Timeless [Doctor Who/11th Doctor]

30. Survive

CHAPTER THIRTY

I must have drifted off in the black of the room, because the blaring bell woke me from dreams of escaping this hell. There were no clocks around the building, making it impossible to know how much time had passed since I had last seen my friends.
Guilt was swimming in my gut thinking of Noah and Xander; I seemed to be making a habit of getting people into danger.

Yet again, I lined up beside the rest of the girls, barely listening to the names that were called out over the tannoy. The lines seemed to be getting more and more sparse each time it happened.

"Why do they call out so many?" I had asked Annalise on what felt like the second day. Or the third, I wasn't so sure. "I mean, the King's just looking for one wife, right?"
"She has to be perfect," she told me in a hushed tone. Whenever I interrogated her, the other girls would turn their gaze to us in the same way the security cameras did. It made my skin crawl.
"So, he's hard to please?"
Annalise didn't laugh.
"Where do they go then?" I had asked. "The girls, if they're not good enough for him, what... happens?" I had a gut feeling the answer wasn't going to be nice.
She gulped before replying. "They go... outside."
"Outside?" I narrowed my eyes.
The whisper must have come out just slightly too loud, because the girls on the other beds snapped their heads towards us.
Annalise just shook her head, continuing her routine of pulling the covers away from the mattress.  "I'm not talking about this."
"What is it with outside?" I practically begged her to answer, louder this time. It was audible to the whole room.
"You don't want to know," a red-haired girl spoke up from three beds away.
"Believe me, I do."
Her and Annalise had shared a worried glance, before she spoke again. "They throw the empties outside. The ones that don't survive."
"Survive what?"
No reply came from either girl, and the lights were switched off.

It was echoing in my head, pinned beside the King's Post-it note; survive what?
Maybe the Doctor would be able to piece something like this together far better. The strings across the board were getting messy and the scribbles ineligible.
"Georgia Peters," the speakers called out, and the red-haired girl stepped out from the line formation with her eyes on the marble tiles beneath her feet. My heart was pounding in my chest. Survive what?
"Abigail Walker." Another girl walked towards the guards, her lifeless eyes blinking in what was probably the first portrayal of emotion in forever. Whatever it was, it must have been bad. Survive what?
"Ayesha Hope." Her dark curls bounced against her shoulders as her name caught her attention, a wave of hopelessness across her features. She knew she wasn't going to survive.
"Charlotte Thorne."

Annalise stared at me as I froze on the spot. "I'm sorry," she breathed, barely audible.
I gave her a smile, much to her surprise. In the split second between the shock and her apology, I had decided this was a good thing. Another place to add to my map. A place I might see the Doctor  - and when I did see him, I was going to give him hell for bringing us somewhere like this.

I was smirking to myself over this plan as the guards walked us down a narrow corridor. Unlike the rest of the building - the pristine white and candelabras - the walls were dark, dusty. It must have been days since I had seen the sun, and the fluorescent strips of light made me squint dizzily. The two other girls ahead of me recoiled away from its shine, vampire-like. God knows how long it had been since they had seen the sun.

They were violently dragged into a room we reached on the left, but the guard gripped my arm and continued on through the hallway. Instead of joining the other girls, I was thrown into another room at the end of the corridor.
"Special treatment?" I said, earning no response. Clearly humour wasn't a thing here.
I was shoved into a chair, my wrists locked onto the arms of it. I seemed to be making a habit of getting locked away, too.
With that, the guard left the room and I was alone in the shadows.
So much for customer service.

For a while, I sat there wondering if something was going to happen. Perhaps this was the thing that I was supposed to survive - but as time passed, I discovered nothing but the hum of the AC fan occasionally switching.
'Boredom' took on a whole new definition - and this was coming from someone who lived in a dead-end village for the first quarter of my life. Or maybe the entirety of my life, if I was to die here. Great.

The dullness must have sent me to sleep eventually, my head lolled against the back of the chair. A clattering noise brought me back to consciousness, my mouth dry as I snapped my head up.
My initial reaction was that I was hallucinating. The entire time I had been here, I hadn't eaten a thing, my body growing weaker by the day. Hallucination would have been a perfectly believable explanation for what I could see in front of me.

Noah was on his knees, the Doctor's screwdriver in his hand. The sickly green illuminated the darkness as it unlocked the steel around my wrists.
"What the hell?" I hissed.
"Oh, you're awake," he smiled. I was pretty grateful to see his face again - and pretty hopeful it was real.
I raised a questioning eyebrow at him.
"It's a long story," he murmered, helping me stand from the uncomfortable chair. "Let's get out of here."
"Where's Xander?" was my first question, which seemed to surprise Noah.
"He's the look-out," Noah smirked. I guess the Doctor and I were out of a job.
I opened my mouth to ask where he was, but Noah already had me sussed.
"I have no idea," he told me. "We got out early, but... the Doctor isn't anywhere. He gave me this before they brought us in," the sonic screwdriver whirred in his hand. "Told me to keep you safe."
I silently cursed him for that. Even if I did like the thought of him saying it. How the hell did he expect us to get out and find the TARDIS, and fly the TARDIS, without him?
"Idiot."

The two of us creeped out of the room, finding Xander stood on the other side. At his feet, a guard lay unconscious on the floor. I gawked at him. This was definitely my imagination.
"I took self-defence classes at the village hall," he shrugged.
I laughed at the thought of the most gentle man I knew spin-kicking an armoured guard.
Together, we snuck through the pitch black corridor, undetected. Noah and Xander had found an escape route through a grid in the ceiling. Above was a series of tunnels, like in a spy movie.
Xander lifted Noah up, as he clasped onto the surface and climbed through the gap in the ceiling. He was about to assist me to do the same, until the fluorescent lights burst through the shadows.

"Going somewhere?" the King's voice bounced towards us.
As he drew closer, Xander raised his fist in preparation. The second he lunged forwards, the King lifted his hand and sent Xander flying back with a wall of energy.
Without a word, the King turned back to me, a spine-chilling smile on his face.
"Why don't you come with me, Charlotte? We have someone I think you might like to see."