The four of them—the TARDIS trio and their monk escort— dismounted their horses outside a small cave. Inside, the TARDIS herself stood tall, the phone ringing.
The Doctor frowned in confusion. "That is not supposed to happen."
Wanda raised her eyebrows. "Well, answer it then!"
Tentatively, he opened the small door next to the Saint John's Ambulance insignia, and answered the ringing phone. "... hello?"
"Ah, hello!" a female voice returned exasperatedly. "I can't find the internet."
The Doctor hesitated, raising his eyebrows. "Sorry?"
"It's gone, the internet," she repeated. "Can't find it anywhere. Where is it?"
"The internet?" the Doctor echoed, sharing a bewildered look with his wife.
"Yes, the internet, why don't I have the internet?"
"It's 1207," the Doctor protested.
The voice on the other end paused. "I've got half past three. Am I phoning a different time zone?"
He made a face. "Yeah, you really sort of are."
"Will it show up on the bill?" she asked.
He snorted. "I dread to think. Listen, where did you get this number?"
"The woman in the shop wrote it down," the woman answered. "It's a helpline, isn't it? She said it's the best helpline out there. In the universe, she said."
"What woman?" The Doctor frowned. "Who was she?"
"I don't know, the woman in the shop." She changed the subject. "So why isn't there internet? Shouldn't it sort of just be there?"
"Look, listen, I'm not actually—it isn't—" The Doctor sighed, giving up. "You have clicked on the wifi button, yeah?"
"Hang on, wifi..."
He rolled his eyes. "Click on the wifi, you'll see a list of names. You see one you recognise?"
"It's asking me for a password."
"Is it an evil spirit?" the monk asked quietly.
"A woman," the Doctor corrected.
The monk crossed himself. At the clearing of a throat, he looked up to see McKenzie and Wanda, both of them giving him disbelieving looks. He hurriedly crossed himself again, making them roll their eyes.
"Hang on a mo," the woman on the phone said. "Run you beautiful idiots and remember, one, two, three."
The Doctor's eyes widened. "What did you say?!"
***
"Don't shout," Clara Oswald complained, rolling her eyes. "Now you've made me type it wrong. It's thrown me out again. What do I do? How do I get back in? It's just a thing to remember the password: run you beautiful idiots and remember." She turned away from her laptop, hearing a frantic hammering at the door downstairs, and got up to answer it. "Hang on." She opened the door to reveal the Doctor's grinning face, Wanda and McKenzie at either side. "Hello."
"Clara," the Doctor beamed. "Clara Oswald."
She blinked at his eagerness. "Hello?"
"Clara Oswin Oswald," McKenzie smiled.
YOU ARE READING
One Last Chance |6| The Ascension
Science Fiction✅ approx. 215,000 words After the horrors of the war against Thanos, the Doctor and McKenzie are finally together again, albeit missing a limb. But that isn't the only thing they are bereft of. The death of their son cut them to the core and they wi...
