*DISCONTINUED* Between Dimensions (A Doctor Who Fanfiction)

Chapter 23: Strex Pets

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Amy gently put her hand on Susan’s shoulder. They were standing in the console room, watching the Doctor pilot the TARDIS.

“Of course.” Susan smiled at Amy. “You’ve gotten used to people dying, yeah? I can handle it.” Amy gave her a sad smile, and Susan turned away just as Amy’s hand flew to her cheek to quickly wipe away a tear.

“I’m gonna read a book in my room,” Susan told the Doctor. “Just give me a shout once we land.”

“You alright?” he asked.

“Yeah, I just need to finish this book, Ender’s Shadow. It’s…a really good book,” Susan mumbled and quickly walked to her room, feeling tears well up in her eyes. She broke into a run once the first tear rolled down her cheek and slammed the bedroom door behind her. Throwing herself onto the bed, she buried her face into a pillow and screamed; visions of Adrian’s slowly disintegrating body played repeatedly through her mind until had no more tears to soak her pillow.

Susan slowly swung her legs off the edge of her bed and walked to the bathroom to splash cold water over her face. She grinned at herself in the mirror and made her way back to the console room.

“So, have we landed yet?” she cheerfully called to the Doctor, who was talking softly to Amy.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Have you finished your book?”

“Yup! I can go outside now, right?” Susan skipped to the door and walked out into the inside of a spaceship. Large pipes ran along the walls and led into different rooms, and a metal grating clanked under her feet as she stepped forward. She felt the vibrations of a running engine under her feet, and she grinned excitedly at the Doctor and Amy, who were stepping out of the blue box.

“We weren’t supposed to land here,” the Doctor said with a confused expression on his face.

Amy looked at him. “Then where were we supposed to-“

“Freeze!” A woman with light brown skin and curly black hair was pointing a futuristic-looking blaster at the three of them. They all put their hands up and backed up a couple steps.

“Who are you?” she asked suspiciously. “How did you get in here?” The Doctor fished in his pocket and pulled out his psychic paper.

“I’m the Doctor, these two are Amy and Susan, and we’re here to…inspect your spaceship.”

“Perfect timing then,” she said, still watching them suspiciously. “We have a little situation that needs solving. Follow me.”

“I’m Captain Cary Gerson, by the way,” she explained as they walked through the ship. “I’ll give you the information you need once we get to where we’re going.”

The woman led them into a room with a large metal table and an equally large computer screen on the wall. As Susan moved closer to the table, she saw multiple pictures of a furry-looking creature with eight eyes and no discernable legs. There were also multiple graphs, all with similar-looking patterns. A tall, fairly muscular man sat at the computer, watching a dark image on the screen.

“Officer Walker, we have visitors claiming that they can fix our Strex problem,” Captain Gerson said, and Officer Walker turned to face them.

“This is the Doctor, Amy, and Susan.” She pointed to each of them in turn.

“Would you care to explain what your problem is?” the Doctor asked. “What is this creature?” He pointed to the picture of the furry animal.

“That is a Strex Pet,” Officer Walker explained. “You probably already know that it is one of the most popular pets in the galaxy.”

“No, I don’t, not really. Why is it so popular?” the Doctor questioned.

“Well, they’re visually appealing and they’re relatively inexpensive. Also, they are virtually invincible. Almost nothing can kill them, not even decapitation, because it just splits them into two new Strex. Anyway, the Strex we are transporting to the planet Freytus have suddenly become hostile. They broke through the door of the cargo hold and killed most of our crew. We’re barely holding them back with multiple layers of sheet metal, but they’re slowly chewing through it as we speak.”

Officer Walker shuffled through the papers to pull out a few graphs. “We took a few readings of radiation levels, temperature, basically anything that might have caused this behavior. And we discovered a spike in cypotonic radiation levels around the same time the Strex started to exhibit aggression. Alright, that enough information?”

“For now,” the Doctor replied. “We just need to figure out how to stop them.”

“Have you tried emptying them out of the cargo hold?” Susan asked.

“We’ve tried multiple times,” Captain Gerson answered. “They just cling to the walls. And it appears that they don’t require air to live.”

“What about fire? Freezing? Sulfuric acid?”

“The Strex can withstand temperatures up to three thousand degrees Celsius. Freezing only causes them to slow down slightly, and we have no access to sulfuric acid. We’re thousands of miles away from the nearest planet.”

Susan crossed her arms. “Well, that’s very convenient.”

“Did you get any information about the Strex after the, er, transformation?” the Doctor questioned.

“We can’t get too close to them,” Captain Gerson replied. “We’ve tried.”

“Well, then, let’s try again.” The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver.

“How would you do that?” Amy protested. “There would be layers of steel blocking you, and even if you did get past them, then you would be putting your life in danger.”

“He could get there through the air ducts,” Officer Walker suggested. “The Strex can’t climb walls. I’ll just pull up the maps.” He turned around and began typing on a keyboard, and a map of the layout of the spaceship popped onto the screen. Then he handed the Doctor an earpiece.

“You can climb up through there, and we will guide you.” He pointed at the vent in the corner of the room, and the Doctor pushed a chair towards it, opened the vent cover with his sonic screwdriver, and squeezed himself through.

“Hello?” The Doctor’s voice echoed from a small speaker.

 “Go to your left,” Officer Walker instructed. The quiet clanking coming from above gradually faded as the Doctor made his way farther into the air ducts. While the others watched the Doctor’s progress through the tunnels on the computer screen, Susan collapsed into a chair in the corner and observed them from a distance. She eventually tuned out their voices altogether and fixed her eyes on a small pinpoint of light in the wall; it was the crack in space and time.

A/N: Sorry this chapter ended at a weird point. I didn't know where else to stop it, because I wrote one extremely long chapter that I needed to split into two. I still hope you enjoyed it!