Chapter Text
“Are we there yet?” Al mumbled, floating near the ceiling of the escape pod.
“We’re not anywhere,” Sam replied glumly. He reclined against one of the seats, yawning. Due to the lack of gravity, he wasn’t really on the seat, so much as parallel to it, and slightly touching it with parts of his body.
Roy was strapped in across the way, staring out the window at the stars, while River hunched over K9, toying with his controls.
It had been several hours now. Sam guessed about eight. The old Sam would never have imagined being in outer space could cause boredom, but here he was, finding the vast, stunning expanse… a little tedious. Well, he supposed, there was a difference between being in outer space and actually doing something while he was there. That was the issue, really: the lack of stimulation. No books to read, no TV, no deck of cards, nothing.
But finally, a squeal came from the wristlink.
“Update complete,” Ziggy announced. “I’ve now integrated two hundred additional years of historical data. That was quite a nourishing meal. Delicious.”
“’Bout time,” Al said, tapping at the device. “So what’ve you got for us?”
“Gooshie and Tina had five children,” she replied, and proudly added: “They called one of them Ziggy.”
“That’s great, Ziggy,” Sam said with a roll of his eyes. “Anything relevant to our current predicament?”
“I’ll tell you if Admiral Calavicci apologises for his toaster comment earlier.”
Al groaned. “Fine, I’m sorry. Yeesh.” He narrowed his eyes, and Sam could tell he wanted to say something else, but held his tongue.
“Thank you, Al,” Ziggy said sweetly. “According to patrol ship schedules, there should be one making its rounds in this area as we speak, and barring incident it should collect us within the next four hours.”
“Hallelujah,” said River, glancing up from the robot dog.
“And what about what we’re here for?” Sam asked. “Got anything?”
“It’s difficult to know for certain, given that I have no access to what has not happened yet,” Ziggy said, “but I have run several scenarios that suggest the woman Admiral Calavicci leaped into may be a subject of human trafficking. Unfortunately we also cannot question the leapee on the matter, due to the lack of Waiting Room.”
“Human trafficking?” Al’s eyes turned toward Roy. “Some security guard you are, letting that go on under your nose.”
Roy held up his hands defensively. “I don’t know anything about any human trafficking—I swear!”
“Admiral, you raise an interesting point,” Ziggy continued. “With a heavily guarded space station such as the one designated KAIROS—which, for reference, is the one that recently exploded—there is a 78.3 percent probability that the trafficking ring might have key members of the security force involved.”
“And the chances that Roy here has something to do with it?” Al asked.
“Zero!” Roy cried. “You gotta believe me…”
“20.1 percent,” Ziggy announced.
“Twenty…” Roy said, disbelieving. “No, you’re wrong.”
“It’s alright,” Sam reassured him, “That’s pretty low.”
“If—if there’s something going on with my work colleagues, I want to know too,” Roy said, rubbing his arm.
“Well, that’s good,” said Sam. “We can use a man on the inside.”
Roy’s eyes grew wide. “I can’t… I’m too nervous… they’d know something was up.”
Sam smiled slyly. “When I said a man on the inside…”
“What… you wanna go back inside me?” Roy stiffened.
“I’ve never done this before,” Sam admitted. “But there’s a first time for everything. What do you say?”
Roy swallowed. “Um… let me think about it.”
“Okay,” Sam agreed. “I’ll give you until we’re picked up to think it over.”
“Hmm…” River said quietly, her eyes squinted. “I wonder if the human trafficking and the Cybermen could be related? Subjects for conversion, perhaps?”
“But what would she be doing at the bar?” Sam wondered. “There has to be more to it.”
“Sounds like run-of-the-mill sex trafficking to me,” Al said with a look of disgust. “Wonder if that slimeball I slugged was a client? Oh, I sure wish I’d kicked his butt six ways to Sunday.” He slapped a fist into his palm.
“You really are from the twentieth century, aren’t you?” Roy asked, staring at Al with wonder. “Your speech is so old-timey…”
“There’s more where that came from, kid,” Al said, smirking.
At this point, Sam tuned out from the conversation and began to wonder if it was possible to somehow communicate with the woman Al had leaped into.
He conceptualised Sammy Jo’s line of thinking and how she must have implemented the new function. And he began to piece together an understanding of how he might get through to the woman.
As he scanned over Al’s body with the sonic screwdriver, Al gave him a co*ckeyed look.
“Whatcha doin’ there, pal?” he asked. “Last time someone ran one of those things over me, I ended up running half way through London and nearly hacking up a lung.”
“Ziggy said you were sharing the same space with your leapee,” Sam explained, “which means that she’s technically with us—just shunted out of sync with our reality. I’m just trying to figure out if I can temporarily flip it so that she’s here…”
“What’d happen to me?”
“I suspect you’d go to the plane that she’s on right now…”
“And where’s that?”
“Maybe another reality… I’m not entirely sure.”
“She is suspended in time,” Ziggy said. “When she returns, it will be as though no time had passed for her.”
“So it’ll be the same for me?” asked Al.
“Yes, Admiral. But I would exercise caution, Doctor Beckett. You may trigger some psycho-synergy.”
Sam nodded. “Thanks for the heads up, Ziggy.” He grinned at Al. “We wouldn’t want that, would we?”
Al cringed. “Oh for the love of—just do what you gotta do, Sam. If I end up answering to ‘Alberta,’ then so be it.”
“Oh, I must see this,” River said, a highly amused expression on her face as she drifted up from her position at the floor.
Sam took Al’s wrist and tapped some commands into the wristlink.
“Ziggy, if you could send a mild electric charge through Al’s body when I give the signal…”
“Of course, Doctor.”
Sam didn’t quite like how comfortable he was being called that.
“Okay, strap into the pilot seat,” Sam instructed. “Hopefully that’ll keep her still if she freaks out at the sudden change in venue.”
Al did as asked. “Awright Sam… I’m trusting you to not screw this up,” he said, before looking at the other two faces. “Guess I’ll see you all on the other side.”
“Thanks for trusting me, Al,” Sam said warmly. “Okay Ziggy. Go ahead.”
“Activated, Doctor.”
“Uh… here goes—allons-y?” Sam said, and activated the sonic screwdriver.
Sam watched Al’s image flicker and contort until the figure before him was the woman he’d first seen as he’d laid eyes on Al earlier: a blonde woman with a shapely body and bright blue eyes. She was about a half foot shorter than Al, and… well, her skimpy, tight white and purple striped dress certainly suited her better than it did Al, that was for sure. As her eyes focused on Sam, they grew wide and fearful, and she looked around the capsule rapidly.
“Whoa, what the hell happened? Where am I?”
“Hey, it’s alright,” Sam soothed. “We’re friends.”
“Like hell you are!” the woman spat, and began pulling at her seatbelt, before realising what it was. “Why am—” she spun the seat around, and looked out the window. “Oh, Christ, I’m in an escape pod. What happened?!”
“Space station exploded,” Roy said.
The woman laughed. “Yeah, okay, now tell me what really happened.”
“No, he’s right,” said River. “It blew up. Or rather, I blew it up.”
The woman looked at Sam for confirmation, and he nodded sheepishly.
“They’re telling the truth.”
The woman took a moment to process this, before finally rubbing her eyes and sighing. “Well ain’t that a kick in the butt.”
