Book 18 - The Plastic Parish

Chapter 1 — Clean Signal

The TARDIS received it like a postcard slipped under a door.

Not a distress call. Not a scream. Not even a request.

An invitation.

The console room was quiet in the way it got quiet when something was trying to look harmless. Lights steady. Rotor breathing. No alarms. Just a single, crisp transmission sitting on the central display as if it had always belonged there.

A smiling face.

A tidy typeface.

A line of text that made Yara’s mouth tighten before she’d even finished reading it.

PARISH NINE WELCOMES YOU.
COMMUNITY HOUR — ALL FRIENDS INVITED.
COME AS YOU ARE. STAY AS YOU LIKE.

Raven leaned on the railing, arms folded, eyes on the message like it might blink. “That’s not how real people talk.”

The Doctor didn’t answer immediately. His fingers hovered over the controls, not touching. He was listening in the way he listened to a room before he entered it—eyes unfocused, attention somewhere behind the sound.

MINO fluttered down from the upper gantry and landed on the console edge with a soft click. His optics pulsed once, then again, as he drew the transmission into himself and peeled it apart layer by layer.

“Broadcast origin: asteroid-class settlement. Designation: Parish Nine. Signal strength: unusually clean. Compression artifacts: minimal.”

Yara snorted. “Clean signals don’t happen by accident.”

The Doctor’s gaze sharpened. “No. They happen when someone wants you to trust them.”

Raven’s eyes didn’t leave the smiling face. “Or when something has practiced.”

The message looped. The same soft image. The same harmless cheer. Somewhere beneath it, the Doctor heard what MINO had already flagged: a faint, almost inaudible carrier wave. Not music. Not language. A low-frequency underpinning that pressed gently at the edges of thought, like a hand trying to guide a chin toward a screen.

The Doctor flicked a dial, isolating audio. The console gave him the surface layer first: a warm voice—female—pleasantly worn, as if it belonged to someone who smiled with their whole face.

“—and remember,” the voice said, “you are not alone. Not here. Not ever, if you choose us.”

The Doctor stilled. Raven’s posture changed a fraction. Yara’s eyes narrowed.

The voice continued, smooth as honey. “Community Hour begins at the chapel bell. Bring your hands. Bring your stories. Bring your grief if you must. We can hold it for you.”

Yara cut in, low. “That’s a cult.”

Raven didn’t disagree. “That’s a lure.”

MINO added, unhelpfully honest, “That is also statistically effective messaging.”

The Doctor didn’t smile. He reached to adjust the audio again and stripped away the warm voice, leaving only the carrier wave.

It wasn’t sound, not properly. It was a pressure.

A rhythm.

A pulse that felt like it belonged to something breathing in a place where breathing shouldn’t happen.

Raven’s eyes flicked to the Doctor. “That’s not human.”

“No,” he said quietly. “It’s not.”

Yara stepped closer, arms folded. “So we don’t go.”

The Doctor’s mouth twitched—almost a smile, almost an apology. “We do.”

Yara’s expression hardened. “You just said it’s a lure.”

“I did.” He tapped the screen with one finger. The smiling face did not change. “But it’s a lure aimed at passing ships, and if it catches someone else—someone without a TARDIS and an exit plan—it won’t be a postcard. It’ll be a trap.”

Raven’s voice was calm. “Classic pattern.”

The Doctor looked at her. “Yes.”

Raven didn’t flinch from the word. Classic. Old shapes. Old hungers. Things that learned how to dress themselves in friendliness because teeth were easier to use when no one ran.

MINO’s optics brightened. “Additional note: message is tagged to multiple travel-lane beacons. It is being rebroadcast intentionally. Range: widening.”

Yara stared at the screen. “So it’s advertising.”

The Doctor nodded once. “Yes.”

Raven’s gaze sharpened. “Where is Parish Nine?”

The Doctor pulled up the coordinates. A small asteroid—large enough to hold a settlement, small enough that you could walk around its curve in an afternoon if you were desperate. A company outpost once, by the looks of the old registry entries. Retrofitted. Renamed. Rebranded.

PARISH NINE was not its original designation.

The Doctor frowned at the file history. “It used to be a plastics reclamation station.”

Yara blinked. “Plastics.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “Why would a reclamation station need a chapel?”

The Doctor didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The answer was in the question.

MINO’s voice remained precise. “Supply chain records indicate recent influx of polymer feedstock shipments beyond normal capacity. Unusual for an off-grid station.”

Yara’s jaw tightened. “So: too much plastic, a chapel, and a broadcast telling strangers they’re not alone.”

Raven’s tone was flat. “And a carrier wave under the hymn.”

The Doctor reached up and switched the view-screen to external sensors. The TARDIS complied, painting a ghostly outline of the asteroid settlement from long range.

It looked… cheerful.

Too cheerful.

A ring of habitation modules wrapped around a central structure that could have been a refinery stack once and had been dressed into a tower—painted white, topped with a bright, simple cross.

Bunting. Lights. A little plaza.

And the plastics plant itself—adjacent—larger than the town needed. Vats. Extrusion lines. Mould bays. A recycling cathedral.

The Doctor leaned closer. “Heat signature is… steady. Strong. But not industrially efficient.”

“Meaning?” Yara asked.

He didn’t take his eyes off the scan. “Meaning the plant isn’t just working. It’s… running warm. Like it’s being kept ready.”

Raven’s voice was quiet. “Ready to print something.”

MINO chimed. “Carrier wave modulation suggests distributed actuator control is possible.”

Yara’s eyes flicked to MINO. “Say that like a person.”

MINO’s head tilted. “The signal may control objects.”

Silence settled for a beat.

The Doctor’s face went very still.

Raven watched him closely—not for fear, but for recognition. Because there were shapes in the universe that the Doctor carried like scars.

Yara watched him too. She was learning the difference between his curiosity and his caution. This was caution.

He reached out and gently—almost fondly—tapped the console, as if the TARDIS could be reassured by manners.

“Alright,” he said softly. “We go in quiet. We don’t announce ourselves. We don’t join Community Hour.”

Yara pointed at him. “No speeches.”

The Doctor blinked. “I—”

“No speeches,” Yara repeated.

Raven’s mouth twitched. “He’ll try.”

The Doctor sighed. “Fine. Minimal speeches.”

MINO fluttered to the top of the console and projected a thin overlay: broadcast lattice lines across local space, all pointing back to Parish Nine like spokes.

“It wants company,” MINO said.

The Doctor’s eyes flicked up. “Or it wants components.”

Yara’s expression tightened. “And you’re going anyway.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “Because if this is what I think it is—”

Raven’s voice cut in, quiet but sharp. “Then it’s already happened before.”

The Doctor didn’t deny it. He set coordinates.

The TARDIS shuddered gently as she moved, not with the rough urgency of a chase but with the smooth inevitability of a decision already made.

As the rotor rose and fell, the smiling face still watched them from the screen.

Warm.

Inviting.

Wrong.

Yara stared at it and felt something crawl at the back of her neck—not supernatural, not metaphysical—just the primal discomfort of being offered comfort by something that hadn’t earned it.

Raven watched the Doctor’s hands. Steady. Fast. Careful.

MINO kept listening to the carrier wave, tiny and tireless, like an owl watching a field at night.

The asteroid grew on the viewscreen.

Its lights twinkled. Its tower shone white. The chapel cross caught starlight and threw it back like a promise.

Then the audio feed shifted—without anyone touching it.

A bell tone rang out, soft and pleasant, and the warm voice returned.

“Community Hour begins soon,” it said. “We are so glad you’re here.”

The Doctor’s fingers froze mid-motion.

He hadn’t opened a channel.

He hadn’t accepted a handshake.

And yet—

It knew.

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “It saw us.”

Yara’s voice went low. “Or it felt us.”

MINO’s optics pulsed. “Incoming targeted broadcast. Authentication bypass detected.”

The Doctor stared at the screen, at the smiling face, at the friendly words pushed into their space like a hand on a shoulder.

His voice was very quiet when he spoke.

“That,” he said, “is not a welcome.”

The TARDIS slowed, aligning to land in the asteroid’s shadow rather than its plaza.

No fanfare. No arrival trumpets. Just a careful descent toward the dark side of a bright little town that wanted to be seen.

Raven checked the inside of her coat—tools, not theatrics. Yara adjusted her kit strap like she was tightening her resolve.

The Doctor held the lever for dematerialisation and paused a fraction of a second, looking at his companions.

“Old-school rules,” he said. “We don’t let it split us. We don’t let it name us. And we don’t let it offer us what we want.”

Raven’s eyes softened by a hair. “Still here.”

The Doctor nodded once. “Still here.”

Yara didn’t echo it. Not yet. But she stood closer than she had the first time she’d heard those words.

The TARDIS landed.

Outside, Parish Nine’s bell kept ringing—gentle, friendly, patient.

Calling its people to the chapel.

Calling strangers, too.

And somewhere beneath the bell, beneath the voice, beneath the invitation, the carrier wave pulsed like a slow, hungry tide.

Waiting to be fed.

///

Chapter 2 — White Smiles

The airlock opened with a polite hiss.

Not the harsh bark of a working dock or the groan of a neglected seal. Polite. Maintained. As if Parish Nine had a committee for first impressions and they took their minutes seriously.

The Doctor stepped out first, not because he wanted to lead but because he wanted to feel the place before it touched Raven or Yara. The ground underfoot wasn’t ground at all—plating over rock, textured for traction. The asteroid’s low gravity made every movement feel fractionally too light, like the whole settlement was holding itself up on manners.

Outside, the dark side of the rock wasn’t truly dark. Floodlights ran in neat, evenly spaced lines along the exterior walkways, casting white pools across pipes and conduits and the curved hull of habitation modules. Every bulb worked. Every panel looked wiped clean.

No grime.

No clutter.

No life.

Yara stepped out and immediately looked for people. She found none. Not even a worker in coveralls, not even a bored security guard pretending not to care. The walkways were empty, the doors shut, the windows lit from within but veiled—frosted film or glare or something that made it difficult to see faces.

Raven followed, quiet, eyes travelling. She didn’t look for people first. She looked for the seams: cameras, vents, speaker grilles, any place a voice could hide.

“Too tidy,” she murmured.

The Doctor nodded. “Too curated.”

MINO drifted out last, hovering just above shoulder height, optics pulsing as he mapped the settlement’s layout in quick, elegant lines. “Broadcast nodes detected. Multiple. Distributed across residential ring and chapel tower.”

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “So the whole place is wired to speak.”

“It’s wired to sing,” Raven said softly.

They moved along the service walkway, boots tapping lightly. Their sound echoed too cleanly. The air smelled faintly of ozone and antiseptic, like a hospital corridor that had been sprayed an hour ago and was waiting for the next shift.

A sign hung above the junction: painted white, letters cheerful, with a small cross in the corner.

WELCOME HOME.

Yara snorted. “I hate that.”

Raven’s gaze flicked over the sign. “It’s not for you.”

The Doctor didn’t argue. His eyes were on the small cameras mounted at intervals—tiny black lenses set into white housings, angled perfectly to catch every face. He raised a hand and gave them a little wave without smiling.

“Hello,” he said quietly.

No response.

But the hairs on his arms lifted anyway, as if something behind the lenses had leaned forward.

They reached the edge of the residential ring. A plaza opened up—small, circular, lined with benches and planters. The planters were full of flowers that looked too perfect in the white light.

Plastic.

The petals held their shape without trembling in the thin air, their colours bright and unbothered by dust. A child’s pinwheel stood in one planter, spinning gently in a breeze that shouldn’t exist.

Yara stared at it. “There’s no atmosphere.”

MINO’s wings ticked. “Ventilation output likely generates micro-currents. Pinwheel rotation appears deliberate. External fan source detected—subtle.”

The Doctor looked toward the chapel tower visible beyond the plaza. The tower’s base was a squat, repurposed industrial structure that had been painted and softened with decorative paneling. White paint. Gold trim. The cross on top glinted.

And beneath the cross, a screen.

Large. Bright. Mounted like a public noticeboard.

It displayed a smiling face—same as the console message. The same warm eyes. The same reassuring mouth.

The face blinked.

Once.

Slow.

Yara’s stomach tightened. “That’s the voice.”

Raven’s voice was quiet. “That’s the mask.”

The Doctor stepped toward the plaza and stopped when he saw the memorial wall.

It ran along the curve of the ring, a series of neat panels with names engraved in tidy rows. Hundreds of names. Some with dates. Some without. Some with small, laminated photos pinned beneath them.

A place to grieve.

A place to remember.

A place to be looked at while you did it.

The Doctor walked closer, reading without meaning to. Names that sounded like workers. Names that sounded like families. Names that sounded like children.

And then he saw something that made his throat tighten.

A photo of a woman smiling.

And the same woman, alive, standing in the plaza’s far shadow.

She wore a pale coat and a scarf, hands folded politely in front of her. She watched the memorial wall as if she was visiting it like a tourist.

Yara noticed at the same time. “Doctor.”

The Doctor didn’t answer. His eyes were on the woman.

Raven didn’t move. She simply shifted her weight, ready.

The woman stepped forward into the light.

Her smile was perfect.

Her eyes were soft.

Her movements were slightly too smooth, like someone had practiced walking in a mirror.

“Hello,” she said. Her voice matched the broadcast. Warm, worn, kind. “You must be new.”

Yara’s mouth opened. No sound came out. The wrongness pressed on her like humidity.

The Doctor spoke first, voice careful. “Hello.”

“I’m Reverend Edda Muir,” the woman said. She extended her hand, palm open, as if it would be rude not to take it. “Welcome to Parish Nine. We’re so glad you heard us.”

The Doctor looked at her hand and didn’t take it.

Raven’s eyes narrowed.

Yara’s voice came out flat. “We didn’t answer.”

Reverend Muir’s smile didn’t change. “Oh, you don’t have to. Coming is enough.”

The Doctor’s gaze flicked to the memorial wall again. “That’s… a lot of names.”

Muir followed his gaze as if she was proud of it. “We’ve had our hardships,” she said. “This rock was never meant to be kind. But we endure. We hold each other. We don’t let grief make us strangers.”

Yara’s jaw tightened. “You put a chapel on a plastics station.”

Muir’s smile warmed, as if Yara had asked something sweet. “We put a chapel where we needed one.”

The Doctor’s eyes flicked to the screen behind her. The smiling face there was… the same face. Exactly the same. Same eye crease. Same mouth shape. Same slow blink.

He felt the cold, quiet certainty settle in his gut.

This wasn’t a person who’d become a preacher.

This was a preacher-shaped thing.

Raven’s voice was low. “Reverend. That screen—”

Muir turned her head toward it, and the screen turned its head toward her at the same time. Perfectly.

Yara’s breath caught.

Muir spoke as if nothing was strange. “Community Hour begins soon,” she said. “You’ll like it. It helps to be together.”

The Doctor watched her. “Does it.”

“It does,” Muir said, and her tone carried absolute conviction. “We remember. We share. We forgive. We welcome.”

She looked at them one by one, her eyes kind in a way that made the Doctor’s skin itch.

“And sometimes,” she added gently, “we get back what we thought we’d lost.”

The Doctor’s gaze snapped back to the memorial wall. He walked closer, not to the wall—toward the photo he’d noticed.

Muir didn’t stop him. She watched like a hostess.

The photo’s label read:

SERA HOLT — LOST IN DOCKING ACCIDENT.

The date was two years ago.

The Doctor turned slowly.

Across the plaza, a woman stepped forward from the shadow.

Not Muir. Someone else.

A different face. Different posture.

But the smile—white, calm, certain—was the same shape of welcome.

She approached with careful, gentle steps, as if she didn’t want to startle them.

Yara’s voice came out as a whisper. “No.”

The woman stopped at a polite distance and lifted her hands slightly, palms out. “It’s alright,” she said softly. “You look frightened. You don’t have to be.”

Raven’s eyes flicked over her wrists, her neck, the seams of clothing.

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. He could see it now: a faint line at the base of the throat where skin met something that wasn’t skin. So subtle it would pass under normal light. Under this harsh white glow, it caught like the edge of a film.

The woman smiled at him like she knew him. Like she was meant to.

“I’m Sera,” she said. “Sera Holt.”

Yara looked from the photo to the woman and back again, as if her brain was trying to decide which reality it was allowed to believe.

The Doctor kept his voice steady. “You died.”

Sera’s smile softened, as if he’d said something sad. “I did,” she said, without drama. “And then I didn’t.”

Yara’s hands clenched. “That’s not how dying works.”

Reverend Muir stepped closer behind Sera like a shadow giving permission. “It’s how being held works,” Muir said gently. “Sometimes the universe gives back.”

The Doctor’s gaze slid across the plaza. The benches. The planters. The shutters on the windows.

Something moved behind one of the frosted panes. A silhouette. A face pressed close.

Then another.

Then another.

Watching.

Waiting.

And all of them smiling.

White smiles in bright light.

Yara’s voice went low. “How many ‘returned’ are there?”

Muir’s smile didn’t falter. “Enough,” she said. “As many as needed.”

The Doctor swallowed. He forced his mind to stay on the practical.

“Where’s your mayor?” he asked.

Muir turned slightly and gestured toward a nearby door marked CIVIC OFFICE. “Mayor Calder Vane will be delighted,” she said. “He loves visitors. He says they remind us we’re part of something bigger.”

Yara muttered, “Part of something eaten.”

Raven’s gaze held on Muir. “Reverend,” she said softly, “did you send the broadcast?”

Muir’s eyes warmed. “We did,” she said. “Together.”

The Doctor heard it then—beneath the warm voice, beneath the bell tone, beneath the plaza’s clean hum—

That carrier wave.

Not loud.

Not obvious.

A gentle pressure behind thought, as if the settlement itself was whispering stay.

He felt it press lightly at the edges of his mind, looking for a place to settle.

He pushed back. Quietly. Instinctively.

And in that moment, Reverend Muir’s smile sharpened by a fraction, as if she’d felt resistance.

“Oh,” she said softly, almost pleased. “You’re… interesting.”

Yara stepped half a pace closer to the Doctor without looking at him. A guard move. A human move.

Raven’s hand rested inside her coat near her tools, her posture still, coiled.

The Doctor kept his voice civil. “We’ll speak to the mayor.”

“Of course,” Muir said. “But first—please.” She gestured toward the chapel tower. “Come to Community Hour. You’ll understand then. We all do.”

The Doctor didn’t move.

Yara said flatly, “No.”

Muir’s smile remained kind. “You will,” she said, in the tone people used when they were certain the world would comply. “It’s what you came for.”

The Doctor met her eyes. “We came because your broadcast wasn’t an invitation,” he said quietly. “It was an intrusion.”

For the first time, a flicker—so brief it might have been imagination—passed through Muir’s face. Something behind the warmth. Something that didn’t blink.

Then she smiled again. “You’re tired,” she said, gently. “Travel does that. Come. Sit. Let the bell hold you.”

Sera Holt stepped forward slightly, eyes soft. “It helps,” she whispered. “It really does.”

Yara’s throat tightened. Not because she believed it. Because the longing in Sera’s voice sounded real.

That was the cruelty of it.

The Doctor looked at Sera, then at the memorial wall, then at the faces behind the frosted glass.

A town full of grief, offered comfort in exchange for consent.

He turned toward the civic office door.

“We’ll start with the mayor,” he said.

Reverend Muir didn’t stop them. She simply watched, hands folded, smile perfect.

“As you like,” she said warmly. “Stay as you like.”

As they walked, the carrier wave pulsed again—faint, patient, hungry.

And behind them, the chapel bell began to ring.

Softly.

Pleasantly.

Like a lullaby you didn’t remember learning.

Yara’s jaw clenched harder with every step.

Raven didn’t look back.

The Doctor did, once—just once—and met Reverend Muir’s eyes across the plaza.

Her smile widened a fraction, as if she’d tasted the shape of his resistance and found it satisfying.

Then the civic office door slid shut behind them with a clean, airtight hiss.

Outside, the bell kept ringing.

And the town kept smiling.

///

Chapter 3 — The Chapel Feed

The civic office smelled like lemon cleaner and warm plastic.

Not the sharp sting of industrial solvent—something gentler, manufactured to imply care. The room was small, almost cosy by necessity: a desk bolted to the floor, two chairs, a wall screen displaying rotating civic notices in soft colours. A little vase of plastic flowers sat in the corner, perfect petals catching the light like they’d been polished.

Mayor Calder Vane rose from behind his desk as if he’d been waiting for them.

He was tall, well-dressed for a place like this—pressed jacket, collar straight, hair carefully arranged. Not a worker. Not a survivor. A presenter. The sort of man who could make a power ration sound like a privilege.

“Friends,” he said with a wide smile, arms opening slightly in the universal gesture of please like me. “Welcome to Parish Nine.”

Yara didn’t sit. Raven didn’t sit. The Doctor sat anyway—not to relax, but to own the room by refusing to perform the same tension.

Vane’s smile barely twitched at that. He sat too, folding his hands on the desk like he was about to host a segment.

“I’m Mayor Calder Vane,” he continued warmly, “and on behalf of the parish, the plant, and every good soul on this rock—thank you for coming. We don’t often get visitors who arrive without an invoice.”

Yara’s voice cut in, flat. “Your broadcast reached us without permission.”

Vane’s smile softened, apologetic in a practiced way. “Ah. Yes. Our Community Hour invitation.” He leaned back slightly, head tilting with a sympathetic sigh. “Reverend Muir can be… enthusiastic. She believes hope is contagious.”

Raven’s gaze didn’t leave his face. “So do viruses.”

Vane chuckled, as if she’d made a charming joke. “You’ll find Reverend Muir sincere,” he said. “A little intense, perhaps, but sincere. She’s held this town together through hard times.”

The Doctor watched him carefully. The mayor spoke like a man who had rehearsed sincerity until it became muscle memory.

“Hard times,” the Doctor echoed. “Your memorial wall suggests a great many.”

Vane’s eyes dipped for a fraction of a second—almost imperceptible—then lifted again, smile still present but gentler now, as if he’d changed lighting.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “We’ve had… losses.” He spread his hands. “Parish Nine was a reclamation station once. Plastics. Polymer recovery. Nobody glamorous, nobody famous. But important work. Then the contracts dried up. Supply lanes shifted. People left. Those who stayed… endured.”

Yara didn’t soften. “And then dead people came back.”

The mayor’s smile held, but the muscles around his eyes tightened. “Returned,” he corrected gently. “We don’t call them dead.”

Raven’s voice was low. “Do they call themselves dead?”

Vane’s smile flickered. “They call themselves… blessed.”

The Doctor leaned forward slightly. “Mayor. Sera Holt is memorialised as deceased.”

Vane nodded, slow. “Yes.”

“And she’s walking around,” the Doctor said.

“Yes,” Vane repeated. “And you saw what that means.”

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “What it means is you’re lying to your people.”

Vane’s expression remained calm, but something sharpened beneath it. “No,” he said softly, as if speaking to a child. “It means we’ve been given mercy.”

Raven’s gaze hardened. “By whom.”

Vane’s smile widened a hair. “By community,” he said. “By faith. By the refusal to let grief be the final word.”

Yara’s mouth tightened. “That’s not an answer.”

The Doctor’s fingers tapped the desk once—light, thoughtful. “Let’s change subject,” he said. “Your plant.”

Vane blinked, as if the shift surprised him. “Our plant?”

“The plastics reclamation facility is operating beyond normal capacity,” the Doctor said. “Your heat signature is high. Your broadcast lattice is unusually strong. Your air smells like polymer.”

Vane’s smile returned to its full setting. “Ah,” he said brightly. “Yes. We’ve had a… renaissance.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “On an asteroid settlement.”

Vane nodded eagerly. “A miracle, truly. Supply lines restored. Feedstock shipments resumed. We’re producing again.” He gestured toward the wall screen, and as if on cue, it shifted to a cheerful clip of workers in white coveralls waving at the camera in a spotless factory bay.

Their smiles were perfect.

Yara stared at the screen. “That’s staged.”

Vane’s voice stayed warm. “It’s a message of reassurance. Our people need to see themselves thriving.”

The Doctor watched the clip and felt the faint pressure of the carrier wave even through the civic office walls. It pulsed under the audio, barely audible, but it made the smiles on the screen feel… sticky.

He leaned in. “Mayor,” he said quietly, “do you know what a Nestene Consciousness is?”

Vane blinked. Just once. Then his smile resumed as if the word had bounced off him.

“I’m afraid I don’t,” he said. “Is that a travel authority?”

Raven’s voice was colder. “Stop pretending.”

Vane’s eyes flicked to her, and for a moment the charm slipped. Something like irritation surfaced, quickly pressed down.

“I’m not pretending,” he said, voice still civil but less warm. “I’m managing.”

Yara stepped closer to the desk, hands flat on its edge. “Managing what?”

Vane inhaled, slow. “You don’t understand what this place was,” he said quietly. “It was a dying rock. We were watching our people leave, watching our children grow up in a place nobody visited and nobody cared about. We were going to become a footnote in some freight ledger.”

The Doctor didn’t interrupt. He let Vane speak. Old-school rule: let them tell you what they think they’re saving.

Vane’s voice softened again. “Then Reverend Muir arrived.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “She wasn’t here before.”

Vane shook his head. “She was transferred. Clergy support program. A kindness from somewhere with money.” He smiled faintly. “She brought… structure. Ritual. People stopped drifting. They started gathering. They started holding each other up.”

“And then?” Yara pressed.

Vane hesitated. The hesitation was small, but it was real.

“Then,” he said, “people started… returning.”

The Doctor’s voice remained steady. “How.”

Vane looked down at his hands. When he spoke again, his tone was careful, as if he was choosing words that would keep the world intact.

“Community Hour,” he said. “The chapel feed. We gather. We share names. We share faces. We remember. And sometimes, someone… walks back into the room.”

Yara’s voice was hard. “That’s impossible.”

Vane’s smile came back, bright, defiant. “So we thought.”

Raven’s gaze cut toward the wall screen again. The clip had shifted to an image of the chapel interior: rows of benches, a white cross, and at the front, a bank of screens displaying faces—smiling, tearful, familiar.

A feed.

A broadcast.

The Doctor’s stomach tightened.

“Where is the chapel’s broadcast equipment?” he asked.

Vane’s smile widened as if he’d been asked about a proud civic project. “In the tower,” he said. “It’s our beacon. Our voice to the lanes. It’s brought us… attention.”

Yara muttered, “That’s one word for it.”

The Doctor stood. “We need to see it.”

Vane rose too, too quickly. “Of course,” he said, and the warmth returned, dialled up. “You’ll be honoured guests. Reverend Muir will be so pleased.”

Raven’s eyes flicked to the door. “Do we have a choice?”

Vane smiled. “You always have a choice,” he said gently. “We simply… invite you toward the best one.”

The Doctor felt the carrier wave pulse a little stronger, like the town had leaned closer.

He met Vane’s eyes. “Then invite us to the chapel,” he said, voice calm. “And don’t route anything into my head while you do it.”

Vane’s smile faltered—just a fraction. Then he laughed lightly, as if the Doctor had made a witty remark.

“My dear friend,” he said, “we don’t route anything into anyone. We offer. People accept.”

Yara’s gaze was sharp as broken glass. “And if they don’t?”

Vane’s smile stayed. “They come around.”

The door opened with another polite hiss, and the moment they stepped into the corridor again, the bell tone grew louder—not physically louder, but closer in perception. Like the settlement’s sound system had decided to cradle their ears.

They walked toward the chapel tower.

Outside, the plaza had filled slightly. Not crowded, not yet—but people stood in small clusters now, hands folded, faces turned toward the chapel as if drawn by gravity. Adults. Children. Workers in clean white coveralls. Elderly residents leaning on rails.

And among them, scattered like quiet miracles: the Returned.

Smiling.

Watching.

Waiting.

Nell Quill slipped out from behind a pillar near the civic office doorway, moving like she didn’t want to be noticed by the adults. She was maybe sixteen, hair pulled into a rough braid, eyes too alert for her age. She caught the Doctor’s eye and made a small motion with her hand—two fingers pointing to her own eyes, then to the chapel.

Watch.

Raven noticed too. She didn’t react, but her attention shifted.

Yara murmured, barely moving her lips. “Teen’s signalling.”

The Doctor nodded once, slight. “I saw.”

They approached the chapel.

Up close, it was worse.

The building’s original industrial skeleton was still visible beneath the paint—support struts, old access plates repurposed as decorative panels. Someone had covered the harsh angles in white cladding and gold trim, like makeup on a bruise. A banner hung above the doors:

COMMUNITY HOUR — YOU ARE HELD HERE.

Yara’s mouth tightened. “That’s a threat disguised as a hug.”

Raven’s voice was quiet. “That’s the point.”

The chapel doors were open, as if they never closed.

Inside, warm light spilled out, tinted slightly amber—comfort lighting. A soft scent of sweet incense hung in the air, but underneath it the Doctor could still smell polymer.

They stepped in.

The chapel was full of screens.

Not just one at the front. Multiple, arranged in an arc like an altar. Each screen displayed a face—smiling, crying, laughing, grieving. Some were live feeds from the congregation: people in the benches, looking up at themselves on screen.

Others were not.

Faces that didn’t belong to anyone currently present. Faces from the memorial wall.

The Doctor felt the carrier wave immediately, stronger here—woven into the lighting, the audio, the feed itself. It pressed at the edges of thought like warm water.

Raven’s posture tightened. Yara’s jaw clenched. MINO’s optics flickered rapidly as he analysed.

“Carrier wave amplitude increased by 64%,” MINO reported softly. “Emotionally resonant visual stimuli present. Probability of cognitive compliance: elevated.”

Yara hissed, “Compliance.”

At the front of the chapel, Reverend Edda Muir stood with hands folded, serene as a statue.

She looked up as they entered and smiled as if she’d been expecting them all her life.

“Friends,” she said warmly. “Welcome. Please—sit. Let the feed hold you.”

No one in the benches turned to look at them. Not properly. A few heads tilted, slow. People smiled at the screens, not at each other, as if the screens were the true congregation.

The Doctor didn’t sit.

He walked forward, slow and deliberate, keeping his eyes on Muir.

“What is this?” he asked quietly.

Muir’s smile softened. “This is Community Hour.”

“No,” the Doctor said, voice steady. “This is a broadcast lattice.”

Muir’s eyes held his. “This is remembrance,” she corrected gently. “And remembrance is a form of love.”

Yara stepped forward beside the Doctor. “And love is a lever.”

Muir looked at Yara with kind eyes. “You’re hurting,” she said softly, like a diagnosis. “All of you are. Everyone is. We’re simply… honest about it here.”

Raven’s voice came low. “Honest would be telling them what the carrier wave does.”

Muir’s smile didn’t change, but something in her eyes sharpened by a fraction, like a cat recognising another predator.

“It does what it must,” she said. “It holds.”

The Doctor’s gaze flicked to the screens. One face in particular—an older man with a scar on his cheek—smiled and blinked.

Then the image changed, and for a moment the screen showed static—a grey, rippling pattern.

Within that static, something moved.

Not a face.

A shape, barely visible. Like a ripple in liquid.

The Doctor’s blood went cold.

He’d seen that kind of ripple before.

Not in this place. But in the universe.

Plastic didn’t ripple like water unless something lived behind it.

Raven noticed too. Her hand slipped inside her coat, fingers brushing a tool.

MINO hovered closer to the screens, optics narrowing. “Anomalous pattern detected within feed static. Non-human signal structure. Correlates with Nestene signatures in database.”

The Doctor’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Yes.”

Muir’s smile widened. “You see,” she said softly, almost pleased. “You understand.”

Yara’s voice was flat, dangerous. “You brought it here.”

Muir’s head tilted. “It came when we called,” she said, as if that was a hymn line.

The Doctor stared at her, and for the first time since stepping into the chapel, his calm began to harden into something else—not rage, but the cold clarity of a Doctor who recognised a trap built from kindness.

“You built a door,” he said.

Muir’s eyes shone with conviction. “We built a bridge,” she replied. “Between the living and the lost.”

Yara snapped, “Between the living and the hungry.”

A ripple moved across the screens again—subtle, like a tide shifting under glass.

Several people in the benches sighed at the same time, eyes half-lidding as if soothed.

And then, on one of the screens, a face appeared that did not belong to anyone in the chapel.

A young woman. Smiling. Tears on her cheeks.

A name tag under the image, in the chapel’s tidy font:

SERA HOLT.

Yara’s stomach dropped. Raven’s gaze tightened.

Outside the chapel, somewhere beyond the doors, the bell rang again.

Inside, the screens hummed.

The carrier wave pressed.

And Reverend Muir opened her hands slightly, like a conductor beginning a piece.

“Community Hour will begin,” she said softly, “as soon as everyone is ready.”

The Doctor didn’t move.

He looked at the faces on the screens—grief packaged as comfort, comfort offered as control.

Then he looked at Raven and Yara, and his voice turned to a low, private instruction.

“We don’t let it get a foothold,” he murmured. “Not in our minds. Not in theirs.”

Yara’s eyes stayed on the screens. “How?”

MINO answered before the Doctor could. “By disrupting the feed.”

Raven’s mouth twitched. “And by refusing the offer.”

The Doctor nodded once.

Reverend Muir smiled at them like she’d already won.

And behind her, in the screens’ rippling static, something vast and patient moved—touching the edges of this little chapel door, testing how wide it could open.

///

Chapter 4 — Returned

Sera Holt sat in the chapel’s side room like she belonged there.

Not a holding cell. Not a confession booth. A “quiet space,” the sign on the door said in the same tidy parish font. A small couch. Two chairs. A kettle unit bolted to the wall. A bowl of wrapped sweets on a low table. Comfort arranged like furniture, curated to lower shoulders and loosen tongues.

The Doctor didn’t sit. Raven didn’t sit. Yara sat on the edge of a chair like she was taking up as little space as possible so she could leave faster.

Sera smiled at them with patient gentleness, hands folded in her lap. She wore a pale cardigan and an embroidered scarf—parish colours, white and gold. The fabric looked new. Her hair was brushed, tidy. Her skin had the warm, living flush of someone who had slept well and eaten regularly.

Which was wrong.

The Doctor’s eyes kept being drawn to the base of her throat where the faint line caught the light. Not a scar. Not a seam, exactly—more like the edge of a film that didn’t quite want to be visible unless you looked too closely.

Sera’s eyes met his, calm and soft. “You’re looking for the trick,” she said.

“I’m looking for the truth,” the Doctor replied.

Sera’s smile didn’t fade. “They’re the same thing, sometimes.”

Yara’s voice came out sharp. “You died.”

Sera’s gaze flicked to Yara, then softened as if she understood her anger. “Yes,” she said. “In docking. The outer lock jammed. The pressure—” She paused, as if remembering a story she’d told herself until it stopped hurting. “It was quick.”

Yara leaned forward. “Tell me something that only the real Sera Holt would know.”

Sera blinked slowly, then smiled as if she’d been asked for a favourite song. “Calder Vane hates the smell of coffee,” she said. “He pretends he doesn’t. But his father used to drink it in the morning, and it makes him think of a time when things were simpler. He keeps mint sweets in his left desk drawer to cover it up.”

Yara looked toward the door as if expecting Vane to be standing there, offended.

Sera continued gently, “Kell Dorran sings when he thinks no one can hear. Old freight shanties. He’s not very good. He does it anyway.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “Those could be learned.”

Sera’s gaze shifted to Raven, and for a moment the warmth in her expression looked almost… admiring. “You’re hard,” she said softly. “I like that. You don’t let things in.”

Raven didn’t react. “Answer the question.”

Sera tilted her head, thinking. “When I was eight,” she said, “my mother made me wear a plastic flower pin to church on Earth. It scratched my collarbone all day. I cried in the bathroom and swore I’d never wear plastic flowers again.” She smiled, small and sad. “The irony is not lost on me.”

The Doctor felt his chest tighten. Not because he believed her. Because the memory sounded like a memory.

Yara’s jaw clenched. “Still doesn’t prove you’re you.”

Sera’s gaze returned to the Doctor. “What would prove it?” she asked, softly, almost pleading. “My fear? My pain? My grief? Would you like me to perform those for you?”

The Doctor held her eyes. “No,” he said quietly. “I’d like you to be free.”

Sera’s smile softened. “I am free.”

Behind them, through the thin wall, the chapel feed’s hum pulsed faintly. A lullaby under the room.

Raven’s gaze flicked toward the wall. “Are you.”

Sera’s eyes didn’t move. “You don’t understand what it was like before,” she said. Her voice remained warm, but there was an edge of steel in it now, as if she was defending something precious. “This place was dying. People were leaving. Children were growing up in a town that had no future. Everyone was tired. Everyone was afraid. Reverend Muir gave us something.”

Yara’s voice was flat. “A drug.”

Sera shook her head. “A hand,” she corrected. “Something to hold onto.”

The Doctor’s fingers curled slightly. “A hand that doesn’t belong to her.”

Sera smiled patiently again. “You speak as though that matters,” she said. “Comfort is comfort. Does it matter who built the bed if you can finally sleep?”

Raven’s voice was low. “It matters when the bed has straps.”

Sera’s gaze sharpened, just for a second. Then the warmth returned, like a curtain dropping back into place.

“You’re frightened,” she said gently. “It’s alright. Everyone is frightened when they come here at first.”

Yara’s face tightened. “We’re not ‘coming here.’ We’re investigating.”

Sera’s smile widened. “Everyone thinks that too.”

The Doctor watched her carefully. Her speech patterns—soothing, circular, gently redirecting. Not argument. Not debate. Reframing. Like a broadcast designed to lower resistance.

He leaned in slightly. “Sera,” he said softly. “When did you come back?”

Sera’s gaze lifted toward the ceiling as if she was recalling a date on a calendar. “Three months ago,” she said. “During Community Hour. Reverend Muir spoke my name. People cried. Someone held my old scarf.” She touched the embroidered cloth at her neck. “And then I was… here.”

“Where were you before that?” the Doctor asked.

Sera blinked slowly. “Gone,” she said simply.

Yara snorted. “Convenient.”

Sera’s eyes softened again. “It felt like drowning,” she said, and for the first time the warmth cracked enough to let something raw through. “Like being held under dark water. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. But I could feel… voices. Faces. Like they were above me, calling. And then—” She swallowed. “Then something lifted me.”

The Doctor’s blood went cold.

That description wasn’t theology. It was physics. It sounded like being suspended in a living medium—thick, cold, pressure-bearing.

He’d seen it. A gelatinous reservoir. A consciousness in plastic.

He kept his voice even. “And what lifted you, Sera.”

Sera smiled. “The parish,” she said. “The feed. The love.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “Not the thing behind the feed.”

Sera’s gaze flicked to Raven. The smile stayed, but her eyes hardened briefly, as if Raven had said something rude in polite company.

“You don’t have to call it a thing,” Sera said gently. “You can call it what it is. Help.”

Yara’s voice went sharp. “Help doesn’t print people.”

Sera’s smile softened. “You keep using the harsh words,” she said. “Print. Control. Monster. Why do you insist on making it ugly?”

“Because it is ugly,” Yara snapped.

The Doctor held up a hand, quieting without force. He looked at Sera again, searching for the smallest crack where a real person might still be—if “real” even applied.

“Sera,” he said, “do you ever feel… pulled? Like you can’t look away from the screens?”

Sera’s smile turned almost indulgent. “Of course,” she said. “It’s soothing.”

“And if you try not to?” the Doctor pressed.

Sera’s gaze stayed on him, unblinking now. “Why would I try not to?” she asked softly. “Why would I choose pain when I could choose peace?”

Raven’s voice was barely audible. “Because peace isn’t peace if it’s mandatory.”

Sera’s head tilted. “Is your pain optional?” she asked Raven, and the question landed like a knife wrapped in silk.

Raven’s eyes didn’t flinch. “Yes,” she said quietly. “Mine is. I choose it.”

Sera stared at her for a beat, and something like confusion crossed her face—genuine, brief. Then the smile returned.

“You’re very devoted,” Sera said softly. “To struggle.”

The Doctor stood straighter. “Sera. I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer it honestly.”

Sera looked up at him, serene. “Of course.”

“Do you ever leave Parish Nine?” the Doctor asked.

Sera’s smile held. “Why would I?” she replied.

The Doctor’s voice sharpened slightly. “Because if you’re truly alive, you should be able to go anywhere.”

Sera’s eyes flickered. Just a tiny movement—like a system checking a rule.

Then she smiled again. “We don’t need anywhere,” she said. “We have each other.”

Yara leaned forward. “That’s not an answer.”

Sera’s voice remained gentle. “We tried,” she said. “Once. A man—Joss Merren—he thought he could leave. He said the parish was ‘wrong.’” She sighed, sad. “He got very confused. He wandered. He came back. And then he apologised.”

Yara’s face went cold. “He came back because you brought him back.”

Sera’s smile softened. “He came back because he was loved.”

The Doctor felt anger rise like heat in his chest—not at Sera, not even at Muir, but at the mechanism. At the way grief had been turned into infrastructure.

He kept his voice low. “Sera. Joss Merren. Where is he now?”

Sera blinked once. “He’s fine,” she said. “He helps with the shop.”

Raven’s gaze snapped to the Doctor. Shop. Plastic souvenirs. Auton-ready.

The Doctor nodded slowly. “Right.”

Yara’s voice was harsh. “You’re not her.”

Sera looked at Yara with pity, as if Yara had just said something heartbreakingly childish. “I’m more her than the wall,” she said softly. “I’m more her than ashes.”

Yara’s jaw clenched. She looked like she wanted to hit something and hated herself for wanting it.

The Doctor spoke before Yara could. “Sera,” he said gently, “I’m going to ask you to do something very simple.”

Sera smiled. “Anything.”

He pointed toward the door. “Walk out of this room,” he said, “and don’t look at a screen.”

Sera’s smile held for half a second.

Then it tightened.

She glanced toward the wall—toward the faint hum of the feed behind it—like someone glancing toward a window when they hear their name.

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “There.”

Sera swallowed. Her hands clenched slightly in her lap, fingers pressing into fabric.

“I can,” she said softly.

“Do it,” the Doctor said.

Sera stood.

For a moment she looked entirely human—nervous, uncertain, trying to please. She took one step toward the door.

Then another.

Her smile returned, strained now. Her breathing quickened slightly.

Yara watched, rigid.

Sera reached the door. Her hand hovered near the latch.

And then—

The chapel feed’s hum rose, just a fraction, like a mother calling a child back.

Sera’s head turned sharply toward the sound.

Her smile relaxed instantly.

Her shoulders dropped.

She exhaled, relieved.

Then she turned back to the Doctor and smiled as if the last ten seconds hadn’t happened.

“There,” she said warmly. “See? I’m fine.”

Yara’s voice went flat. “You didn’t do it.”

Sera blinked. “I did,” she said. “I stood. I walked. I’m here.”

The Doctor’s voice stayed gentle, but the words were iron. “You couldn’t not look.”

Sera’s smile softened into patient sadness. “You’re very determined to see a cage,” she said.

Raven’s voice came low. “Because it is.”

For a heartbeat, Sera’s eyes hardened again—quick, sharp, like a warning light.

Then the sweetness returned.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” she said softly. “You don’t have to fight this. You can let it hold you too.”

The Doctor felt the carrier wave press at the edge of his mind even here, in this side room. It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.

It was confident.

He looked at Sera and saw the real hook: not a monster in the walls, not a weapon, not a threat.

A promise.

A promise to end loneliness.

To end grief.

To end the ache that made people do stupid, desperate things.

It was the most dangerous offer in the universe.

The door opened suddenly.

Reverend Muir stood there, smiling as if she’d been listening the whole time—which, the Doctor realised, she probably had.

“Isn’t she wonderful?” Muir said warmly. “We’re so grateful you’re meeting our Returned properly. It helps outsiders understand.”

Yara’s voice was sharp. “We understand enough.”

Muir’s eyes stayed kind. “Then you’ll join us,” she said softly. “Community Hour begins soon. The bell is calling.”

Raven’s gaze cut to Muir. “We’re not joining.”

Muir’s smile did not change. “Everyone joins,” she said, gentle as a lullaby.

The Doctor stepped toward the door, placing himself between Muir and Sera without making it look like a block.

“Reverend,” he said quietly, “your feed is a net.”

Muir’s eyes shone. “A cradle,” she corrected.

The Doctor’s voice dropped lower. “It’s the same thing, depending on whether you can climb out.”

Muir’s smile widened a fraction, almost pleased. “You talk like someone who has been lonely,” she said softly.

The Doctor felt the words hit close to bone.

Raven’s eyes flicked to him—quick, grounding.

Yara’s voice cut in, blunt and human. “Stop fishing.”

Muir turned her smile toward Yara, unoffended. “Oh,” she said gently, “I’m not fishing. I’m feeding.”

The chapel bell rang again—closer now, louder in perception.

Outside, footsteps began to gather, a soft shuffle of people heading toward the chapel like sleepwalkers.

Sera’s smile brightened as if she could feel it. She took a step toward the door, eager.

“Come,” she whispered. “It’s beautiful.”

The Doctor watched her, and the old-school dread in him hardened into purpose.

“Raven,” he said softly.

Raven met his eyes.

“We don’t let the feed start,” he said.

Raven’s reply was immediate, quiet. “We cut it.”

Yara stood, jaw tight. “How?”

The Doctor looked past Muir toward the chapel, toward the tower, toward the screens that were about to open wider.

He spoke with calm certainty.

“We find where the feed is sourced,” he said. “And we take the power away.”

Reverend Muir smiled at him like a teacher pleased with a student finally asking the right question.

“Oh, Doctor,” she said warmly, as if the name was a compliment. “You’re going to be such a gift to us.”

The Doctor didn’t answer.

He simply stepped out into the corridor, the bell ringing in his ears, the carrier wave pressing gently at his thoughts like a hand that assumed it would be allowed.

And behind him, Sera Holt followed—smiling—drawn toward the chapel like a moth toward a light that promised warmth and delivered flame.

///

Chapter 5 — The Recycling Plant

The plant sat beside the chapel like a second religion.

From the plaza it looked almost handsome—white cladding, gold trim, clean signage with friendly arrows. But once you passed through the service gate the paint gave way to the truth: industrial ribs, heavy doors, old warning placards half-covered by newer “parish” branding.

WELCOME, VOLUNTEERS!
KEEP OUR HOME CLEAN.

The Doctor read the sign without blinking. Raven read it like an insult. Yara read it like a threat.

A second sign below it, smaller, in the same tidy font:

PLEASE SMILE.

Yara’s mouth tightened. “Absolutely not.”

MINO hovered near the ceiling and watched a camera lens rotate smoothly to track them. “Optical tracking active,” he noted. “Non-threatening posture requested.”

Raven’s voice was quiet. “It can request whatever it likes.”

The plant door opened before any of them touched it.

Not dramatically. Not a hiss of vacuum. Just a neat, timed slide as if the building had been told, they’re here now.

Warm air poured out—sweet and chemical and faintly floral, like someone had tried to perfume a factory. The Doctor felt it coat the back of his throat and wanted to cough, but didn’t. He refused to give the place that satisfaction.

Inside, the floor was pristine. Too pristine. Marked lanes. Bright lighting. Everything scrubbed and arranged. The kind of cleanliness that wasn’t achieved by effort but by design.

A man stepped forward from the control desk near the entrance—broad-shouldered, grease under his nails despite the polish, hair tied back with a strip of cloth like a worker who didn’t have time for vanity.

He smiled, but his smile was the first one the Doctor had seen here that looked like it belonged to a living face.

“Kell Dorran,” he said, offering a hand.

The Doctor didn’t take it. Not rudely. Just… not at all.

Dorran’s hand hovered, then lowered. His smile flickered, then recovered into something wary.

“Right,” Dorran said. “New folks don’t shake much. That’s fine.”

Yara stared at his outstretched hand like it might bite. Raven didn’t even look at it.

Dorran cleared his throat and gestured deeper into the plant. “Mayor said you wanted a tour.”

“We want the truth,” Yara said.

Dorran’s smile thinned. “Same thing, if you’re lucky.”

The Doctor watched him closely. Dorran’s eyes moved constantly—checking doors, checking ceiling corners, checking the far end of the bay where a line of huge vats sat under soft white light.

“Do you want us here?” the Doctor asked.

Dorran hesitated. Then he shrugged, a tired movement. “Do I want strangers in my plant when the whole town’s… like this?” He glanced toward the chapel tower visible through a high window. “No.”

“Do you need us here?” the Doctor asked.

Dorran’s jaw tightened. “Yes.”

That was honest.

“Show us,” the Doctor said.

They walked.

The main bay was vast, high-ceilinged, with catwalks running like ribs above the production floor. Pipes lined the walls in neat, colour-coded bundles. Conveyors ran in silence, though they were clearly powered. The hum in here wasn’t loud, but it was constant, and if you listened too long it felt like it was trying to become a rhythm your body could match.

The Doctor didn’t let it.

He looked at the vats first—large polymer reservoirs with transparent inspection panels. Through the panels he could see thick gel—translucent, pale, shifting slowly like a sleepy sea.

The surface of the gel rippled.

Not from vibration.

From something beneath.

He kept his face neutral.

Raven slowed beside him, eyes narrowed. She saw it too. She didn’t comment. She simply moved her hand inside her coat and brushed her tool canister lightly, as if the cold against her palm was a reminder: you are awake.

Yara’s gaze went from vat to vat, reading the hazard placards.

POLYMER GEL — STABLE.
DO NOT INTRODUCE FOREIGN MATERIAL.
DO NOT STIR WITHOUT AUTHORISATION.

Yara muttered, “Stable my arse.”

MINO hovered closer to the nearest vat and emitted a soft chirr. “Gel composition is non-standard,” he said. “Contains signal-responsive microstructures.”

Dorran flinched at MINO’s voice like he hadn’t yet decided whether he hated the owl or was grateful for him.

“Yeah,” Dorran said. “The gel’s… new.”

The Doctor’s eyes flicked to him. “When did the new feedstock arrive?”

Dorran’s jaw tightened. “Three months ago.”

The Doctor felt something click into place, like a lock finding its groove. Same timeline as Sera’s “return.”

“Where did it come from?” he asked.

Dorran hesitated again—then he looked away, as if checking whether the cameras could hear guilt.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Not properly. Mayor says it’s from a supplier. Off-world. ‘Miracle polymer.’”

Raven’s voice was low. “No manifests?”

Dorran swallowed. “There are manifests. They’re… thin.”

“Thin,” Yara echoed, sharp.

Dorran spread his hands. “We were starving,” he said. “You can’t eat principles.”

Yara’s eyes hardened. “You can if the alternative is being eaten.”

Dorran’s mouth tightened. “We’re not being eaten.”

Raven’s gaze slid to the vats. “Not yet.”

The Doctor stepped to a console near the vats and glanced at the control readouts. Temperature stable. Pressure stable. Throughput—high. Ridiculously high for a small settlement.

He looked at the extrusion line. “What are you producing?”

Dorran’s smile returned faintly, a worker’s pride trying to survive under dread. “Everything,” he said. “Tools. Parts. Housing panels. Toys for the kids. The parish shop gets its souvenirs.”

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “Souvenirs.”

Dorran nodded. “Keeps people smiling,” he said, and the way he said it sounded like he was repeating someone else’s line.

The Doctor moved toward the extrusion bay.

Here the plant looked more like what it had been designed to be—large mould frames, robotic arms, conveyor belts, heating units. But the heat in this section felt wrong: too even, too comforting, like a warm room where you were meant to fall asleep.

The Doctor looked up. The lights were softer here, a slightly amber tint. The air vents breathed out warm air in gentle pulses.

“Why is it so warm?” he asked.

Dorran shrugged. “Keeps the polymer flowing.”

The Doctor’s eyes went to the vent grilles. They were spotless.

Then he saw something—a thin thread of translucent material caught at the edge of a grille, trembling slightly in the airflow like a strand of cobweb.

He stepped closer.

The strand looked like plastic filament.

It moved.

Not with the air.

With intention.

He didn’t touch it. He watched, and the filament withdrew slowly into the vent grille as if it had realised it was being observed.

Raven’s voice was barely audible. “It’s everywhere.”

Yara’s jaw clenched. “You’ve got plastic in your air.”

Dorran’s face tightened. “We run filters.”

The Doctor looked at the filtration unit on the wall. New. Overpowered. And still, the air smelled sweet and chemical.

“How often do you change filters?” he asked.

Dorran hesitated. “We… don’t. Not anymore.”

Yara snapped, “Why not?”

Dorran’s eyes flicked toward a ceiling speaker grille in the corner. “Because Reverend Muir told us not to,” he said quietly. “Said the air is ‘part of the holding.’”

Raven’s posture went colder. “So you’re breathing the feed.”

Dorran swallowed. “People are calmer,” he said, defensive. “People sleep.”

The Doctor’s voice was gentle but edged. “And people stop resisting.”

Dorran looked down. “Maybe resistance is what was killing us.”

The Doctor didn’t answer immediately. He knew that line. He’d heard versions of it in a thousand places. People said it whenever someone offered them a soft cage and called it safety.

He walked further, toward a side bay marked QUALITY CHECK / PRINTED GOODS.

Inside were shelves of finished products, all arranged with obsessive care. Parts and panels and tools. Toys in tidy rows. Figurines in parish colours. Miniature chapel towers with perfect crosses on top.

Yara’s hand hovered near a shelf of dolls. Each doll had a smiling face and the same phrase printed on its chest:

YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

She looked away fast.

Raven picked up a small figurine—an angel with folded hands—and turned it over. The plastic felt warm, despite the room’s ambient temperature.

She set it down like it had burned her.

The Doctor moved to a workbench at the far side of the bay. A worker in white coveralls stood there, back to them, moving hands over a mould frame with slow, precise motions.

The worker didn’t turn when they entered.

Dorran cleared his throat. “Joss?”

No response.

Dorran took a step closer. “Joss Merren.”

The worker’s hands paused.

Then resumed.

The Doctor’s blood chilled.

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “That’s the man who tried to leave.”

Dorran’s voice was tight. “Yeah.”

The Doctor moved closer, careful. “Joss?”

The worker turned slowly.

His face was blank in the way a person’s face becomes blank when they’ve been trained to look calm. His eyes were open and shining, but the shine didn’t reach anywhere deep.

He smiled.

Too much.

“Hello,” Joss said warmly. “Welcome to Parish Nine.”

Yara’s voice went sharp. “Do you remember trying to leave?”

Joss’s smile held. “We don’t need to leave,” he replied.

Raven’s gaze slid to his wrists.

There it was. A faint line at the base of one wrist, just visible where the sleeve had ridden up—like a seam beneath skin.

The Doctor didn’t flinch outwardly.

“Joss,” he said softly, “what do you do here?”

“I help,” Joss said. “I make things.”

“What things?” the Doctor asked.

Joss gestured toward the shelves. “Gifts,” he said, voice reverent. “For friends.”

Yara snapped, “Do you know you’re breathing polymer dust?”

Joss smiled wider, as if she’d asked a silly question. “It’s good for us,” he said. “It helps us feel held.”

The Doctor felt anger rise again—quiet, controlled.

He looked at Dorran. “Is he like this all the time?”

Dorran’s eyes looked tired. “He’s… happy,” he said, and the word sounded like a lie he was trying to convince himself to believe.

Raven stepped half a pace closer to Joss, eyes level with his. “Joss,” she said, voice soft and deadly calm, “blink twice.”

Joss blinked once.

Slow.

Then he smiled again. “Community Hour begins soon,” he said.

The Doctor’s gaze snapped to the overhead speakers.

The bell tone wasn’t physically present in the plant, but the carrier wave was. The air itself vibrated with it. Gentle. Persuasive. Everywhere.

He turned to Dorran. “Where does the chapel feed route through the plant?”

Dorran swallowed. “It doesn’t,” he said quickly.

The Doctor held his gaze. “It does.”

Dorran’s shoulders sagged. “The tower’s broadcast lines run through the plant’s backbone,” he admitted quietly. “Old infrastructure. It was the tallest structure. Easier to repurpose.”

“And the plant has distributed speakers,” Raven murmured, eyes scanning. “Vent routing. Warm air ducts. Perfect.”

Yara’s voice was flat. “A town-wide loudspeaker system, breathed into people’s lungs.”

Dorran’s face tightened. “It calms people.”

“It sedates them,” the Doctor corrected.

MINO hovered near a wall panel and projected a schematic in the air: broadcast lines branching through the plant, then into residential modules, then into the chapel screens.

A lattice.

“Primary node,” MINO said. “Chapel tower. Secondary amplification: plastics plant. Polymer gel tanks function as signal medium.”

The Doctor’s jaw tightened. “Yes.”

Dorran stared at the projection as if seeing it like this made it suddenly unforgivable. “We didn’t—” he began.

“You did,” Yara said sharply. “You let it in.”

Dorran flinched. “We were dying.”

The Doctor looked at him. “And now you’re being remade,” he said quietly.

Dorran’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.

The Doctor turned back to the vats, the gel rippling slowly. He could almost feel it—something vast and patient, reaching through the medium like a hand through a curtain.

He’d fought the Nestene before. He’d seen what happened when people thought “plastic” meant harmless. He’d seen mannequins walk. He’d seen toys become weapons. He’d seen a consciousness that didn’t hate humans the way people hated monsters—because hatred required intimacy. The Nestene didn’t hate. It simply used what was available.

And right now, what was available was grief.

Raven’s voice came low, close to his ear. “The plant is the engine,” she murmured.

The Doctor nodded once. “Yes.”

Yara watched the workers in white coveralls in the bay—three more had drifted closer without anyone noticing. They stood at a polite distance, smiling softly, watching.

Not threatening.

Not yet.

But their eyes were on the Doctor like they were waiting for instructions.

Yara’s voice tightened. “We need to get out.”

The Doctor didn’t move. He looked at the vats again, then at the broadcast lattice, then at the chapel tower visible through the plant window.

“Not yet,” he said quietly. “We need one more thing.”

Raven’s gaze sharpened. “What.”

“The entry point,” the Doctor replied. “Where the signal becomes physical. Where the Nestene touches this place.”

MINO’s optics pulsed. “Likely within polymer reservoir sublevels. Restricted access.”

Dorran swallowed. “There are lower levels,” he admitted. “Old maintenance. We don’t go down there. Reverend says it’s… sacred.”

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “Sacred to whom?”

Dorran’s voice dropped. “To the parish.”

The Doctor turned to him. “Show us.”

Dorran hesitated. His eyes flicked to the workers watching, to the cameras, to the speaker grille in the ceiling.

Then he exhaled like a man choosing the harder death over the softer one.

“Alright,” he said quietly. “But we do it fast.”

Raven’s hand slipped inside her coat and came out with a small device—cold canister, compact, utilitarian. “Cold,” she said softly, as if reminding the room what fear felt like.

The Doctor nodded. “Cold,” he agreed.

Yara didn’t smile. She simply moved closer, ready.

Dorran led them toward a side door marked MAINTENANCE / AUTHORISED ONLY. The door should have required a code.

It opened anyway.

The corridor beyond was darker, more industrial. The paint peeled here. The air was warmer, heavier, and the sweet chemical smell thickened until it felt like it was coating the inside of the nose.

As they stepped into the corridor, the plant’s hum changed subtly—less like machinery, more like a throat clearing.

Behind them, the workers in white coveralls followed at a distance, their footsteps soft, their smiles unbroken.

The Doctor didn’t look back. He knew they were there.

He could feel the carrier wave in his bones now—steady, confident.

Leading them downward.

Inviting them toward the source.

And somewhere above, the chapel bell rang again, gentle and patient, as if the town itself had decided that resistance was simply another form of participation.

///

Chapter 6 — Shop Window

The parish shop was the brightest place on the rock.

It sat directly opposite the chapel doors, positioned like a friendly handshake between faith and commerce. Its windows glowed with warm light that didn’t belong on an asteroid—light designed to flatter faces, soften shadows, and make everything inside look like it had been chosen with love.

The sign above the door was painted in the same tidy font as everything else:

THE HOLDING STORE.
TAKE A LITTLE HOME.

Yara stopped at the threshold and stared at the words like they were a confession in public. “I hate this place,” she said, and there was no theatre in it. Just the blunt disgust of a human being watching something sacred get packaged.

Raven didn’t answer. Her eyes were on the window display.

The Doctor’s gaze followed hers.

It was a tableau built to disarm.

A small mock living room: plastic couch, plastic throw blanket, plastic mug on a plastic coffee table. A toy chapel tower in the corner, white cross gleaming. A family of figurines arranged on the couch—mother, father, child—faces tilted toward a tiny screen that played the Community Hour feed in miniature.

All of them smiling.

Their smiles were perfectly identical.

MINO hovered closer, optics pulsing. “Manufacture precision unusually high. Facial variation minimal.”

Yara’s voice was flat. “Because they’re not meant to be people. They’re meant to be symbols.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “They’re meant to be templates.”

A movement in the corner of the display caught his attention.

A doll—no bigger than a child’s hand—shifted its head slightly, just enough that its eyes aligned with the Doctor’s.

Raven didn’t move. She simply watched.

The doll blinked.

Yara’s skin crawled. “Did that just—”

“Yes,” the Doctor said quietly.

The shop door slid open with a soft, welcoming chime.

Inside, it was warmer than it should have been. The same gentle amber lighting, the same faint scent of sweet incense mixed with polymer and something floral that tried too hard to be “comfort.”

Shelves lined the walls in perfect rows. Every item faced forward. Every label was aligned. The floor was spotless in the way that wasn’t achieved by cleaning but by replacement.

Someone stood behind the counter.

A young woman in a white apron with a gold-trim cross stitched on the chest. Her hair was braided neatly. Her smile was bright and open and, for the first time since stepping onto Parish Nine, the Doctor saw a smile that didn’t feel like a printed mask.

It looked… alive.

“Hi,” she said quickly, too quickly, as if she’d been waiting for them to enter so she could prove something. “You’re the visitors. I saw you with the mayor.”

Her eyes flicked to Raven, then to Yara, then to the Doctor, lingering a fraction longer on him like she was trying to decode what he was.

The Doctor kept his tone gentle. “Hello.”

“I’m Nell,” she said. “Nell Quill.”

Yara didn’t soften. “You work here.”

Nell’s smile faltered slightly, then returned. “I volunteer,” she corrected. “Everyone volunteers for something.”

Raven’s gaze stayed on Nell’s hands. “Do you like it.”

Nell’s smile twitched again. This time it didn’t recover fully. “It’s… fine,” she said.

The Doctor glanced around the shop. There were toys, tools, “parish keepsakes,” clothing patches with slogans, small frames that displayed rotating photos of smiling faces, prayer beads made from polished polymer spheres.

Everything was plastic.

Everything was warm.

And in the corners—subtle, almost decorative—small speaker grilles. Vent outlets. A quiet infrastructure of persuasion.

The Doctor stepped closer to a shelf of figurines. Each was a little “saint” in parish colours, hands folded, head tilted, eyes upturned.

One figurine’s head turned slightly as he approached.

Not much.

Just enough.

Raven’s voice came low. “Autons,” she murmured.

Yara swallowed. “They’re… dolls.”

“They’re interfaces,” the Doctor said softly. “Any plastic can be.”

MINO hovered nearer the shelf and clicked. “Carrier wave intensity higher than plaza baseline. Shop appears to function as local reinforcement node.”

Nell flinched at MINO’s mechanical voice, then glanced toward the doorway as if checking whether anyone had heard. The plaza outside was visible through the window: a few parishioners drifting toward the chapel in gentle clusters, heads slightly bowed, smiles in place.

Nell lowered her voice. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said quickly.

Yara’s eyebrows rose. “You opened the door.”

Nell’s eyes flashed with frustration. “The door opens for everyone,” she said. “It’s not… it’s not me.”

The Doctor looked at her carefully. “You signaled us earlier.”

Nell’s breath caught. For a moment, she looked genuinely scared.

Then she nodded, a quick, tiny motion. “Yeah,” she whispered. “Because you’re not like the others.”

Raven’s voice was quiet. “Define.”

Nell swallowed. “You don’t… drift,” she said. “You don’t smile when the bell rings.”

Yara’s mouth tightened. “We’re not from here.”

Nell shook her head. “Some outsiders come through,” she said. “Sometimes. They dock, they buy water, they leave. But when the bell rings, they still… soften. You didn’t.”

The Doctor’s gaze sharpened. “So the carrier wave affects visitors too.”

Nell nodded, eyes wide. “It’s like… like it puts a blanket on your brain,” she whispered. “Makes you feel like everything’s okay even when it’s not.”

Raven’s eyes didn’t leave Nell. “And you feel it.”

Nell’s mouth tightened. “Yeah,” she said. “All the time.”

“Then why aren’t you smiling?” Yara asked, blunt.

Nell hesitated, then looked at the counter, where a small screen sat angled toward her. It played the chapel feed on loop—faces, stories, warmth.

She glanced away quickly, like looking at it too long made her dizzy.

“I… try not to,” she said, voice small. “Because if I do, I forget to be angry. And I need to be angry.”

The Doctor felt something in his chest ease—just slightly. A living, human defiance in a town full of programmed peace.

“Good,” he said quietly. “Anger has uses.”

Nell’s eyes flicked to him, and for a second her expression was almost pleading. “They say it’s a gift,” she whispered. “The Returned. The comfort. The way people stop crying.”

Yara’s voice went hard. “And what do you say.”

Nell swallowed. “I say it’s wrong,” she said. “Because my dad’s on the wall.”

The Doctor’s stomach tightened. “Your father is memorialized.”

Nell nodded, jaw trembling slightly. “He died in a valve accident two years ago. Everyone cried. I cried until I thought my ribs would break.” She wiped at her eye quickly, furious at herself for it. “And then Reverend Muir said we could ‘hold him’ during Community Hour. She said if we believed hard enough, he’d come back.”

Yara’s face went cold. “Did he.”

Nell’s voice dropped. “Something did,” she whispered. “It looked like him. It sounded like him. It knew the jokes he used to tell me.” Her hands clenched on the counter edge. “And my mum hugged it like she was drowning.”

Raven’s voice was barely audible. “And you didn’t.”

Nell shook her head. “I couldn’t,” she whispered. “Because when it smiled, it was… off.” She swallowed hard. “And when I said his name, it looked past me—like it was listening to something else.”

The Doctor felt the shape of the trap become clearer: grief as broadcast fuel.

He leaned closer, keeping his voice low. “Nell. Does the shop ever close.”

Nell blinked. “No,” she said. “Not really. Someone’s always on shift. Reverend says ‘a home keeps a light on.’”

“And do you ever see the stock change,” the Doctor asked, “without anyone bringing new items in?”

Nell’s eyes flicked toward a shelf behind her. “Yeah,” she whispered. “All the time. Things appear. Sometimes… things move.”

Yara muttered, “Of course they do.”

The Doctor looked at one of the shelves of dolls again. A doll’s head had turned to face Nell now, as if it was watching her conversation.

The Doctor didn’t take his eyes off it when he spoke. “Nell. Has Reverend Muir ever told you to bring something specific into the chapel.”

Nell hesitated, then nodded slowly. “Objects,” she said. “Mementos. Photos. Clothes. Anything that still smells like the person.” Her voice tightened. “She says it helps the Returned ‘find the shape’.”

Raven’s gaze sharpened. “So you feed it data.”

Nell swallowed. “Yeah,” she whispered.

Yara’s voice went flat, controlled rage. “You’re making your own monsters out of memories.”

Nell looked down, ashamed and furious all at once. “We didn’t know,” she said. “At first. And then… everyone wanted it to be true.”

The Doctor’s eyes drifted to a shelf of small picture frames—each frame displayed a face, cycling slowly. Some were clearly real photographs. Some looked slightly too smooth.

He picked up one frame carefully, as if it might be fragile in a different way.

The face in it smiled and blinked.

The Doctor turned the frame over.

The back was stamped with a plant marking: P9 POLYMER / BATCH 44.

The Doctor’s voice was low. “Everything here is coming from the plant.”

Nell nodded. “The plant makes everything now,” she whispered. “Even the things we don’t ask for.”

MINO hovered close to the frame and clicked. “Material is signal-reactive. Contains microfilament channels consistent with Auton actuation.”

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “So the shop is an armory.”

Nell flinched. “It’s not—” she began.

Raven cut in, quiet and final. “It can become one.”

The Doctor set the frame down gently.

He looked at Nell. “Has anyone ever tried to smash one of these?” he asked.

Nell swallowed. “Once,” she said. “A man—Coral Jinn—he got angry. He said his wife’s Returned wasn’t her. He grabbed a doll and threw it at the wall.”

“And?” the Doctor asked.

Nell’s eyes widened. “It didn’t break,” she whispered. “It… bent. Like it was soft for a second. And then it sprang back. And Coral started crying like someone had hit him.”

Yara’s face tightened. “The signal pushed back.”

Nell nodded. “After that, nobody breaks things,” she said. “They just… smile.”

Raven’s gaze went to the sweets bowl on the counter. Wrapped candies in shiny plastic. Each wrapper printed with a cheerful message.

YOU ARE HELD.

Raven didn’t touch them.

The Doctor watched Nell again. “Why are you telling us this.”

Nell’s smile—small, real, fragile—appeared for a moment. “Because you look like you might actually do something,” she whispered. “And because Community Hour tonight… it’s different.”

The Doctor’s eyes sharpened. “Different how.”

Nell hesitated, then leaned closer, voice dropping to a whisper. “The Returned are gathering,” she said. “Not just in the chapel. In the plant too. Reverend says it’s ‘a big holding.’ Like… like they’re about to open the door wider.”

Yara’s voice went hard. “Open it to what.”

Nell swallowed. “To the thing behind the feed,” she whispered.

A soft chime sounded overhead.

The chapel bell tone—faint but present—filtered into the shop as if the building itself wanted to remind everyone where they belonged.

The dolls on the shelf all turned their heads slightly, in near-unison, toward the chapel.

Yara’s skin crawled.

Raven’s posture went still and lethal.

The Doctor felt the carrier wave press at his thoughts like warm hands on his temples.

And Nell—human Nell—flinched visibly, eyes flicking toward the small screen on the counter despite herself.

The Doctor stepped closer to her and lowered his voice. “Nell. When the bell rings, what do you feel.”

Nell’s throat bobbed. “Like… like I’m about to stop fighting,” she whispered. “Like it’s okay to give up.”

The Doctor nodded, slow. “That’s not comfort,” he said gently. “That’s surrender.”

Nell’s eyes shimmered. She blinked hard, angry at tears.

Yara’s voice cut through, blunt. “Do you know how to get into the chapel tower.”

Nell hesitated, then nodded once. “There’s a service stair behind the altar,” she whispered. “Locked. But I… I have a key.” She fumbled under the counter and pulled out a small metal fob on a chain—real metal, not plastic. “I clean the screens.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “You clean the screens.”

Nell nodded quickly. “They told me it’s important,” she said. “No dust. No smears. Faces must be clear.”

The Doctor felt cold anger slide under his ribs. Of course. Of course a teen would be put on “clean the faces,” because it sounded harmless, because it sounded like helping, because it made you complicit without feeling like you were doing anything wrong.

He looked at the dolls again.

One doll was watching Nell.

Its smile was perfect.

Too perfect.

The Doctor turned back to her. “We’re going to need that key,” he said quietly.

Nell’s breath hitched. “If they see—”

“They will,” Yara said flatly. “But you can either be part of the door opening, or part of the door shutting.”

Nell stared at Yara, then at the Doctor, then at Raven. Raven’s eyes were steady—no pity, no coaxing. Just the simple promise: choose, and live with it.

Nell swallowed hard and nodded.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay. I’ll help.”

As she said it, the shop lights flickered—just a tiny dip, like a blink.

The carrier wave pressed harder for half a second.

And every plastic face in the shop—dolls, figurines, screens—tilted slightly, as if the town itself had noticed the word help and wanted to know which side it belonged to.

Behind the counter, Nell’s hand tightened around the key fob until her knuckles went white.

Outside, through the shop window, the plaza was filling now. People drifting toward the chapel in a slow, smiling tide.

The Doctor felt time tighten.

He looked at Raven and Yara and spoke in a low, old-school certainty.

“We cut the chapel feed,” he said. “Before Community Hour becomes something else.”

Raven nodded once. “We cut it.”

Yara’s jaw clenched. “And we don’t let them turn this town into an army.”

Nell swallowed, voice small. “They already are,” she whispered.

The Doctor glanced at the shop window display again.

The tiny figurine family sat on their plastic couch, faces angled toward the miniature screen.

And on that screen, the Reverend’s smile filled the frame as she lifted her hands like a conductor.

“Community Hour begins soon,” her voice purred through the shop speakers, soft and kind. “All friends invited. Come as you are.”

The Doctor’s eyes hardened.

“Stay as you like,” he murmured, and the words no longer sounded like an invitation.

They sounded like a lock clicking shut.

///

Chapter 7 — The First Auton

They didn’t go straight to the chapel.

Not yet.

That was the trap: to let the place set the tempo, to let the bell decide when your heart beat. The Doctor refused it. He led them out of the shop and into a side corridor that ran behind the plaza—service route, narrower, darker, less curated.

Nell Quill moved with them like she didn’t belong in her own town anymore. She kept the key fob clenched in her fist, knuckles white, eyes flicking to every camera lens and speaker grille like they were eyes and mouths.

Yara walked beside her, not gentle but protective in the way a guard dog is protective—by being willing to bite the thing that comes too close.

Raven walked slightly behind, scanning, quiet. She had her cold canister ready now, not hidden. A small, unignorable piece of reality in a place that wanted to lull everything into softness.

MINO hovered above the corridor, optics pulsing, mapping.

“Chapel tower service stair entrance in 240 meters,” MINO reported.

The Doctor nodded. “We do this clean,” he said softly. “In and out. No speeches.”

Yara shot him a look. “Good.”

Nell whispered, “They’ll know.”

“They already do,” Raven replied without looking at her. “Just keep moving.”

The corridor ended at a maintenance door marked CHAPEL SERVICE ACCESS / AUTH ONLY. The door was older than the parish branding, metal scuffed, paint chipped, the kind of honest wear that said it had existed before the smiles.

Nell stepped forward, hand trembling slightly as she raised the fob.

The door opened before she touched it.

Nell froze. “I didn’t—”

“I know,” the Doctor said quietly.

The door had opened because the town had decided to be helpful. Helpful in the way a spider is helpful when it parts the web for a fly.

They stepped into the service stairwell.

It smelled like old dust and warm wires. The lighting was harsher here, utilitarian strips that buzzed faintly. The carrier wave was still present, but thinner, like a song muffled by a wall.

The Doctor felt relief—not because they were safe, but because the place’s hands weren’t quite as close to his thoughts.

Nell led them upward.

Every step echoed.

Every echo felt like a message sent.

Halfway up, the stairwell door below them opened.

Footsteps.

Soft.

Measured.

Not running.

Not urgent.

Just… following.

Yara’s head snapped down the stairwell. Her posture changed instantly, body coiling.

“Someone’s coming,” she said, voice low.

Nell’s breath hitched. “It’s them.”

“Keep going,” the Doctor murmured.

They climbed.

The footsteps below continued, steady, as if the person following didn’t need to hurry because time belonged to them.

At the next landing, Raven stopped and looked down through the railing gap.

A figure emerged into view—white coveralls, gold cross patch on the chest, head tilted slightly upward. A parish volunteer. A factory worker.

Smiling.

The smile was too perfect.

The eyes were too empty.

Yara’s voice went flat. “That’s not a person.”

Nell whispered, terrified, “That’s Joss.”

The Doctor’s jaw tightened. “No,” he said. “That’s an Auton.”

The figure climbed one step at a time, hands loose at its sides, face calm. It didn’t look angry. It didn’t look threatening. It looked like it had been programmed to be reassuring.

“Hello,” it called up the stairwell, voice warm, the same cadence as Reverend Muir. “Please don’t be afraid. Community Hour begins soon.”

Nell’s skin went pale. She grabbed the railing like it might anchor her to reality.

Yara’s voice was controlled rage. “It’s using her voice.”

The Auton climbed another step.

Raven lifted her cold canister.

The Doctor held up a hand. “Not yet.”

Yara shot him a look that could have cut metal. “Why not.”

“Because I want to know what it’s here to do,” the Doctor whispered.

The Auton reached the landing below and stopped. Its head tilted slightly as if listening—though there was nothing to listen to except their breathing.

Then it lifted one hand, palm outward in a gesture of peace.

“Please return to the chapel,” it said gently. “You are welcome. You are held.”

Yara’s jaw clenched. “You’re not holding anyone.”

The Auton blinked once. Slow.

Then its smile widened by a fraction.

“Resistance is tired,” it said softly. “Rest is kinder.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “That’s new phrasing,” he murmured. “It’s adjusting.”

Raven’s gaze stayed fixed. “It doesn’t need to be clever,” she said. “It needs to be persistent.”

The Auton took another step up.

Yara moved down one step, shoulders squared, placing herself between the Auton and Nell without thinking. Not because she was fearless. Because she was angry enough to do the right thing.

“Stop,” Yara said.

The Auton smiled at her.

Then it moved.

Fast.

Not a slow, polite climb. A sudden burst upward, arms extending, fingers splaying with unnatural strength.

It grabbed Yara’s forearm.

Yara reacted instantly, twisting her body, wrenching free—but the Auton’s grip was like a vice. Its fingers dug into flesh with mechanical certainty.

Yara hissed in pain and fury.

The Doctor stepped forward, snapping his sonic up, flicking frequency—high enough to disrupt, low enough not to shatter anything.

The Auton jerked, its grip loosening for a fraction of a second.

Raven didn’t hesitate. She sprayed cold directly onto the Auton’s wrist joint.

Frost flashed white, spreading fast.

The Auton’s arm stiffened.

Its grip released.

Yara yanked herself back up the stairs, breathing hard, eyes blazing.

The Auton looked down at its frozen wrist as if confused, then slowly lifted its head and smiled again.

“Cold is unkind,” it said softly.

Raven’s voice was ice. “So am I.”

The Auton’s other hand rose toward Raven.

The Doctor lunged forward, pressed the sonic against the stairwell’s metal railing, and sent a tight, focused pulse through the structure.

The Auton shuddered—its internal actuation system stuttering as the signal interfered.

It froze mid-motion.

Its smile stayed on its face as if the smile was the only part that never needed power.

MINO darted closer and projected a tight scanning lattice around the Auton’s head. “Auton actuation confirmed,” he said. “Signal source: chapel tower. Local relay: distributed speakers.”

The Doctor nodded, breath tight. “Good. That means if we cut the tower, we cut the movement.”

The Auton stood frozen on the landing below, one wrist encased in frost, body locked by the sonic pulse.

For a heartbeat, it was just a mannequin in coveralls.

Then the carrier wave surged.

Not loud. Not violent. Just… present.

The Auton’s eyes shifted slightly, as if the signal had found a workaround.

Its head turned. Slowly. Deliberately.

It looked directly at Nell.

Nell’s breath caught.

The Auton smiled at her like a friend.

“Nell Quill,” it said, and the use of her full name made her flinch. “Please return the key.”

Nell’s hand clenched harder around the fob. “No,” she whispered.

The Auton’s smile softened into patient sadness. “You are tired,” it said gently. “You don’t have to be brave.”

Yara snarled, “Don’t talk to her.”

The Auton’s gaze flicked back to Yara. “You are angry,” it said. “Anger is heavy. Let it go.”

Yara’s eyes went wild. “I’ll let you go first.”

The Auton shifted again, tiny movement, fighting the sonic’s lock.

The Doctor adjusted the frequency sharply, tightening the interference field. The Auton stiffened again, frozen.

Raven looked at the Doctor. “We can’t stand here.”

“I know,” he said.

He glanced up the stairwell. “Nell—how many doors between us and the tower control room?”

Nell swallowed. “One landing,” she whispered. “Then a short corridor. Then the control hatch.”

The Doctor nodded. “Go.”

They moved upward again, faster now, footsteps sharp in the stairwell.

Behind them, the Auton remained frozen.

But the Doctor could feel it—like pressure in the air.

The signal would keep working at it. The Nestene would keep pushing. It didn’t need to win quickly. It only needed to win eventually.

They reached the next landing and pushed through the door.

A corridor stretched ahead—narrow, lined with cable conduits. The air smelled of warm electronics. The carrier wave thickened again, pressing at their thoughts like a hand guiding their faces toward the nearest screen.

At the far end of the corridor was a hatch marked BROADCAST / FEED CONTROL.

Nell hurried forward, fumbling with the fob. Her fingers trembled so badly she dropped it once, then snatched it up.

Yara stood behind her, half-turned, watching the stairwell door as if expecting it to burst open.

Raven stood beside the Doctor, cold canister ready, eyes scanning.

MINO hovered near the ceiling, optics pulsing. “Multiple mechanical units approaching,” he warned. “At least three Autons. Estimated arrival: 30 seconds.”

Nell’s breath hitched. “They’re coming.”

The Doctor’s voice was calm, precise. “Open the hatch.”

Nell pressed the fob to the reader.

For a second nothing happened.

Then the reader beeped—soft, polite—and the hatch clicked.

The Doctor pulled it open and stepped into the control room.

It was small, packed with equipment: broadcast consoles, signal modulators, power couplers, screen routers. And in the center, bolted to a pedestal like a shrine, was a polished polymer sphere the size of a human head—clear as glass, filled with slow-moving gel.

The gel rippled.

The Doctor’s skin crawled.

Raven’s voice was low. “That’s it.”

MINO darted in behind them, optics narrowing. “Signal medium identified. Nestene interface probable.”

Yara hissed from the doorway. “We have company!”

The Doctor glanced at the corridor outside.

Two Autons had reached the landing already—white coveralls, blank smiles, moving with calm purpose.

A third figure followed behind them, and the Doctor’s breath caught.

Reverend Edda Muir.

Alive. Human. Smiling.

She walked between the Autons as if escorted by angels.

Her eyes met the Doctor’s through the doorway, and her smile widened.

“Oh,” she said warmly, voice echoing gently through the corridor as if the chapel itself was speaking. “There you are.”

Yara’s voice went hard. “Stay back.”

Muir’s smile didn’t change. “Why,” she asked softly, “would I do that? You came to us. You heard the bell.”

The Autons stepped closer.

The Doctor’s mind raced, old memory and present danger aligning.

He looked at the polymer sphere. The gel inside moved slowly, patiently, like a tide.

He didn’t have time to dismantle the system gently.

He needed a jam.

He needed a cut.

He needed to stop the first wave before the town became a marching congregation of plastic saints.

The Doctor snapped his sonic up and set it to a tight band disrupt—aimed at the sphere.

Raven raised her cold canister.

Yara braced herself in the doorway like a human barricade.

And Reverend Muir smiled at them all, as if they were children about to be soothed.

“Don’t fight,” she said softly. “Just… let go.”

The Doctor didn’t answer.

He triggered the sonic pulse.

The polymer sphere shuddered.

The gel inside rippled violently.

Outside, the Autons faltered—one step, a stutter, a pause.

For half a heartbeat, the carrier wave thinned.

Then the sphere brightened from within.

Not light.

Presence.

The screens on the consoles flickered, static crawling across them like living skin.

And something vast and silent pressed closer behind the static, as if the door had noticed hands on the lock.

Reverend Muir’s smile turned almost reverent.

“It hears you,” she whispered.

The Doctor’s eyes hardened.

“Good,” he said quietly. “Then it can hear me when I tell it no.”

///

Chapter 8 — Nestene Logic

The polymer sphere didn’t glow like a lamp.

It clarified.

The gel inside sharpened from sleepy translucence into something that looked suddenly purposeful, as if the medium had been waiting for a reason to wake up. A slow ripple moved through it—too smooth to be random, too deliberate to be physics alone.

The consoles around it began to flicker.

Static crawled across every display in the control room, grey-on-grey at first, then streaked with pale, milky bands that made the Doctor’s teeth ache. The carrier wave thickened until it stopped feeling like “sound” and started feeling like a hand on the back of the neck.

Outside in the corridor, the two Autons faltered—shoulders twitching, heads tilting, like puppets whose strings had been yanked too hard.

Reverend Edda Muir didn’t falter at all.

Her smile widened.

“See?” she whispered, voice warm with awe. “It’s here.”

Yara braced in the doorway, feet planted, shoulders squared. “It’s not here,” she snapped. “It’s using you.”

Muir’s eyes softened toward Yara. “Oh, darling,” she said gently, “it’s helping us.”

The Doctor didn’t look at Muir. He kept his eyes on the sphere and adjusted the sonic’s output—tightening the frequency band, narrowing the interference pattern. He wasn’t trying to destroy it. Not yet. He was trying to learn the shape of the link.

MINO hovered near the ceiling, optics narrowed to pinpoints. “Signal handshake confirmed,” he reported. “Bioplasmic modulation. Non-human protocol.”

The Doctor muttered, “Nestene.”

Raven stood close to the sphere with her cold canister raised, eyes steady. “If it moves,” she said softly, “I freeze it.”

“You can’t freeze a consciousness,” the Doctor replied, not unkindly.

Raven didn’t lower the canister. “You can freeze the thing it’s in.”

The Doctor’s mouth tightened. “Yes.”

The consoles spat out audio without permission—soft, layered voices, like a choir that had forgotten it was made of recordings. Snatches of Community Hour bled into the room: laughter, someone crying, the bell tone, the Reverend’s sermon voice repeating over itself.

And under the human sound, a deeper pressure—something that did not have words and did not need them.

The Doctor felt it press against his mind like warm water, seeking a surface to cling to.

He pushed back.

Not with rage. With clarity.

The sphere rippled again.

A shape moved behind the static on the nearest screen—an outline like a face made of liquid, briefly suggested, then gone. Not a person. Not an Auton. Something older. Vaster. Patient.

Yara’s breath hitched. “That’s… it.”

MINO confirmed, calm as ever. “Visual interference pattern matches archived Nestene manifestations.”

The Doctor nodded once, sharp. “Good.”

Reverend Muir stepped closer in the corridor, not crossing Yara’s line but nearing it like someone approaching a sleeping animal. The Autons beside her resumed their slow, calm steps, their smiles still perfect.

Yara snarled, “Stay back.”

Muir’s voice was honey. “You don’t have to guard the door,” she said. “The door is open.”

The Doctor flicked a glance at the corridor. “Not wide enough,” he said quietly.

He raised the sonic again and sent a second pulse into the sphere—this time modulated with a counter-phase designed to interrupt the carrier without rupturing the medium. A jammer. A stutter in the song.

The effect was immediate.

The carrier wave thinned, like a blanket tugged away.

The Autons in the corridor froze mid-step—arms slightly lifted, faces still smiling, eyes blank.

Even Reverend Muir’s posture dipped for half a heartbeat, like her balance had shifted.

Her smile remained, but her eyes sharpened.

“Don’t,” she said softly.

Yara’s eyes widened. “You felt that.”

Muir’s gaze stayed on the Doctor. “You’re hurting it,” she said, and the warmth in her voice slipped for the first time into something like warning.

The Doctor didn’t soften. “I’m closing a door you opened without permission.”

Muir shook her head slowly, pitying. “Permission?” she echoed. “We begged. We prayed. We called. The universe answered.”

“The universe doesn’t answer prayers with plastic soldiers,” Yara snapped.

Muir’s smile returned full force. “They aren’t soldiers,” she said gently. “They’re helpers.”

As she spoke, one of the frozen Autons twitched—just a finger, then stillness again. The signal was already trying to reroute around the jam.

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. The Nestene didn’t rage. It didn’t panic. It didn’t escalate emotionally.

It adapted.

That was the logic: not malice. Utility.

“MINO,” the Doctor said, voice low, “trace the signal path. I want primary, secondary, tertiary. Where is the relay network anchored.”

MINO’s optics pulsed rapidly, projecting a lattice diagram above the sphere: lines running from the tower into the chapel screens, branching into the plaza speakers, threading through residential vents, and—critically—down into the plastics plant backbone.

“Distributed broadcast,” MINO said. “Primary node: tower. Secondary amplification: plant infrastructure. Additional nodes: shop window displays, plaza signage, residential screens.”

The Doctor’s jaw clenched. “So even if we sever this room, the town keeps singing.”

Raven’s voice was quiet. “Then we don’t just sever the room.”

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “We sever the tower.”

“And the plant,” the Doctor added.

Reverend Muir’s smile brightened like she’d just heard a plan she liked. “You’re thinking in systems,” she murmured, almost delighted. “You understand. That’s why you’re here.”

The Doctor looked at her now, eyes cold. “I’m here because you turned grief into machinery.”

Muir’s expression remained serene. “Grief is machinery,” she said softly. “It grinds people down. We simply gave it purpose.”

Yara’s voice turned sharp. “You gave it an owner.”

Muir’s gaze flicked to Yara, then softened again. “Oh, love,” she said, “it doesn’t own us. It holds us.”

The Doctor stepped closer to the sphere, staring into the gel. For a moment, he saw his own reflection warped by rippling translucence—his face stretched, softened, made to look calmer than he felt.

The carrier wave pressed again, searching for a gap.

And in that pressure, the Doctor felt the shape of the Nestene’s offer: Stop fighting. Stop hurting. Let the weight drop.

Not a threat.

A seduction.

Old-school, in the worst way.

He tightened the sonic’s jam and spoke into the air, not because the Nestene needed sound, but because people did—and because Reverend Muir needed to hear herself opposed.

“You can’t fix loneliness by printing copies of the dead,” he said.

Muir’s eyes shimmered with conviction. “We’re not printing,” she whispered. “We’re returning.”

The Doctor’s voice was hard now. “No. You’re replacing.”

For the first time, Muir’s smile faltered.

Just a flicker.

Then it returned, brighter, more insistent.

“You think you’re protecting them,” she said softly. “But you’re stealing their peace.”

The Doctor didn’t respond. He reached to the console and yanked a manual power lever down.

Sparks snapped.

The main screen bank went black.

The carrier wave shuddered.

Outside, both Autons sagged—knees flexing slightly, bodies losing their perfect posture like marionettes whose strings had slackened.

Yara took the opportunity. She shoved the corridor door half-closed and jammed it with her boot and shoulder, creating a narrow choke point.

“Raven,” she said sharply, “now would be a good time for cold.”

Raven didn’t wait to be told twice. She leaned into the gap and blasted the nearest Auton’s forearm joint. Frost spread fast over synthetic skin, whitening it, cracking the surface slightly.

The Auton’s arm stiffened.

Its smile did not change.

The Doctor glanced at the other Auton and saw its fingers twitch again—signal rerouting. The Nestene was already compensating for local power loss by leaning on the town-wide network.

He looked back at the sphere. It continued to ripple, unbothered by sparks and levers, patient as a sea.

“MINO,” he said, “how do we break the link without killing everyone’s screens and turning the whole parish into an electrical fire?”

MINO paused—just long enough to suggest calculation, not uncertainty. “Option: isolate carrier frequency and inject destructive interference across all nodes simultaneously. Requirement: access to broadcast tower main amplifier.”

The Doctor nodded. “So we need the tower.”

Reverend Muir smiled again, as if the decision pleased her. “You’ll come,” she said softly. “You’ll stand in the chapel. You’ll feel what we feel. You’ll understand why we chose this.”

Yara’s voice was low and vicious. “We didn’t choose. You did.”

Muir’s eyes softened. “And you will,” she said gently, “when you’re tired enough.”

The Auton’s frozen hand cracked under Raven’s frost—tiny fractures spidering across its knuckles.

It didn’t cry out. It didn’t even flinch.

It simply raised its other hand, slowly, calmly, and tried to push through Yara’s jammed door.

Yara shoved back, muscles straining. “Doctor!” she barked.

The Doctor snapped his sonic off the sphere and aimed it at the Auton’s torso, flooding it with a harsh disrupt. The Auton locked mid-push.

For half a second, the corridor fell still.

Reverend Muir stood behind the frozen Autons like a saint behind statues, her smile unwavering.

“Time,” Raven said quietly to the Doctor. “We’re buying seconds.”

“I know,” he replied.

He looked at Nell Quill—still in the control room, pressed against the wall, eyes wide, clutching the key fob like it was her last chance at being real. Her gaze flicked between the sphere and Reverend Muir and the Autons, as if she couldn’t decide which was the worst.

“Nell,” the Doctor said gently.

She blinked hard. “Yeah?”

“Can you get us to the tower’s upper access from inside the chapel without crossing the main floor?” he asked.

Nell swallowed. “There’s a back stair,” she whispered. “Behind the screens. Only volunteers and… Returned go up.”

Yara snapped, “We’re volunteers.”

Nell’s mouth twitched—almost a laugh, strangled by fear. “Okay,” she whispered. “I can take you. But—” Her eyes flicked to the corridor door. “They’ll follow.”

Raven’s voice was calm, certain. “Let them.”

The Doctor nodded once. “We don’t fight the whole parish,” he said quietly. “We cut the song.”

Reverend Muir’s smile widened as if she’d heard the phrase cut the song and found it sacrilegious in the most satisfying way.

“Oh,” she murmured, “Doctor… you always think you can silence the ocean.”

The Doctor met her eyes through the crack in the door.

His voice was flat and old with experience. “Not the ocean,” he said. “Just the speaker.”

He turned to Nell. “Lead.”

Nell took a shaky breath, then nodded.

And as they moved toward the hatch that would take them down into the chapel’s back corridors, the polymer sphere behind them rippled one last time—slow, patient—like something pleased to see them heading deeper into the place it had already claimed.

///

Chapter 9 — Grief Economy

The chapel’s back corridors were older than the paint.

Here the “parish” had given up on pretending. The walls were bare metal, the lighting harsh, the air warmer and more electrical. Cable trunks ran like veins along the ceiling. The hum of the broadcast equipment seeped through everything, a constant presence that tried to make your thoughts feel smooth.

Nell Quill led them quickly, shoulders hunched, key fob swinging in her fist. She kept glancing over her shoulder as if she expected the corridor behind them to fill with smiling faces at any second.

Yara walked tight behind her, one hand hovering near Nell’s elbow—ready to push her forward or pull her back, whichever survival demanded. Raven moved silently at the rear, cold canister held low but ready. MINO hovered above them, optics scanning ahead and behind, an owl in a pipe maze.

The Doctor kept pace without rushing. He knew better than to run in a place that wanted you to lose control. His breathing stayed even. His mind stayed sharp.

Still, the carrier wave kept pressing.

Not loud.

Not forceful.

Just constant—like the soft insistence of a lullaby you didn’t remember learning.

“Here,” Nell whispered.

She stopped at a narrow door half-hidden behind a cable trunk. A small plaque read:

PASTORAL SUPPORT / STORAGE

Nell’s hands trembled as she raised the key fob. The door beeped and opened with a neat click.

Inside was a cramped room packed with boxes and shelves. Candles. Cloth banners. Old hymn-books. A stack of printed pamphlets with smiling faces on the cover.

But what made Yara’s stomach twist was the wall.

A corkboard, covered in photographs.

Hundreds of them.

People’s faces pinned in tidy rows. Some old, creased. Some new, glossy. Some printed from screens. Some ripped from wallets.

Each photo had a name beneath it.

And a note.

SAY THIS NAME.
BRING THIS OBJECT.
HOLD THIS SCARF.
REMEMBER THIS LAUGH.

Raven’s voice was quiet, flat. “A shopping list.”

Yara’s jaw clenched. “A recipe.”

The Doctor stepped closer, eyes scanning the board. He could see the structure of it immediately—patterned categories, clustered by relationships, by “usefulness,” by emotional proximity.

Parents grouped. Lovers grouped. Children grouped.

And then a section labeled, in neat ink:

HIGH IMPACT RETURNS

The Doctor’s throat tightened.

Nell swallowed hard. “I told you,” she whispered. “They make you bring things. They say it helps.”

“It helps the feed,” the Doctor said quietly.

MINO hovered near the board and projected a faint overlay of signal resonance. “Photographic density and personal-object tagging correlate with increased carrier-wave responsiveness,” he reported. “The board functions as an emotional indexing system.”

Yara stared at him. “So they’re cataloguing grief.”

“They’re monetising it,” Raven said softly.

Nell flinched. “It’s not money,” she whispered.

The Doctor looked at her gently. “It doesn’t have to be money,” he said. “Economy is just what a system trades. Here, it trades loss for compliance.”

Nell’s eyes shimmered. “People wanted it,” she whispered. “They begged.”

“And someone answered,” the Doctor said.

Yara pointed at a photo near the bottom—a man with a wide grin, grease on his cheek. The name beneath: JOSS MERREN.

“He’s on the board,” she said.

Nell nodded, voice small. “After he tried to leave, they put him here,” she whispered. “Like… like a warning. Like he needed extra holding.”

Raven’s gaze sharpened. “So the board isn’t just for the dead.”

Nell shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “It’s for anyone who needs correcting.”

The Doctor’s jaw tightened. This wasn’t merely a town seduced by comfort.

This was a system with enforcement.

He turned away from the board and scanned the shelves. He found binders—handwritten ledgers, tidy columns, the kind of paperwork that looked harmless until you realised what it measured.

He pulled one open.

Names. Dates. Attendance ticks.

And then a category he didn’t like at all:

DONATIONS — FEEDSTOCK

Under it, itemized entries:
• polymer scrap (kg)
• household plastics (kg)
• memorial objects (units)
• personal effects (units)
• “heirloom” (units)

The Doctor felt cold spread through him.

“Mayor,” he said quietly. “This was his part.”

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “What.”

The Doctor held the ledger out. “They’ve made grief into an intake pipeline,” he said. “They take plastics and keepsakes under the banner of ‘donation.’ It goes to the plant. It becomes product. It becomes bodies. It becomes enforcement.”

Nell whispered, horrified, “They said it was for the town.”

“It is,” Raven said. “Just not the way they mean.”

MINO added, clinical, “Recycling plant throughput aligns with donation totals. Material conversion efficiency unusually high.”

Yara’s voice went hard. “So every time someone brings their dead husband’s scarf, the plant eats it.”

Nell’s face crumpled. “My mum—” she began.

Raven’s voice cut in, gentle but firm. “Don’t. Not here. Not now. Later, when we’ve stopped this.”

Nell swallowed, nodding quickly, wiping her face like she was angry at it for being human.

The Doctor closed the ledger and placed it back on the shelf with care, like it might bite. Then he looked around the room again, taking in the board, the binders, the pamphlets.

Old-school horror wasn’t tentacles.

It was paperwork.

It was a warm voice and a tidy font and a system that looked like care until you noticed it was also control.

Yara looked at the pamphlets and picked one up, reading the front.

COMMUNITY HOUR — YOU ARE HELD HERE.
BRING A NAME. BRING A MEMORY. BRING A SMILE.

She crumpled it in her fist. “I swear,” she said through clenched teeth, “I’m going to—”

“Not yet,” the Doctor said quietly.

Yara glared at him. “Why not yet.”

“Because if we break the wrong thing first, they’ll turn the whole town into Autons,” the Doctor replied. “And then we’ll be fighting plastic people while the Nestene keeps singing through their mouths.”

Raven nodded slightly. “Cut the song.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said.

Nell whispered, “They’ll notice we’re here.”

The Doctor glanced toward the door. He could already hear it—the faint shuffle of movement outside, the softest echo of footsteps.

Not running.

Not panicking.

Approaching with polite certainty.

“They’ve noticed,” Raven said.

Yara stepped to the door and listened, body tense.

A voice drifted through the metal—warm, familiar, Reverend Muir’s cadence.

“Friends,” it said softly. “You’ve wandered into storage. There’s nothing for you there. Community Hour is waiting.”

Nell’s breath hitched. “She’s outside.”

The Doctor’s voice stayed calm. “Not alone.”

MINO’s optics pulsed. “Multiple units present. At least six. Two Autons. Four human.”

Yara’s jaw clenched. “Humans.”

Raven’s voice was low. “Humans who are smiling.”

The Doctor looked at Nell. “Where’s the back stair you mentioned?” he asked.

Nell pointed to a second door at the far side of the storage room—narrow, unmarked, half hidden behind a rack of folded banners. “That,” she whispered. “It goes up behind the screen wall.”

“Good,” the Doctor said.

He moved toward it, but paused at the photo board again, eyes drawn to one particular section.

Pinned near the center was a photo of a young woman with bright eyes and a grin like she’d been caught mid-laugh.

Under it, in neat ink:

NELL QUILL — HIGH LEVERAGE

Yara saw it too. Her face went very still.

“They’re tracking you,” Yara said quietly.

Nell stared at her own photo like it was an insult made physical. “I never—” she began.

“You don’t have to bring yourself,” Raven said softly. “They already did.”

Nell’s hands clenched. The key fob rattled against her knuckles.

The voice outside continued, gentle as a lullaby. “Nell,” it called softly. “Sweetheart. Come out. You don’t need to be scared.”

Nell’s eyes widened. “That’s my mum’s voice.”

Yara’s expression hardened. “They’re using voices now.”

The Doctor’s mouth tightened. “They’re using what works.”

The voice outside changed again—still warm, still kind.

“Nell,” it said. “It’s Dad. It’s alright. Come on.”

Nell made a small sound in her throat that wasn’t a word.

The Doctor stepped closer to her, keeping his voice low and grounded. “That isn’t your father,” he said gently. “It’s a recording or an Auton using a template. It’s bait.”

Nell’s eyes shimmered. She nodded quickly, fiercely, like she needed the nod to be a weapon.

“I know,” she whispered. “I know.”

The door handle on the storage room door moved—slowly, politely—testing.

Yara braced herself against it instinctively.

The Doctor turned to Raven. “Cold on the hinge,” he murmured.

Raven nodded once, raised the canister, and sprayed a thin line of frost along the door seam.

The metal shrank slightly. The hinge stiffened.

The handle stopped moving.

Outside, Reverend Muir’s voice remained calm. “You don’t have to lock us out,” she said softly. “We’re not angry.”

Yara muttered, “You’re worse.”

The Doctor moved to the back stair door. Nell stepped in quickly and used the fob. The lock clicked.

They slipped through.

The stairwell beyond was narrow and steep, climbing behind the chapel’s screen wall. The air grew warmer as they ascended, and the carrier wave thickened again—not because it was louder, but because they were moving closer to the heart of the broadcast.

Behind them, the storage room door shuddered once—gentle, controlled.

Not a battering ram.

A polite insistence.

Raven glanced back. “They’re not rushing,” she murmured.

“They don’t have to,” the Doctor replied. “Their economy is time. They can spend it.”

Yara climbed faster, shoulders tense. “We can’t.”

“No,” the Doctor agreed. “We can’t.”

Above them, a faint glow seeped through the stairwell’s upper hatch—warm, inviting light. The kind of light you’d see at the end of a church aisle.

Nell’s breathing quickened. “That’s the screen wall,” she whispered. “We go through there and we’re behind the altar.”

The Doctor nodded.

He could already hear the chapel crowd now—the soft murmur of hundreds of voices, the bell tone, the gentle laugh-cry cadence of Community Hour building like a tide.

And beneath it all, the carrier wave pulsed with patient hunger.

The Nestene wasn’t screaming.

It was simply opening its mouth and letting grief fall in.

///

Chapter 10 — Hard Proof

The clinic sat three doors down from the chapel and pretended it wasn’t related.

A small white sign—PARISH HEALTH / WALK-INS WELCOME—a row of plastic chairs bolted to the floor, a bowl of wrapped sweets nobody touched, and a wall screen looping soft wellness messages over footage of smiling parishioners.

BREATHE.
REST.
YOU ARE HELD.

Dr. Sia Ren had torn the screen out of its mount.

It lay face-down on the counter like a dead fish, cords exposed, sparking faintly. Someone had tried to put it back twice; the screw holes were stripped. A third attempt had been made with adhesive and had failed.

Sia stood behind the counter with her arms folded, sleeves rolled to the elbow, dark circles under her eyes that no amount of chapel light could soften. She looked like she’d been awake for days and had decided that if she was going to hallucinate, she would at least do it angrily.

When the Doctor slipped in through the back door—quiet, fast, led by a narrow service corridor Nell still remembered—Sia didn’t flinch.

She didn’t smile.

She looked at him like he was a tool she’d ordered months ago and had finally arrived after the crisis had already started.

“About time,” she said.

Yara blinked. “You were expecting us?”

Sia’s gaze flicked over Yara, Raven, Nell, MINO, then returned to the Doctor. “No,” she said flatly. “But I was expecting someone who doesn’t smell like incense and compliance.”

The Doctor’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “Doctor,” he said, offering the word like a handshake he was actually willing to give.

“I know what you are,” Sia replied. “Not your name. Your type.” She gestured sharply to the room. “Close the door.”

Raven did without being asked.

Nell hovered near the wall, pale and tense. She looked like she expected the clinic to start smiling at her.

MINO perched on a light fixture like he belonged there.

Sia moved around the counter and grabbed a metal tray from beneath it, placing it on the nearest examination table. On it were sample tubes, microscope slides, and a small, battered field analyser held together by tape.

“Hard proof,” she said, tapping the tray. “Because no one here believes anything unless it comes with a hymn.”

The Doctor leaned in. “Show me.”

Sia picked up a slide between gloved fingers. “Blood smear,” she said. “From a worker who ‘felt calmer’ after Community Hour. He came in because his hands kept trembling.”

She shoved the slide into the clinic microscope, then nudged it toward the Doctor with her elbow.

The Doctor bent to look.

He saw red cells, white cells—and then something else.

Fine, translucent filaments, too thin to be hair, too regular to be dust. They drifted through the field like lace, catching the light in a way that made the Doctor’s mind itch.

Not alive in the usual sense.

Responsive.

A pattern.

He straightened slowly.

“Polymer microfilaments,” he murmured.

Sia nodded once, hard. “In blood. In sputum. In lungs.” She pointed at a sealed jar on the tray. Inside was a wad of gauze, tinged faintly grey and glittering with almost-invisible thread.

“Coughed up,” she said. “By a twelve-year-old. His mother said he was ‘sleeping better.’”

Yara’s face tightened. “They’re making people breathe plastic.”

“They’re making people breathe signal,” the Doctor corrected quietly.

Sia’s eyes narrowed in approval. “Exactly.”

Raven’s voice was low. “Where does it come from.”

Sia gestured toward the ceiling vents with two fingers like she wanted to tear them out with her hands. “The warm air,” she said. “The chapel feed is in the air. They’ve tuned the ventilation. The plant pumps it through ducts that were never meant to touch a residential system. And the parish calls it ‘holding.’”

Nell whispered, “My mum said the air felt softer.”

Sia’s gaze flicked to Nell, sharp. “Your mum is being drugged by polymer dust and prayer,” she said, then softened a fraction—not in tone, but in aim. “Not because she’s stupid. Because she’s tired.”

Nell swallowed hard.

The Doctor looked at Sia. “How long have you known.”

Sia’s laugh was short and bitter. “I’ve known something was wrong since the first Returned walked into my waiting room and tried to convince me she didn’t need a physical exam,” she said. “People don’t come back from explosive decompression with perfect blood pressure and no scar tissue.”

Yara’s voice went flat. “You examined one.”

Sia’s gaze sharpened. “I tried,” she said. “She sat right there.” She pointed to the chair by the wall. “Smiling. Warm hands. Normal pulse. But when I tried to take a sample—” Sia’s mouth tightened. “Her skin didn’t bleed. It… beaded. Like gel trying to pretend it was blood.”

The Doctor felt cold spread through his chest. “And after that.”

Sia’s eyes flashed. “After that, Mayor Vane visited,” she said. “He told me to ‘focus on wellness.’ Reverend Muir visited after him. She smiled and told me I was ‘holding pain’ and didn’t have to.” Sia’s jaw clenched. “Then my screen started turning itself on at night.”

MINO clicked softly. “Predictable escalation pattern.”

Sia glanced at MINO and, despite herself, looked grateful. “Thank you,” she said dryly. “It helps when someone else sees reality.”

The Doctor stepped closer to the tray again. “Do you have anything from the polymer vats,” he asked.

Sia nodded and pulled out a sealed vial of translucent gel. It shimmered faintly under the clinic light.

“Came through the vent filter,” she said. “I scraped it off with a scalpel.”

The Doctor held the vial up. The gel shifted slowly, like it was thinking about moving faster and choosing not to.

He could almost hear the carrier wave in it.

Raven watched the vial and said quietly, “It wants to be a body.”

The Doctor didn’t deny it.

Sia folded her arms again. “So,” she said, “you tell me: am I losing my mind, or is this place building something.”

The Doctor looked at her. “You’re not losing your mind,” he said. “This is Nestene interface work. Classic. Old. Opportunistic.”

Sia’s expression tightened. “Then why are they doing it here?”

The Doctor didn’t answer immediately. He let the question sit in the room like a weight.

Then he said, “Because Parish Nine is perfect.”

Yara’s eyebrows rose. “Perfect?”

“Small,” the Doctor said. “Isolated. Desperate. A population trained to accept ‘community’ as survival. A plastics plant to provide medium. A chapel tower to provide broadcast. And grief—” His voice hardened slightly. “Grief is the best adhesive in the universe. It makes people stick to anything that promises relief.”

Nell’s breath hitched.

Sia’s gaze was sharp. “So we’re a test site.”

The Doctor nodded once. “A relay,” he said. “A beacon. It’s advertising itself to the lanes. It wants visitors.”

Sia’s mouth tightened. “To convert them.”

“Or to use them,” Raven said softly.

Yara’s jaw clenched. “And Muir? She knows.”

Sia’s laugh was bitter. “She knows enough,” she said. “Or she chooses enough.” She gestured toward a small cupboard behind the counter. “I have more.”

She opened the cupboard and pulled out a thin folder.

Inside were printed attendance sheets—clinic visits cross-referenced with Community Hour attendance. Notes in tidy handwriting: calmer after attending, less questioning, more compliant. And a list of names labelled:

NON-COMPLIANT — WATCH

Yara leaned in and saw one name near the top.

DR. SIA REN.

Sia’s eyes met Yara’s. “They’re tracking dissent,” she said. “Not just grief. Anyone who resists.”

The Doctor’s gaze sharpened. “And that means they’ll come for you.”

Sia’s expression didn’t change. “They already have,” she said.

As if summoned by the sentence, the clinic lights dipped—just a fraction.

A soft bell tone seeped in through the ductwork, distant but unmistakable. Not loud. Not a siren.

A reminder.

The carrier wave pressed lightly at the edge of thought, like a hand testing whether the door was still unlocked.

Nell flinched and glanced toward the vents. “They’re starting,” she whispered.

Sia’s jaw clenched. “Community Hour,” she said, voice full of disgust. “Every time that bell rings, my patients get softer. Like wet clay.”

The Doctor moved toward the clinic door, listening.

Outside, in the corridor, footsteps. Slow. Many. A gentle tide of movement toward the chapel.

And beneath those footsteps, something else—an almost inaudible plastic creak, like joints moving without tendons.

Autons.

Raven’s voice went low. “They’re mobilising.”

Yara’s fists clenched. “Because we’re cutting into the system.”

The Doctor looked at Sia. “You’re coming with us,” he said.

Sia blinked. “I’m not—”

“You are,” the Doctor cut in, calm but final. “Because if they take you, they take the only person here who can tell the difference between a living body and a manufactured one.”

Sia stared at him for a beat, then exhaled sharply through her nose. “Fine,” she said. “But I’m not joining your chapel singalong.”

Yara muttered, “Nobody is.”

Sia grabbed a small med kit, shoved vials into her pocket, and snapped the gloves off her hands like she was discarding the last illusion that this was normal work.

MINO clicked. “Incoming units. Estimated arrival: 12 seconds.”

Nell went pale. “They’re coming here.”

Sia’s eyes narrowed. “Of course they are,” she said. “Can’t have anyone proving the miracle is plastic.”

The Doctor stepped closer to the vent above the doorway and aimed his sonic at it.

A quick pulse.

The vent grille popped loose and dropped into his hand.

Behind it, the duct interior shimmered faintly with translucent thread—microfilaments clinging like dew.

The Doctor’s voice turned quiet and grim.

“They’re not just broadcasting,” he said. “They’re seeding.”

Raven lifted her cold canister.

Yara braced at the door.

Sia stood with her med kit in hand and a look on her face that said she’d stop being polite even if the whole parish begged.

Outside, the clinic corridor filled with soft footsteps.

A warm voice drifted through the closed door—Reverend Muir, gentle as ever.

“Dr. Ren,” she said kindly, “sweetheart… you look tired. Come to Community Hour. Let us hold you.”

Sia’s mouth curled in something that wasn’t a smile. “Go to hell,” she said softly.

The door handle turned.

Slow.

Polite.

Certain.

The Doctor didn’t move.

He looked at his companions and spoke with old-school clarity.

“We leave now,” he said. “And then we cut the tower before it turns this entire rock into a showroom.”

///

Chapter 11 — The Nest Beneath

They didn’t exit through the front.

The front was where Parish Nine expected you to go when you were ready to be welcomed. The front was a funnel, a stage, a smile-shaped mouth.

The Doctor took them through the clinic’s rear service hatch into a narrow maintenance crawl that ran behind the residential ring. It smelled of warm metal and disinfectant, and the ductwork hummed with the carrier wave like a distant choir inside the walls.

Yara went first, shoulders tense, eyes scanning corners as if plastic could jump out at her.

Nell followed, breathing shallowly, clutching her key fob like it was a rosary.

Sia Ren came next, moving briskly, jaw set, med kit slung tight. She didn’t look back. She refused to give the parish the satisfaction of seeing her hesitate.

Raven brought up the rear with MINO floating above her shoulder. Raven’s cold canister was in her right hand, visible, unapologetic. MINO’s optics pulsed rapidly, mapping ahead.

Behind them, through the duct’s thin metal skin, they could hear the corridor outside filling with the soft, measured footsteps of people who weren’t running because they didn’t need to.

Muir’s voice followed them through the vents. Warm. Kind. Persistent.

“Friends,” it drifted, muffled by metal. “There’s no need to hide. We’re not angry. We only want to help.”

Sia’s mouth tightened. “She can help herself into an airlock.”

The Doctor didn’t answer. His focus was on the map MINO projected—thin lines of corridors, nodes, speakers, screens, and the thick trunk of the chapel tower rising like a spine.

But beneath that spine, there was something else.

A weight.

A deeper cluster of signal density that MINO kept circling as if it offended his sense of clean geometry.

“MINO,” the Doctor murmured, “show me the lower levels.”

MINO’s projection shifted, revealing something Parish Nine didn’t advertise: old maintenance strata beneath the chapel and plant—original station infrastructure. A reclaimed station always had layers: the pretty skin built over the bones, and beneath the bones, the things nobody wanted to remember still existed.

“There,” MINO said. “Substructure node. High carrier resonance. Consistent with signal medium volume.”

Raven’s voice was low. “The reservoir.”

Sia frowned. “The gel sphere in the control room?”

The Doctor shook his head. “That was a local interface,” he said. “A finger through the curtain. This—” He tapped the projection. “This is the hand.”

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “You’re telling me there’s a bigger tank.”

“Not just bigger,” the Doctor said. “Older. Integrated. The original plant reservoirs were designed to hold tonnes of polymer slurry.”

Sia went still. “You mean the thing behind the feed isn’t just riding the signal.”

The Doctor’s jaw tightened. “It’s anchored.”

Nell whispered, “I didn’t know there was anything under the chapel.”

Raven glanced at her. “That’s why they call it sacred.”

They reached a junction where the maintenance crawl widened into a service corridor with a grated floor and a low ceiling. The lighting here was dimmer, and the smell changed—less antiseptic, more chemical, a sweet plastic note that made the Doctor’s tongue feel coated.

A sign on the wall—older, industrial—had been painted over with white.

Under the white, the original warning text still bled through:

RESERVOIR ACCESS — AUTHORISED ONLY.
HAZARDOUS MATERIAL.

Someone had stencilled a new message over it in gold:

DO NOT FEAR THE DEEP.
THE DEEP HOLDS YOU.

Yara stared at it like she wanted to set it on fire. “They write like they’re putting pillows over faces.”

Sia muttered, “They write like marketing.”

The Doctor moved to the door beneath the sign. It was heavy, old, mechanical, with a manual wheel lock.

It should have been difficult.

It opened when he touched it.

A gentle click. A polite release. Like the parish was holding the door for a guest.

The Doctor’s skin crawled. “It wants us down there.”

Raven’s voice was calm. “So we go down and we take it away.”

Yara braced. “If we’re walking into a trap—”

“We are,” the Doctor said. “But it’s also an opportunity. We need to know what we’re cutting.”

Sia’s eyes narrowed. “And if we can’t cut it?”

The Doctor looked at her. “Then we stop the broadcast and evacuate the rock.”

Sia’s breath caught. “Evacuate?”

The Doctor’s voice stayed level. “If the Nestene gets a proper anchor here, Parish Nine becomes a manufacturing front for Auton deployments along the lanes.”

Yara’s jaw clenched. “So it’s not just the town.”

“No,” the Doctor said softly. “It never is.”

He stepped through the doorway.

The corridor beyond sloped downward. The air grew warmer with every meter, and the carrier wave thickened until it felt like pressure in the sinuses. The lighting changed too—no longer bright white strips, but an amber glow that didn’t come from fixtures so much as from the walls themselves, reflected and amplified.

Halfway down, Nell stumbled slightly. She caught herself on the railing, breathing hard.

Yara steadied her without comment.

Nell swallowed. “It feels—” she began.

“Like going under water,” the Doctor finished quietly.

Nell looked at him, eyes wide. “Yes.”

Sia’s expression tightened. “That’s not normal.”

“No,” the Doctor agreed. “That’s the medium.”

They reached the bottom.

A hatch opened into a chamber that made even the Doctor pause.

It was vast—far larger than any “parish” space above. The ceiling arched high, supported by old structural ribs. Catwalks ringed the room at multiple levels, and below them, in the chamber’s center, sat a reservoir.

Not a neat tank.

A pool.

Contained by thick transparent barriers, with pipes feeding into it from every direction like arteries.

The gel inside was not pale here.

It was milky, shimmering, with slow currents that suggested something more than fluid dynamics. The surface rose and fell in tiny waves, as if the pool was breathing.

And above it, suspended from a cable frame, hung an array of modulators—broadcast equipment repurposed to vibrate the gel. A chapel organ built for a sea.

Sia’s face went tight with disgust and awe. “Jesus.”

Raven’s voice was quiet. “Not him.”

MINO hovered forward, optics narrowing. “Signal medium volume: extremely high. Carrier wave generated here. This is the anchor.”

The Doctor stepped onto the catwalk, metal ringing softly under his boots. The sound echoed through the chamber and came back changed—thicker, as if the gel absorbed and returned it.

He felt the Nestene’s presence more clearly now.

Not in a “voice.”

In a pressure. A vast mind pressing gently at the edges of the room, like the ocean pressing against the glass of an aquarium.

He swallowed and forced himself to breathe normally.

“Doctor,” Raven said quietly, and he heard the warning in her tone.

He followed her gaze.

Along the chamber walls, lined up like decorative statues, stood figures in white.

Not moving.

Not yet.

Autons—some in coveralls, some in parish volunteer aprons, some in plain clothes that looked like they’d been copied from townspeople.

Their faces were smooth. Their smiles were perfect.

Their eyes were empty.

And each one faced the reservoir, as if waiting for the moment the pool told them to turn.

Yara’s voice went low. “How many.”

“Enough,” the Doctor said softly.

Sia’s jaw clenched. “So this is where they’re made.”

The Doctor nodded. “Printed, assembled, actuated,” he said. “The plant produces the bodies. The reservoir gives them coherence. The tower gives them direction.”

Nell’s voice trembled. “And the Returned?”

The Doctor looked at the gel. “Those are… specialized constructs,” he said carefully. “More detailed. More convincing. Built from grief data and reinforced by proximity.”

Sia’s eyes hardened. “You’re saying they’re not people.”

“I’m saying they’re not free,” the Doctor replied.

A soft sound rose through the chamber.

Not a bell.

A sigh.

The gel surface rippled more strongly, and a wave rolled to the reservoir’s edge, pressing against the transparent barrier like a curious animal pressing its nose to glass.

Raven lifted her cold canister.

The Doctor held up a hand. “Not yet,” he whispered.

Raven’s eyes didn’t leave the pool. “It’s noticing us.”

“I know,” he said.

Sia stepped closer to the barrier, peering through. “Is it alive?” she asked, voice tight.

The Doctor didn’t answer immediately. The question wasn’t simple. The Nestene was a consciousness—alien, distributed—capable of inhabiting plastic media the way a human inhabited flesh. Alive in the sense that it thought. Alive in the sense that it acted.

Alive enough.

“Yes,” he said finally. “In its own way.”

Nell shivered. “It feels… kind,” she whispered, and then looked horrified at herself for saying it.

Yara snapped, “That’s the point. It feels like a blanket.”

The Doctor nodded, grim. “The carrier wave is designed to soothe resistance. It doesn’t need you terrified. It needs you compliant.”

The gel surface rippled again, and this time the wave was accompanied by static on a small monitor mounted to a catwalk railing nearby. The screen had been left on—an industrial display—now filled with grey interference.

Within the interference, a shape formed.

Not a face, exactly.

A suggestion of eyes. A mouth. A human arrangement imposed on something that didn’t have one.

Sia’s breath hitched.

The shape on the screen shifted, and the audio from a nearby speaker crackled to life—soft, warm, familiar.

Reverend Muir’s voice, but not coming from the chapel.

Coming from here.

“Doctor,” it said gently, as if it had always known him. “You’ve come to see the heart.”

The Doctor stared at the screen, expression controlled. “That’s not her,” he said quietly.

Raven’s voice was low. “It’s using her mouth.”

The screen shimmered. The shape behind the static pressed closer, like a tide.

“You speak in harsh categories,” the voice murmured. “Monster. Control. Trick. But you are tired too.”

Yara’s fists clenched. “Shut it off.”

The Doctor didn’t move. His eyes stayed on the screen. “What do you want,” he asked.

The voice didn’t answer immediately. It didn’t need to. It showed.

On the far side of the reservoir, a panel in the wall slid open silently.

A figure stepped out.

Human.

Not plastic.

Reverend Edda Muir, walking across the upper catwalk with calm, warm certainty, as if she was descending into a sanctuary rather than a manufacturing pit.

Behind her, two Autons moved in perfect synchrony, flanking her like ceremonial guards.

Muir smiled when she saw them, and for the first time down here her smile looked strained—as if even she felt the pressure of the reservoir’s presence and had learned to perform comfort in its shadow.

“Friends,” she said warmly. “You really shouldn’t be down here.”

Yara’s voice was a low growl. “This is what you’re doing.”

Muir’s eyes softened. “This is what we’re surviving,” she corrected. “Do you know how many times I have buried children on this rock? Do you know what it does to a place when hope becomes a joke?”

The Doctor kept his voice level. “So you invited a predator.”

Muir’s smile tightened. “I invited help,” she said. “And it answered. Not with judgment. Not with shame. With holding.”

Sia’s voice was hard. “With polymer in lungs.”

Muir looked at Sia with something like genuine sadness. “Oh, Doctor Ren,” she said softly. “You hold pain like it’s proof you’re awake. But suffering isn’t a virtue.”

Sia stepped forward. “It’s not a virtue,” she snapped. “It’s information. It tells you when something’s wrong.”

Muir’s smile lingered, but her eyes sharpened. “Information doesn’t keep people warm,” she said. “Information doesn’t bring back the dead.”

The Doctor’s gaze flicked to the Autons lining the wall. “No,” he said quietly. “It brings back copies.”

Muir’s eyes widened a fraction, and for a moment anger flashed—quick, bright, suppressed. Then the warmth returned.

“You’re clever,” she said. “But you’re also lonely.”

The Doctor didn’t flinch. “That’s not relevant.”

“It’s the only thing that is,” Muir said softly. “This—” she gestured to the reservoir like a priest gesturing to an altar, “—is relief. A world where grief doesn’t have the final word. Where a town doesn’t have to accept loss as a law.”

Yara’s voice was flat. “At the cost of free will.”

Muir’s smile softened. “Free will is a luxury,” she said gently. “Ask anyone who has watched their home decay. Ask anyone who has stared at an empty bed and wondered why the universe is so cruel.”

Nell’s breath hitched.

Muir’s gaze slid to her, and the warmth in her eyes intensified in a way that made Nell recoil.

“Nell,” Muir said softly. “Sweetheart. Come here.”

Nell froze.

Yara moved instinctively, shifting to block Nell’s line of sight to Muir without touching her.

“No,” Yara said, voice hard.

Muir’s smile remained. “You don’t need to protect her,” she said. “I’ve protected her for years.”

Nell’s voice trembled. “You used my dad.”

Muir’s eyes softened into a look of wounded compassion. “I gave your mother a moment of peace,” she said. “Do you hate me for that?”

Nell swallowed hard, eyes wet. “I hate you for the lie,” she whispered.

Muir’s smile flickered—just a fraction. Then it hardened into something firmer, still wrapped in warmth.

“Truth,” she said softly, “is not always kind.”

The gel in the reservoir surged.

The surface rose suddenly, a swell pressing against the transparent barrier with more force than before. The chamber’s lights dipped, then brightened.

The Autons along the walls twitched—tiny movements in hands and necks, as if the signal had just tightened a string.

MINO’s optics pulsed rapidly. “Carrier wave amplitude increasing,” he warned. “Community Hour entering peak phase.”

The Doctor felt it too: the whole parish above, gathering, feeding the signal with faces and names and memories. The reservoir below responded like a stomach filling.

Muir looked pleased. “It’s beginning,” she whispered. “You’ll feel it. Everyone does.”

Sia’s voice went sharp. “You’re opening the door wider.”

Muir’s eyes shone. “We deserve it,” she said. “We deserve to be held.”

The Doctor’s jaw clenched. He could see the system now, fully: grief data in, polymer medium ready, broadcast tower amplifying, reservoir anchoring.

Classic.

Old.

And brutally effective.

He turned to MINO. “How much time until Community Hour peaks,” he asked.

MINO clicked. “Approximately seven minutes.”

The Doctor nodded once. Seven minutes before the carrier wave reached maximum coherence—before the Nestene could push more of itself through the medium, perhaps enough to manifest something larger than Autons, something capable of leaving the asteroid.

Raven stepped closer to the reservoir barrier, cold canister lifted. “Let me freeze it,” she said quietly.

The Doctor shook his head. “If you freeze the surface abruptly, you risk fracturing the barrier,” he said. “And if this floods—” He glanced at the Autons. “We won’t be fighting a handful of helpers. We’ll be fighting a tide.”

Yara’s voice was low. “So what do we do.”

The Doctor’s eyes went to Muir. “We cut the tower,” he said.

Muir smiled, serene. “You can’t,” she said gently. “Even if you break the tower, the parish will still gather. The plant will still print. The reservoir will still hold.”

The Doctor’s voice turned cold. “Not if we starve it.”

Muir’s smile softened. “Starve it of what,” she asked, almost curious.

The Doctor didn’t answer her. He looked at Sia.

“Sia,” he said, “how quickly can you knock people out of the carrier wave if we give you clean air and a counter-stimulant?”

Sia blinked. “Knock them out?”

“Out of compliance,” the Doctor clarified. “Wake them up.”

Sia’s eyes narrowed, mind snapping into clinical mode. “If it’s polymer microfilaments + audio entrainment…” she began, thinking aloud. “We could use bronchodilators, stimulants, irritants—break the calm reflex—”

Raven cut in. “Or we cut the screens.”

The Doctor nodded. “We cut the screens,” he agreed. “We cut the broadcast. We cut the reinforcement nodes.”

Yara’s jaw clenched. “And we stop Community Hour.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “We stop the feeding.”

Muir’s smile held, but her eyes sharpened. “You won’t,” she said softly. “They want it.”

The Doctor looked at her, voice quiet and old. “Wanting isn’t consent,” he said. “Not when the want has been engineered.”

For the first time, Muir’s warmth slipped enough to show the steel beneath.

“You think you’re saving them,” she said, voice low. “But you’re about to take away the only thing keeping this town from breaking.”

The Doctor met her eyes. “Then it breaks honestly,” he said. “And we help them rebuild with their own hands, not with yours and not with—” he glanced at the reservoir “—that.”

The gel surged again, and this time the reservoir barrier creaked—a deep, stressed sound that vibrated through the catwalk.

Nell let out a small, terrified sound.

MINO’s optics flared. “Barrier stress increasing. Signal coherence approaching threshold.”

The Doctor’s mind sharpened.

They needed to leave this chamber now, before the Nestene decided it was time to demonstrate what “holding” really looked like when it stopped being gentle.

He looked at Raven. “Cold the door behind us,” he murmured. “Slow them.”

Raven nodded once, already moving.

He looked at Yara. “Get Nell and Sia out. Up to the tower.”

Yara nodded, jaw tight. “On it.”

He looked at Sia. “You keep your evidence,” he said. “We’ll need it when this town wakes up and tries to deny what happened.”

Sia’s mouth tightened. “I’ve been waiting months for someone to need my evidence.”

Muir watched them with a calm that wasn’t peace. It was certainty.

“You can run,” she said gently. “But you’ll come back. Everyone comes back.”

The Doctor didn’t answer.

He turned, and as they moved toward the exit hatch, the reservoir monitor behind them filled with static again—thicker, more alive.

A deeper presence pressed at the screen.

And beneath Muir’s warm smile, the Doctor heard something else in her voice as she spoke one final line, softer than a prayer:

“It’s hungry now.”

The hatch clanged shut behind them.

Raven sprayed frost along the seam, sealing it as best she could.

And as they ran upward into the chapel’s hidden stair, the carrier wave pulsed through the metal like a heartbeat that wasn’t theirs—steady, patient, convinced it had already won.

///

Chapter 12 — Sunday Crowd

They emerged behind the screen wall into warmth and sound.

The chapel’s main hall was full now—packed benches, standing room along the walls, children perched on laps, elderly clustered near the aisles. The air was thick with bodies and perfume and that sweet polymer note underneath, like plastic flowers left too long in the sun.

At the front, Reverend Muir’s screens curved in a glowing arc, faces shifting and smiling, tears rolling down cheeks that might have been real and might not.

The bell tone pulsed softly through the speakers.

Not loud.

Not commanding.

Just present, threading itself into breathing.

The Doctor kept his group low and moving, using the narrow service corridor behind the altar to slip along the chapel’s side like ghosts. Nell led, trembling, key fob still clenched. Sia moved beside her, eyes scanning the crowd with a doctor’s instinct—looking for the slack jaw, the softened gaze, the shallow breathing of people being lulled.

Yara watched the congregation like she was watching a flood build at a dam. Raven watched the screens like she was watching a weapon.

MINO hovered above the corridor, optics pulsing, mapping exits.

The Doctor’s skin crawled as the carrier wave pressed at his mind. Here, it wasn’t just a signal. It was reinforced by faces, by ritual, by the collective desire in the room to stop hurting.

That desire hummed.

It fed the system.

At the front of the chapel, Reverend Edda Muir stood in her white-and-gold vestments, hands lifted slightly as if blessing the crowd. Her smile was calm, radiant, practiced.

And on either side of the altar stood two volunteers in white.

Still.

Smiling.

Autons, holding their posture like statues.

Muir’s voice flowed over the congregation like warm water.

“Friends,” she said, “we gather to be held. We gather to remember. We gather to let the universe carry what is too heavy for one heart.”

Heads nodded. Smiles softened. People breathed out like they’d been waiting all day to stop resisting their own sadness.

Sia’s jaw tightened. “They’re sedated,” she muttered.

The Doctor kept moving. “Not sedated,” he whispered back. “Entrained.”

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “Same outcome.”

“Different solution,” the Doctor replied.

Nell swallowed hard. “The tower access is up there,” she whispered, pointing at a narrow staircase hidden behind the screens’ left curve. It was guarded by a small door with a volunteer placard: SCREEN MAINTENANCE / AUTH ONLY.

An Auton stood near it.

Smiling.

Watching.

The Doctor’s mind ran quickly. If they tried to push through, the Auton would move. If the Auton moved, the congregation would notice. If the congregation noticed, panic could break the trance—and a stampede in a packed chapel on low gravity metal flooring would be fatal.

Classic base-under-siege problem: the monster wasn’t just the enemy. The crowd was part of the hazard.

Yara saw it too. “We can’t fight in here.”

“No,” the Doctor said. “We don’t fight in here. We redirect.”

Raven’s voice was quiet. “Cut their line of sight.”

The Doctor nodded once. “Yes.”

He leaned toward MINO. “Create a visual glitch in the screen array,” he whispered. “Something small. Something that pulls attention away from the stair door.”

MINO’s optics pulsed. “Feasible. Can inject minor static interference into two screens. Probability of congregation response: curiosity, not panic.”

“Do it,” the Doctor said.

MINO hovered closer to the screen wall, wings ticking softly, and emitted a narrow-band pulse into the nearest maintenance conduit.

Two screens flickered.

Not blackout. Not chaos. Just a brief smear of static across smiling faces—like a blink.

The congregation murmured softly. Heads lifted. People leaned forward as if the screens were a hearth and someone had briefly thrown ash on the fire.

Reverend Muir’s smile didn’t falter, but her eyes sharpened for a fraction of a second.

“Sometimes,” she said warmly, voice smoothing the moment, “the feed stutters. It’s only the universe reminding us that even comfort needs patience.”

Soft laughs. Nods. More smiles.

But attention shifted.

And that gave the Doctor his opening.

He touched Nell’s shoulder gently. “Now,” he whispered.

Nell moved toward the maintenance door, trembling but determined.

Yara and Raven flanked her, close enough to protect, not close enough to look like a threat. The Doctor moved slightly ahead, positioning his body between the congregation’s line of sight and Nell’s hand.

Sia stayed back half a pace, eyes scanning the crowd for the first signs of agitation.

Nell raised the key fob and pressed it to the reader.

The reader beeped.

Louder than she wanted.

The Auton near the door turned its head slowly toward the sound.

Its smile remained perfect.

Its eyes locked on Nell.

“Nell Quill,” it said softly, in Reverend Muir’s cadence, “please return to your seat.”

Nell froze.

Yara’s voice was low and sharp. “Keep going.”

Nell swallowed and pressed the fob again.

The door clicked open.

The Auton stepped forward.

Not rushing.

Not lunging.

Just a polite, inevitable approach.

“Please,” it said gently, “do not disrupt Community Hour.”

The Doctor lifted his sonic subtly at waist level and sent a tight disrupt pulse into the Auton’s knee joint—low enough to avoid audible feedback.

The Auton’s leg stiffened.

It paused.

Still smiling.

Raven stepped forward and sprayed a thin line of frost across the Auton’s ankle actuator. Frost flashed white.

The Auton’s foot locked to the floor.

It remained upright, calm, smiling, as if being immobilised was simply another form of participation.

Yara whispered, vicious, “Good. Stay.”

Nell slipped through the door into the narrow stairwell beyond.

The Doctor followed, then Raven, then Yara. Sia went last, glancing back at the congregation.

Too many faces.

Too many smiles.

Too much hunger in the air.

Reverend Muir’s voice continued, soothing, as if nothing unusual had happened.

“We are safe,” she said warmly. “We are together. We are held.”

The maintenance door slid shut behind them with a soft click.

In the stairwell, the sound of the chapel dulled, but the carrier wave grew stronger.

They were climbing closer to the amplifier heart.

Nell’s breathing quickened. “She’ll know,” she whispered.

“She already knows,” Yara replied.

MINO hovered above them. “Signal coherence increasing,” he warned. “Peak phase approaching in five minutes.”

The Doctor nodded, eyes fixed upward. “Then we have five minutes to stop a town feeding an alien consciousness through a chapel hymn.”

Sia’s voice was tight. “And if we fail?”

The Doctor’s jaw clenched. “Then the parish becomes a broadcast station,” he said. “And the lanes become a showroom.”

They climbed.

At the top of the stairwell was a hatch marked AMPLIFIER ACCESS / AUTHORIZED TECH.

Nell raised the key fob again, hands shaking.

The hatch didn’t open.

Nell stared. “It should—”

MINO clicked. “Access permissions have been revoked. Manual override required.”

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “So they noticed.”

Raven’s voice was quiet. “Of course they did.”

The Doctor stepped forward, placing his hand on the hatch. He felt the faint vibration through the metal—carrier wave pumping upward, steady, insistent.

He raised the sonic and began to work the lock.

Behind them, from the stairwell below, came soft footsteps.

Not many.

One set.

Slow.

Polite.

A familiar warmth in the air.

Reverend Muir’s voice drifted up through the stairwell, gentle as ever.

“My friends,” she called softly, “you don’t have to climb so hard. The tower will hold you too.”

Yara’s posture tightened. “She’s coming up.”

Sia’s jaw clenched. “Let her.”

The Doctor’s sonic whined softly as he coaxed the lock’s ancient mechanics into yielding. His eyes stayed on the hatch.

Click.

The hatch released.

He pushed it open and warm air spilled out—hotter, more electrical, saturated with the carrier wave like thick fog.

The amplifier room beyond was cramped, filled with broadcast gear and power couplers, and at its center sat the heart of the chapel’s voice: a large modulation unit bolted to the floor, wired into every screen and speaker in the parish.

It thrummed like a living thing.

The Doctor stepped in.

Raven followed, cold canister ready.

Yara and Sia stayed at the hatch, guarding the stairwell.

Nell hesitated, then slipped in too—eyes wide, seeing the machinery that had been singing in her lungs for months.

The Doctor looked at the modulator and felt the old-school shape of the problem settle into his bones:

A town, a tower, a monster that didn’t need claws because it had comfort.

He raised his sonic.

“MINO,” he said softly, “give me the carrier frequency.”

MINO’s optics pulsed and projected a thin readout in the air—numbers that were almost music.

The Doctor adjusted the sonic’s output to match.

Outside, in the chapel below, Reverend Muir’s voice swelled into the peak of Community Hour.

“Now,” she said warmly, “we speak the names.”

Hundreds of voices murmured in response, a soft collective chant.

Names.

Faces.

Memories.

Fuel.

The modulator’s hum deepened.

The Doctor felt the Nestene’s presence press closer, like a tide rising under the floor.

He tightened his grip on the sonic.

And behind them, in the stairwell, footsteps reached the hatch.

A soft, pleasant voice drifted in—close now, intimate.

“Doctor,” Reverend Muir said gently, “please.”

Yara’s voice answered, hard as steel. “No.”

///

Chapter 13 — Cut the Feed

The amplifier room vibrated.

Not with sound in the normal sense—more like the metal itself was humming in sympathy with the carrier wave, as if every bolt and bracket had been trained to sing. The modulation unit in the center was larger than it looked from the doorway: a floor-mounted block of composite casing with cooling fins, power couplers thick as wrists, and a glass-fronted cavity where gel conduits pulsed faintly like capillaries.

Not just electronics.

Medium.

Plastic and signal braided together.

The Doctor stepped closer, sonic in hand, eyes scanning the unit’s access panels. He didn’t touch anything yet. He listened—physically, with his ears, and mentally, with the part of him that could feel when a place was trying to lean into his thoughts.

The carrier wave was strongest here. It tried to make his breathing slow. It tried to make his shoulders drop. It tried to make him think why fight?

He pushed back.

Raven stood to his left, cold canister ready, gaze steady and unblinking. Nell hovered near the wall, pale, watching the machine like it was a predator in a cage.

At the hatch, Yara braced one shoulder against the frame, boots planted. Sia stood beside her, jaw clenched, hands empty but ready to be used as weapons if needed.

From below, Reverend Muir’s voice drifted up, close now.

“Friends,” she said softly, “you don’t need to do this. You can come down. You can sit. You can be held.”

Yara didn’t look back. “Keep your hands to yourself,” she said.

Muir’s tone remained warm. “Anger makes you tired,” she replied gently. “Let it go.”

Sia’s voice cut in, sharp. “Stop trying to sedate us.”

A pause. Then Muir’s voice, still kind. “I’m trying to save you from pain.”

“You’re trying to sell us relief,” the Doctor called without turning around. “And you’re using a Nestene to do it.”

The modulator’s hum deepened, as if it disliked the word.

Raven murmured, “It heard that.”

“Good,” the Doctor said. He crouched and slid his fingers under a small access lip on the unit. “MINO—carrier readout again. I want the phase map, not just frequency.”

MINO’s optics pulsed and projected a three-dimensional waveform above the modulator: carrier frequency, modulation harmonics, phase offsets that tracked the chapel chant below.

The Doctor watched the wave like it was a lock tumbling.

“Right,” he whispered. “It’s using the crowd as a phase stabilizer. The more synchronous their breathing and speaking, the smoother the signal.”

Nell swallowed. “So… Community Hour is the stabilizer.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “It’s a human tuning fork.”

Down in the chapel, Muir’s voice swelled—bright, reassuring.

“Speak the names,” she said warmly.

A distant murmur rose through the tower floor. Hundreds of voices chanting softly. Names repeated like prayer beads.

The waveform above the modulator smoothed, tightened, became cleaner.

The Nestene’s presence pressed harder, not angry—simply closer, drawn by coherence.

Sia’s voice was tight. “It’s getting stronger.”

The Doctor nodded once. “Which means we cut it now or we’re fighting a tide.”

Yara’s voice turned low. “Muir’s coming up.”

Footsteps echoed in the stairwell hatch—slow, measured, like she had all the time in the universe.

The Doctor didn’t look away from the machine. “Yara, if she gets through that hatch, do not let her into this room.”

Yara’s laugh was humourless. “Wasn’t planning on offering her tea.”

Raven’s gaze flicked to the hatch. “She won’t come alone.”

MINO confirmed. “Multiple units detected below. Autons and humans. Estimated arrival: 90 seconds.”

Nell’s throat bobbed. “They’ll take us.”

“No,” the Doctor said quietly, and his voice had that old, unarguable calm. “They won’t.”

He slid open the modulator’s access panel.

Inside, the unit was a blend of hardware and biology-like engineering: coils and capacitors, yes—but also gel conduits feeding into a central resonator chamber where translucent material pulsed faintly with each chant below.

It looked like a heart.

The Doctor’s stomach tightened.

“Raven,” he said softly. “Cold on the conduits. Thin, controlled. We don’t want a fracture.”

Raven nodded once. She stepped forward and sprayed a fine mist along the gel channels. Frost crept across them like ivy.

The modulator’s hum wavered.

Down below, the crowd’s chant stumbled for half a beat.

A few voices faltered.

The wave above the modulator rippled—still coherent, but less smooth.

Muir’s voice rose, soothing the stumble instantly. “It’s alright,” she said warmly. “Stay with me. Breathe together.”

And just like that, the chant tightened again.

The Doctor felt something like irritation from the Nestene—an increase in pressure, a slight surge in the carrier wave.

Not anger.

Correction.

He muttered, “Fine. We go blunt.”

Sia heard him and went still. “Blunt how.”

The Doctor raised the sonic and adjusted it, fingers quick and precise. “Destructive interference,” he said. “We inject a counter-phase into the carrier, but not here—here is too local. We use the tower amplifier to broadcast the counter-phase across every node at once.”

Nell’s eyes widened. “You can do that?”

The Doctor nodded. “Yes.”

Raven’s voice was quiet. “Do it.”

The Doctor plugged the sonic’s output into the modulator’s manual input port—an old maintenance socket hidden behind the panel. The sonic’s whine shifted as it interfaced.

MINO’s projection updated: two waveforms now—carrier and counter-phase overlay.

The Doctor tuned carefully, matching amplitude, offsetting phase.

Down below, the chant continued, names and names and names.

The modulator vibrated.

The Nestene pressed.

The Doctor’s mind stayed sharp, but he could feel the carrier wave searching for edges—trying to make his hands slow, trying to make his focus soften.

He tightened his grip.

“Doctor,” Nell whispered, voice trembling, “I can feel it in my teeth.”

“Good,” he murmured. “That means we’re close.”

At the hatch, Yara’s body tensed. “She’s here.”

A soft knock sounded on the metal frame.

Not a pounding. Not violence.

A polite knock.

Reverend Muir’s voice drifted through, close and intimate.

“Yara,” she said gently, and the fact she used Yara’s name made the hair on the Doctor’s arms lift. “You’re very strong. You’ve carried so much. Let us carry it.”

Yara didn’t answer.

Another knock.

Muir’s voice softened. “Dr. Ren,” she continued, “sweetheart… you don’t have to be alone with all that knowledge. You can rest.”

Sia’s face twisted with disgust. “She’s using our names.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “She knows. The reservoir told her.”

The Doctor didn’t look up. He kept tuning.

Muir’s voice dropped to something almost maternal. “Doctor,” she said softly. “I know you. I know what it is to hold too much.”

The Doctor’s fingers tightened on the sonic. He said nothing.

“Please,” Muir whispered. “Just… come down. Sit with us. Let the bell do what it does.”

Yara spoke then, voice hard and clear. “No.”

The word rang in the stairwell like a slap.

Silence for half a heartbeat.

Then the hatch handle turned.

Slow.

Polite.

Certain.

Yara shoved her shoulder into the hatch, bracing it shut. Metal groaned.

From below, a second sound—plastic creaking, joints moving. Autons arriving.

Sia’s voice went tight. “They’re pushing.”

The Doctor’s eyes flicked up for the briefest moment. “Hold thirty seconds,” he said.

Yara snarled. “Make it twenty.”

The Doctor looked back to the waveform. He was close. He could see the counter-phase alignment approaching perfect cancellation.

MINO clicked. “Counter-phase match at 93%. Recommend activation.”

The Doctor inhaled once, deep.

Then he flipped the sonic’s output into broadcast.

The modulator shrieked—not audibly, but through the carrier wave. The entire tower vibrated as the counter-phase surged outward, riding the broadcast lines like a knife through cloth.

Down below, the chant stopped.

Not gradually.

Instantly.

As if a hand had covered a mouth.

A collective gasp rose through the chapel—hundreds of people inhaling at once, suddenly aware of their own lungs.

The screens flickered.

Faces stuttered.

Static crawled across them like frost.

The bell tone warped, collapsed, and then died.

In the amplifier room, the carrier wave thinned so abruptly the Doctor felt his mind snap into sharper relief—like stepping out of warm water into cold air.

Nell swayed slightly, blinking hard.

Sia exhaled sharply, eyes wide. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “It’s… quiet.”

Raven’s posture stayed tense. “Not quiet,” she corrected. “Angry.”

Because the pressure in the air didn’t vanish.

It changed.

The Nestene’s presence—denied its smooth feed—pressed harder, thicker, more frustrated.

The gel conduits inside the modulator pulsed violently, like a heart suddenly deprived of oxygen.

MINO’s optics flared. “Carrier wave destabilized. Town-wide nodes disrupted.”

Below, muffled through the floor, came a sound the Doctor hadn’t heard yet on Parish Nine:

crying.

Not soft, soothed tears.

Real crying.

Panic beginning to bloom.

Yara grunted at the hatch. “They’re still pushing!”

The Doctor snapped his head toward the hatch. “Yara—”

The hatch buckled inward slightly.

A white hand—plastic, smooth—slipped through the gap.

An Auton’s fingers, reaching.

Yara slammed her fist down on it.

The plastic didn’t break.

But it flexed.

Raven moved instantly, spraying cold into the gap. Frost flashed along the Auton’s fingers, whitening them.

The hand withdrew.

The pushing paused.

For a moment.

Then resumed, harder.

Sia’s voice went sharp. “What happens when you cut the feed to a crowd that’s been drugged for months? They’ll stampede.”

The Doctor’s jaw clenched. “Yes.”

He looked at Nell. “Where’s the emergency PA? The non-parish system.”

Nell blinked, mind scrambling. “There’s… there’s an old industrial announcement line,” she whispered. “Plant-era. Separate speakers. In the tower junction box.”

MINO projected the layout instantly. “Junction box located behind modulator. Manual switch available.”

The Doctor moved fast, yanked open another panel, and found the old line—thick copper, manual toggles, no gel conduits.

He flipped it.

A harsh, tinny speaker crackled to life—old, uncomfortably real.

He leaned in and spoke, voice calm, firm, carrying authority without warmth.

“Attention,” he said. “This is an emergency announcement. Do not run. Do not push. Sit down where you are. Breathe. If you’re standing, lean against a wall. If you’re holding a child, keep them close. Follow instructions from medical staff. You are safe if you stay still.”

His voice went out across the chapel through speakers that didn’t carry Muir’s lullaby cadence.

A different kind of sound.

Reality.

Down below, the crying faltered—confused, disrupted by a voice that wasn’t part of the ritual.

Sia looked at him, sharp. “That might work.”

“It has to,” the Doctor said.

Raven’s gaze snapped to the modulator. The gel conduits were still pulsing, but now their rhythm was chaotic.

The counter-phase had cut the town’s feed, but the reservoir below—the anchor—was still there.

And hungry.

The Doctor met Raven’s eyes.

“We’ve cut the broadcast,” he said quietly. “Now we cut the source.”

Raven nodded once. “The nest beneath.”

Yara grunted as the hatch shook again. “Make it fast.”

The Doctor grabbed the sonic, unplugged it from the modulator, and looked at MINO.

“Route us to the reservoir access,” he said.

MINO’s projection shifted instantly, drawing a path down the tower, through service corridors, toward the substructure chamber.

“Estimated travel time: three minutes,” MINO reported.

The Doctor nodded, eyes hard.

Below, the chapel was waking up.

Above, the amplifier room was under pressure.

And somewhere beneath their feet, the Nestene—denied its smooth hymn—was beginning to look for a louder way to be heard.

///

Chapter 14 — The Parish Breaks

The first real scream came from below like a crack in glass.

Not the soft weeping that had started when the bell died—this was a clean, animal sound: someone realising the blanket had been smothering them, and that the room was full of strangers with the same sudden, naked fear.

The Doctor heard it through the tower floor plates as he yanked the amplifier room’s emergency latch and shoved the hatch open. Warm air hit his face, but the carrier wave—the drug-song—was gone. The warmth felt honest now: heat from bodies, heat from wires, not the engineered comfort of compliance.

Yara shoved off the hatch frame and stumbled backward, shoulders heaving. Sia grabbed her elbow instinctively, keeping her upright.

Behind them, the stairwell churned with movement.

Autons.

Not a wave, not yet, but enough—three white-smiling figures moving up the steps with the slow certainty of door-to-door solicitors. Behind them, human parishioners climbed too—confused, drawn upward by habit, still half-entrained by months of “follow the voice,” even though the voice had been cut.

And at the center of it all, Reverend Muir.

Her smile was still present, but now it was tight. The warmth had become a clamp.

“Friends,” she called softly, stepping up another stair, “there’s no need for this. You’ve frightened them.”

“You frightened them,” Sia snapped back.

Muir’s eyes flicked to Sia, and for a moment, the kindness slipped. Something like irritation—then the mask returned. “Dr. Ren,” she said gently, “please don’t make this harder.”

Yara’s laugh was sharp and humourless. “Harder for who?”

The Doctor didn’t give Muir a conversation. He grabbed Nell’s shoulder lightly—grounding, not owning—and pointed down the service stair.

“Move,” he said.

Nell moved. Raven moved. MINO darted ahead, mapping the fastest path.

Sia followed, tight and quick. Yara went last, backing down the stairwell like she was escorting a prisoner, eyes on the Autons.

The Autons didn’t rush.

They didn’t have to.

They descended with polite inevitability, smiles untouched by urgency.

Raven sprayed a thin line of frost across the stairwell’s handrail supports as they passed, creating slick patches and seized joints—small delays, not fights.

“Don’t waste your cold,” the Doctor murmured.

Raven’s voice was flat. “I’m not wasting. I’m buying you seconds.”

They hit the chapel’s hidden corridor and pushed through into the back passage behind the screen wall.

And the sound hit them.

The chapel was no longer a warm tide.

It was a storm.

People were standing up too fast, some crying, some yelling, some laughing in panic because their minds didn’t know what to do with raw feeling. Children were wailing. Elderly parishioners clung to benches, eyes wide, as if they’d woken mid-surgery.

The screens at the front were still flickering with static—faces stuttering, smiling mouths freezing and melting into grey noise. The altar Autons had shifted. One had turned its head toward the crowd, still smiling, like it was waiting for a cue.

The Doctor’s industrial PA voice cut through it again, tinny and harsh:

“Sit down. Do not run. Breathe. Stay where you are.”

It helped—some.

A few people did sit, confused by the difference between the old warm voice and this new sharp one. A few clung to the instruction like a lifeline.

But many didn’t.

A man surged toward the aisle, trying to force his way out. A woman screamed his name. Someone knocked over a child-sized stool. The sound of it hitting the floor was too loud.

Stampede risk.

Yara’s posture changed instantly, like a switch. She launched herself into the side aisle and planted her body sideways across a narrow pinch point between benches and a support column—exactly where a crush would form first.

“Stop!” she barked, voice cutting through the noise without needing amplification. “No running! Sit down or lean—now!”

People hesitated. Some listened. Some didn’t.

Yara reached out and caught a man by the front of his jacket and shoved him backward—not hard enough to hurt, hard enough to reset his momentum.

“You run,” she snarled close to his face, “and you kill someone. Decide.”

His eyes went wide. He stopped.

Sia followed Yara into the aisle like a medic in a disaster zone. She climbed onto a bench, raised her hands, and shouted with clinical authority.

“Eyes on me!” she called. “You’re panicking because you’ve been entrained. It will pass. Breathe in—four counts—hold—out—six. Now!”

A few people mirrored her without thinking.

Breath is contagious too.

Nell stood in the back corridor, shaking, watching her town crack open. “My mum—” she whispered.

The Doctor’s gaze scanned the crowd fast. He saw it—Liora Quill, Nell’s mother, standing near the front, hands clasped, face slack with confusion as the ritual collapsed. Her eyes kept flicking to the screens as if waiting for the bell to tell her what to feel.

And beside her—Sera Holt.

Smiling.

Still smiling.

Not confused. Not startled. Not waking.

Sera’s smile didn’t widen or falter. It simply remained, like a printed logo in a room full of human grief.

The Doctor’s stomach tightened.

“The Returned aren’t reacting,” Raven murmured, seeing it too.

“Because they’re not entrained by the crowd,” the Doctor said quietly. “They’re driven by the source.”

MINO hovered above the back passage, optics pulsing. “Auton movement increasing. Multiple units entering chapel through side doors.”

Raven’s head snapped toward the side doors. “They’re going to steady the crowd.”

The Doctor’s voice went hard. “They’re going to control the crowd.”

And then the first Auton stepped into the aisle.

White volunteer apron. Perfect smile. Hands open in a calming gesture.

“Friends,” it said, in Muir’s cadence, “please remain calm. Please return to your seats.”

People turned toward it reflexively—because for months they’d been trained to trust that voice.

A few began to sit.

Not because they understood.

Because obedience was easier than confusion.

Yara saw the shift and swore under her breath. “No,” she growled, and moved toward the Auton.

The Doctor caught her arm. “Yara.”

She snapped her gaze to him. “If it anchors them again—”

“I know,” he said. “But if you hit it in front of them, you trigger panic. We can’t fight the room.”

Raven’s voice was cold. “Then we leave the room.”

The Doctor nodded once. “We go under.”

Nell’s breath hitched. “Under—under the chapel?”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “Now.”

He looked at Sia and jerked his chin toward the aisle. “Can you hold this long enough for us to get below?”

Sia’s eyes were blazing, but her brain was already triaging. “I can slow the crush,” she said. “I can’t guarantee no one dies.”

The Doctor’s jaw clenched. “Do your best. Yara will help.”

Yara’s face tightened. “You’re leaving us up here?”

“I’m leaving you to keep them alive,” the Doctor said. “I’m going to stop the thing that makes this happen.”

Yara hesitated—then nodded once, hard. “Fine. But if you take too long—”

“I won’t,” he said.

Raven stepped closer to Yara for a heartbeat, eyes steady. “Hold the line,” she said softly.

Yara gave a grim nod. “Always.”

The Doctor looked at Nell. “You’re with us,” he said.

Nell swallowed. “Okay.”

MINO clicked. “Substructure access route available via rear maintenance hatch, 40 meters. Compromised by two units.”

“Then we make it uncompromised,” Raven said.

They moved.

The back corridor opened into a narrow service hall that ran behind the chapel’s support walls. The lighting was harsher here, the air warmer, and the sweet polymer note stronger—as if the building itself was exhaling.

Halfway down the hall, two Autons stood side by side, blocking the maintenance hatch that led to the lower levels.

They weren’t moving.

They didn’t need to.

Their smiles were enough to imply inevitability.

“Please return,” the left one said warmly. “You are welcome.”

The right one nodded slowly, smiling. “You are held.”

Nell froze.

Raven didn’t.

She stepped forward and sprayed a sharp blast of cold across both Autons’ lower joints—ankles, knees, the places actuation needed freedom. Frost bloomed white, cracking synthetic skin. The Autons stiffened.

Still smiling.

The Doctor raised the sonic and hit them with a tight disrupt pulse.

The Autons locked completely, frozen mid-calm.

Raven shoved past them without ceremony, shoulder checking one like it was a statue.

Nell flinched as they passed, but she followed.

The Doctor reached the maintenance hatch—old industrial wheel lock, painted over in parish white, gold lettering beneath:

DO NOT FEAR THE DEEP.

He spun the wheel, yanked the hatch open.

Heat rose from below like breath from a furnace.

Not engine heat.

Living-medium heat.

The Nestene’s scent—sweet, chemical, intimate.

MINO’s optics flared. “Carrier amplitude increasing from substructure. Source agitation detected.”

Raven’s voice was low. “It knows we cut the feed.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said, staring into the dark. “And it’s going to try to replace it with something louder.”

Behind them, the chapel roared—human voices, panic, the Auton voice trying to soothe, Sia shouting breathing instructions, Yara barking orders.

The town was breaking honestly now.

Good.

Painful.

Necessary.

The Doctor stepped down into the maintenance shaft, Raven right behind him, Nell trembling but refusing to stop. MINO glided after, silent and watchful.

Above them, the parish tried to reclaim itself with plastic calm.

Below them, the reservoir waited—hungry, agitated, ready to demonstrate what “holding” meant when kindness was no longer enough.

And somewhere in the air between, Reverend Muir’s voice carried faintly through the vents, still warm, still certain:

“You’ll come back,” it whispered. “Everyone comes back.”

///

Chapter 15 — The Reservoir Opens

The ladder down was slick with condensation.

Not water condensation—chemical sweat, the kind that formed when warm polymer vapor met cold metal and decided to cling. The Doctor kept his grip firm and his breathing even, but the air thickened with every rung, heavy with that sweet plastic scent that tried to become comforting by sheer repetition.

Below, the substructure chamber vibrated.

Not the hum of machinery—this was slower, deeper, like a heartbeat traveling through steel.

MINO hovered just above the ladder shaft, optics pulsing. “Barrier stress increasing,” he warned. “Reservoir agitation sustained. Probability of breach: rising.”

“Of course it is,” Raven said quietly behind the Doctor, voice level. She was climbing like she’d been born on ladders—steady, unhurried, cold canister clipped to her belt for quick access.

Nell climbed below Raven, trembling, fingers white on the rungs. Every few seconds she swallowed as if trying to push panic back down her throat.

“I can… smell it,” she whispered.

“Yes,” the Doctor replied softly. “That’s the point. It wants you to associate its presence with warmth.”

Nell’s voice shook. “It feels like… like the chapel. But thicker.”

The Doctor’s jaw tightened. “Because it’s closer to the source.”

They dropped off the ladder into the lower access corridor—narrow, dim, lined with old industrial plating. The gold parish slogans were painted here too, but sloppier, like someone had been in a hurry to make even the underworld feel holy.

THE DEEP HOLDS YOU.
DO NOT FEAR.
REST.

The Doctor walked past the words without looking.

At the end of the corridor was the heavy door to the reservoir chamber.

It was already unlatched.

He felt a brief, ugly pulse of satisfaction from the place—like a lock turning itself because the house wanted its guests inside.

“It’s inviting us,” Nell whispered.

“It’s corralling us,” Raven corrected.

MINO clicked. “Multiple Auton units repositioning within chamber. Estimated count: twenty-four. Additional units emerging.”

The Doctor exhaled once. “Then we do not get trapped in there.”

Raven’s eyes were steady. “We came to cut it.”

“We came to cut it,” the Doctor agreed. “But not by walking into its mouth.”

He cracked the door open a fraction.

Heat spilled out.

Not furnace heat—wet heat, humid and chemical, like standing above a hot pool in a sealed room. The reservoir’s surface sound—soft, shifting—was audible now, a constant liquid movement that seemed too purposeful to be random.

The Doctor peered through the gap.

The chamber looked worse than before.

The gel pool had risen. The surface was higher against the transparent barrier, bulging slightly in places like pressure was building unevenly. The broadcast modulators above it shook faintly, cables trembling.

Along the walls, the Autons had changed stance. Not statues now—heads angled inward, arms slightly lifted, like they were preparing to move.

And on the catwalk across the chamber—

Reverend Edda Muir.

She stood with her hands clasped, face calm, looking down at the reservoir like a priest at an altar mid-miracle.

When the Doctor’s door crack widened, her head turned.

She smiled.

“There you are,” she said warmly, as if they’d returned to a party after stepping out for air.

Nell went rigid. “She’s down here.”

Raven’s voice was low. “Of course she is.”

Muir’s gaze slid to Nell, and her smile softened in a way that made Nell flinch.

“Nell, sweetheart,” Muir called gently, voice echoing across the chamber. “You don’t need to be frightened. We’re about to make it better.”

The Doctor pushed the door open and stepped into the chamber.

He didn’t go far—just enough to take in the whole space, to confirm angles, exits, options.

Raven stepped in beside him.

Nell hesitated, then followed, eyes wide, breathing shallow.

MINO hovered at the doorway like a sentry, optics scanning constantly.

Muir didn’t move. She didn’t need to. Her calm was a weapon.

“You cut the feed,” she said softly, not accusing—observing. “Do you know what you did to them upstairs?”

The Doctor kept his voice level. “I woke them up.”

Muir’s smile tightened. “You ripped the blanket off a fever patient,” she murmured. “You made them feel cold again.”

“They needed to feel cold,” Raven said, voice like ice.

Muir’s eyes flicked to Raven, and for a moment genuine dislike surfaced—quick, bright, then buried under kindness. “You’re always so proud of hardness,” she said softly. “As if it’s purity.”

Raven didn’t react. “As if it’s freedom.”

The gel in the reservoir surged.

A wave rolled up, pressed against the transparent barrier, and held there—like a hand against glass.

Nell made a small sound and stepped back.

The Doctor watched the wave, jaw tight. He could feel the Nestene now without the broadcast smoothing it. Its presence wasn’t gentle anymore. It was intent.

“Doctor,” Muir said, still warm, “it’s hungry because you starved it.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “It was always hungry.”

Muir’s smile softened into something that looked almost sorrowful. “Everything is hungry,” she said. “We just pretend otherwise.”

The reservoir barrier creaked—low, stressed.

MINO’s optics flared. “Barrier integrity decreasing. Microfractures detected along lower seam.”

Raven’s head snapped toward the seam. “We don’t have long.”

“No,” the Doctor agreed.

He stepped closer to the barrier—not too close. Close enough to see the gel’s surface up close.

The gel wasn’t just gel anymore. There were structures in it now—threadlike filaments forming and unforming, as if the medium was rehearsing shapes. Tiny whorls moved through it like schools of fish.

And near the center, the gel rose into a dome—an almost-human suggestion forming beneath the surface, like something trying to stand up inside a liquid body.

Nell whispered, horrified, “It’s… making a person.”

“It’s making an interface,” the Doctor said softly. “A better mouth.”

Muir’s voice was reverent. “It’s learning,” she whispered.

The Doctor turned his head slightly, eyes hard. “No. It’s expanding.”

Muir’s smile returned full force. “Yes,” she said softly. “Because you forced it to. You forced it to stop whispering and start speaking.”

The dome in the gel pushed higher.

The barrier bowed outward slightly.

MINO’s voice sharpened. “Breach threshold imminent.”

Raven lifted her cold canister. “We freeze the seam.”

The Doctor shook his head. “If we freeze a stressed seam, we can shatter it,” he said quickly. “We need to relieve pressure or redirect it.”

“Redirect how?” Raven asked.

The Doctor’s eyes flicked upward to the modulation array—cables, couplers, feed pipes. Then to the old industrial drain gate at the reservoir’s lower side—an emergency overflow channel designed to dump polymer slurry into a containment sump.

A mouth beneath the mouth.

“There,” he said. “Overflow gate.”

MINO projected a quick schematic. “Manual wheel located on lower catwalk. Requires approach within Auton perimeter.”

Raven’s gaze slid to the Autons.

As if hearing their purpose named, the Autons twitched.

One turned its head toward the Doctor.

Its smile remained perfect.

Then another.

Then another.

Twenty-four heads moving, slow, synchronized, like a field of flowers turning toward the sun.

Muir watched them with calm satisfaction. “They’ll help you,” she said gently. “If you stop fighting.”

Yara wasn’t here to bark orders. Sia wasn’t here to shout breathing counts. Up above, the town was raw and panicking.

Down here, the Doctor had only the three of them and an owl-shaped AI.

He felt the weight of it—old-school danger, physical and immediate: plastic bodies, alien mind, a room that wanted to close around you.

He chose action.

“Raven,” he said quickly, “cold on the Autons’ ankles as we pass. Not faces. Not torsos. Joints.”

Raven nodded once. “Understood.”

“Nell,” the Doctor said softly, “you stay by the door with MINO. If we get cut off, you leave. You do not wait.”

Nell’s eyes widened. “I’m not leaving you.”

“You will,” the Doctor said, voice quiet, absolute. “Because if you die down here, this town loses its last living witness to the lie.”

Nell swallowed hard, then nodded, tears in her eyes.

MINO clicked. “Compliance noted.”

The Doctor moved along the catwalk toward the lower level stair.

The Autons began to move.

Not charging.

Walking forward in a slow, steady line, hands slightly lifted, smiles serene, like they were coming to guide a guest to their seat.

“Please remain calm,” one said warmly.

“Please return,” another echoed.

The Doctor ignored them and descended the stairs toward the lower catwalk where the overflow wheel sat.

Raven followed close, spraying sharp, controlled bursts of cold at ankles and knees as they passed. Frost flashed, joints stiffened, Autons paused mid-step and locked.

But more stepped forward behind them.

Always more.

The reservoir surged again.

The dome beneath the surface pressed harder against the barrier.

A hairline fracture spidered visibly across the lower seam—thin white lines like stress cracks in ice.

Nell gasped from the doorway. “It’s breaking!”

Muir’s voice rose, warm and thrilled. “Let it,” she whispered. “Let it breathe.”

The Doctor reached the overflow gate wheel—old industrial metal, thick, resistant. He grabbed it and began to turn.

It didn’t budge.

He gritted his teeth and leaned in, using leverage, shoulder and back, forcing the wheel to move.

It gave slightly—one notch.

Then another.

A low groan echoed through the metal piping as the gate mechanism began to open.

The reservoir responded instantly.

The gel surface shuddered.

The pressure at the barrier seam eased by the smallest amount.

MINO called out, “Barrier stress decreasing marginally.”

“Not enough,” Raven said, voice tight.

The Doctor turned harder.

The wheel fought him like it had been welded shut by neglect and holy paint.

He forced it again—two more notches.

A deep, wet sound rose from below as something shifted in the overflow channel.

The reservoir surged—and then, finally, a thick stream of gel began to pour into the overflow conduit, vanishing into the containment sump beneath the catwalk.

The pressure dome inside the reservoir wavered.

The barrier seam stopped creaking.

Nell exhaled sharply, trembling.

For half a second, the chamber felt less like it was about to explode.

Then the gel stream changed.

It didn’t just pour.

It reached.

The flowing gel formed thin filaments that latched to the conduit edges, climbing against gravity like living vines.

The Doctor’s breath caught. “It’s using the overflow as a new path.”

MINO’s optics flared. “Correct. The Nestene is attempting to extend its medium into containment infrastructure.”

Raven’s voice went cold. “It’s getting out.”

Muir smiled down from her catwalk like a saint witnessing ascension. “Yes,” she whispered. “That’s what you’ve done. You’ve opened the way.”

The Doctor kept his hand on the wheel, mind racing. Close the gate and risk barrier breach. Leave it open and let the medium spread into the station’s lower guts.

He looked at Raven.

Raven looked back, eyes steady.

“Option,” MINO said quickly. “Shock-cool the overflow conduit at junction point. Solidify medium in transit. Prevent spread while maintaining pressure relief.”

Raven’s fingers tightened on her canister. “I can do that.”

The Doctor nodded once. “Do it.”

Raven sprinted along the lower catwalk toward the conduit junction, spraying cold in a continuous line. Frost raced along the pipe exterior. The gel stream inside slowed—thickened—began to congeal.

The Nestene pushed back.

The pipe bulged slightly.

Raven didn’t stop. Her face was set, jaw tight, the kind of focus that didn’t ask permission.

The gel inside the pipe froze into a pale solid plug.

The bulge stopped.

For a heartbeat, it worked.

Then the Autons—still smiling—reached Raven.

One lifted a hand and placed it gently on her shoulder like a comforting friend.

“Please rest,” it said softly.

Raven’s body snapped rigid—not from entrainment, but from the sheer wrongness of a plastic hand pretending to be kind.

She twisted, slammed her elbow into the Auton’s chest.

The plastic flexed, didn’t crack.

Another Auton stepped in, hands out.

The Doctor’s voice went sharp. “Raven!”

She sprayed cold directly into its face.

Frost bloomed across the smile.

The Auton’s head locked mid-kindness.

But the first Auton still had her shoulder.

It tightened.

Raven hissed in pain.

The Doctor moved—fast, direct—leaping the last steps along the catwalk and bringing his sonic up into the Auton’s torso joint seam, blasting disrupt at point-blank range.

The Auton’s grip released.

Raven yanked free, breathing hard.

Muir’s voice echoed down, warmer than ever. “You see?” she called. “They’re only trying to hold you.”

The Doctor looked up at her, eyes hard. “That’s not holding,” he said. “That’s taking.”

Muir’s smile tightened. “Sometimes those are the same thing.”

The reservoir behind them surged again, but this time not toward the barrier seam.

Toward the modulation array.

The gel surface rose in thin tendrils that reached up like arms, touching the hanging equipment.

The cables trembled.

The entire chamber’s light dimmed and then brightened as the Nestene re-routed itself—finding another exit.

MINO’s voice sharpened. “Nestene is attempting direct interface with modulation array. Potential for re-broadcast independent of tower.”

The Doctor’s blood went cold. “It’s trying to sing without the chapel.”

Raven’s voice was tight. “How do we stop it.”

The Doctor stared at the gel tendrils climbing toward the modulators, then at the Autons converging again, then at the sealed doorway where Nell stood, shaking.

Old-school problem. Simple. Brutal.

He looked at MINO. “What happens if we electrically overload the modulation array,” he asked.

MINO paused—calculating. “High probability of igniting polymer medium. Result: localized thermal event. Risk: catastrophic.”

Raven’s eyes sharpened. “Fire.”

The Doctor nodded slowly. “Fire is what it understands.”

Nell’s voice rose from the doorway, desperate. “You’re going to burn the chapel!”

The Doctor looked at her, gentle and grim at once. “I’m going to burn the anchor,” he said. “The chapel is just the mouth. This is the stomach.”

Raven stepped closer, eyes locked on the reservoir. “Do it,” she said quietly. “Before it learns a new song.”

Above them, Reverend Muir’s smile finally cracked—just slightly—as if she sensed where the Doctor’s mind was going.

“No,” she said softly, and the softness was suddenly fear. “Don’t. You’ll kill them. You’ll kill us.”

The Doctor’s voice was flat. “You invited an alien consciousness into a polymer sea beneath a town,” he said. “People are already dying. The question is how many more you’re willing to trade for comfort.”

Muir’s eyes flashed. “You don’t understand what it’s like to watch a place rot,” she snapped—real emotion breaking through. “To watch hope die one slow day at a time.”

The Doctor’s gaze didn’t move. “I understand,” he said quietly. “That’s why I’m not letting you rot them into plastic instead.”

He raised the sonic, set it to a tight, high-energy coupling mode, and aimed at the modulation array’s main coupler.

Raven moved instinctively—positioning herself between the Autons and the Doctor, cold canister raised like a blade.

Nell clutched the doorframe, trembling, whispering “please” to no one in particular.

MINO’s optics flared. “Doctor—thermal runaway risk increasing.”

“I know,” the Doctor said.

He triggered the sonic.

The coupler whined, then screamed—a rising electrical note that made the reservoir’s surface quiver.

The gel tendrils slapped against the modulators as if trying to cling.

A spark snapped.

Then another.

The modulation array arced, bright white-blue.

The gel caught.

Not like gasoline.

Like plastic.

A sudden bloom of flame that climbed the tendrils back toward the reservoir surface in hungry, curling tongues.

The chamber filled with heat and light.

The Autons paused—just a fraction—as if the signal behind them had flinched.

Reverend Muir screamed.

Not warm.

Not kind.

A raw, human scream of someone watching their miracle turn into a fire.

The Doctor grabbed Raven’s arm. “Door,” he barked.

Raven yanked free and sprinted toward the exit.

Nell fumbled with the latch, panicking, and MINO emitted a sharp tone that steadied her hands just enough—she got the door open.

The Doctor shoved Nell through, Raven right behind, MINO gliding after.

As they bolted into the corridor, the reservoir chamber behind them roared with flame—plastic burning, medium igniting, the Nestene’s anchor turning into a furnace.

The Doctor slammed the heavy door shut and spun the manual wheel lock hard, sealing it.

From behind the door came a new sound—no longer hymn, no longer lullaby.

A deep, furious pressure, like the ocean slamming itself against a dam.

And through the metal, faintly—static, distorted, the last remnants of a voice trying to speak through fire.

The Doctor didn’t listen.

He ran.

///

Chapter 16 — Firebreak

The corridor outside the reservoir chamber was already warming.

Not comfortable warmth—heat that seeped through metal too quickly, carrying the sharp, acrid bite of burning polymer. The Doctor felt it catch in the back of his throat and knew this was no slow burn. This was plastic turning to smoke, and smoke looking for lungs.

“Move,” he snapped, voice tight.

Raven grabbed Nell’s wrist and pulled her forward without gentleness. Nell stumbled, then ran, eyes wide, throat working in panicked swallows.

MINO glided ahead, optics flaring, projecting a path over the corridor floor like a ghostly arrow.

“Egress route: left junction, 30 meters,” MINO said. “Primary concern: smoke infiltration into residential vents.”

Sia had said it earlier: the parish had been breathing the feed.

Now they might breathe the fire.

The Doctor’s jaw clenched. “We need a firebreak,” he said.

Raven didn’t slow. “We need to get out,” she replied.

“Both,” he said.

They hit the left junction and the corridor widened into an older service hall—industrial ribs, exposed pipes, warning placards half-painted over with parish slogans. The slogans were already blistering near the ceiling vents, paint bubbling from rising heat.

Nell’s voice trembled. “It’s… it’s burning under the chapel.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “Which means the tower structure will heat, the vents will draw, and if we don’t isolate airflow, the whole rock turns into a smoke chamber.”

Nell’s eyes widened. “People are upstairs. My mum—”

“I know,” the Doctor said, and the steadiness in his voice was for her more than for him.

MINO clicked. “Reservoir chamber door temperature increasing. Structural integrity risk to corridor doors within four minutes.”

Raven looked back once—just once—toward the sealed door behind them. The air shimmered faintly. Heat was already pushing through seams.

“That door won’t hold,” Raven said quietly.

“No,” the Doctor agreed. “It just buys us time.”

They ran.

The service hall intersected with a vertical shaft—an old industrial lift well with a ladder and a manual platform. A red sign on the wall read:

VENTILATION CONTROL — MAIN DAMPERS

The Doctor’s eyes snapped to it.

“That,” he said.

Raven stopped dead. “We don’t have time—”

“We don’t have a choice,” he cut in, and there was steel under the calm now. “If smoke hits the chapel hall during panic, they’ll stampede and suffocate.”

Nell shook her head, voice cracking. “The chapel’s already chaos.”

“Then we make it less lethal,” the Doctor said.

He moved to the damper control panel beside the lift shaft. The panel was old—mechanical levers, manual wheels, nothing sleek. Someone had painted over it in parish white and gold, but the industrial markings still showed beneath:

CHAPEL SUPPLY
RESIDENTIAL SUPPLY
PLANT BACKBONE
SUBSTRUCTURE EXHAUST

A gold slogan had been stencilled across the panel like a blessing:

BREATHE TOGETHER.

Raven’s mouth tightened. “Of course.”

The Doctor grabbed the Chapel Supply lever and shoved it down.

It resisted—stiff with paint and neglect.

He forced it.

Metal groaned.

The lever slammed into the closed position.

MINO’s optics pulsed. “Chapel supply airflow decreasing.”

The Doctor moved fast—Residential Supply next. He hesitated for half a heartbeat, mind weighing the risk: cut residential supply and you risk panic, suffocation, overheating. Leave it open and you risk smoke spreading.

He chose the lesser evil.

He closed it halfway—not fully. Enough to reduce draw, not enough to choke.

“Partial closure,” MINO reported.

“Substructure exhaust,” the Doctor said, and yanked it wide open.

The panel shuddered.

A deep draft surged through the corridor, pulling air downward toward the shaft, toward the burning reservoir chamber and away from the chapel above.

The smell of smoke sharpened.

The pull in the air became noticeable, like a wind inside the metal lungs of the station.

Raven coughed once, then steadied her breathing.

Nell’s eyes watered. “It’s pulling it down,” she gasped.

“It’s supposed to,” the Doctor said. “Smoke wants to rise. We’re forcing it to go where we can vent it.”

MINO clicked. “Exhaust routing now favors external radiator vents. Probability of smoke reaching chapel reduced by 63%.”

Raven nodded once, approving despite herself. “Good.”

The Doctor wasn’t finished. He turned the Plant Backbone damper lever.

It was stuck.

He put both hands on it and leaned in, muscles straining.

The lever gave with a sudden jerk.

The Doctor nearly fell.

He caught himself on the panel and slammed the lever down, closing the plant’s backbone airflow.

“Cutting off any residual carrier wave routes,” Raven murmured, understanding.

“And cutting smoke routes,” the Doctor replied, breathing hard.

Behind them, the corridor lights flickered.

Not gentle flicker.

A harsh dip, then flare.

Heat was affecting the power trunk.

MINO’s optics flared. “Power instability detected. Fire is impacting substructure systems. Risk of secondary ignition points.”

Raven’s voice went low. “We need to get above this before the whole spine cooks.”

The Doctor nodded. “Yes.”

He turned to the lift shaft. The manual platform hung at mid-level, usable if they could pull it up.

Nell stared at it. “That hasn’t worked in years.”

The Doctor’s mouth tightened. “Then it works now.”

He grabbed the manual chain pulley and hauled.

The chain squealed.

The platform rose slowly, metal grinding.

Raven joined him, pulling with quiet, relentless force.

Nell tried too, hands shaking.

MINO hovered, optics pulsing. “Platform will reach corridor level in 12 seconds.”

Heat surged behind them.

The air shimmered.

A deep, muffled bang came from the direction of the reservoir door—like pressure hammering the seal.

Raven’s eyes snapped toward it. “That’s not going to stay contained.”

“No,” the Doctor said. “But it doesn’t have to. Not if the medium burns itself out.”

Nell’s breath hitched. “Medium.”

“The gel,” the Doctor said, voice tight. “It’s fuel. It’s also the Nestene’s body. If it’s burning, its anchor is collapsing.”

MINO added, “Nestene interface coherence decreasing.”

Raven’s voice was flat. “So it’s dying.”

The Doctor didn’t romanticise it. “It’s being forced to withdraw,” he said. “If it can.”

The platform hit corridor level with a clang.

“On,” the Doctor snapped.

They stepped onto it—Doctor, Raven, Nell—tight formation. MINO hovered just above, following.

The Doctor grabbed the platform’s crank and began to winch it upward.

The lift groaned.

The platform rose slowly through the shaft.

As they climbed, the heat below became a thick, oppressive presence. Smoke curled upward but was pulled downward again by the exhaust draft the Doctor had forced open. The air in the shaft was turbulent, swirling, confused—like lungs trying to decide whether to inhale or cough.

Nell coughed hard, eyes watering. Raven shifted closer, using her body to shield Nell’s face from the worst of the smoke.

The Doctor kept turning the crank.

His mind wasn’t on heroics.

It was on the upstairs chaos. On Sia and Yara holding a crowd together. On whether his industrial PA had been enough. On whether cutting the feed had created a stampede anyway.

MINO clicked. “Chapel crowd noise pattern indicates partial de-escalation. Breathing cadence increased coherence. Sia Ren’s instructions effective.”

The Doctor exhaled sharply, relief flickering.

“Yara?” he asked, voice tight.

MINO paused. “Yara is at corridor pinch point. No fatalities detected in that sector.”

Raven breathed out once. “Good.”

They reached the upper shaft landing and the platform clanged into place.

The Doctor shoved the gate open and stepped out into the mid-level maintenance corridor behind the chapel screens.

The air here was cooler, but still thick. The bell tone was gone. The carrier wave absent.

What remained was human sound—voices, crying, shouting, real.

From ahead came Sia’s voice, amplified now by nothing but raw throat:

“Breathe! Look at me! In—hold—out—slowly!”

And Yara’s bark, hard as steel:

“Sit down! Stop pushing! If you run, you crush the kid next to you!”

The Doctor moved toward the chapel corridor and saw it: the congregation, no longer smiling in unison, but now scattered between panic and awakening. Some were sobbing openly. Some were furious. Some were staring at their hands as if discovering they had been living in someone else’s skin.

At the front, the screens were black now—no flicker, no faces. Just dead glass.

And in the aisle near the altar, two Autons stood frozen—ankles frosted, joints locked—still smiling into nothing.

A woman screamed at one, punching its chest with bare fists. The plastic flexed. It didn’t crack. Her knuckles bled.

Sia moved toward her, voice firm. “Stop. You’ll break your hands.”

The woman sobbed, collapsing into Sia’s arms.

Yara’s eyes snapped to the Doctor as he entered. They met for a fraction of a second.

Did you do it?

The Doctor nodded once.

Yara’s shoulders dropped by a millimeter—relief she refused to show fully.

Then her eyes narrowed. “Smoke,” she said.

The Doctor nodded. “We’ve diverted most of it downward, but the substructure is burning. We need evacuation protocols. Controlled.”

Sia’s jaw clenched. “You’re telling me the chapel is about to catch.”

“I’m telling you the under-chapel is a furnace,” the Doctor replied. “We can keep smoke down, but heat will travel. We need to get people out into the docking ring and seal off vents.”

Yara’s voice went hard. “Do it now.”

The Doctor looked across the hall and saw Reverend Muir.

She stood near the side wall, no longer at the altar. Her vestments were rumpled. Her smile was gone.

Her face looked… raw.

Not evil. Not saintly.

Human.

She stared at the dead screens like someone staring at a body.

When she saw the Doctor, her eyes sharpened—not with warmth, but with hate.

“You burned it,” she said, voice low.

The Doctor held her gaze. “I stopped it.”

“You burned our holding,” she whispered.

“I burned your prison,” the Doctor replied.

Muir’s eyes flashed. “And now what,” she snapped. “Now they suffer again? Now they scream and break? Is that your victory?”

The Doctor’s voice was steady, kind without softness. “Now they live in the truth,” he said. “And we help them survive it.”

Muir’s jaw trembled. “You don’t understand what you took.”

The Doctor’s eyes didn’t move. “I understand exactly what you took,” he said quietly.

Behind Muir, an Auton shifted.

Just slightly.

A hand twitch.

The Doctor’s blood went cold.

Raven saw it too. Her cold canister lifted.

MINO’s optics flared. “Residual actuation detected. Nestene coherence not fully collapsed. Autonomous subroutine active.”

Raven’s voice went tight. “It’s still moving.”

The Doctor’s jaw clenched. “Then the fire didn’t end it.”

The Auton’s head turned slowly toward the nearest cluster of people.

Its smile remained perfect.

And in the silence between screams, its voice came out—distorted, crackling, not Muir’s cadence anymore.

Something deeper trying to find words through plastic.

“…HOLD…” it rasped.

The crowd recoiled.

Panic surged again like a wave.

Sia shouted, “No running—no running!”

Yara barked, “Stay down!”

The Doctor stepped forward, sonic raised.

Raven moved with him, cold canister ready.

And Reverend Muir—standing beside the wall—whispered, almost to herself, voice broken:

“It’s still here.”

///

Chapter 17 — Break the Saints

The Auton’s smile didn’t change.

That was the worst part.

It stood in the aisle like a carved icon, face serene, eyes empty, mouth stretching into a kindness that no longer fit the sound coming out of it. The voice rasped again—distorted, glitching, as if the words were being forced through a throat that wasn’t built for speech.

“…HOLD…”

The congregation reacted like a body recoiling from a needle.

People shrank back. Someone screamed. A child began to wail. Bodies pressed toward exits again—crowd physics turning fear into momentum.

Sia climbed onto a bench again, voice sharp, urgent, real. “STOP! BREATHE! DO NOT RUN!”

Yara moved like a barricade, planting herself in the pinch point again, arms out, using her body as a wall. “DOWN!” she barked. “SIT DOWN! YOU RUN, YOU KILL EACH OTHER!”

Some listened—enough of them to blunt the stampede’s first surge.

But the Auton’s presence was a spike in the room. A visible reminder that the “miracle” hadn’t simply vanished. That it might still be inside their walls.

The Doctor stepped forward, sonic raised.

Raven moved beside him, cold canister lifted.

MINO hovered above, optics flaring. “Residual actuation is local. Likely autonomous routine. Carrier wave absent. Movement sustained by internal power reserve and minimal signal bleed from remaining nodes.”

“Meaning,” the Doctor murmured, “it’s on a timer.”

Or it was on a purpose.

The Auton took one slow step forward toward a cluster of parishioners near the front.

Hands lifted, palms open, a perfect imitation of comfort.

“Please,” it said—warmer now, less distorted, as if it had found a cleaner channel inside its own casing. “Remain. Calm.”

A woman screamed and threw a hymn-book at it.

The book hit the Auton’s chest and bounced off, thudding to the floor.

The Auton didn’t react.

It simply looked at her—head tilted, smile patient—like it was waiting for her tantrum to finish so it could resume holding her.

The Doctor’s jaw clenched.

He could hear the old pattern, the classic cruelty of it: the monster that doesn’t look like a monster until it moves.

In the chapel’s former glow, the Auton had been a “helper.”

Now, in dead screens and raw panic, it was a saint statue stepping off its pedestal.

Raven whispered, “We end it.”

The Doctor didn’t argue. “Not in front of them,” he said quickly. “Not violently.”

Yara barked across the room, “Doctor!”

He glanced at her. She pointed sharply toward the side doors.

More Autons.

Two, then three, stepping in—white aprons, coveralls, parish clothing. Still smiling. Moving with that slow, measured inevitability.

The crowd saw them and the room’s fear doubled.

Sia shouted again, voice cracking. “STAY STILL! DOWN!”

The Doctor’s mind snapped into cold logistics.

They’d cut the feed, but the Nestene hadn’t fully withdrawn. Residual programming remained in the Autons, and whatever anchor was still burning under the chapel had not eliminated every node.

If the Autons kept moving, the crowd would break. If the crowd broke, people would die. And in the chaos, the Autons could herd, isolate, “hold” them in controlled clusters.

Classic Auton tactic: contain the humans so the mind can work without resistance.

The Doctor raised his sonic and aimed at the first Auton in the aisle.

But before he pulsed it, Raven stepped forward—one foot onto the aisle runner, cold canister held low.

She didn’t spray the Auton.

She sprayed the floor.

A thin, wide fan of cold across the aisle between the Auton and the crowd.

Frost spread like a pale slick veil over the flooring.

The Auton took another step.

Its foot hit the slick.

For the first time, it looked wrong—not menacing, not dramatic—just incompetent. Its balance wavered. Its arms lifted slightly in a corrective motion that was almost human, almost comical.

It slipped.

Not a dramatic fall. A stiff, awkward drop to one knee.

The crowd gasped.

A few people—stunned by the sight of the saint statue failing—stopped backing up.

Yara saw it instantly. “Good,” she muttered. “Make them look stupid.”

Sia’s eyes widened. “It breaks the spell.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said softly. “It breaks the myth.”

The Auton tried to rise, but its ankle actuator—already weakened by Raven’s cold earlier—caught on the slick. It wobbled again.

The Doctor sent a tight sonic disrupt pulse into its torso.

The Auton froze mid-correction, one knee on the floor, hands still raised, smile still perfect.

It looked like a mannequin caught mid-prayer.

The crowd stared.

A man near the front—older, grey hair, eyes raw—let out a harsh laugh that turned into a sob. “It’s… it’s plastic,” he choked.

“Yes,” Sia shouted, seizing the moment. “It’s plastic! It’s not your dead! It’s not a miracle! Sit down and breathe!”

The reality landed like a slap.

Not on everyone. Not evenly.

But enough.

The Doctor turned to MINO. “Project it,” he murmured.

MINO’s optics pulsed, and a tight holographic projection shimmered above the altar area: a magnified image of the microfilaments Sia had shown them—plastic threads in blood—overlayed with the Auton’s internal structure schematic, simple and unmistakable.

Not too technical.

Just enough to make the point.

A few people screamed. Others stared, horrified. Some began to cry in a new way—not panic, but betrayal.

The Doctor’s voice came through the industrial PA again, firm and clear.

“Those are not your loved ones,” he said. “They are constructs. This town has been manipulated. You are awake now. Stay still. Stay together. Help each other.”

For a heartbeat, it worked.

Then Reverend Muir moved.

She stepped into the side aisle, pushing toward the altar with purpose. Her face was no longer warm. It was determined, almost feral, the expression of someone who has lost their religion and chosen to become it.

“No!” she shouted—her first full-volume shout in front of them all. It rang through the chapel like a gunshot.

The crowd froze, shocked to hear her voice stripped of softness.

“You don’t understand!” Muir cried, turning toward the congregation. “You don’t—this is us! This is how we survived!”

Her eyes swept the faces—hundreds of people staring at her now with confusion and hurt.

“You were drowning,” she shouted. “You were drowning in grief and debt and decay, and the universe gave us a rope!”

Yara’s voice cut across, hard. “It gave you a leash.”

Muir’s head snapped toward Yara, fury flashing. “You,” she hissed. “You come here with your clean anger and your brave voice—do you know what it costs to keep a place alive? Do you know what it costs to bury the same names again and again?”

Nell, trembling near the back corridor, whispered, “You used my dad.”

Muir’s eyes flicked to Nell and softened for half a second—then hardened again. “I gave your mother a breath,” she said. “I gave her a moment where she didn’t want to die.”

Sia’s voice rose. “By poisoning her lungs with polymer.”

Muir spun toward Sia. “By giving her peace!” she screamed.

The Doctor stepped forward, voice low but carrying. “Peace built on a lie isn’t peace,” he said. “It’s sedation.”

Muir’s chest heaved. Her eyes were wet now—real tears, not screen tears.

“And what about after?” she demanded, voice cracking. “What do they do after you leave? They wake up to nothing again. They wake up to empty beds and empty coffers and a dying plant. You cut the feed, you burn the anchor—fine. What do you give them instead?”

The question hung in the air.

The Doctor felt the weight of it, because it wasn’t rhetorical. It was the core wound of the town.

Old-school Doctor Who always did this: it wasn’t just monsters. It was what humans did when monsters offered shortcuts.

He looked at the crowd—raw faces, shaking hands, children clinging, old men crying.

Then he answered, calmly, so the room could hear him.

“I give them each other,” he said. “And the truth. And the work of rebuilding without being owned.”

Muir let out a broken laugh. “Work,” she spat. “You think work fixes grief?”

“No,” the Doctor said quietly. “But it fixes life. And grief is part of life. You don’t get to delete it just because it hurts.”

The Auton in the aisle twitched.

A finger moved.

Then another.

MINO’s optics flared. “Residual actuation spreading. Additional units activating. Source likely: remaining medium in plant conduits.”

Raven’s gaze snapped to the side doors again.

Two more Autons stepped in.

The crowd gasped.

And then, from somewhere deeper in the chapel infrastructure, a low vibration pulsed—like a distant drum.

Not the bell tone.

Something heavier.

The Doctor felt it in his bones.

The Nestene—wounded, burning below—was trying one last push. A last “holding.” An emergency consolidation: activate every construct, herd the humans into one place, feed off the panic, re-establish coherence through sheer density.

The Doctor’s voice snapped into command.

“Yara,” he said sharply, “we evacuate. Controlled. Docking ring. Now.”

Yara’s eyes flashed. “On it.”

“Sia,” the Doctor continued, “triage breathers. Anyone coughing, anyone dizzy, anyone with kids—front of the line.”

Sia nodded instantly, already moving. “You heard him!” she shouted. “Children first! Elderly next! If you can walk, you help someone else!”

The crowd surged—but not into a stampede. Into a messy, frightened flow.

Yara moved to the main aisle, barking like a drill sergeant. “Single file! Slow! No pushing! Hands on shoulders! Move!”

People began to comply—not because they were entrained now, but because someone was finally giving them a structure that wasn’t a hymn.

Raven stepped toward the Autons.

The Doctor caught her shoulder. “Raven—no.”

“We can’t leave them,” she said, eyes cold. “They’ll follow.”

“We don’t fight them here,” he said quickly. “We make them inert.”

Raven’s jaw clenched. “How.”

The Doctor raised the sonic and set it to a broad-spectrum disrupt—wide enough to hit multiple Autons, narrow enough not to fry human implants or the chapel’s entire wiring.

“MINO,” he said, “sync me. Give me the Auton actuation resonance.”

MINO projected the resonance bands instantly.

The Doctor pulsed the sonic.

A wave rolled through the chapel air—silent to human ears but brutal to plastic joints. The Autons in the aisle and at the doors all jerked in unison, then locked mid-step.

Still smiling.

Frozen in kindness.

One stood with arms out as if offering a hug.

Now it was just a statue again.

The crowd saw it.

And something in them broke free further—the myth snapping in another place. The saints were not saints. They were dolls.

Muir stared at the frozen Autons, chest heaving, tears streaming. Her hands clenched into fists.

“You’re breaking them,” she whispered, voice broken.

“I’m breaking your tools,” the Doctor replied quietly.

Muir’s eyes lifted to him, full of hate and grief and something like pleading.

“You’re going to leave us with nothing,” she whispered.

The Doctor’s voice softened—not indulgent, just human. “No,” he said. “I’m leaving you with reality. And that means you can start building something that belongs to you.”

Muir’s face twisted. “I don’t know how.”

“Then learn,” Yara snapped from the aisle without looking back. “Like everyone else.”

Muir flinched at that. The rebuke landed hard because it wasn’t cruel. It was true.

The evacuation flow continued—shaky, messy, but moving.

Sia moved through the crowd like a fire medic, checking faces, barking instructions, pulling people into breathing patterns.

Yara held the main aisle like a dam, keeping the tide from turning into a crush.

Raven stayed close to the Doctor now, eyes scanning for any Auton that might still be moving. Cold canister ready.

MINO hovered above the chaos like an owl over a battlefield, feeding the Doctor information in clipped bursts.

“Docking ring airlocks can accept 600 per cycle,” MINO reported. “Recommend staged egress. Smoke levels in upper corridors rising slowly but manageable.”

The Doctor nodded once.

Then he felt it—heat through the floor, stronger now.

A deep tremor.

The fire below was growing.

The reservoir anchor was still burning.

And the chapel, built above it like a mouth over a stomach, was beginning to feel the consequences.

The Doctor looked toward the side wall where Reverend Muir stood, shaking, watching her parish file out.

“Come,” he said to her, voice firm. “You evacuate too.”

Muir stared at him. “Why would you save me,” she whispered.

The Doctor’s eyes didn’t soften, but his voice did. “Because I’m not you,” he said.

Muir swallowed hard, then—slowly—stepped into the flow with the others.

Not smiling.

Just walking.

Behind her, the frozen Autons stood like broken saints in a dead chapel, smiles still carved on faces that no longer meant anything.

And above the altar, the screens remained black—finally honest about what they were.

///

Chapter 18 — Docking Ring

The docking ring smelled like cold metal and fear.

It was a broad circular corridor that wrapped the asteroid’s outer edge, lined with airlocks, cargo seals, and docking berths that hadn’t seen a ship in weeks. Emergency lights flashed amber along the floor strips, and the station’s low gravity made every hurried step feel slightly wrong—too buoyant, too easy to stumble.

The evacuation stream spilled into the ring in uneven waves.

Families clung together. Some people cried openly. Others stared, hollow, as if their minds were still catching up to the fact that they’d been living inside a hymn. Children wailed. A few teenagers laughed—sharp, manic laughter that sounded like panic wearing a mask.

Sia Ren moved along the flow like a triage officer, scanning faces with brutal efficiency. “If you’re dizzy, sit against the wall,” she barked. “If you’re coughing, raise your hand. Kids and elderly to the inner lane—now!”

Yara kept the stream from becoming a crush. She walked backward at points, arms out, voice like a blunt instrument. “No pushing. Keep moving. Hands on shoulders if you can. If you fall, someone picks you up. You—yes, you—help him.”

People listened, because she sounded like the only stable thing in the ring.

The Doctor watched it with a complicated ache in his chest.

This was always the real work: not the clever lock picks, not the sonic pulses, not the monster below.

People.

A community waking up in pain.

Raven stayed close to him, scanning the ring’s intersections and vents. Her cold canister was still half-full. Her eyes were sharp.

MINO hovered above, optics flaring, projecting evacuation metrics in the air only the Doctor could fully parse.

“Ring occupancy rising,” MINO reported. “Air quality stable. Smoke infiltration minimal. Heat signatures from chapel substructure increasing. Risk of structural compromise in 18 minutes.”

The Doctor nodded once. Eighteen minutes until the wrong beam softened, until the chapel above the burning reservoir did what all structures did when their foundations became a furnace: it failed.

He looked down the ring toward the main airlock bank.

A large seal door stood open, leading to a pressurised holding bay—an old cargo vestibule repurposed as emergency shelter. People filed into it in clusters, guided by the station’s remaining emergency beacons.

But the ring had its own hazards.

Docking ring meant external interfaces. External interfaces meant doors to vacuum, valves, emergency shutters—systems that, if tampered with, could kill a hundred people in one mistake.

And the Doctor knew this enemy wasn’t finished with them yet.

Because if the Nestene’s anchor was dying, its last play would be simple: take the humans with it.

Not out of spite.

Out of logic.

Reduce resistance. Remove witnesses. Deny the loss.

He scanned the ring again and spotted the first sign.

A cluster of parishioners near an airlock stood too still.

Not in shock still. In synchronised still.

Smiles.

Small, soft smiles.

As if they’d suddenly remembered the chapel’s warmth and wanted it back.

Raven saw it too. Her posture tightened. “Returned,” she murmured.

Sia spotted them and swore under her breath. “No,” she muttered, moving toward them. “Not now.”

The Doctor moved faster, intercepting.

The cluster consisted of four people—two adults, an older woman, and a teenage boy. Their eyes were slightly unfocused, mouths gently curved into calm.

The older woman looked straight at the Doctor with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

“Doctor,” she said softly, voice too even.

The Doctor’s blood went cold.

Not because she knew his name.

Because she said it with Muir’s cadence.

The carrier wave was gone, but something was still using its templates.

“Please,” the woman continued, smiling, “come with us. The holding bay is full. We have a quieter place.”

Yara’s head snapped toward them. “Hey!” she barked. “Keep moving!”

The teenage boy turned toward Yara and smiled gently. “Anger is heavy,” he said. “You don’t have to carry it.”

Yara’s face hardened. “Oh, I do,” she said, and took a step toward him.

The Doctor raised a hand, stopping her. “Careful,” he murmured. “These aren’t Autons. These are better constructs.”

Sia’s eyes narrowed, fury and disgust braided together. “They’re targeting the stressed ones,” she snapped. “The ones who want the blanket back.”

The older woman smiled at Sia. “Dr. Ren,” she said softly, “you’ve worked so hard. You can rest.”

Sia’s jaw clenched so hard her cheek muscles twitched. “Don’t,” she hissed.

The woman’s smile didn’t change. “Come,” she said. “It’s safer. It’s quieter. We will hold you.”

Raven stepped forward, cold canister lifted. “You won’t,” she said, voice calm as death.

The woman looked at Raven and, for a fraction of a second, the smile widened—just slightly too much. The skin around the mouth didn’t move like real skin.

Then the woman’s eyes flicked toward an airlock control panel beside her.

Her hand moved.

Slowly.

Casually.

Toward the manual override.

The Doctor’s mind snapped into action. He lunged, grabbed her wrist.

Her skin was warm.

That was the horror. Warm.

But under the warmth, the resistance felt wrong—like gel under a thin membrane, giving slightly, then stiffening.

She looked at him and smiled.

“You’re tired too,” she whispered.

The Doctor’s voice was flat. “No,” he said.

He raised the sonic and pulsed it at point-blank range at her wrist joint—not enough to blast, just enough to disrupt the internal actuation.

The woman’s hand spasmed, then went slack.

Her smile faltered for the first time, flickering like a screen losing signal.

The teenage boy blinked, expression briefly confused—human confusion fighting through the construct template.

Sia stepped in and grabbed his shoulder, hard. “Breathe,” she snapped at him. “You’re real. Breathe.”

The boy’s eyes widened. His smile collapsed into panic. “Mum?” he gasped, suddenly awake.

The adult beside him—his mother, presumably—stared at the Doctor with tears pouring down, face contorted. “What—what did I—” she sobbed. “I was—”

“You were being pulled,” the Doctor said quickly. “Stay with Sia. Breathe.”

Yara stepped between the group and the airlock panel, body blocking it. “Nobody touches doors,” she barked. “Not unless I tell you.”

The older woman—construct—watched them, smile flickering. She tried to pull her hand free from the Doctor’s grip, but her wrist remained slack where the sonic disrupt had cut her internal coherence.

Raven stepped in and sprayed a thin line of cold along the woman’s forearm—just enough to stiffen the gel under the skin.

The woman’s arm locked.

Her smile froze mid-kindness.

The Doctor exhaled sharply. “Good.”

MINO clicked. “Construct template collapsing. Without carrier support, higher-order constructs degrade rapidly when disrupted.”

“Meaning,” Raven said quietly, “they’re desperate.”

“Yes,” the Doctor replied.

He looked down the ring.

More clusters were forming.

Here and there, people slowing, turning, smiling softly, drifting toward doors and panels like sleepwalkers.

The Nestene, losing its anchor, was attempting a last consolidation through individual lures—pulling small groups into dangerous places, into quiet compartments, into airlocks.

Not malice.

Efficiency.

Yara’s voice went hard. “We can’t babysit every door.”

The Doctor’s jaw clenched. “No.”

He looked at MINO. “Can we lock down airlocks and manual overrides from a central point?”

MINO’s optics flared. “Central docking ring control exists. Location: Ring Control Node, 120 meters clockwise. Manual override possible.”

The Doctor nodded. “We go.”

Raven glanced toward the evacuation flow. “What about the crowd.”

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “I hold them. Sia keeps them breathing.”

Sia didn’t argue. She was already moving, shouting instructions, grounding people with counts and touch and reality.

The Doctor looked at Nell Quill.

She stood near the wall, shaking, watching her town wake up and almost fall back asleep again. Her face was wet with tears she didn’t seem to notice.

“Nell,” he said softly.

She blinked at him. “Yeah?”

“I need you to do something hard,” he said.

Her throat bobbed. “Okay.”

He pointed toward a cluster of people drifting toward a different airlock. “Go with Yara and Sia,” he said. “Stay in the flow. Use your voice. Call names. Real names. Make them look at you. Make them wake.”

Nell’s eyes widened. “I—”

“You can,” the Doctor said quietly. “They used names to feed the lie. You use names to cut it.”

Nell inhaled, shaking.

Then she nodded, fiercely. “Okay,” she whispered, and stepped into the stream.

Yara barked, “Nell—stick close!”

Nell did.

The Doctor turned to Raven and MINO. “Ring Control Node,” he said.

They ran clockwise along the docking ring, boots ringing on metal. The low gravity made their speed feel strange—momentum carrying them forward too easily, like the ring wanted them to fall.

The corridor ahead was emptier—less populated, more industrial. Emergency signage flickered. The air was cooler here, less saturated with human heat.

As they ran, the Doctor saw it—small streaks of translucent gel seeping from a ceiling vent seam, gathering into droplets.

Not smoke.

Not condensation.

Medium.

The Nestene was pushing residual polymer into the ducts, trying to create new bodies, new hands, new mouths.

Raven saw it too and swore softly. “It’s bleeding into the ring.”

The Doctor’s voice was grim. “It’s trying to relocate the anchor.”

MINO’s optics flared. “Ring Control Node ahead. Door locked. Manual access required.”

The Doctor reached the control node door—a heavy industrial seal—and slammed his palm on the reader.

It didn’t open.

He raised the sonic.

Behind them, down the ring, a soft voice drifted—warm, familiar, wrong.

“Doctor,” it called gently. “Please.”

The Doctor froze for a fraction of a second.

That voice.

Not Muir’s.

Not Sia’s.

A voice he hadn’t heard in years.

A voice the Nestene had no right to have.

He turned slowly.

Down the corridor, walking toward them with calm, measured steps, was a figure in plain clothes—no parish vestment, no volunteer apron.

A man with familiar eyes.

A familiar smile.

Too perfect.

The Doctor’s throat tightened.

Raven’s voice went low, lethal. “That’s bait.”

The figure lifted a hand in a gentle wave.

“Come on,” it said softly, with a voice that hit the Doctor like a knife wrapped in velvet. “You don’t have to fight alone.”

The Doctor didn’t move.

He stared at the construct, and for the first time since arriving on Parish Nine, the enemy had found a lever that wasn’t just a town’s grief.

It had found his.

///

Chapter 19 — The Wrong Face

The figure kept walking.

Not fast. Not urgent. As if there was no need to hurry because the outcome had already been decided.

The docking ring lights flickered again—brief, soft dips—like the station itself was blinking. The air smelled faintly of sweet polymer and overheated wiring. Somewhere behind them, the evacuation flow continued in ragged waves. Ahead, the sealed door of Ring Control Node waited like a lifeboat locked shut.

Between them and that door, the construct approached.

Plain clothes. Human proportions. Natural gait.

And the face—

The Doctor’s chest felt tight, like someone had wrapped a band around his ribs. It wasn’t fear exactly. It was that older, uglier sensation of being seen in a way you didn’t consent to.

The face was wrong because it was right.

A person he had lost. A person who belonged in a different chapter of his life.

A face the universe had no permission to print.

Raven stepped slightly in front of him, cold canister raised. Her voice was flat, deadly calm. “Stop.”

The construct smiled. It didn’t look at Raven. Its eyes stayed on the Doctor, like Raven was a piece of furniture.

“Please,” it said again, gently. “You don’t have to do this.”

The Doctor’s throat worked. “That’s not—” he began, then stopped, because the words felt stupid. Of course it wasn’t. And yet the shape of the voice hit the inside of his skull in a way that made him want to answer.

MINO hovered close, optics flaring. “Construct analysis: high-fidelity template. Emotional lever attempt. Probability: 0.97 that this is not the original individual.”

“No kidding,” Raven muttered.

The construct’s smile softened—pain and understanding in the corners of its eyes, perfectly crafted.

It took another step.

Raven raised the cold canister higher. “Another step and I freeze your face off,” she said quietly.

The construct’s gaze flicked to Raven at last, mild curiosity, then returned to the Doctor. “She’s very protective,” it said softly, almost amused. “She reminds me of—”

“Don’t,” the Doctor said, voice low, sharp. The word came out harsher than he intended.

The construct paused, smile still in place. “I’m only trying to help,” it said gently. “You’re tired. You always get tired right about now.”

The Doctor’s jaw clenched. His fingers tightened around the sonic. He could feel the temptation of rest trying to seep into his bones.

Not a surrender.

Just a pause.

Just one moment of not carrying everything.

That was how the Nestene operated: not with claws, but with offers.

Raven’s voice dropped. “Doctor.”

He didn’t look at her. If he looked at her, he might lose his grip on the shape of the lie.

The construct stepped closer again. “Come on,” it said softly. “Let’s go somewhere quiet. I’ll sit with you. I’ll listen. You don’t have to perform heroism for them.”

The Doctor swallowed hard.

He lifted the sonic.

But instead of firing, he did something else.

He spoke.

Not to the construct’s face.

To the thing behind it.

His voice was quiet, cold, old.

“You don’t get to wear that,” he said.

The construct smiled sadly. “Why not?” it asked. “Because it hurts?”

“Because it’s theft,” the Doctor said.

The construct’s brow creased slightly, a perfect imitation of concern. “It’s comfort,” it said. “It’s holding.”

The Doctor’s eyes hardened. “Holding is consent,” he said. “This is coercion wrapped in skin.”

For the first time, the construct’s smile wavered.

Just a flicker—like the mask slipped for half a frame.

Behind the eyes, something patient and non-human pressed closer, irritated at the refusal.

MINO clicked. “Micro-instability detected. Emotional lever failing.”

Raven didn’t wait. She sprayed.

A fine, controlled stream of cold across the construct’s jawline and neck—not enough to shatter, just enough to stiffen the gel and disrupt its ability to mimic warmth.

Frost bloomed.

The construct’s smile froze mid-expression.

Its lips didn’t move, but its eyes still looked at the Doctor—trapped in an imitation of kindness.

“Thank you,” the Doctor murmured to Raven, voice strained.

Raven’s gaze stayed hard. “Don’t thank me,” she said. “Just don’t follow it.”

The Doctor nodded once, jaw clenched.

MINO’s optics flared. “Ring Control Node door remains locked. Manual bypass required.”

The Doctor snapped back into motion. He aimed the sonic at the control node lock and pulsed it.

The lock mechanism whined, then clicked.

The heavy door slid open.

Cold, filtered air spilled out—sterile, clean, the smell of machines that didn’t pretend to be people.

They rushed inside.

The control room was compact and ugly in the way honest engineering always is: consoles, manual override levers, status readouts, emergency schematics. No parish slogans. No gold paint. Just metal and function.

The Doctor slammed the door shut behind them and spun the manual seal wheel.

Raven kept her cold canister raised, listening for movement outside.

MINO hovered above the main console, optics scanning. “Access granted. Airlock systems available. Recommend immediate lockdown of manual overrides.”

“Do it,” the Doctor said.

He moved to the central panel and ran his hand across the controls. The screen flickered, then stabilised—old industrial UI, plain text, no smiles.

DOCKING RING CONTROL — MANUAL OVERRIDE ENABLED
AIRLOCK STATUS: 14 ACTIVE
EMERGENCY SHUTTERS: READY

The Doctor began flipping switches with ruthless speed.

“Lock all airlocks,” he said. “Manual override disabled. External cycling requires two-person code.”

MINO projected confirmation. “Command accepted. Manual override disabled.”

Raven exhaled softly. “Good.”

The Doctor continued. “Seal vent interfaces between substructure and ring,” he ordered. “Route ring airflow to external radiators only.”

MINO clicked. “Routing executed. Smoke infiltration reduced.”

The Doctor paused—hand hovering over another switch: EVACUATION BEACON OVERRIDE.

He flipped it.

The docking ring speakers crackled, and his voice went out—cleaner now, amplified through industrial comms.

“Parish Nine,” he said, voice calm and firm. “This is emergency control. Stay in the docking ring. Do not attempt to return to the chapel. Airlocks are locked for safety. Follow instructions from Dr. Ren and Yara. Help each other. You are awake. Stay awake.”

He released the mic and stared at the console, breathing hard.

For a moment, the control room felt like a small island of sanity.

Then the wall shook.

A deep impact—metal groaning.

Raven spun toward the door, posture tightening.

Another impact.

Not a fist.

Not a boot.

Something heavy striking the seal.

“The construct,” Raven said, voice low.

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Or an Auton.”

MINO’s optics flared. “External door pressure increasing. Multiple units present. Likely attempting breach.”

Raven lifted her canister. “Freeze the seam.”

The Doctor shook his head. “Not here,” he said quickly. “We need the door intact.”

Raven’s gaze sharpened. “Then what.”

The Doctor looked at the console, mind racing. He saw the option and hated it.

EMERGENCY JETTISON — RING SECTIONAL SHUTTERS

The docking ring wasn’t one continuous hallway. It was segmented by emergency bulkheads—designed to isolate breaches, fires, depressurisations.

He could cut off the section of corridor outside this control node.

Trap the units.

Not kill people—airlocks were locked, pressure stable. But he could isolate the corridor pocket and vent it if necessary.

“MINO,” he said, voice tight, “which ring section are we in.”

MINO projected a map. “Section D-3. Adjacent sections: D-2 toward evac flow, D-4 toward external berths.”

The Doctor nodded. “Seal D-4 bulkhead. Seal D-3 internal. Keep D-2 open to evac flow.”

MINO clicked. “Executing.”

A deep metallic thud echoed through the station as a bulkhead shutter closed somewhere down the corridor.

The impacts on the control room door continued—harder now. The seal wheel vibrated faintly.

Raven’s eyes were cold. “They’re strong.”

“They’re desperate,” the Doctor replied.

Another impact. The door groaned.

MINO’s optics flared. “Door integrity: 72%. Estimated failure in 90 seconds if impact continues.”

The Doctor’s mind snapped. “Then we don’t let them keep hitting it.”

He flipped another switch.

SECTION D-4 — PRESSURE DUMP READY

Raven’s gaze snapped to him. “You’re going to vent them.”

“I’m going to vent the corridor pocket,” the Doctor replied, jaw clenched. “No civilians are in D-4. D-2 is holding evac. D-3 is us. D-4 is them.”

Raven nodded once. “Do it.”

The Doctor hesitated for a fraction of a heartbeat—not because he felt pity for the constructs, but because he hated the necessity.

Then he pressed the red confirmation.

A warning tone sounded—industrial, harsh.

The screen flashed:

CONFIRM PRESSURE DUMP — SECTION D-4
COUNTDOWN: 5

The impacts on the door intensified as if the units sensed something was about to happen.

4

Raven braced her shoulder against the door, not to hold it shut, but to keep it from deforming inward under strain.

3

The Doctor’s breath was steady. His eyes didn’t move.

2

MINO clicked. “Pressure dump imminent.”

1

The corridor outside the control node went silent.

Not quiet.

Empty.

A deep, sucking absence.

The impacts stopped instantly.

The door seal wheel stopped vibrating.

Raven exhaled once, slow.

MINO confirmed, “Section D-4 vented. No human life signs detected in vented pocket. Constructs likely incapacitated.”

The Doctor closed his eyes for half a second, letting the tension unclench.

Then he opened them and looked at the console again.

“Status on the fire,” he asked.

MINO’s optics flared. “Substructure thermal event ongoing. Reservoir medium combustion decreasing. Heat propagation into chapel structure continues. Estimated safe occupancy of chapel: none.”

The Doctor nodded. “So no one goes back.”

Raven’s voice was low. “Muir.”

The Doctor’s mouth tightened. “We find her. We keep her alive. And then we hold her accountable.”

Raven didn’t object.

Outside, beyond sealed bulkheads and vented corridors, Parish Nine was still full of people breathing for the first time in months without a hymn telling them how.

The Doctor leaned toward the mic again and spoke—calmer now, as if he could lend them his steadiness.

“Evacuation continues,” he said. “Keep moving clockwise. Stay together. Help those who are shaking. The chapel is unsafe. Do not return.”

He released the mic and turned to Raven.

“We’ve stopped the doors,” he said. “Now we stop the last anchor points.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “Plant conduits.”

The Doctor nodded. “And the ones who chose to open the door in the first place.”

Raven glanced toward the sealed control room door, then back to him. “And your wrong face.”

The Doctor’s jaw tightened. “That stays wrong,” he said quietly. “Always.”

MINO hovered, optics pulsing. “Doctor. Incoming message from Sia Ren. Priority.”

A small comm panel lit up.

Sia’s voice came through, strained but controlled.

“Doctor—Yara’s holding the flow, but there’s a problem,” she said. “Reverend Muir is gone. She slipped away during the crush. And… people are saying the Returned are gathering near Berth Seven.”

The Doctor’s blood went cold again.

Not from fear.

From calculation.

Berth Seven meant external dock interface.

External dock interface meant the lanes.

If Muir was running there, she wasn’t running to hide.

She was running to call something.

Or to leave with it.

///

Chapter 20 — Berth Seven

Berth Seven was at the far end of Docking Ring Section C—an older interface, rarely used, with a wide cargo seal and a narrow personnel lock set into the same bulkhead. The signage was faded, half-stripped of parish paint, as if even the cult of comfort hadn’t bothered to decorate this corner.

It smelled colder here.

Less human.

More vacuum-adjacent.

The Doctor ran clockwise with Raven at his side and MINO hovering above, using the ring’s industrial map on the control console to pick the fastest safe route—bulkheads opening ahead of them, vents sealed behind.

As they moved, they passed clusters of evacuees huddled against the ring wall—shivering in their own skin now that the hymn was gone. Sia moved among them like a scalpel, sharp and practical. Nell was there too, calling names, touching shoulders, making eye contact like it was a rope.

“Levi—look at me. Mara—breathe. Kaito—hold your brother’s hand.”

Names used honestly this time.

Yara stood further along like a human gate, controlling the flow with ruthless clarity. When she saw the Doctor sprint past, she barked, “Berth Seven?”

He nodded once without slowing.

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “Bring her back.”

The Doctor didn’t promise.

He just ran harder.

MINO’s optics flared. “Berth Seven corridor ahead. Thermal levels stable. External seal status: active. Warning: movement detected at berth interface.”

Raven’s voice was low. “How many.”

MINO paused. “At least six life signs. One matches Reverend Muir. Five likely constructs.”

The Doctor’s jaw clenched. “Returned.”

They reached the corridor leading to Berth Seven.

It was narrower, darker—emergency lighting flickering red. A faint draft ran through it, cold enough to raise gooseflesh. At the far end, the cargo seal door loomed, and beside it the personnel lock.

And there—standing in a loose semicircle facing the lock—were the Returned.

They looked like people.

That was the trick.

Not plastic aprons and fixed smiles like the Autons. These were faces with micro-expressions, tears glinting on lashes, hands shaking slightly as if they were as scared as the living.

But their eyes were wrong.

Too steady.

Too oriented toward a single purpose.

They were waiting.

In the center of them stood Reverend Edda Muir.

Her vestments were torn now, stained with soot. Her hair had come loose. Her face was streaked with real tears.

But her posture was upright.

Committed.

Her hands were on the personnel lock console, fingers flying across it as if she’d practiced this a hundred times.

The Doctor slowed to a stop fifteen meters away, Raven a step behind, MINO hovering above and slightly forward.

“Muir,” the Doctor called, voice steady.

She didn’t look up at first. “Don’t,” she said softly, still typing. “Don’t come closer.”

Raven’s voice was low. “What are you doing.”

Muir finally turned her head.

Her eyes were wet, red, furious.

“I’m saving them,” she said.

The Doctor’s jaw tightened. “By opening a berth.”

Muir’s smile flickered—gone, then a ghost of it returned, brittle. “By giving them a way out,” she whispered. “A ship will come.”

The Doctor felt cold spread through him. “You called it.”

Muir’s eyes flashed. “Of course I called it,” she snapped. “You burned the anchor. You cut the tower. You took away the only thing holding this town together. You think they’ll rebuild? With what? Their hands? Their empty hands?” Her voice broke, then hardened again. “No. They need help. Real help.”

Raven’s voice was flat. “Not that help.”

Muir’s shoulders trembled. “You don’t understand,” she hissed. “The Nestene wasn’t a monster to them. It was relief. It was silence. It was sleep.”

“It was ownership,” the Doctor replied quietly.

Muir’s gaze fixed on him like a knife. “And what are you,” she spat, “if not another kind of ownership? You arrive, you decide, you leave. You call it freedom because you’re the one who gets to walk away.”

The Doctor didn’t flinch. The accusation wasn’t new. It just landed harder when spoken by someone who had used the same logic to justify a cult.

“You’re right about one thing,” he said softly. “I can leave. They can’t. That’s why what you did is worse.”

Muir’s face twisted. “I did what I had to.”

“Then face what you did,” Raven said, stepping forward, cold canister visible.

The Returned shifted—five heads turning toward Raven in near-synchrony.

A woman among them—young, tear-streaked, beautiful—smiled gently at Raven. “You’re tired,” she whispered.

Raven’s eyes didn’t blink. “Try it.”

The Returned woman’s smile widened slightly—too much. “Come,” she said softly. “We’ll hold—”

Raven sprayed.

Cold hit the woman’s cheek and jaw. Frost bloomed. The skin stiffened, micro-cracks forming under the thin membrane.

The woman’s smile froze.

And the illusion snapped: beneath the “skin,” a gel density pattern shimmered briefly, like light through milk.

The other Returned recoiled—not in fear, but in recalibration. Their eyes shifted toward the Doctor.

They were trying to decide which lever would work on him now that the wrong face had failed.

MINO clicked. “Constructs attempting emotional engagement. Recommend broad disrupt.”

The Doctor raised the sonic. “Stand down,” he said, not to Muir, but to the constructs.

They didn’t.

They stepped forward together, slow and calm, forming a moving wall.

Not rushing.

Not attacking.

Just advancing, blocking the corridor, herding the Doctor away from Muir and the lock.

Classic again: comfort as a cage.

The Doctor pulsed the sonic in a wide sweep.

The Returned staggered—faces glitching, smiles slipping, eyes flashing with static. One dropped to a knee, hands clutching their head as if the signal inside was suddenly too loud.

But they didn’t collapse fully.

They recovered.

Their higher fidelity made them resilient.

Raven swore softly. “They’re tougher than Autons.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said, grim. “They’re closer to the source.”

And then the lock console beeped.

A clean, pleasant confirmation tone.

The personnel lock door slid open.

Cold air spilled out from the small chamber beyond, tinged with the smell of docking sealant and external vacuum.

Muir’s face lit with desperate relief.

“There,” she whispered. “There’s the way.”

The Doctor’s voice went sharp. “Where does it lead, Muir?”

Muir’s eyes flashed. “Away.”

“Away to what?” he demanded.

Muir’s breath hitched. Her eyes darted—just for a fraction—toward the open lock, toward the dark beyond.

“Help,” she said again, but the word sounded thinner now.

Raven’s voice was quiet, lethal. “It’s not help. It’s extraction.”

Muir’s jaw clenched. “You don’t know that.”

The Doctor took one step forward. “Yes,” he said softly. “I do.”

He looked past the open personnel lock into the berth interface chamber. There was a small external view panel there—thick glass showing the darkness of space and the outline of the berth’s docking clamps.

And something else.

A faint shape in the dark, just beyond the berth, too smooth to be rock, too symmetrical to be debris.

A ship.

But not a human ship.

Not industrial.

Not even “alien tech” in the colourful sense.

It looked like a polished black seed—rounded, silent, waiting.

Nestene transport.

A way to relocate medium.

A way to take Parish Nine’s grief economy and export it.

MINO’s optics flared. “External object identified. Non-human. Likely Nestene-aligned carrier. Docking approach in progress.”

The Doctor’s blood went cold.

Muir’s eyes widened at the Doctor’s reaction. “It came,” she whispered, voice trembling with awe and terror. “It came.”

“It came because you called it,” the Doctor snapped.

The Returned shifted again, their bodies now aligning not just to block but to guide—subtly angling toward the open lock like shepherds.

They wanted the Doctor and Raven too.

Not to kill them.

To bring them into the medium.

To hold them in the ship’s belly and remove the last resistance.

Raven’s voice was low. “Doctor. We end this now.”

The Doctor’s mind raced.

If that carrier docked, Parish Nine wasn’t just a contained incident. It became a node.

A broadcast-less, mobile anchor.

And the lanes were full of isolated rocks like this—desperate places, grief-rich places, perfect for “holding.”

He looked at MINO. “Can we lock the berth clamps,” he demanded. “Prevent docking.”

MINO’s optics pulsed. “Possible. Requires access to berth control panel inside lock chamber. Risk: exposure to constructs and vacuum-adjacent systems.”

Raven stepped forward, cold canister raised. “I’ll go.”

The Doctor caught her arm. “No,” he said sharply. “We go together.”

Raven’s eyes flicked to his face. The decision landed. She nodded once.

They moved.

The Returned tried to intercept—five bodies shifting to close the corridor.

Yara wasn’t here.

Sia wasn’t here.

This was the Doctor, Raven, MINO, and a corridor full of warm-faced lies.

The Doctor raised the sonic and pulsed again, harder this time—targeting the constructs’ core actuation frequencies rather than surface mimicry.

Two Returned froze mid-step, faces locking into half-expressions. A third stumbled, eyes flickering with static.

Raven sprayed cold low, sweeping ankles and knees, turning graceful bodies into stiff statues.

They pushed through the gap and entered the personnel lock chamber.

Cold hit them immediately—dry, biting. Emergency pressure seals hissed softly.

The berth control panel sat on the wall—a manual interface for clamp systems and docking gates.

The Doctor slammed his hand onto it and began overriding.

“MINO,” he barked, “give me clamp controls. Hard lock. No auto-dock.”

MINO projected the control sequence. The Doctor’s fingers flew.

Behind them, Muir’s voice rose, frantic. “Stop!” she shouted. “Stop! You’ll doom them!”

The Doctor didn’t look back. “You doomed them the moment you made grief a product,” he said through clenched teeth.

Raven stood at the lock threshold, cold canister ready, eyes on the Returned converging again.

They stepped into the lock chamber with calm, reaching hands.

“Please,” one whispered. “Come.”

Raven sprayed the floor, frost spreading, forcing them to slow, destabilising their perfect gait.

The Doctor hit the final override.

The panel beeped, harsh.

BERTH CLAMPS — MANUAL LOCK ENGAGED
AUTO-DOCK — DISABLED

Outside the view panel, the black seed ship drifted closer—then subtly adjusted, as if searching for a docking handshake that was no longer answering.

MINO clicked. “Docking denied. Carrier will attempt alternate interface or retreat.”

The Doctor exhaled sharply, relief and dread braided together. “Good.”

Muir’s scream cut through the corridor—raw, human rage and grief.

“You don’t get to decide!” she shrieked. “You don’t get to—”

Raven snapped her head toward Muir. “You already decided,” she said coldly. “For everyone.”

Muir’s eyes were wild. “I saved them!”

“You used them,” Raven shot back.

The Returned surged again—not fast, but purposeful—hands reaching, smiles reforming.

The Doctor realised with sudden clarity what the Nestene was doing: if it couldn’t dock, it would take what it could—people, constructs, medium—through the open lock while it hovered.

Muir’s lock had created a bridge.

They needed to close it.

Now.

The Doctor slammed his palm on the lock controls.

“Seal the personnel lock,” he barked.

The controls flashed red.

LOCK CYCLE IN PROGRESS
WARNING: OBSTRUCTION DETECTED

A Returned’s arm was in the door path.

It didn’t pull back.

It smiled and held its arm there like a sacrifice.

Raven’s eyes narrowed. She sprayed cold directly onto the arm joint.

Frost snapped across it.

The arm stiffened, then cracked at the elbow with a brittle sound.

The Returned didn’t scream.

It just looked at Raven with a smile that finally became wrong enough to be frightening.

The obstruction cleared.

The door began to close.

Muir lunged toward it.

“No!” she screamed.

The Doctor stepped into her path, not gentle, not cruel—just immovable.

“It’s over,” he said.

Muir’s hands slammed against his chest. “You don’t understand!” she sobbed. “You don’t—”

The lock door sealed with a heavy, final thud.

The personnel lock chamber lights shifted from red to steady amber.

Outside, through the view panel, the black seed ship drifted—denied. It lingered for a heartbeat, then began to slide away into the dark.

MINO confirmed, “Carrier retreating. Docking attempt aborted.”

The Doctor’s shoulders loosened by a fraction.

Then he looked at Muir.

She stood shaking, tears streaming, vestments ruined, hands trembling like she’d just watched her god die.

The Returned—those still functional—stood in the corridor beyond the sealed door, smiles fixed, cut off from their exit.

Their eyes flickered with instability, their coherence failing without the carrier’s support.

They were dying, slowly, like puppets whose strings had been cut but whose limbs still twitched.

Muir stared at the sealed lock door, then at the Doctor, and something in her face collapsed.

“I was trying to make it stop hurting,” she whispered.

The Doctor’s voice softened—not forgiving, not cruel. “I know,” he said.

Raven’s voice stayed cold. “And you made it hurt other people instead.”

Muir’s eyes squeezed shut. A sob broke out of her like a wound.

In the docking ring behind them, the evac flow continued—people awake, frightened, alive.

And beneath the station, the last of the Nestene medium burned itself out in a furnace of its own making.

Parish Nine had survived.

But the Doctor knew, watching the seed ship vanish into the dark, that survival wasn’t the same as safety.

Because the lanes were wide.

And the universe was full of places that wanted to be held.

///

Chapter 21 — Reckoning

The personnel lock stayed sealed.

For a long moment, nobody moved.

The docking ring corridor outside the berth interface was lit in thin emergency amber, and the air felt too clean for what had just happened—filtered, clinical, indifferent. The black seed ship was gone from the view panel now, only darkness and distant stars.

Reverend Edda Muir stood with her hands hanging at her sides like someone who had suddenly forgotten how to use them. Her chest rose and fell in sharp, uneven breaths. Tears tracked down her face, cutting clean lines through soot.

Raven watched her without softness.

The Doctor watched her without hatred.

There was a difference.

Behind the sealed lock door, the Returned remained in the corridor—half a dozen figures, still smiling, still standing, their bodies slowly betraying them as coherence failed. You could see it if you looked closely: a tremor in a hand, a blink that didn’t match the rest of the face, a slight sag in posture as if the body was remembering it wasn’t real.

One of them—an older man with gentle eyes—lifted his head as if listening for a voice that wasn’t there anymore.

His smile faltered.

Then returned, stubborn and wrong.

MINO hovered near the control panel, optics pulsing. “Construct degradation accelerating. Without carrier and without tower coherence, they will collapse into inert medium within minutes.”

“Collapse where?” Raven asked.

MINO clicked. “In-place.”

Raven’s jaw tightened. “In the corridor with evac routes.”

The Doctor nodded. “We isolate them.”

He turned to the berth control panel and began cycling through options. The interface was plain and honest: emergency bulkheads, venting, quarantine shutters. He selected an isolation sequence that would seal the berth corridor pocket and route its air through external scrubbers.

“Section quarantine,” he said quietly.

The panel beeped.

A heavy shutter door down the corridor slid into place with a dull metallic thud, sealing the Returned into a contained segment away from the main docking ring flow.

Muir flinched at the sound.

“Don’t,” she whispered, voice broken. “They’re… they look like—”

“They look like people,” the Doctor said, gentle but firm. “That’s why they’re dangerous.”

Muir’s mouth trembled. “They were helping.”

“They were herding,” Raven snapped.

Muir’s eyes squeezed shut. “I didn’t—” she began, then swallowed hard, as if the sentence was too big to finish.

The Doctor turned away from the sealed lock and toward the docking ring, where the evacuation continued.

Sia’s voice carried down the corridor in sharp bursts—counting breaths, assigning tasks, keeping people moving in groups without letting them bunch into crush points.

Yara’s voice was there too, blunt and unwavering, calling instructions like a ship’s bosun in a storm.

“Clockwise! Keep the inner lane clear! No one goes back! If you’re steady, you guide someone who isn’t!”

Nell’s voice threaded through it as well—softer, but insistent, naming people, grounding them.

“Liora—Mum—look at me. Stay with me. Here. Here.”

The Doctor felt something in his chest loosen. The town was still afraid, but it wasn’t collapsing. It was moving.

He stepped out of the berth interface corridor with Raven and MINO, bringing Muir with him—without touching her, but without leaving her an exit.

Yara spotted them immediately and strode over, eyes hard.

“You got her,” she said.

“Yes,” the Doctor replied.

Yara’s gaze flicked to Muir and stayed there like a blade. “You,” she said flatly.

Muir didn’t answer. She looked smaller in the docking ring’s harsh light, stripped of altar glow and screens.

Sia arrived a moment later, breathing hard, hair plastered with sweat, eyes sharp. She took one look at Muir and her face tightened into fury so clean it looked almost calm.

“Reverend,” Sia said softly.

Muir’s eyes lifted to her, and for a heartbeat her warmth tried to return—reflex.

It failed.

“I was trying—” Muir began.

Sia cut her off. “Don’t,” she said. “Not yet. Not until you hear what you did.”

Muir’s breath hitched.

Sia turned to the crowd—people clustered along the ring wall, watching. Some were still shaking. Some looked angry. Some looked like they wanted to punch something and didn’t know what.

Sia raised her voice, not screaming—projecting like a clinician addressing a ward.

“Listen,” she said. “You’ve been breathing polymer microfilaments for months. Many of you will cough. Many of you will feel dizzy. That’s withdrawal and irritation. We are not leaving anyone alone. If you feel faint, sit. If you can walk, you help someone else. And if you see anyone smiling calmly and telling you to ‘rest’—you get away from them and you tell me or Yara immediately.”

A murmur ran through the crowd—fear, anger, understanding.

Yara stepped up beside Sia and added bluntly, “If you try to run, you crush someone. If you try to go back, you die. Stay in the ring. Do what you’re told.”

Some flinched at the harshness.

But most nodded, grateful for clarity.

The Doctor looked at MINO. “Status on the fire.”

MINO’s optics flared. “Reservoir medium combustion decreasing. Substructure heat plateauing. Smoke diversion functioning. Chapel structure compromised but collapse unlikely to spread to ring. Recommendation: permanent seal of chapel access and plant intake.”

The Doctor nodded. “Seal it,” he said.

MINO emitted a sharp tone and sent commands through the ring control infrastructure. Bulkheads shifted. Distant shutters closed.

A low, heavy sound traveled through the station—doors sealing, pathways shutting, the town’s old mouth being closed.

Muir heard it and shuddered. “You’re sealing the chapel,” she whispered.

“Yes,” the Doctor said.

“That’s our heart,” Muir whispered, and her voice cracked like bone.

“No,” Raven said, cold. “That was your leash.”

Muir’s eyes flashed at Raven. “You don’t get to—”

Raven stepped closer, eyes like ice. “I do,” she said. “Because I watched you try to export this. Because I watched you open an airlock to a predator and call it mercy.”

Muir’s face crumpled.

Sia spoke again, quieter now, to the Doctor. “Casualties?” she asked.

The Doctor looked at MINO.

MINO paused. “Confirmed fatalities: seven. Missing unconfirmed: three. Several injuries from crowd surge; no crush fatalities detected. Respiratory irritation widespread.”

Seven.

The Doctor let the number settle in him. He didn’t flinch away from it. He didn’t soften it.

He looked at the crowd and spoke into the ring’s harsh light without amplification—just voice.

“Seven,” he said, and people turned. “Seven people died here because someone decided grief was a resource and comfort was worth ownership.”

Muir flinched like she’d been struck.

The Doctor continued, voice steady. “We will account for every missing person. We will treat every lung. We will seal this station until it is safe. And we will record what happened here openly.”

A man in the crowd shouted, hoarse and furious, “She should be spaced!”

Another voice, shaking, “She brought my boy back—she—” Then sobbing.

A woman screamed, “That wasn’t my boy!”

The ring erupted into overlapping cries—anger, grief, confusion.

Yara stepped forward, voice like a hammer. “Enough!” she barked. “You want justice? Then you stay alive long enough to do it. Breathe. Sit. Shut up and listen.”

The crowd quieted—not fully, but enough.

The Doctor looked at Muir. “You will be recorded,” he said. “You will be held in a secure compartment. You will face the consequences of your choice.”

Muir’s eyes were wet and furious. “I didn’t choose evil,” she whispered.

“No,” the Doctor said quietly. “You chose shortcuts. You chose control. And you told yourself it was kindness.”

Muir’s jaw trembled. “What else was I supposed to do?”

Sia answered, voice tight with pain. “Ask for help,” she said. “Not from that. From people. From ships. From law. From me. From anyone who doesn’t require you to poison a town.”

Muir looked like she might collapse.

Raven didn’t look away. “And you,” she said, “will live with what you did. That’s the minimum price.”

The Doctor turned to Yara. “Secure room,” he said.

Yara nodded once. She took Muir by the elbow—not violently, not gently, just firmly. Muir didn’t resist. She walked like a sleepwalker in reverse, awake to pain and unable to stop moving.

As Yara led her away, the Doctor watched the docking ring again.

People were sitting now in clusters. Helping each other. Sharing water. Holding children. Crying honestly.

Sia moved through them, checking, instructing.

Nell sat with her mother, Liora, arms around her, whispering names into her ear like anchors.

Raven stood beside the Doctor, quiet, her cold canister finally lowered.

MINO hovered, optics pulsing softly now, as if the urgency had dialed down from screaming to steady.

The Doctor exhaled slowly.

Penultimate was always the part where you counted the cost.

And decided what kind of ending you were going to allow.

MINO clicked. “Doctor. Quarantined berth corridor: constructs collapsing. Inert medium recovery possible for analysis.”

The Doctor nodded. “Good,” he said. “Bag it. Document everything.”

Raven’s voice was low. “And the seed ship?”

The Doctor’s gaze went to the external view panel at the far end of the ring—blackness and stars.

“It got away,” he said quietly.

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “So it’s not over.”

The Doctor’s voice stayed calm, but there was iron in it. “No,” he said. “But Parish Nine is done being someone else’s feeding ground.”

He looked at the people sitting in the ring and felt the strange, painful truth of it:

They were awake.

And that was the beginning of everything.

///

Chapter 22 — Still Awake

The chapel was sealed.

That mattered more than anyone up in the docking ring fully understood yet.

A place like Parish Nine didn’t just lose a building when you welded it shut. It lost a story—the central myth it had been using to hold itself together. For months, the chapel had been the soft center of the town’s day: the bell, the screens, the smiling faces that promised you could stop hurting if you just breathed together.

Now it was a blackened mouth with its teeth knocked out, locked behind industrial shutters and warning lights.

And the town had to live without it.

They didn’t do it all at once.

They did it in small, shaky increments.

In the docking ring holding bay, people sat in clusters under harsh emergency lighting. Blankets were passed around—real fabric, not warmth in the air. Water was rationed. Someone found a crate of nutrient bars and handed them out without ceremony.

Sia Ren ran the space like a field hospital. She walked from group to group, checking breathing, checking pupils, checking hands for tremors.

“This is withdrawal,” she told them bluntly. “You’re not going mad. Your nervous systems have been coerced into calm for months. Expect irritability. Expect crying. Expect anger. It doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you’re back.”

People stared at her, some with gratitude, some with resentment, some with the hollow look of those who didn’t know who they were without a blanket.

Yara held the perimeter—less like a guard and more like a gravity well. When someone stood too fast or tried to force a door, she was there, voice hard, body in the way.

“No,” she said, over and over. “Not there. Not now. Sit. Breathe. Help someone.”

The Doctor watched it from the edge of the bay with Raven beside him and MINO hovering above like a quiet sentinel.

He didn’t speak much.

He listened.

He counted.

Seven dead. Three missing. Three might be bodies in sealed compartments. Three might be trapped nearer the substructure. Three might be worse.

He’d been through enough disasters to know that numbers don’t soften just because you want them to.

MINO clicked softly. “Search teams deployed with breathing apparatus. Substructure remains hazardous. Thermal levels decreasing.”

“Time estimate?” Raven asked.

MINO paused. “Two hours for safe access to sealed chapel perimeter. Longer for deeper compartments.”

Raven’s gaze stayed on the holding bay. “So they wait.”

“They wait,” the Doctor agreed.

A small commotion rose near the far wall: a woman crying too loud, rocking, repeating a name like a spell.

“My Aron—my Aron—my Aron—”

Nell Quill was there before anyone else.

She knelt beside the woman and took her hand, not trying to stop the grief, just anchoring it.

“Aron is real,” Nell said softly. “Aron is real. We will find out what happened. We will know.”

The woman sobbed harder, but her rocking slowed.

Names used as anchors again.

The Doctor felt a tightness in his chest ease.

Nell’s mother, Liora, sat nearby, wrapped in a blanket, eyes red and swollen. She looked like she’d aged five years in one afternoon. Her hands shook in her lap.

Nell sat close, shoulder pressed to hers, whispering sometimes, silent other times.

Liora stared at the floor for a long time.

Then, finally, she looked up at the Doctor.

Not with gratitude.

With a raw, exhausted question.

“What do we do tomorrow?” she asked.

The Doctor held her gaze.

There it was.

Not monster questions. Not hero questions.

Life questions.

“Tomorrow,” he said gently, “you drink water. You eat. You sleep if you can. You keep people together. You tell the truth out loud so it doesn’t become a secret again.”

Liora’s mouth trembled. “And after that?”

“After that,” the Doctor said, “you make a list. What you need, what you’re missing, what you can’t do alone. And you broadcast it. Not with hymns. With facts.”

Sia overheard and snorted softly, approving. “Yes,” she said. “Finally.”

Yara, passing by, added bluntly, “And you stop letting one person run the whole town.”

Liora gave a small, broken laugh that turned into a sob.

Raven watched Liora for a moment, then looked at the Doctor. “Muir,” she said quietly.

The Doctor nodded.

They found Muir in a sealed maintenance room off the ring—an old storage bay cleared for containment. No comforts. No screens. Just a metal bench, a basic sanitation unit, and a camera light blinking.

Yara stood outside the door, arms folded.

“She’s inside,” Yara said. “Quiet.”

The Doctor looked at her. “Did she say anything?”

Yara’s mouth tightened. “Just that she wants to talk to you. Of course she does.”

Raven’s eyes were cold. “We don’t owe her a confession booth.”

The Doctor didn’t disagree. “No,” he said. “We owe the town a record.”

He entered with Raven.

Muir sat on the metal bench, hands clasped, shoulders hunched. Without vestments and altar lighting, she looked like what she was: a tired woman who had decided she could carry an entire town’s grief by turning it into a system.

She looked up when the Doctor entered.

Her eyes were swollen. Her face was grey with exhaustion.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” she whispered.

“I’m not here for you,” the Doctor said quietly. “I’m here to make sure what happened is documented properly.”

Muir swallowed hard. “You think I’m a monster.”

“I think you made monstrous decisions,” the Doctor replied.

Muir’s jaw trembled. “I didn’t start this,” she whispered. “The town was dying. The plant was failing. The lanes ignored us. Relief shipments got rerouted. People started disappearing on supply runs. We were—” she swallowed— “we were alone.”

“And then you found the reservoir,” Raven said flatly.

Muir’s eyes flicked to Raven, then back to the Doctor. “It found us,” she whispered. “A salvage team brought back a sealed polymer module from an old wreck. It… reacted. It responded. It was like… like the station took a breath for the first time in years.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Who approved that salvage.”

Muir’s mouth tightened. “Procurement,” she said quietly. “The plant supervisor. The council.”

Names.

Systems.

Not just a lone priest. A town complicit because the shortcut was comforting.

The Doctor nodded once. “We will record those names too.”

Muir flinched. “You’ll destroy them.”

“I’ll give them the truth,” the Doctor said.

Muir’s eyes filled again. “I did it for them.”

Raven’s voice was a knife. “You did it to them.”

Muir squeezed her eyes shut. A tear fell. “I know,” she whispered. “Now I know.”

The Doctor watched her for a long moment.

Then he said quietly, “Tell me about Berth Seven. The seed ship. How you contacted it.”

Muir’s breath hitched. “It taught me,” she whispered. “The reservoir… it showed me patterns. It showed me where the old comm lines were buried. It—” she swallowed— “it showed me how to call.”

The Doctor’s face went still. “So it wasn’t just a presence,” he murmured. “It was instructing.”

Muir nodded, shaking. “It promised it would take some away,” she whispered. “It promised they wouldn’t hurt anymore.”

Raven’s eyes hardened. “By turning them into cargo.”

Muir didn’t answer.

The Doctor leaned closer, voice low. “Did it say where it came from. How many there are.”

Muir’s eyes lifted, unfocused, as if she was looking at the memory of a wave.

“It didn’t speak like that,” she whispered. “It showed… lanes. Rocks like ours. Little lights. A web. It felt—” she swallowed— “it felt hungry.”

The Doctor straightened.

There was your hook.

Not a one-off.

A pattern.

He looked at Raven. Raven’s jaw was tight, eyes steady.

“We need to warn the lanes,” Raven said.

“We will,” the Doctor replied.

He looked back at Muir. “You will stay here until transport arrives,” he said. “You will be handed over to whoever holds jurisdiction. And you will not be allowed to turn this into martyrdom.”

Muir flinched. “What if no one comes,” she whispered. “What if they ignore us again.”

The Doctor’s voice was quiet and ruthless. “Then you live with them,” he said. “Awake.”

He left.

Outside, Yara pushed off the wall. “You done?” she asked.

“For now,” the Doctor said.

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “I want something from you,” she said.

The Doctor looked at her. “Say it.”

Yara gestured toward the holding bay, where the town sat in raw clusters. “Don’t leave them with a speech,” she said. “Leave them with a plan.”

The Doctor nodded. “We will.”

He, Raven, Yara, Sia, and Nell gathered in the bay’s center where most could see. It wasn’t theatrical. No altar. No screens. Just people looking up with the exhausted attention of those who had had too much ripped away at once.

The Doctor spoke plainly.

“This station will be quarantined,” he said. “The chapel and plant intakes are sealed. Search teams are retrieving the missing. Medical triage continues. We will broadcast a distress report on open lanes with a full record of what happened here—names, systems, evidence.”

He nodded at Sia. “Dr. Ren will coordinate medical response.”

He nodded at Yara. “Yara will coordinate movement and safety.”

He nodded at Nell. “Nell Quill will coordinate community check-ins—names, households, who’s missing, who needs help.”

Nell swallowed hard, then nodded.

Sia blinked. “Wait,” she said, sharp. “You’re assigning roles.”

“Yes,” the Doctor replied. “Because the chapel was your centralised control point. It’s gone. You need structure that belongs to you.”

A murmur moved through the crowd—hesitant, then slightly steadier.

A man near the wall called out hoarsely, “And you?”

The Doctor’s mouth tightened.

It would be easier to say “I’ll fix it.”

But that was the same lie, in a different coat.

“I will do two things,” he said.

He held up two fingers.

“First: I will make sure a proper rescue response reaches you—ships, supplies, independent inspectors.”

“Second: I will make sure this doesn’t happen somewhere else without warning.”

He paused, letting the silence hold.

“And then,” he said quietly, “I will leave you awake.”

That line landed hard.

Some people looked angry. Some looked relieved. Some looked terrified.

But nobody looked entrained.

Good.

Afterward, the bay slowly returned to its messy reality: people sitting, talking, crying, helping.

Sia immediately began organising medication distribution and respiratory support. Yara set up a rotation for guarding access points. Nell started writing names on a panel with a marker—who was present, who was missing, who needed attention.

The Doctor stepped away from the crowd and into a quieter side corridor with Raven.

The docking ring’s emergency lights cast long shadows. The air was cooler here, the noise softer.

Raven leaned against the wall, exhaled slowly, and finally let her shoulders drop.

“You burned it,” she said softly.

“I had to,” the Doctor replied.

Raven’s eyes were steady. “It almost got you,” she said.

The Doctor didn’t pretend not to know what she meant. “Yes,” he admitted.

Raven’s gaze softened a fraction. “You didn’t follow.”

“No,” he said. “Because you were there.”

Raven looked away briefly, then back. “Still here,” she said—quiet, not ritualistic, just true.

The Doctor nodded once, and the words settled between them like a small stone in a pocket.

“Still awake,” he replied.

MINO floated into the corridor and hovered near the Doctor’s shoulder. “Open-lane broadcast drafted,” MINO reported. “Includes: incident summary, evidence attachments, procurement chain, carrier ship description, hazard classification.”

The Doctor nodded. “Transmit.”

MINO emitted a soft tone.

Somewhere in the station’s comm array, a message went out—clean, factual, uncomfortably honest—into the lanes.

A warning.

A record.

A refusal to let Parish Nine become a secret.

Raven’s gaze drifted toward the external view panels in the ring—stars beyond, dark and indifferent.

“You think it’ll come back,” she said.

The Doctor’s voice was quiet, certain. “Yes,” he said. “Not for this rock. Not soon. But somewhere else—somewhere tired—someone will hear the promise of relief and think it’s kindness.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “And then?”

The Doctor’s jaw tightened slightly. “Then we make sure they’re warned,” he said. “And if warning isn’t enough—”

He didn’t finish the sentence.

He didn’t need to.

They stood together in the docking ring’s quiet corridor while behind them a town learned how to breathe without a hymn.

And far out in the dark lanes, a black seed ship drifted away with empty clamps—denied this harvest, but still hungry.

The universe didn’t stop putting teeth in walls.

But Parish Nine had learned, the hard way, not to mistake a smile for mercy.

The Doctor adjusted his coat, glanced once toward the holding bay, then turned back toward the TARDIS with Raven beside him.

No triumph.

No clean victory.

Just a town that was still alive.

Still awake.

Still here.