Chapter Seven: Inner Space

            This has to be a dream. This whole day…it all has to be some twisted nightmare.

            That was what Alexis kept telling herself, but the result remained the same: she was actually fleeing for her life with a bunch of meddling kids, their talking Great Dane, a dog catcher and his deadbeat son, and a young blonde armed with a bō staff.

            The blonde (Gen) led them across Georgetown’s campus grounds.

            They ran to a tall, black rectangular solid displayed right outside Lauinger Library.

            Alexis had passed by it for weeks, figuring it to have been a model that the art department put there.

            To her bewilderment, it was way more than that.

            Gen placed her palm against the sleek marbled surface of the solid; under her delicate touch, there was a brief flash of blue light outlining every detail of Gen’s palm before it “seeped” into the solid.

            A set of doors then materialized, revealing a much bigger space within.

            “Whoa!” Alexis gasped.

            Craig and Willie shared in her shock.

            “My goodness! I’ve stepped into The Twilight Zone,” Willie muttered.

            Alexis was quick to realize how little Fred, Daphne, Shaggy, Velma, and their dog, Scooby-Doo, were daunted by the dimensionally disproportionate interior. “This doesn’t faze you kids whatsoever?” she questioned them.

            “I guess we oughta come clean to you, Professor Redding,” Daphne said. “We’ve been traveling with Gen for quite some time.”

            “Solving mysteries across multiple dimensions,” Fred enthusiastically added.

            In hearing this, Alexis grew infuriated and surmised, “So all of you knew about that man who tried to kill me back in class?!”

            “That man is my twin brother, Christopher,” Gen disclosed.

            “He said his name was Everett,” Alexis recollected.

            “That’s what he calls himself in this regeneration he’s in,” Gen stated. “I got a distress call from a source, telling me that he and his earliest regeneration, LeMarier, were targeting you.”

            Alexis became more and more befuddled. “Wait. Hold up. Regeneration? Your ‘source’? Who’s your source?”

            “You are,” Gen stoically answered.

            She brought them all inside the bigger-on-the-inside solid.

            Craig, Willie, and Alexis couldn’t believe the majestic, well-conditioned room they walked into. It was like a spaceship. A strawberry aroma filled the air, making it more obvious that it was owned and operated by a woman.

            At the center of it was a control console where Gen entered a small, round golden object through a slot.

            The large view screen across the console flickered on.

            A series of recorded footage played on it, starting from a middle-aged woman with short blond hair fending off a group of mechanized creatures on an alien planet.

            “This is who I once was,” Gen indicated the recording. “Her name was Candace, but her true name – my true name – is Neas.”

            More footage of other women shown.

            A much younger silver-haired individual wearing a cosmic combat top.

            A Portuguese woman that appeared to have a particular taste for form-fitting attire that showed off her exceptionally sizable backside.

            A crazy-eyed blonde with a bright smile that was as beautiful as it was goofy.

            A Filipina dressed like a ninja and armed with sais.

            An Asian that seemed more down-to-Earth with her “country girl” clothes.

            A stunning redhead whose intense, exotic exterior masked a more nurturing, motherly personality.

            Yet another blonde who exceled in yoga practices.

            And then Gen herself popped onscreen, looking as daring as Alexis had seen her earlier against Everett.

            “Who are all these women?” Alexis asked.

            “They are all me…and you,” Gen told her.

            The footage proceeded on with more personalities – the next one following Gen’s evoking a huge reaction from Craig and Willie.

            “That’s a black dude,” the former exclaimed.

            Gen’s brow furrowed in curiosity as she glanced at the African American male that would be her next regeneration, going by the order the montage was played in. “So it is,” she reflected.

            Willie ate it up, his eyes centering on Alexis.

            “Well, ain’t that somethin’! No wonder you a teacher in Black History – ‘cause you are black!”

            Alexis cringed. “No! No, Mister Jones! I’m not or never will be any of these people! I think I would’ve remembered any of it, if I were!”

            “That’s because you’re under the influence of the chameleon arch,” Gen said. “You used it to stay hidden from LeMarier and Everett. Unfortunately, the real leader of this grand scheme of theirs – Missy – got to you before they did. She injected you with a deadly parasite.”

            Redding couldn’t decide if she should be stunned or entertained at the thought.

            “And h-how did this ‘Missy’ accomplish that? Especially when – again – I don’t remember it happening!”

            “When was the last time you saw your pharmacist?” Gen asked her. “She’d been prescribing you with medicine to quell those migraines, right? But instead of relieving them, they’ve gotten worse.”

            Alexis deflected, wondering how Gen would know about her monthly check-ups or even the terrible migraines she suffered since she was twenty-five.

            “How do you…?”

            “Missy was your pharmacist!” Gen exclaimed. “She’d been feeding you drugs that’s bred the parasite feeding on your mind and slowly killing you…killing us!”

            Alexis grasped at her head, sensing another migraine coming on.

            Only now, she suspected it to be the “parasite” Gen spoke of.

            “How do I get it out of me?” she asked the young, fierce blonde.

            “I went to a dimension where a brave test pilot named Tuck Pendleton miniaturized himself within an experimental, submersible pod,” Gen elucidated. “I intercepted the experiment before the scientists could have injected Tuck in their original target: a test rabbit. It was already predestined to fail though. I just got there first.”

            For that short span of time, Alexis feared there was truth in Gen’s words.

            However, she should’ve stopped with the parasite before bordering into science fiction with miniaturized test pilots. That much was too hard to swallow for the college professor.

            “You really had me going there for a sec,” Alexis scoffed.

            Gen scowled. “You mean to tell me that is where you draw the line?!”

            “I don’t have time for this nonsense, O.K.? I need to contact my boyfriend, who’s sure to find out about the attempt on my life on the six o’clock news. Now where do you keep a phone in this overgrown domino block?!”

            Alexis rummaged around the hexagonal console.

            At one point, she made the mistake of bending over in front of Gen, her backside in the young blonde’s direct line of fire.

            Out of the left side pocket of her leather jacket, she retrieved a syringe.

            “Godspeed, Lieutenant,” she whispered to it, right before sticking the needle in Alexis’s left glute.

            Redding yelped, standing upright and clutching her bottom.

            “What did you just do to me?!” she roared.

            “Oh, I just injected a naval aviator into your butt, that’s all,” Gen nonchalantly said. “And the phone’s right there to your right.”

            She indicated the precise spot of the console where – sure enough – there was a stationary phone, not unlike the one she and Jeff had back at their place. Using it straightaway, she called the apartment and hoped that Jeff made it back in time for her to explain the whole situation.

            “Hello?”

            It was Maxine, his mother, who picked up.

            And she sounded very worried, her voice breaking.

            “Maxine?” Alexis said.

            “Alexis, is that you? Oh, child. I’m so glad you called.”

            “Why? What’s wrong? Where’s Jeff?”

            “Jeff…He’s…He’s been in a terrible accident.”

---------------

            Alexis imagined her day could only get so weird.

            How wrong she was when Maxine called.

            According to her, Jeff was struck down by a meteorite, and his injures were being treated at the local hospital.

            “Boy got struck down by a meat-te-or?!” Willie hardly believed it. “Bullets from a drive-by I can get, but a meat-te-or brought the brotha down? A black man can’t even go outside without watchin’ his back and his front, now he gotta look up?!”

            They met with Jeff’s doctor as soon as they walked in.

            “He suffered broken bones and third-degree burns, leaving massive scar tissue,” the doctor informed. “The rock that hit him did great damage. He’s fortunate to still—”

            “ARGH!”

            Alexis clasped at her left eye, experiencing a sharp sting, as if something was shot into the back of her eyeball. In her sudden moment of agony, she screamed, drawing much attention around her – even from Jeff’s doctor.

            “Are you alright, Miss Redding?” he asked. “Is there something I can do?”

             “She’s fine,” Gen intervened rather abruptly. “Just a little spasm.”

            With her one unharmed eye, Alexis gawked at Gen.

            The knowing look she had on her face somehow reassured her. “Yeah, like the young lady said…I’m fine,” Alexis told Jeff’s doctor.

            He was left with no choice but to take her word for it, continuing to lead the way.

            Meanwhile, Alexis – her hand still over her irritated eye – whispered to Gen, “What was that?!”

            “If I were to guess, Lieutenant Pendleton planted a camera into your optic nerve, so that he can see what you can see,” Gen enlightened.

            “You could’ve warned me about that,” Alexis grumbled.

            “Well, you should’ve believed me about the shrunken test pilot currently navigating through your insides,” Gen said. “Let me know when you hear him. He’ll implant another device in your inner ear that’ll enable him to talk directly to you.” She noticed the college professor shooting her a revolted glare. “Hey, you said you wanted a warning. There you go.”

            Alexis’s eye recovered from the sting, just as the doctor took them into the room where Jeff, heavily bandaged, lied unconscious in his bed. Around him were his parents and best friend, Michael Anderson.

            Alexis comforted the weeping Maxine with a hug.

            “He’ll be alright,” she reassured her. “I’m going to stay right here by his side.”

            “Alexis,” Gen objected. “Our safety is in jeopardy the longer we’re—”

            “I said I’m staying with him,” Redding vulgarly proclaimed. “Until he wakes up!”

            Gen saw there was no convincing the college professor.

            Her mind – her natural human mind – was made up.

Chapter Six: Chanley

            “Gizzzzzzzzmmmmmoooooooooo!!!”

            “Gizmo, where are you?”

            “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

            A month into their travels aboard Neas’s Type-Z T.A.R.D.I.S., Al-Lee and Zoe grew to feel more at home. Al-Lee had fully recovered from the injuries she sustained in her torture on Gallifrey and also taken up wearing Earth-based attire.

            Things mellowed out quite well since their escape.

            Too well for Zoe and Al-Lee’s taste. Boredom began to sink in for the two girls.

            For that, they needed something to pass the time until Neas found a new destination; so they settled on a game of hide-and-seek with Gizmo. Turned out the little Mogwai was exceptionally good at hiding, even in an endless ship like the T.A.R.D.I.S.

            Several minutes passed before they found him in the kitchen, hiding in the cupboards. “Bright light, bright light,” he cried when Al-Lee opened the cupboard, prompting Zoe to recall one of Neas’s provisions regarding to caring for a Mogwai: do not expose it to any bright lights that can and will kill it.

            Right away, she dimmed the kitchen lights. “Sorry, lil’ fella,” she told Gizmo.

            Al-Lee took him out of the cupboard, cradling him in her warm, strapping arms. She was just as relieved as Zoe to see that he wasn’t wounded from the lights.

            “Glad he’s alright,” Zoe said. “Hate to see anything happen to such a tiny, sweet thing.” She stroked Gizmo’s small furry head with her left index finger, which nearly diminished it. “Man, this place – this T.A.R.D.I.S. – has been so much fun. It’s almost as impressive as the Doctor’s.” The smile on her face dropped into a frown, as she lamented, “Wonder if I’ll ever see him again.”

            “What did Neas say?” Al-Lee asked.

            Aggravated, Zoe rolled her eyes. “He said that I could when he figures out how to get me back in my own timeline.”

            “Still finding it hard to believe he’s your future self?”

            “Not any harder than finding out I’m gonna be a Time Lord like the Doctor! And the worst part is that Neas will hardly tell me anything else! It’s so unfair!” It then dawned on Zoe that she had another resident of Gallifrey right in her presence. “Wait. You’re part of my future, too! Maybe you can tell me more about what I’ll one day be!”

            Al-Lee hesitated. “I have heard many stories, growing up. But it’s not my place to tell you your own destiny. That responsibility belongs to Neas. I’m sorry.”

            “But he’s so guarded…and serious, too…I mean, like, all the time,” Zoe groaned. “And that really makes me worry about what happens in my future that turns me into such a grim kind of person like him.”

            “Zoe, his father – your father – was abducted on Gallifrey,” Al-Lee recalled. “Something like that takes away any moment of solace. He’s going to do whatever he can to bring her back. But first he has to figure out who it was that took her.”

            “It was me.”

            A voice near them spoke.

            They spun around towards the doorway to see a fancy-dressed brunette standing outside in the corridor. Neither Zoe nor Al-Lee had seen this woman around the T.A.R.D.I.S. before, which encouraged Zoe to ask, “Who are you?”

            “I’m Chanley…but Neas knows me better as his twin: Christopher. And I know where they’ve taken Aznavorian, our father.”

---------------

            Zoe and Al-Lee brought Chanley to the console room where Neas and Jane were.

            Needless to say, Neas was not all too pleased once he heard who Chanley was and why she was aboard his T.A.R.D.I.S. (through means he couldn’t begin to make sense of). “The last time I saw you, or any version of you, you left me for dead inside a death arena,” he aggressively scolded her.

            “I know, and there’s no way to tell you how sorry I am,” Chanley said. “I was reckless and vengeful at the time. But I’ve changed since then. This is my third regeneration, and you have all the reason to hate me for what my first one has done to you and Daddy. But I need you to trust this version of me for the sake of our father.”

            “So you actually know where Lauren is?” Al-Lee inquired.

            Chanley sadly nodded. “By now, she’s not Lauren anymore – she’s regenerated.”

            Neas flared at this unsettling news; enraged, he threateningly advanced on Chanley. “What did you do to him?!” he roared.

            Chanley quivered in fear. The hate in his eyes boarded on murder.

            Jane saw it as well and stood in between them, holding Neas back.

            “Calm down,” she told him. “This isn’t the one you should be upset with. Let’s just hear her out.”

            Neas heeded Jane’s words and permitted Chanley to continue:

            “LeMarier’s given Daddy the Regen-8 formula. By now, she’s already experienced ‘Phase One’ – simulated regeneration. It’s not meant to be the real thing, but her body doesn’t know that…which is what leads her into ‘Phase Two’: molecular instability. At that phase, she has no other choice but to regenerate to stabilize her molecules, but it won’t last long.”

            Chanley’s info sounded credible, yet there was still the fact lingering in the recesses of Neas’s mind that this woman was an incarnation of his twisted twin. “How can I trust anything you say?” he asked. “You could be leading us into another one of your death traps.”

            Having anticipated his distrust, Chanley retrieved a small, round object from her jeans pocket. It was etched with instructional Gallifreyan hieroglyphics on its shiny gold casing. Neas knew it to be a Time Lord data orb, not unlike the one his previous incarnation carried around in her vacant eye socket.

            There was only one other Time Lord he knew of that carried around data orbs.

            When Chanley inserted it into the nearest console port, the T.A.R.D.I.S. picked up on it, and the view screen automatically flickered on.

            The face of a middle-aged woman with Egyptian features materialized onscreen.

            Behind her was the T.A.R.D.I.S. console room of Aznavorian the Tinkerer’s Type-X model.

            “Hey there, sweetheart,” Neas presumed her to be addressing him. “You don’t know this face yet, because you haven’t properly met it…but it’s me…your Pop. I go by ‘Rania’ in this regeneration. But that’s beside the point of this message I had Chanley deliver, in case you didn’t believe her. I’ve traveled with her, and I’ve witnessed the redemption close at hand between her previous regeneration and this one. This woman in front of you has the caring hearts I’ve always known your brother to have, and she will do anything to protect us. Let her help you, so that you both can help me.”

            The message ended on a freeze frame of Rania’s hopeful, smiling face.

            Her testimony of Chanley was all he needed to go on; if he couldn’t trust his own father, who else could he trust?

            “Alright,” he conceded. “Tell us exactly where Pop is.”

            “It’s a hidden island occupied by women known as Themyscira,” Chanley said.

            “Then that’s our next destination.”

            As he proceeded with operating the T.A.R.D.I.S. controls, Chanley was quick to forewarn him, “If we’re going there, we’re gonna need help… a lot of help.”

Chapter Five: “Phase One”

            Lauren’s head was the first thing that throbbed, waking out of unconsciousness.

            Someone had clocked her good; the bump was still there at the back of her head, right underneath all her golden locks.

            Last she remembered, she was on Gallifrey with Neas and Jane.

            While she waited for the former to finish his talk with the General, someone swooped in and attacked her.

            After that…total blackness.

            Now, she was lying in some type of cavernous prison.

            She heard water running close by, presumably a stream flowing out of the wall.

            Sitting up, she realized the mistake in her presumption as soon as she saw what appeared to be a young humanoid deer in an oversized beige sweater squatting to one corner of the cavern. She was a rather adorable looking thing to Lauren. Her dark brown hair was short and bouncy with antlers sticking out of it. Her face was freckled and had features crossed between human and deer; at the moment, it contorted in reflection of her moment of relief.

            Lauren saw that the young humanoid deer was relieving herself in a wooden bucket – the only source of a reasonable lavatory offered to them.

            Clearing her throat, she caught the young humanoid deer’s attention.

            The streaming ceased once Lauren’s cellmate cumbersomely looked her way. “It’s not what you think,” she said, clearly embarrassed. “T-There’s a waterfall near here, that’s all.”

            Lauren held back a giggle over the young alien’s poor attempt at covering herself.

            Dripping noises resonated from the bucket.

            “Since when do waterfalls run out of water to fall?” Lauren teased.

            The humanoid deer moaned, knowing the jig was up. “They need samples every few hours or so.”

            Lauren frowned with question. “They? Who’re they?”

            “The people who run the experiments.”

            “What kind of experiments?”

            “The kind that a Barasinghan is needed for.”

            “Barasinghan? From the planet Cervidae?”

            “That’s the one they took me from.”

            “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

            “Fawn.”

            “That’s a very lovely name. I’m Lauren, Fawn. Can you perhaps tell me where it is that we are right now?”

            “I don’t know. But there are a lot of women here.”

            Lauren noticed that when she woke up. There was one statuesque woman in distinct, revealing armor, maintaining guard over their prison cell.

            “Excuse me,” Lauren addressed her. “Would you please tell us where we are?”

            The guard said not a word; however, Lauren did receive an answer.

            “A special island that will serve as our own Doctor Moreau.”

            Beyond the tall guard’s wide, muscular frame spoke another woman who emerged into Lauren’s view. She wore a brown cloak and a gown to match. Pulling back the hood, she revealed an elegant face Lauren had not seen since she and the many regenerations of Neas were kept prisoner on a Dalek ship.

            “LeMarier,” she identified the first regeneration of her other child, Christopher.

            “Hello, Dad,” LeMarier sneered.

            “I don’t understand,” Lauren stated.

            “No, you never did,” LeMarier retorted. “But you will soon.”

            “Christopher, if this is all about me giving you away when you were just a baby, I am truthfully sorry,” Lauren confessed. “There are many things I wish I could take back when I was that old, foolish man. Many things I’ve done when I was scared and helpless.”

            “We are way past apologies,” LeMarier denied. “I’m gonna make you and Neas suffer dearly.”

            “You leave Neas alone,” Lauren demanded.

            “Oh, I will,” LeMarier acknowledged. “I won’t harm one of her lives. Can you guess which one that is?”

            There was one incarnation of Neas Lauren knew LeMarier favored the most.

            Distressed, Lauren pleaded to her, “Please reconsider whatever mad plan you have. It’s not worth destroying the only family you have.”

            “It’s not my plan,” LeMarier said. “It’s my father’s – my true father.”

            “The Master,” Lauren keenly recognized.

            “She goes by ‘Missy’ these days,” LeMarier divulged. “He had his own little ‘gender swap’ recently.”

            “Christopher, listen to me,” Lauren beseeched. “The Master might’ve raised you, but he has never loved you. I’ve known him well and whatever this plan is of his – or hers – it will only lead to death.”

            “I’m counting on it,” LeMarier professed. “And I hope it’ll be your death.”

            Hurt by her words, Lauren was rendered speechless.

            Seeing that she won the argument, LeMarier turned to the guard and ordered her to open the prison cell. As she strode in, Fawn shot up from her squatted position and cowered to another corner.

            LeMarier pleasingly looked down into the bucket.

            “You’ve done it again, Barasinghan,” she told Fawn. “There’s enough here for a dozen more formulas to be made.” She then called out from the cell, “Oh, girl!”

            Immediately, a woman carrying another wooden bucket rushed in.

            Lauren saw how exquisite she was, standing as tall as six feet with an olive complexion, brown eyes, long and naturally flowing dark brown hair, and an athletic physique. She was donned in warrior garb, which – in addition to her impressive build – seemed like an insult to the job she was assigned in retrieving a bucket of Barasinghan urine.

            “Good girl, Diana,” LeMarier treated her like a dog. “Take it to the lab inside my T.A.R.D.I.S.”

            “Yes, my queen,” Diana obliged, speaking with a foreign accent.

            Shortly after she left the cell, another party entered the cell – a slender teenage boy with sleek white-blond hair, cold grey eyes, a pale complexion and rather sharp, pointed features. He wore a tattered school uniform that bore the crest of a snake.

            Lauren knew of this youth. “You’re the boy from the wizard school. ‘Draco Malfoy’ is your name, isn’t it?”

            “You know nothing about me,” Draco barked to her. “And do not speak of Hogwarts! That place is dead!”

            “Don’t listen to a word she says, Draco,” LeMarier instructed. “All you need to do is place that paralyzing spell on her.”

            Draco did as she commanded, taking out his wand and immobilizing Lauren.

            While she was maintained in this state, LeMarier walked right up to her, brandishing a syringe filled with glowing gold liquid. Lauren’s eyes – the one part of herself she could barely move – widened in horror, recognizing the liquid that was injected into her blood stream.

            “That’s right, Dad,” LeMarier smirked at her reaction. “The Regen-8 formula. Rassilon’s own cocktail remedy for controlled regeneration.”

            Malfoy released the spell over Lauren.

            She collapsed to the floor, watching the formula take effect on her body, her veins glowing as if she were regenerating.

            It left her in a state of panic.

            “What’ve you done to me?!” She cried. “Don’t you know the dangers this formula can cause to the body of a Time Lord?!”

            “I do,” LeMarier coldly said. “I wouldn’t want our actual subject to be harmed in any way, as Missy and I work on perfecting it.”

            Lauren’s panic intensified. “You’re using me as a guinea pig!”

            “You’re in the process of ‘Phase One’ as we speak: a simulated regeneration – not the actual thing, but close enough,” LeMarier explained. “Then there’s ‘Phase Two’: molecular instability – from there, anything can happen. And, last but not least, there’s ‘Phase Three’, which I admit that I know nothing about. We haven’t gotten that far yet, but the desired result we’re looking for is total control of regeneration itself.”

            LeMarier and Malfoy departed from the cell.

            Lauren was left writhing on the floor in agony, her body lighting up in golden regenerative energy.

            Fawn was forced to watch on helplessly, not having any clue what was happening.