"Now please really try, Ace," said the Doctor as they walked down the quiet, tree-lined street, "not to blow our cover."
"I still don’t even know what it is," Ace replied under her breath.
"We’re going to follow Mrs Charleston’s lead," he said. The newspaper advertisement that attracted the Doctor’s attention had been sinister but vague—just "Reliable persons wanted for" something or other that had set off his alarm bells. So here they were, doing their best impression of reliable persons.
"Which means you’ll start making stuff up and I have to read your mind. Got it," said Ace, apparently satisfied. She hitched her rucksack to ride higher on her shoulders.
"Just try to keep a low profile," said the Doctor.
"Got it, Professor." She grinned.
The large, splendid door of Mrs Charleston’s large, splendid house was opened by a large, splendid butler. He raised one eyebrow (large and splendid) until the Doctor, taking off his hat, explained that they’d come in answer to the advertisement.
They were shown to an elegant parlor. There were porcelain ornaments and fragile-looking dried flowers and frills on things that Ace hadn’t even thought it was possible to have frills on. They sat down side by side on a blue striped couch with curly wooden arms and legs. It looked plush but somehow managed to be as hard as rocks. Ace carefully set her rucksack down on the floor between her feet.
"Mrs Charleston will be with you shortly," said the butler, and left.
"I don’t like this," Ace whispered to the Doctor. She felt out of place, like a child’s action figure shoved into a dainty dollhouse.
He shook his head. "You’re right. There’s something wrong in this house."
Just then the door opened and a woman entered who Ace assumed had to be Mrs Charleston. She wore a skirt suit and pearls, with neatly set grey curls and perfect makeup. Ace thought she looked like a person on TV.
"Mrs Charleston?" said the Doctor, springing to his feet to shake her hand, then sitting back down as she seated herself in a massive, throne-like velvet armchair. Ace stood up and sat back down too, but kept her arms crossed, watching quietly.
"We’re here about the advertisement," he went on. "I’m the Doctor and this is Ace."
"Wonderful," she trilled. She had a strange, thoughtful expression on her face, looking hard at the Doctor. Her left fingertips traced where her right hand had touched his. "You seem… somewhat overqualified for the position I had in mind, Doctor. I wonder whether you would be interested in a… curatorial role."
Yeah, this lady was definitely where the sinister vibes were coming from.
"Possibly," said the Doctor slowly. "We would have to discuss terms."
Ace wasn’t sure whether he knew what she meant and was leading her on, or whether he was just as confused as she, Ace, was, and covering it up.
"And the young lady?" said Mrs Charleston.
"It’s Ace," said Ace, and the Doctor said somewhat apologetically, "She’s more what you might call action-oriented."
Without replying, Mrs Charleston rang a little bell that stood on a side table, and a dainty, elegant maid in a frilly blue uniform appeared through the parlor’s back door. Did she pick all her servants to match the house? Ace wondered.
"Tea, please, Mary," she said. "Miss Ace will have the special blend."
"Yes, madam," said Mary without expression, and retreated.
The Doctor complimented Mrs Charleston on her collection of seashells, or something—Ace wasn’t entirely following their conversation. She could tell the Doctor was just filling time, playing a flattering role to keep the conversation moving, which probably meant action soon. So rather than listening she mentally rehearsed the handy little items she’d brought with her in her rucksack, plus one in her pocket for emergencies.
Mary returned with three delicate china cups of tea on a silver tray. Ace smiled at her as she set the tray down on a little wooden table, but she didn’t seem to respond. Unfriendly or frightened? Ace thought as Mary left.
"Splendid," Mrs Charleston cooed. She handed Ace a cup with little pink flowers painted around the brim, then handed the Doctor one with yellow flowers, and kept the last one—also yellow—for herself.
Something fishy there. Ace looked toward the Doctor—subtly, she hoped—for guidance on whether she should drink the tea or not.
At the same moment, the Doctor shot her a wide-eyed, panicky glance. Don’t drink it, then, she concluded. Was there a houseplant she could tip it into?
"I’m especially impressed with your cuckoo clock," said the Doctor, pointing to it on a mantelpiece behind their hostess.
"Ah yes," said Mrs Charleston, "isn’t it darling?" She turned to look at it. "Two little people come out and kiss, every hour on the hour. Regular as clockwork!" she giggled.
While her head was turned, the Doctor frantically snatched the tea from Ace and pressed his own cup into her hands.
Mrs Charleston looked back to them, smiling, totally unaware of the switch. Ace took a hesitant sip of the tea from the yellow-flowered cup that she now had. It seemed normal, maybe a little weak. And she would’ve liked milk and sugar, but she hadn’t been offered any.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Doctor take a similarly hesitant sip of his tea, which had been hers. He immediately coughed, as if it had burnt him or choked him.
"Are you all right?" asked Mrs Charleston, all saccharine concern. The Doctor wrapped his hand around his cup so as to hide the design—Ace immediately did the same—and nodded, clearly forcing himself to stop coughing. "Just went down the wrong way," he croaked.
"Well, we must take good care of you," said Mrs Charleston. "We wouldn’t want anything to go wrong before you’ve even started work." She stood up and walked towards them.
As she approached, the Doctor smiled. "I’ll just wash it down," he said. Then he threw back his head and gulped down the entire cup of tea.
"How inelegant," said Mrs Charleston disapprovingly as he crashed forward, face-first into a table with a photo album on it, convulsing.
At Mrs Charleston's quiet signal, the butler easily managed to haul an armful of gasping, struggling Time Lord into the hall and up two flights of stairs. More startlingly, Mary managed the same with Ace, locking her arms behind her back with inhuman strength. They dumped the Doctor and Ace in a small grey room. There was an iron bedframe with no mattress, a cracked, rusty, industrial-looking sink in one corner, and a dresser with two of its drawer handles missing. Light crept in through a dusty, cobwebbed dormer window with bars outside the glass.
Ace picked herself up off the musty-smelling rug and collected herself. (They'd taken her rucksack. Crap.) The Doctor lay as he had fallen, and she rushed to help him sit up. But as soon as her hand touched his, he screamed in pain.
"Oh no," she muttered. She tried to make him more comfortable without actually touching him, pulling the sleeves of her jacket over her hands. Weren't you supposed to lay people on their sides?
He was still lying down when she'd done what she could, but at least his head wasn't twisted to one side, his limbs awkwardly underneath him, in that horrible way. Even in the moment she'd touched him, she'd felt that his skin was fever-hot—and if it felt hot to her, it must be burning up for him. Tremors occasionally ran through him, so that he would shake uncontrollably for a moment.
"What happened, Professor?" she asked, crouching as close to him as she dared get. It would be stupid to ask "are you all right?"
He shut his eyes, as if having eyes and mouth open at the same time took too much energy, and managed to whisper the reply: "Poison."
Well, obviously, Ace thought, amusement and frustration blending into her overwhelming panic. "Why?" she said. "Why did that woman want to poison me? Why did you drink it? What's going on in this house?" If you can't make it make sense, who ever can?
A tremor seized him. His body stiffened and she could almost hear his teeth grinding as he tried to resist it.
Better question. "What can I do?" she asked. As his muscles relaxed he seemed to come back to himself a little bit, and he tried to sit up.
"Are you warm? You feel warm," she said. He nodded weakly, and as she helped him to sit up, she managed to get his jacket off. That made it easier to help him without accidentally touching him—contact which still seemed to cause him incredible pain—and she hoped it would relieve his fever or whatever it was, too. There was probably nothing she could do about the pullover, unfortunately.
They managed to get him sitting up, leaning against the foot of the empty bedstead. He looked awful, Ace thought with a sudden sense of panic—white-faced with hectic red spots in his cheeks, sweat-soaked hair plastered to his forehead, propped up like a ragdoll. He was disturbingly fragile, like this.
"What can I do?" she repeated.
"Is there any—any water?" he asked.
Ace glanced dubiously at the sink. "Probably," she said. "I don't have a cup or anything."
He reached a shaking hand out, and she realized he was trying to reach his jacket. She hurriedly handed it to him and he fished his handkerchief from the pocket.
"Soak it?" she asked and he nodded. Even the motion of his head seemed to hurt him, as he squeezed his eyes shut against it.
Ace went to the sink, watching over her shoulder to keep an eye on the Doctor. She opened the tap and it coughed and spluttered to life. She ran it until it stopped looking rusty, then soaked the handkerchief and brought it back to the Doctor.
He took it and squeezed the first drops into his mouth, then wiped his face and hands. Water ran onto his collar and cuffs but he clearly didn’t care.
He was still now at least, probably as comfortable as he was going to get here, with his head and neck propped awkwardly between two iron bars. Ace crouched next to him, repressing the urge to take his hand. "I need you to explain what’s happened to you," she said as calmly as she could manage. "You can play whatever stupid games you want as long as you’re winning. But I can’t get us out of trouble if you don’t tell me what trouble we’re in."
"Who says I’m not winning," he replied with a threadbare attempt at a smile.
His eyes were still closed; he couldn’t have seen the expression on her face. But just as if he did, he backtracked and started trying to explain.
"Mrs Charleston collects people," he said. "The butler, the maid—who knows how many others—not paid servants. They’re under her mental control."
"A hypnotist," said Ace.
"Not much of one." The Doctor paused to catch his breath and explained. "What she put in your tea—it would’ve made you psychically hypersensitive. And then she'd have you…"
"But you’re already psychic."
"Hence all this. Yes."
"You didn’t have to do that for me," said Ace.
The Doctor cracked another one of those terrifying smiles. "Yes I did," he said, and relapsed into silence.
Ace waited beside the Doctor until she was satisfied that, whatever he was going through, he was at least stable. Whatever it felt like, having his telepathic sensitivity boosted up to eleven, she couldn't quite imagine, but it made her shudder. Yet she was terribly glad he hadn't let her drink the tea. She'd have hated, hated being hypnotized by that woman, even briefly.
She spent the next hour or so working on escape. The window was no good; standing on the furniture, she might break the glass, but the bars were sturdier than their flaking paint and cobwebs suggested, and the window was only barely person-sized, and there was no way she was getting the two of them down three stories anyways, certainly not with the Doctor in this condition.
The door itself, with its two bolts, was more promising but also more worrying. The Doctor could pick the locks—soon, when he was feeling better—but they'd still have to escape the house itself, its mindless staff, and its terrible mistress. And that left her restless, anxious hands nothing to do in the meantime. Or maybe…
She wrenched a rusty bit of wire out of the decaying bedstead and set to work on the hinges.
When the Doctor recovered consciousness Ace wasn't there.
He couldn't open his eyes at first—the intense flood of information pouring in through every sense was too overwhelming—but he had been able to feel her presence, even across the room. She'd given him water and then gone and done something; he hadn't really followed her actions. But the bright warm spark that was her presence had been the only thing half-bearable in the riot of sensations, and now it was gone.
He still felt as if he'd been peeled, every nerve ending of his telepathic receptors exposed to the air. But at least he was thinking more or less straight now. For a while there he was pretty sure he'd been picking up radio signals in his brain. Although there was a possibility that had been a hallucination. It was hard to predict what would happen once you started mucking around with your brain chemistry.
He imagined, rather too vividly, each of his neurons individually complaining about the treatment they'd received lately. "I would rather not have done that either," he answered them. Aloud, he thought, although he wasn't sure.
Yes, judging from his current behavior, he was definitely still influenced by the sensitizing drug.
Which meant that since he couldn't feel Ace's presence, she was gone. Quite a ways away most likely.
Which meant that he had to open his eyes.
At first everything was pain, as the low afternoon sun streamed directly through the window onto his face. He closed his eyes again, shielded them with his hands, and changed position, keeping his eyes covered until he felt he could bear to look around.
As he had feared, Ace was nowhere to be seen. Anxiety twisted in his stomach. It was his job to protect her; if they'd come and taken her away, if he'd been unable to stop them, paralyzed by his very attempt to save her…
Before he could follow this grim thought to its conclusion, however, he noticed that the hinges of the door were twisted, one entirely detached. The marks of some kind of simple prying tool were on the inside of the door.
Relief and fondness flooded him, amplifying each other through his still hypersensitive psychic senses. That's my Ace, he thought.
Steadying himself against the wall, he crept through the gap in the door, following the unmistakable marks of Ace's escape.
The house was quiet and deserted—strangely deserted, for its size, and given what the Doctor now knew about its owner's sinister little hobby. Where were her unfortunate staff? For that matter, where was she? The only trace of a living presence was a very faint noise in the distance, so the Doctor followed it, down a set of concrete back stairs where leaking water puddled and along a corridor that suddenly switched from bare plastered walls to the luxury they had seen in Mrs Charleston's own living space. So he knew he was moving in the right direction, and even more so when he started to be able to parse the noise into words.
It was Ace's voice. "—and where do you get off, anyway, turning up on our planet and thinking you can do what you like?"
The Doctor started running.
"Give me my servants back," said Mrs Charleston. Her voice was like a harsh echo of her former sickly-sweet tones, twisted by anger—and what else?
"Not a chance," said Ace, just as the Doctor burst through what turned out to be the doors of the dining room.
Ace was safe; that was the first thing. Safe for the unique definition of the word that applied to Ace, anyway. She had a carving knife, and had backed Mrs Charleston into a corner. But rather than the neat little old lady she had been, she had… changed. Scales, the Doctor took in at a glance, possibly also talons.
He could feel Ace's adrenaline, the sense of control it gave her to be doing something, the doubt she still felt. He tried not to look too hard, but she was glowing so brightly.
The Doctor cleared his throat. "Is this a private denouement, or can anyone join?"
Ace shot a glance at him over her shoulder, keeping one eye on the alien. "Good to see you up and about," she said. "Would you mind letting a couple of people out of whatever that is in there?" She indicated another door with a tilt of her head.
"The butler's pantry," put in the Mrs Charleston-creature.
"Did I say you could talk?" said Ace.
"This would be the maid and butler?" asked the Doctor. "Are you sure—"
"Yes," said Ace. "I deprogrammed them while you were out. And she had a boot boy. He must be about fourteen. We'd better find his parents or something." Her voice was hard and angry; even if he hadn't been able to feel the spark of her mind flaring, he knew her well enough to know her matter-of-fact tone covered a vengeful fury on behalf of the boy.
"You deprogrammed them?" he said.
"It's basic chemistry," she said, and to his raised eyebrow, "Not everything I make explodes."
"She invaded my laboratory," said Mrs Charleston, still backed in her corner at the point of Ace's knife. "She stole my research."
"Ought to have kept your notes locked up then," said Ace with a smirk.
The Doctor let the three bewildered humans—who remembered none of their time under Mrs Charleston's sway—out of the butler's pantry and led them to the street. But then he rushed back to Ace, who maintained her guard.
"Professor, what am I supposed to do with her?" Ace asked as soon as he returned.
"Put that knife away, to start with," said the Doctor. "She won't move if she knows what's good for her," he added, and Ace reluctantly lowered the knife.
The Doctor looked into the creature's eyes, the same hard, cold blue-grey they had been when he'd first seen them. "You'll get in your ship," he said, "and you'll go home, and you'll never interfere with this or any other planet again."
"Oh, will I?" said the creature. Being this close to her was still remarkably painful. The Doctor's head pounded and unwelcome fuzzy feelings shot through his nerves.
"You will," said the Doctor. "And on another day I'd give you a hundred reasons why. I'd turn your morality on your head and make you condemn yourself out of your own mouth. But you've tried to hurt my friend today, and you've hurt me instead. And you're not the first, and you won't be the last, and I'm very tired. I don't have a lot of energy left, and I'm using most of it to stop myself getting angry." He closed his eyes for a moment and then met hers again. "You and I will both be happier if I never have to think about you again."
She slipped from under his gaze and ran.
The alien had an escape pod disguised as a garden shed, and the Doctor and Ace followed her just to make sure she really left.
Once she had, and once they'd made sure the alien's victims had somewhere safe to go, Ace turned to the Doctor. "How are you doing?"
"There's still… a lot in my head," he said quietly. "You did well back there."
She took his arm and they started the walk back to the TARDIS. "There was a lot that could have been better," she said. "Starting with how you drank poison in front of me."
"I wouldn't have died," he said. "I knew I'd be all right. I knew you'd have my back."
"Please don't do that again," she insisted.
She knew he couldn't make any promises. But he put an arm around her shoulders.
"Does it not hurt anymore?" she said. "Touching me, I mean?"
"You know it was never because of you that it hurt," he said, and she nodded. "My system is dealing with the drug," he said. "The psychic hypersensitivity is a lot better, and the other symptoms will pass soon."
When she heard that, she took his other hand in hers, and they walked like that all the way home.