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The air was growing thinner – or was that just his imagination? He could have sworn that it had not been so hot and stifled fifteen, ten, five minutes ago, even. There was a sort of mustiness about it, too, tickling his nose. It seemed like such a small thing to be bothering him, what with everything that was going on, but he pressed his hand over his face anyway, suppressing a sneeze. Someone outside might hear him. And if they heard him… He did not particularly like the thought of what might come next.
Maybe he had crawled into an older or dirtier part of the vents, he thought. After all, was anyone really bothered about cleaning, in an occupied base? The walls certainly seemed to be pressing in closer around him, his elbows hitting against them as he moved, the top of the vent close against his back as he squirmed along. He had been fighting down panic for too long to know whether that was real or just his imagination. Breathe, said a voice in his head that sounded rather like the Doctor. Breathe. Slowly, now.
But how could he, at a time like this? The tightness of the vent was one thing – not something he enjoyed, sure, but he was good at keeping a lid on that by now. His lungs still had room to breathe, and the itch behind his eyelids had not yet grown large enough to block out his thoughts. He still had time before the small space overwhelmed him entirely. No, it was the thought of the Doctor that worried him the most. The far-off sight of him being dragged away, kicking and flailing and shouting out objections as he went – he had carried it on his back all the way to the station, even as the Klaals had caught him at the gate and put an end to his hopeless, foolish rescue mission. It had sat with him in his cell, crawled with him through the tunnels. The Klaals had not been particularly gentle with him, and they had known how unimportant he was, in the grand scheme of things. There had been no reason for them to bother with him. They had only really locked him up to keep him out of the way, or he would never have been able to escape. The Doctor, though… Surely they would know he knew everything.
Best not to imagine how far they might go to make him talk.
There was a grate in the vent’s wall up ahead, and he crawled towards it with renewed energy, heaving himself along with pushes of his elbows and kicks of his feet against the metal below him. The skin on his arms had been rubbed red raw by now, and the fresher air renewed the stinging, but his relief at breathing easier all but drowned it out for a few, blissful seconds. He collapsed in front of the grate, pressing his face against the bars, drawing in his breaths as deeply and as slowly as he could. Breathe, the Doctor’s voice in his head said again. There you are. Slowly. That’s it. I won’t help you.
Something about that last part seemed wrong.
“I simply refuse.” It had seemed wrong, he realised with a leap of his heart, because it had not been in his head at all. The Doctor was out there in the room beneath him, somewhere. Arguing with someone, by the sounds of it.
Straining to push himself up so he leant on his forearms, he peered through the grate. The room was deserted, as far as he could see. Rows of panels ran up and down the space, each of them decked out with buttons and levers and screens, though many of them had been smashed or scorched. The Klaals had not been subtle in taking control of the station. This must be the control room, he supposed. The nerve centre of the station, before the Klaals had arrived, and the place they seemed to have made their headquarters, now that they were in charge. But where was the Doctor?
“It would be in your interests,” the hissing, gurgling voice of a Klaal replied, “to cooperate.”
They strolled into view moments later, and Jamie sucked in a sharp breath, pushing himself backwards as quickly as he could so he was out of view. His heel banged against the wall as he went, echoing around the vent, and he winced, pressing his face against the metal beneath him. Through the sliver of the grate still visible to him, he saw the Klaal snap their head up, their nostrils twitching. They were strange things to watch, the Klaals. The Doctor had told him once that humans were fish, really – pointed to a model of a fish in a museum and told Jamie, quite confidently, that the thing was his ancestor. Jamie had been ready to laugh, turning to the Doctor and expecting to see a twinkle of mischief in his eyes, but there had been none. He still could not quite believe that the Doctor had been serious, even after all his explanations, but if he were to imagine something between fish and people, then the Klaals would be it. This one had removed their helmet to reveal their noseless, lipless face and the smooth, scaly top of their head.
At last, they lowered their head again, their eyes flicking away from the vent, and Jamie allowed himself to breathe again. “We know you have information,” they carried on. There was something – wet, about the way they talked, like they really were a fish out of water. “Our sources were very clear that you are working for the Scaleless.”
“The Aenarchians, I believe they like to be called,” the Doctor put in mildly.
“The Scaleless,” the Klaal repeated. “You will tell us what you know.”
“Hm.” He could see the Doctor now, wandering into view, twirling between the panels and dancing his fingers over buttons and levers as he passed them. “How about – a little exchange, hm? I tell you what I know, and you tell me the names of your sources.” The Klaal simply hissed in response, pulling its mouth open to reveal pointed teeth. “No. Well, it was worth a try, wasn’t it?”
“You will tell us.”
“You seem very certain of that,” the Doctor tossed back lightly. “You see – I’m not afraid of anything you could do to me. I think you’ll, ah, find that I have quite a high pain tolerance.”
Jamie’s fists clenched against the bottom of the vent. He knew from bitter experience that the Doctor was not lying, or even exaggerating. Whatever the Klaals threw at him, he would grit his teeth and bear it for as long as he could, or sink into one of his unnervingly deep sleeps so he could block out the rest of the world. The Klaals could do as much as they liked, but they would kill him before he let a word pass through his lips. And they could kill him, over and over again. Jamie himself was useless here, cowering in a vent – but even if he was down there with them, what could he do to stop them?
“We have anticipated this.” Reaching out, the Klaal snatched at the Doctor, who simply skipped away, pirouetting past the end of one panel and down another aisle. “We are not threatening you.” Jamie let out a deep sigh, thudding his forehead down against the metal beneath him. “You must be able to answer our questions, after all. It would not do to -” They paused, sucking in a loud breath between their teeth. “Damage you.”
“Then why should I answer?”
“We have your companion.”
The Doctor drew to a halt at that, turning slowly to look up at the Klaal. “That’s impossible.”
“He is in our cells at this moment.”
“You’re lying.” But there was a note of uncertainty in the Doctor’s voice. “I don’t believe you.”
“Believe, or don’t believe. It makes no difference.” Strolling over to the panel closest to the Doctor – one of the few left undamaged – the Klaal stretched out their hand to flick the screen on. The Doctor hovered by their shoulder as they pressed button after button, apparently too shell-shocked to do much more than stare, let alone to run away. The screen was angled away from the vent, and Jamie could only barely make out endless pictures of gates and walls and cells, but he squinted down at them anyway, struggling to make out the detail.
At last, the Klaal paused, and this time Jamie only had to glance at the picture for a moment for all the breath to be sucked out of his lungs. That was him on the screen, crouched on the floor of the cell he had escaped not half an hour ago. Sitting there as if he was still down there, in the dark. The sight seized his lungs up again, the itch behind his eyes spreading up into his skull until his thoughts were all but blotted out. The image itself was an unpleasant one – but the horror written across the Doctor’s face was far worse.
“No,” he said softly, reeling back from the screen like he was moving in slow motion. “No, you can’t have him.”
“It makes little difference to us,” the Klaal said, quite calmly. “But it may matter to you when he suffers for your insolence.”
“No,” the Doctor said again, so quietly that Jamie could barely hear him. “No, you wouldn’t.”
“You’re right.” The Klaal grinned. “We wouldn’t. Unless you were to go on making things unpleasant between us.”
The Doctor squeezed his eyes shut – wandered away from the Klaal, opening and closing his fists – wandered back, opening and closing his mouth now – and headed away again. Don’t do it, Jamie was screaming inside his own head. Don’t give in to them. The Doctor wasn’t that silly, he reassured himself. He knew better than that. God knew Jamie had been at his wit’s end with the Doctor at times, taken him to task over how ruthless he could be, but now he was praying with every ounce of determination he had that the Doctor would show even a little of that ruthlessness. Don’t get sentimental. Please. He would be angry with the Doctor later, he was sure, if he said no – but that would be a later. There would be a later. If the Doctor gave in – who knew what would happen, to any of them?
Creeping forward again, his heart leapt in his chest when he saw that the Doctor was staring right at the grate in the vent. Come on, Jamie thought. See me. If the Doctor could just catch sight of him, know that he was safe…
Whatever deity had heard his plea must not have been particularly kind that day, because the Doctor’s next words turned his blood to ice. “What do you want to know?”