "My mom thought I was making fun of you. She said I had to apologize to you. So sorry anyway."
Alex waved aside the apology. "I asked you to do it. Did she tell the Doctor?"
Carity gave her a puzzled look. "You call him the Doctor too? Doesn't he have a name?"
"Yes, but he doesn't tell people what it is."
Carity shrugged. "She didn’t say anything in front of me, but he and Mom were in a huddle while I was delivering plates. Why, do you think he’ll be mad at me?"
Alex walked to the door, obsessing about every step, deliberately keeping her hands at her sides, and almost fell onto Carity. "Sorry." She stuck her head out the door, then stepped into the short hall, looking for the Doctor. "Hey!" she shouted. The Doctor looked up. Alex mimed locking her lips closed and tossing the key over her shoulder. He waved back, cheerily. She treated him to an exasperated eye roll and ducked back into the galley.
Her ears started to feel stuffy. She messed with her shield, but lowering and raising it had no effect. "Are your ears popping?" she asked Carity.
"They have been all afternoon," Carity said.
"That's probably just me," she said without thinking, then added, "What's that noise?" It was a roar with a whistle at its heart, a strange, menacing noise distinct from the wind and rain. The noise built into a shriek. The galley shook. Something crashed into the ceiling and dragged across it with the squeal of a giant's fingernails on a chalkboard. The lights went, plunging the two of them into pitch blackness.
"Get down!" Carity yelled, and dove at Alex. Alex curled herself into a ball and covered her head with her arms like she did in tornado drills back home, Carity curled uncomfortably close beside her. The other girl's fear and her own were drawing them together. Carity was yelling, “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die!” over and over, louder than the wind, which was impossible, the noise was too loud to be shouted down. She couldn’t hear anything but the wind and Carity screaming in her mind. Alex was dissolving, crashing. She shielded hard and scooted farther down the bench. A couple of plates of pie rattled to the edge of the counter and bounced off their bodies to the floor.
As abruptly as it came upon them, the tornado, if that's what it had been, moved on. They were in total darkness for another couple of beats, then a backup generator hummed and the lights came on, sickly and bluish at half power. Acoustic tiles from the ceiling littered the floor. Carity giggled. It sounded almost like a sob. "You know what this means," she said, once she had recovered her composure.
"What?" Alex was still breathless and a little sick. She picked piecrust out of her hair.
"Pie before dinner." She grinned wickedly and handed her a slice. Alex took it numbly, resting it on her knees. Carity reached over her head. "We got lucky," she said.
Alex looked up. The chili pot had slid forward and was resting with about a quarter of its bottom overhanging the stove's edge. She had been crouched directly beneath it. Carity carefully pushed the pot back to the rear of the stove, then picked up her slice of pie and bit into it. "Eat, really," she prompted. She was smiling, but her face was still pale and her hands shook.
Alex nibbled the tip of her slice. She supposed it was decent pie, but her appetite was nonexistent. There was a knock at the door. Carity moved out of the way. The Doctor poked his head in. "You two all right?"
They both shrugged. Alex set her pie up on the counter and shoved herself to her feet. "Good, I'm good," she said.
"I wasn't making fun of her," Carity said.
"She wasn't, I asked her to show me what I look like," Alex confirmed.
The Doctor pushed the door wide. "We need everyone out in the main room. Now." He let Carity pass them by. "Things have gotten a bit more serious, I'm afraid," he said to Alex. "The TARDIS isn't where we left it."
Author: Prairie Dawn
Characters: Ten, Alex (OC) buncha guest OCs
Time Period: For Ten, after Voyage of the Damned, for Alex, after The Elephant in the Room
Rating: K+
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and the universe he inhabits, not mine. Alex and Tempest, mine.
Genre/Warnings: After School Special, Person versus Nature, gratuitous pie, preteen angst. National Weather Service recommends this story be read in a basement.
Previous chapter at a Teaspoon and an Open Mind: http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=35891&chapter=1
The TARDIS rematerialized inside a Quonset hut full of scratched and dented small craft. A thin whistling sound permeated the building, punctuated by a sound like distant thunder as the corrugated metal hemisphere that formed the walls and ceiling rattled in the wind. Carity walked out into an open space a little way in front of the TARDIS and cupped a hand to her mouth. "Echo, echo, echo!" she shouted. Her words reverberated around the interior of the large, corrugated metal building for several seconds. "This way," she beckoned to Alex and the Doctor, then ducked around a dented blue and silver ship and out of sight. The Doctor turned to face her. "Keep your eyes open and don't get lost. It could be nothing, but..."
"But it's not." Alex interrupted.
"Exactly." He started off in the direction Carity had gone.
Alex ran to catch up. "Hey, um, could you maybe not say anything about me and the, you know, thing?" she waved her hand vaguely at her head.
"Don’t worry, I won't say anything unless your safety is at stake. Just stay out of trouble." They ducked under the wing of a little flyer and out a door helpfully marked "EXIT."
The wind almost blew them over. Carity and a teenaged boy were waving to them across the space between buildings. Pink fluff and tiny bits of stem and stick, some of it sharp, whipped through air grown much colder even in the few minutes they had been in the TARDIS. Alex turned her head to the south, where clouds too dark for snow made a threatening line on the horizon. When they were almost at the building Carity and the boy stood in front of, the boy shook his head and pointed at a domed building a hundred meters away. Confused, Alex ran in slow motion, hindered by her increased weight and the buffeting wind. The Doctor caught her arm to drag her along.
They reached a clear, low, domed building. "Down the stairs unless you want to learn to fly," the boy shouted over the rattling of the dome. Alex and Carity stumbled down a narrow flight of stairs, followed by the Doctor. The boy stayed behind, holding the door closed with both hands wrapped around the handle and his body cantilevered over the stairwell. “We’ll wait for your parents before we barricade the door,” he called down to Carity once they had reached the foot of the stairs.
Alex found herself in a basement cafeteria, or at least a reasonable facsimile of one. A dozen people bustled about inside the large room, setting up chairs and folding tables. A grandfatherly man with a cane sat on a carpet remnant, minding a baby and toddler. She tried to fade back toward the edge of the room, where it was less busy.
Carity ran across the room to a tall young man with long dreadlocks who was counting boxes in a corner and making notes on a palm computer. She grabbed his arm, almost knocking the computer from his grasp and started yelling at him and pointing toward the door. He was leading Carity to a chair when the Doctor hurried over, blocking Alex's view.
"You all right?" he asked. Alex nodded. "Well, come on then, work to be done! Stick by me, I don't want to lose you." He studied the room for a moment, then made a beeline for a couple standing by the stairwell.
He interrupted whatever conversation they might have been having to interject, "Hello, I'm the Doctor, just visiting this really interesting planet you've got here. I've been hearing about some technical problems you're having and I wondered if I might make myself useful."
The man turned to the Doctor with an irritated expression. "We have a jet stream inversion likely to hit us in ninety minutes. Winds may hit 200 klicks per hour, and that's if we're not hit by any tornadoes. We do not have time for tourists."
"Seems to me like you need every pair of hands you can get," the Doctor continued smoothly, ratcheting up the charm. She could actually see him shining a little brighter in her mind's eye. She wondered if that was an altogether fair way to behave. "And if you don't mind my asking, why did you have a team out collecting research platforms with a storm like that coming on? With a baby, no less?"
The woman answered him this time. "We couldn't see the storm coming. A solar flare took out our weather and communications satellites, which means no forecasts, no TransMat, and no ability to get a distress signal out. Snow down could start as soon as tomorrow, which means we have to move twenty people, twenty-two with you and your little girl, 2000 klicks sunward in flitters tonight as soon as the weather breaks. If the weather breaks our way."
"And if it doesn't?"
She glanced at Alex and bit off whatever she had been about to say. "The weather had better break our way," she said instead.
"Well," he said, "I can fly a flitter, I can fix almost anything...not while it's in orbit, mind, but anything I can get to, and I have my own ship." He put a heavy emphasis on the last five words.
The door at the top of the stairs banged open. Lila, Van, and Mallena thumped down the stairs covered in half the prairie, followed by the boy who had been holding the door for them. The tall man with the dreadlocks sprinted up the stairs along with a burly woman, both of them carrying large plastic panels.
"Doctor!" Lila shouted, too loudly for the room. She rubbed her ears. "Sorry, it's getting loud out there," she said more quietly. "I'm glad to see you made it here safely." She scanned the room until her eyes lit on Carity, then settled into a more relaxed posture.
She turned to the woman at the foot of the stairs. "Janeane, windspeed's up to 100 kph, and I could see a well formed wall cloud. Is everyone below ground now?"
The woman, Janeane, nodded.
"Did we get the research platforms stowed?" the man at the foot of the stairs asked anxiously.
"Five of nine," Lila replied. "We had to abandon the last four when the wind picked up. Doctor, would you come with me for a moment? The girls are old enough to make themselves useful. I'd like to get them started putting together supper while we discuss the situation in more detail." If that wasn’t a transparent attempt to get rid of her and Carity, Alex didn’t know what was.
"Oh, absolutely. Come on then, Alex," he said cheerfully, then added to Lila, "My ship will easily accomodate a couple of dozen people, drop you off wherever you like."
"Your ship?" Lila said, a little dubiously.
Carity caught up with them. "We'll all fit, mom," she said. "It's a class four nested manifold with a tesseract integrated into it somehow."
Lila quirked an eyebrow at the Doctor, who confirmed Carity’s statement with a nod. The Doctor muttered an aside to Alex, "I think I like it better when they just say it's bigger on the inside."
"That too," Carity said, overhearing them. A bass rumble overhead brought silence to the room. Everyone shared nervous stares for a few heartbeats, then the chatter and bustle resumed. Alex shivered.
"Here we are." Lila opened a door into a small galley, where a pot of chili was bubbling. Cornbread sat cooling in pans on the counter. "You girls make up the plates and bring them out. Nobody is going to want to eat much, but we all need to. Fill the bowls with chili and put a slice of cornbread on the side. There's apple pie to pass out later for dessert. And don't forget to eat something yourselves."
"Okay," Carity said. She started pulling out plates and bowls and setting them on trays. Lila and the Doctor turned to leave.
"I'll fill, you carry," Alex said. She was not about to try carrying hot chili through a gauntlet of milling people, not by a long shot.
"Good idea, Alex, make like an assembly line," the Doctor said as he left them in the galley.
“What do you think they’re talking about that they don’t want us to hear?” Alex said.
Carity found a knife and started to slice the cornbread into squares. “We should have left last week. Winter’s coming early this year, and with the satellites out of commission, we’ve been moving the whole camp a little bit at a time in flitters. If we don’t get out, we’re dead.”
“But the TARDIS can travel in any kind of weather.” At least, Alex couldn’t see any reason why a storm would stop it. She found a stool to climb on and started spooning chili into bowls with one of those giant spoons with the long handles. Carity sliced cornbread and tucked one slice onto each plate, under the rim of the bowl. "You can help carry trays out when you're done filling up the bowls," Carity said, bustling back and forth behind Alex to gather silverware and napkins. The room swayed gently in time with her movements, as though Alex were on a boat.
"I shouldn't. I'll spill chili all over the place." It was taking Alex's entire concentration just to fill the bowls neatly, although that may have just been because filling bowls neatly with a spoon that long would be difficult for anybody, especially anybody short enough to have to stand on a stool to reach the soup pot. "I'm really clumsy."
"Be right back," Carity said, leaving with two trays, one in each hand, the showoff.
Alex hurried to finish filling the bowls while she was gone. She didn't want Carity to bump into her and make her tip the scalding pot over both of them. She was about half done when Carity returned for the next pair of trays. "Mom's right, nobody's eating. I'll threaten them some this trip." This time Carity was gone long enough for Alex to finish. She stepped down off the stool and carefully pushed the large, slightly scary pot of hot chili to the back burner.
Carity reappeared to collect the next set of trays. "Come on, you only have to take one if you don't want to do two."
"I really shouldn't.” She looked around for another job she could do in the kitchen and came up blank. “I'm not really just clumsy,” she admitted, “I have a problem with balancing. I fall down all the time."
"Oh." She looked at the floor for a moment, chewing her lip. "Is that why you walk funny?"
"I walk funny?" Alex felt her cheeks begin to flush. The Doctor had not told her that there was anything obviously wrong with the way she walked.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. My mom always says my mouth gets me into trouble." Now Carity was reddening, her embarrassment heightening Alex's own.
Alex looked for something to say to smooth things over. "No, it’s okay, its good you told me.” She found herself acutely aware of her arm resting on the counter. Would she be doing that if she trusted her sense of balance? Did it look weird? “Walk like me. I want to see,” she said.
"Seriously?"
"I promise I won't get mad. Just show me."
"Okay, let me think." She walked into the hallway and shook her body out like an actress getting into a role. Then she took a few steps. Her arms were held out a little from her body, as if she were balancing on a beam, and her feet were spread a little too far apart. The steps were in an odd rhythm, as if she were avoiding invisible obstacles. "It's not quite that weird, really," she said when she turned around and caught Alex's appalled expression.
Lila was hurrying toward Carity, a stern look on her face. "Quick, back inside," Carity said. They backed into the galley. "I had better carry out some more trays," Carity said, "You make up the pie plates."
Alex slid pieces of pumpkin pie onto plates and vowed she would never walk again, which was stupid, but she might as well wear a big sign around her neck that said "weirdo". She had thought she could pass for normal. Apparently, she couldn’t.
Carity came and went a few more times, until all of the trays were delivered. When she finished, she sprawled on a chair. "My mom thought I was making fun of you. She said I had to apologize to you. So sorry anyway."
Alex waved aside the apology. "I asked you to do it. Did she tell the Doctor?"
Carity gave her a puzzled look. "You call him the Doctor too? Doesn't he have a name?"
"Yes, but he doesn't tell people what it is."
Carity shrugged. "She didn’t say anything in front of me, but he and Mom were in a huddle while I was delivering plates. Why, do you think he’ll be mad at me?"
Alex walked to the door, obsessing about every step, deliberately keeping her hands at her sides, and almost fell onto Carity. "Sorry." She stuck her head out the door, then stepped into the short hall, looking for the Doctor. "Hey!" she shouted. The Doctor looked up. Alex mimed locking her lips closed and tossing the key over her shoulder. He waved back, cheerily. She treated him to an exasperated eye roll and ducked back into the galley.
Her ears started to feel stuffy. She messed with her shield, but lowering and raising it had no effect. "Are your ears popping?" she asked Carity.
"They have been all afternoon," Carity said.
"That's probably just me," she said without thinking, then added, "What's that noise?" It was a roar with a whistle at its heart, a strange, menacing noise distinct from the wind and rain. The noise built into a shriek. The galley shook. Something crashed into the ceiling and dragged across it with the squeal of a giant's fingernails on a chalkboard. The lights went, plunging the two of them into pitch blackness.
"Get down!" Carity yelled, and dove at Alex. Alex curled herself into a ball and covered her head with her arms like she did in tornado drills back home, Carity curled uncomfortably close beside her. The other girl's fear and her own were drawing them together. Carity was yelling, “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die!” over and over, louder than the wind, which was impossible, the noise was too loud to be shouted down. She couldn’t hear anything but the wind and Carity screaming in her mind. Alex was dissolving, crashing. She shielded hard and scooted farther down the bench. A couple of plates of pie rattled to the edge of the counter and bounced off their bodies to the floor.
As abruptly as it came upon them, the tornado, if that's what it had been, moved on. They were in total darkness for another couple of beats, then a backup generator hummed and the lights came on, sickly and bluish at half power. Acoustic tiles from the ceiling littered the floor. Carity giggled. It sounded almost like a sob. "You know what this means," she said, once she had recovered her composure.
"What?" Alex was still breathless and a little sick. She picked piecrust out of her hair.
"Pie before dinner." She grinned wickedly and handed her a slice. Alex took it numbly, resting it on her knees. Carity reached over her head. "We got lucky," she said.
Alex looked up. The chili pot had slid forward and was resting with about a quarter of its bottom overhanging the stove's edge. She had been crouched directly beneath it. Carity carefully pushed the pot back to the rear of the stove, then picked up her slice of pie and bit into it. "Eat, really," she prompted. She was smiling, but her face was still pale and her hands shook.
Alex nibbled the tip of her slice. She supposed it was decent pie, but her appetite was nonexistent. There was a knock at the door. Carity moved out of the way. The Doctor poked his head in. "You two all right?"
They both shrugged. Alex set her pie up on the counter and shoved herself to her feet. "Good, I'm good," she said.
"I wasn't making fun of her," Carity said.
"She wasn't, I asked her to show me what I look like," Alex confirmed.
The Doctor pushed the door wide. "We need everyone out in the main room. Now." He let Carity pass them by. "Things have gotten a bit more serious, I'm afraid," he said to Alex. "The TARDIS isn't where we left it."