Serenity: Soldiers searching the TARDIS Evans, who was the leader, motioned for his men to enter the box. They were hesitant, because they, too, had heard the angry man over the radio, but they followed their orders: this time they not only came from Evans, but from their leader’s superior, as well. These were orders they could not afford to ignore if they wanted to continue work in the Alliance. And if they weren’t with the Alliance, who knows where they’d be? “Clarke,” Evans snapped, as soon as they were all in the box, “you hold at the door. Keep a watch out. Flynn, you’ve got the thing in the center there, but don’t touch it unless you absolutely have to. Rice, ‘round the arches: yours. Again, don’t touch what you don’t have to.” He walked ‘round the room, marveling at it, wondering what that man over the radio had meant, and who he was. “Sir,” came the query, breaking his line of thought, “What about me?” It came from a soldier absently standing by the three chairs by the sort of console thing in the center. “What am I to do?” “You, Pierce,” answered Evans slowly, “are going to come with me.” And with that, he set out to go further in. * * * Serenity: Soldiers searching the TARDIS: Perspective: Clarke The junior officer who’d acted out earlier in the dining area moved to stand post in the door, keeping watch both inside and outside the strange box. It was a disconcerting feeling to say the least, so he kept his eyes on either one sight or another. He was very glad he’d been assigned a mindless job like this one, because it gave him time to reconcile what he was seeing with the basic laws of physics he was taught at the preliminary academy. Volume, he remembered suddenly, as he watched the others look around in amazement, is equal to the length of an object times its width times its height. Or its volume can be measured by displacement, he remembered suddenly, by watching how much water moves when it is placed in it. This most certainly did not fit inside the police box exterior, though. Not in the slightest. It was a square based box. One, maybe two people could fit inside, but it was huge inside, and not only massive, it was … strange. It was, he realized in awe of the strange box, alien. * * * Serenity: Soldiers searching the TARDIS: Perspective: Flynn Flynn was the most technical of the group, and as he looked at the center console, for that’s what he had it pegged as, he could only be amazed at how it was still working. It looked like it had been held together with the most… oh. It had been held together with the strangest things. There was even a mallet hanging off one bit of it, and it looked like it was used to get things going rather often, he thought. “This is in no way human,” he mumbles to himself, as he works. “If this were human, then the Independents have won the war and I’m not with the Alliance. Just look at this technology… it’s nothing like I’ve seen. Well, the wires and bits, yeah, I’ve seen, but… come on. There is absolutely no way that we did this… it’s bigger on the inside, and I can’t identify what this is, beyond some sort of control console...” * * * Serenity: Soldiers searching the TARDIS: Perspective: Evans and Pierce “Sir,” ventured the junior officer, “is this even remotely possible?” “Pierce, I couldn’t tell you that if I wanted to. It looks real, but how are we to know?” He continued further into the seemingly endless corridors, and it wasn’t long before he was lost. The strange interior of the box surely didn’t fit in the exterior? If it had, the five of them wouldn’t have fit. So what was this? “Sir,” he queried again, “do you believe in aliens?” “What do you take me for, a complete backbirth? There are no aliens.” “Then what’s this? It’s obviously not Alliance, if our superiors didn’t know what it was, and we don’t know what it is, and if the Independents had had this kinda technology, we wouldn’t have won the war. So what is this, if not human?” “I don’t know, Pierce, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this: it means I’m going to have to write at least two separate reports about today’s search. One on the ship, and another on the whatever-the-hell this thing is. And it means you all are giving me reports when we get back on our ship, so I can give the superiors what they want.” They walked on further for a bit, and Evans held his hand up to motion that they stop. “Sir?” “I think we’ve gone past this before…”

Perspective: The Doctor, with River Well, he reckoned, at least they’ve not carted me off to a lab yet. ‘YET’, though, he reminded himself, gave them time to do so. While he sat there, looking at the strange little girl who co-inhabited this cell (though, to be fair, she was here first, so he was the co-inhabitant, or even the intruder), he remembered that he’d taken a sheet of what could only be dubbed as electronic paper from the guy in charge (-ish). As he takes it out, he readied himself to figure out just how much damage they’ve managed to do, just from the amount of time they’d had available to run tests on the blood he belatedly realized the handcuffs had extracted. Not much, he hopes, and regards the ‘paper’ with a less than hopeful outlook. “So he knew only this? This is better than I could have hoped for… still, it’s not good they’ve got even this.” “It’s been worse than this though, but never this bad. How will you save her?” He sighed. “They’ve gotten me, and they’ve gotten her, but they’ve never seen her.” He paused for a moment, and a realization hit him as soundly as that woman had back on Serenity. “I haven’t told you anything about that. Are you mucking about in here,” he asked, tapping his forehead. “’s not my choice, they make me. They took me, and they hurt me, and I don’t know what’s wrong, but I see things, and I hear things, and they don’t make sense, and you don’t make sense. But it’s all my fault that you’re here and I didn’t mean to and I can’t stop.” She moaned, but when she looked up, her gaze was again clear. “But you’re the worst, ‘cause you make sense, and you don’t make sense, and you talk, but you don’t, and you mourn, but you’re the cause of your grief, and she’s made you realize things about you that you’d rather not remember. But now they’ve got all three of you: the wanderer who makes no sense, the girl who fears all and none, and her. And you and she have a bond going back so far, but you both talk so loudly to each other I can’t hear anything else, and it hurts, but I can’t stop listening.” He sat for a second, apparently ignoring her. “Right. That just about sort that out? My head’s not the safest place to go roaming about, much less if I don’t know it’s happening.” And so can’t hide my proper thoughts, he almost said, but didn’t. “Much more confusing for you lot when you don’t tell me you’ve any sort of telepathic talent.” ‘cause I can’t shut out the confusing emotions that I am. “Yes. You’re quieter now. Inverse relationship, you get quieter, she gets louder and more confused. But who am I but a circuit hardwired to be closed, unable to shut myself off?” She lay down on the bunk, stretched out upon it as far as such bunks can be stretched upon, and promptly went to sleep. “Yes,” he mused to himself, still processing through the girl’s babbling, and, on another level of consciousness, worrying about his TARDIS. “She is confused. I would be too…” * * * Serenity: Engine room: Perspective: The TARDIS The TARDIS is by no means happy. Not only had her Doctor been assaulted just after leaving her, she’d been left open on a strange ship, and now there were soldiers milling about inside her. Well, the two who had gone further inside were having fun, at least, ‘cause she was mucking about with the order and arrangement of her corridors again. To be fair, they’d just wandered in, so she was just keeping them busy, confused, and irritated. But there was that one by her console, and she didn’t like him there. Most of the soldiers had figured out that she was alien technology, but that guy at the console was getting rather close to touching her controls. What had really worried her was when her Doctor had gotten quiet to her, and in response, she’d gotten louder. She could still hear his muffled thoughts to a point though, and it was to her surprise that she found there was a sleeping girl in the cell with him. She was further surprised when she found that that girl had telepathic talents. Oh. Right. That would explain why the Doctor settled down. Complexity such as his with the unshielded mind of that girl… she would be in unimaginable pain… unimaginable. With a loving nudge to her Doctor, she settles her own mind, quieting her thoughts

Alliance ship: Interrogation room: Perspective: The Fed As the fed sits there, reading over his papers, he realizes one’s missing. The one that he’d been reading when the alien had been in the room. More accurately, the one he’d been reading just before the alien had been taken to another cell for his disruption of orders. I'll be sure to get that back. He gets up, leaving his report for later, when he has more information. Pressing the button again on his desk, he speaks. "I need five guards on the security hall, and one of the high security cells opened – we've found fugitives."

GASP!! The TARDIS got a POV? … Yeah. I was a bit surprised at that myself. Mind, that was just weird. I'm unknowledgeable as to where that came from. I think I was high at the time. (Is this another fluff chapter? Geez... my plot sucks. Or lack of plot. This(the sucking)'ll stop later.)