Chapter Text
“You’re finally awake.”
The world came into focus slowly, black bleeding from the edges like ink seeping into parchment. Four stark white walls. A stainless steel tray, instruments aligned with surgical precision. A single chair bolted to the floor. Whoever decorated clearly had a minimalist vision and zero budget.
Lumine jerked upright. Beep-beep-beep. The cardiac monitor beside her spiked in tempo, the jagged green line dancing across the screen like it was auditioning for a medical drama. Behind a translucent curtain that hung like a discount Halloween decoration, something squeaked, in-out, in-out, like rubber against rubber, metronomic and unsettling. She inhaled and her sinuses stung with chemicals, antiseptic, formaldehyde, ozone, the signature perfume of places where fun goes to die.
Her fingers traced the bedsheet. Crackle. Like butchers paper rather than fabric. Apparently comfort wasn’t in the operating budget either. She flexed her hands inside her gloves, black leather creaking softly at the knuckles. Her dress’s pale blue accents caught what little light remained. The only colour in a monochrome nightmare, as if she’d accidentally wandered into an art house film.
A figure waited against the wall, unnaturally still. Shoulders loose. Relaxed. Teal hair falling in precise layers across skin so pale it might have been carved from ice, bloodless and perfect. The mask curved like a crow’s beak, obsidian-black, catching the fluorescent strips overhead in distorted ribbons of light, hiding everything but a thin-lipped mouth that wasn’t smiling. A horizontal line carved into marble. Great. A horror movie villain with excellent hair care.
Her tongue felt three sizes too large. “Wh—“ The word died. She swallowed, tried again. “Where... am I? And please don’t say ‘my lair.’ I’ve had enough clichés for one kidnapping.”
The masked man didn’t reply at once. Instead, he looked her over with clinical attention that made her skin crawl. Lumine pressed her hands against the mattress, bracing herself, and swept her gaze around the room. No windows. Dim strips of light along the upper corners. Standard kidnapping accommodations, really. Just missing the complimentary mint on the pillow.
She narrowed her eyes at him, expecting some threat, some sudden move. Instead, he simply cocked his head, the long beak of the mask catching the cold light. The gesture reminded her of a bird that had spotted something shiny and wasn’t sure if it was edible yet. Was he a doctor? A warden? The specter of some interstellar quarantine? She tried to recall her last memories. Stars, alarms, a sudden pressure in her chest, and then nothing. Her stomach twisted.
“Is this medical?” she said, forcing her voice steadier than her trembling fingers suggested. “Or are you just into the plague aesthetic?” Her eyes traced the obsidian curve of his mask, searching for any hint of humanity behind the polished surface. Perhaps there was just another, smaller mask underneath. Masks all the way down.
The masked man remained a statue carved from winter air. Not a wrinkle formed at the corners of his visible mouth, not even the slightest shift betrayed discomfort or impatience. She stared into where his eyes should be behind the mask, jaw clenched tight enough to ache, refusing to be the first to flinch.
Somewhere, a clock was ticking. Probably. It seemed like the kind of room that should have an ominously ticking clock.
A pause stretched between them. Not long enough for heartbeats. Just enough to feel wrong, like a metronome missing its downbeat.
“That depends,” he said, voice smooth. “How much do you remember?”
Reality fractured. Which seemed about right for a Tuesday.
The angle of his head flickered. Not turned, not moved, but skipped like damaged footage, a staccato frame-jump that left afterimages burning in her vision. Between one blink and the next, he stood at the foot of her bed, pale hands folded precisely behind his back, the starched edges of his coat hanging motionless.
He had not walked there. Probably saving on shoe leather. The room’s corners widened and contracted with a nauseating pulse, like the walls were breathing through invisible lungs. Standard evil lair architecture, really.
Lumine’s eyes narrowed to amber slits against the clinical glare. “Neat trick,” she said, voice rough from disuse. Her spine straightened, shoulders squaring as her gaze flicked between the sealed door and the ceiling vent, measuring distance, angle, possibility. “Do you do kid’s parties too? The teleporting thing would really kill at a five-year-old’s birthday.”
A muscle twitched in her jaw before she leaned forward, fingers curling into the papery sheets. “Where’s my brother? If you’ve done something to Aether...”
“You were the only one we found,” he said with a clinical shrug that made her want to throw something at his masked face. Possibly the mask itself, if she could pry it off whatever collection of sentient lab equipment was clearly operating beneath it.
Lumine’s gloved fingers flexed, leather squeaking. “Convenient,” she snapped. “So you kidnap me, don’t introduce yourself, and can’t explain why I’m not floating dead in space. Do you at least offer complimentary breakfast with the abduction package?”
He tilted his head at an angle that suggested his neck had more joints than necessary. “Is that a priority for you? Dying?”
“Not today,” she replied, mentally measuring the distance to the door. Twelve steps, assuming gravity remained consistent, which felt like a bold assumption.
α - Oh, she’s awake...
β - Don’t interrupt.
α - I’m not interrupting, you’re just slow.
His gloved hand drifted up to adjust the mask with the careful deliberation of someone who had read a manual on human gestures but never mastered the timing. His lips parted in what a technical manual might label “smile-adjacent behaviour,” all teeth and no warmth, like someone had explained the concept using only mathematical formulas.
Ω - She’s not going to like the answer, you know.
α - That’s the fun part.
The furniture’s angles warped at the edges of her vision, as if reality itself was being operated by committee. She suppressed a shiver. Being watched was nothing new, but this felt different, layered, like being observed by a stack of entities taking turns with a single pair of binoculars.
His voice arrived like a perfectly calibrated instrument. “I have a name, but it would be meaningless to you. You may call me Dottore.” He delivered it with the flat enthusiasm of someone reading nutrition facts on a cereal box.
“Dottore as in... Doctor? Or Dottore as in Dotty?” Lumine rolled her shoulders, the way she did before a fight, wondering if her captors had at least provided complimentary stress balls somewhere in this nightmare of interior design.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he approached the bed with movements so precisely coordinated they suggested an internal metronome, or perhaps three smaller entities operating a single tall body with remarkable synchronisation. She noted how he kept his hands behind his back, as if they might be doing something else entirely back there, like playing cat’s cradle or filling out paperwork.
“You’re not dead, Traveler,” Dottore announced, each syllable crisp enough to snap in half. “You are, however, not where you were.” The room’s air pressure seemed to adjust with his words, like reality itself was being fine-tuned by an unseen technician.
“And you just expect me to go along with this little abduction?” she said, mentally calculating whether his impeccable posture suggested spinal reinforcement or just really good yoga. “You’re the one who dragged me here. If you want something, spit it out, preferably before whoever’s operating your left arm gets tired.”
Ω - She’s direct.
β - As predicted. Possibly more so.
Σ - Much more fun than the last one.
Dottore’s head tilted at an angle that suggested internal committee voting. “I am not your captor,” he said, adjusting his left glove with his right hand while his right shoulder adjusted a fraction too late. “I am your guide.”
Lumine’s eyebrows climbed. “Guide... through what, exactly?”
His pause was less than a breath; she almost missed it. The mask’s beak dipped slightly, as though consulting notes pinned to his chest.
“Through adaptation,” Dottore said, three syllables, each with a distinct intonation. “If you wish to find your brother, you will need context. Local understanding.” His left hand made a mild gesture while his right twitched toward something unseen. “Consider me a resource. Or an interpreter, if you prefer.”
She glanced at the blank wall. “And do windowless medical cells usually come with a welcome tour?”
He regarded her a moment, swaying almost imperceptibly, like someone balancing on another’s shoulders. “You are free to leave at any time.”
She blinked. “Thanks,” said Lumine, and then she swung her legs off the edge of the bed and took a running start at the door. The ceiling rippled like disturbed water, its sterile whiteness dissolving into blue depths before snapping back into focus. Her feet hit the ground hard enough to jar her knees into a brief, unwilling bow to gravity, and then, clutching at the unfamiliar hollowness in her pocket-dimension, she remembered: she was unarmed. Typical Tuesday: kidnapped, interviewed by what appeared to be a sentient lab coat with opinions, and now running weaponless toward who-knows-what.
She shouldered through the door, her momentum carrying her past the figure in the hallway, a flash of teal hair and a familiar mask at the edge of her vision. The second Dottore stood perfectly still, hands clasped behind his back, his head tilted at precisely the same angle as the one she’d just fled, as if they’d both received the same memo about optimal head-tilting protocol. His shadow stretched across the floor, overlapping with an identical silhouette cast from the doorway behind her.
For anyone paying attention, this would have been the moment to notice there were two of him. Or possibly six of him, depending on how generous one was feeling.
Lumine, unfortunately, was not paying attention.She stumbled into the corridor, held herself upright on the first length of wall she found, and scanned for anything that could be repurposed as a bludgeon: clipboard, glassware, perhaps a stray section of medical tubing. Nothing presented itself, so she pressed on, footsteps growing steadier with each stride.
A half-turn of the hallway later, a guttural howl echoed down the sterile channel. Whatever made that sound wasn’t human, but the primal threat in its tone was universal enough to make her blood quicken with recognition. At least this was something she understood. Danger. Monsters. Much more straightforward than the mask-wearing doctor.
Lumine adjusted her grip on nothing and kicked off with renewed energy; the doors here, marked with numbered glyphs, were all too easy to open, and the hilichurl, alone, its club nearly the size of her leg, was waiting for her in some kind of… enrichment chamber. Someone had helpfully labeled it “Enrichment Chamber 3” in neat block letters. Not that Lumine could read it. She wasn’t from this planet.
She locked eyes with the hilichurl and it roared, spittle flying before the charge. Three steps apiece closed the distance, she feinted left as its club whistled through the air where her skull had been. The impact shattered tile. She twisted under its guard, muscles screaming, and seized its wrist with both hands. She wrenched with savage force. The crack echoed like gunshot, or perhaps like someone dropping a clipboard in surprise.
The beast howled. Blood thundered in her ears as she exploited the opening, driving her palms into its throat hard enough to collapse its windpipe. The club crashed to the floor, the sound reverberating through her bones. She snatched it up, adrenaline blurring her movements, and swung it once to test its weight. Perfect. Just the right heft for bludgeoning monsters or possibly uncooperative doctors who couldn’t decide which personality to wear today.
“Hah!” Lumine snarled, jamming the jagged end against its chest hard enough to keep it down. “Not so tough now.”
The hilichurl’s surrender was immediate, instinctive in the face of superior violence. She backed away, weapon raised, pulse still hammering, and slammed the door with enough force to rattle hinges. Somewhere, she was certain, someone was taking notes.
β - The subject demonstrates continuous adaptive escalation.
α - She broke my toy, did you see that?
Ω - She’s good with that club.
β - Think we could get her to sign the incident report?
α - I’ve got twenty mora says she broke something in there.
Σ - You’re just mad she took your data point.
Ω - The system logs everything anyway. We’ll review the footage over lunch.
Σ - Next time, we fill the enrichment chamber with more hilichurls!
β - This would prove little.
Σ - It would be fun.
Ω - Here she comes.
Lumine skidded to a halt halfway down the hall, club slung casually over her shoulder. The Doctor stood there, arms crossed, shoulders squared, one foot hammering a staccato rhythm against the floor tiles. His mask caught the fluorescent light. Everything about his posture seemed hungrier than the one she’d left behind.
The Doctor peeled himself from the wall with a lazy predatory grace, his left shoulder rising a full second before his right. “There’s a restaurant in Nasha Town. Hot dogs. Sixty-eight percent survival rate this week.” His gloved finger tapped twice against his thigh while his other hand took inventory of his coat buttons.
She could hear the amusement in his voice. Suspicious. “Date or abduction?”
“I can hear your stomach growling from here, Stardust.” The mask tilted three degrees left, his right shoulder two degrees right.
Her stomach betrayed her with a low rumble. The memory of bones snapping beneath her hands still tingled in her fingertips.
She shouldered through the doorway without answering, paused for half a breath at the threshold. His footsteps clicked behind her, measured, unhurried. She found herself stretching her stride to keep ahead of his metronome pace. His long legs closed the distance and overtook her easily, refusing to adjust to her stride.
Archons above, she was chasing after him like some sort of lost duckling.