The Doctor Of War ³

Thin Ice pt.3

The urchins are doing their lost dog piece. Kitty is about to pick a pocket when Bill taps her on the shoulder.

"Need help, need it now. Are you in?" Bill asks.

"Where're your friends?"

"Not here."

"What are they doing?"

"Not sure. But whatever it is, I don't think we're going to miss it" a few minutes later, the urchins are running through the crowds.

"The thaw! The thaw is here!"

"A lady fell through the ice!" the people start fleeing.

"The ice is melting!"

"Quick! Get to the shore!" Bill shouts.

"The ice is melting! The ice!"

"It's a mistake! The ice isn't melting. I swear to you, there is no thaw!" Sutcliffe shouts at the fleeing crowd.

"The ice is melting!"

"Quickly, quickly, that's it," Bill says another henchman is laying out the fuse wire across the ice as Sutcliffe checks on his electrostatic detonator.

"Come on! Hurry! Come on! Something's happened. They've got the word out. We blow it now!" Sutcliffe says.

"No, not yet. Harriet, run!" Bill shouts.

"But there's still people..."

"Forget them. There's no time. Kitty? Run! Now!" the soldiers gambling on top of a barrel wave her away. Sutcliffe primes his generator and pushes the lever. His henchmen cringe, expecting a boom, but nothing happens. Inside the fireworks tent, the sonic screwdriver is whirring away, but the barrels have gone. They are attached to the creature's chains freeing her.

"What?" Sutcliffe pushes the plunger again only to hear distant explosions "argh! Out of my way!" he runs across the ice to the tent.

"Quick! Get to the shore!" Bill says, the Doctor, in a diving suit, climbs out of a well at the workhouse with the help of me which I pull him out. The creature is loose. Sutcliffe enters the tent and sees the screwdriver, then hears ice cracking and goes outside again. A scaly dorsal fin breaks the ice in front of him, then a crevasse runs between his legs. He falls into the water.

"Doctor! Seer!" Bill shouts.

"Bill! Bill!" the Doctor and I have returned from the workhouse. Bill is running across the ice to them, just ahead of the cracks.

"You did it! She's free!" Bill jumps and I pull her onto the dockside while the Doctor pulls on the wire to retrieve his sonic screwdriver. The creature swims past them "go! Where will she go?"

"Somewhere cold, I imagine. Hopefully, she's smart enough to avoid you lot now" I say.

"What if she isn't? What if we just like, doomed Greenland?"

"We'll check in on Greenland."

"How long is she?!" she splashes them with a flick of a flipper "ah. Can you hear that?"

*Time skip*

The urchins get off the carriage.

"Harry, look!" Harriet rings the bell.

"No pinching anything, you hear me? And no staring like gapeseeds when the lady talks peculiar. It's rude" Kitty says, the door opens.

"Get a load of you lot! Cute as! Come in" Bill says. They walk through the vast empty space with its old portraits on the walls.

"You going to tell us what we're here for?"

"A very long time, I hope" in the dining room, the Doctor is at a small table scraping some ink off a Last Will and Testament between the words 'unto the said' and 'Sutcliffe' I sit beside him. The main table is laden with food.

"Go on. Eat as much as you like" Bill says.

"Er, you, boy! Remind me, what's your name?" the Doctor asks.

"Perry" the boy replies with a mouth full of food.

"Perry. His name's Perry. Why?" Kitty asks.

"Apparently, Lord Sutcliffe's long-lost heir can't be a girl," Bill says, after a while the Doctor, Bill, and I go back to the TARDIS which dematerialises and returns to its place in the corner of the office "we must have changed something, right? I mean, people saw a monster in the Thames" Bill says as they all exit the TARDIS "well, it doesn't look any different. Nardole enters with the tea tray. The Doctor picks up papers from his desk.

"All right. There you go. There's your tea. I put a bit of coffee in it, as well, just to give it some flavour. See, it's much better when you stick to your oath" Nardole says smiling until he notices their change of clothes "oh sir, ma'am, no. This is unacceptable. This is beyond unacceptable. This is naughty.

"Language" I say, Bill is doing internet searches on her phone.

"I don't get it. London, 1814. Monster, sea creature, serpent, really, really big fish. Nothing" Bill says.

"Sir, ma'am, you said you wouldn't be going off-world," Nardole says.

"Do these look like off-world clothes to you?" the Doctor asks.

"But, sir, you said you'd be coming back to your office!"

"Look, here we are. I'm in our office. We're drinking our tea, in our specially chosen tea clothes."

"I don't understand. How could it not have been headline news?" Bill asks.

"Never underestimate the collective human ability to overlook the inexplicable. Also, the Frost Fair involved a lot of day drinking. May I?" I ask, I soon finds something useful on Bills phone instead and hand it back "you can always rely upon the papers to miss a headline."

"Lord Sutcliffe drowns in snap thaw. Shock as steel fortune is passed to street urchin!"

"Ma'am. We need to talk. Your oath" Nardole says.

"Give us a coin."

"What?"

"The new Lord Sutcliffe was found starving on London's streets. The inheritance was contested, everyone got super mad, blah, blah, blah, Urchin boy deemed legitimate. Oh my God, it worked! You did it. You saved them" Bill says.

"You did. You gave the order, boss" the Doctor replies.

"Sir."

"Give me a coin. We'll toss for it. Heads, the TARDIS stays put. Tails, you leave us alone."

*Time Skip*

"Leave them alone. Huh. Chance would be a fine thing. Leave me alone. How about that for a new idea? I didn't ask to be re-assembled, did I?" Nardole asks something thumps on the vault door, from the inside "knocking. What was that about? No one's going to open the door, just because you're knocking!"there are three bangs "oh, getting cocky now, are you? Why? What do you think you know? What have they told you?" three more bangs "because, yeah, they may have a little friend now and, yeah, they may be a little bit distracted, but I tell you something, I'm still here. And as long as I'm still here, you are going nowhere!" but the loud banging is scaring him and he whimpers softly.