Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who.

The Two Amelias

Chapter Five

When Amy came to, she was still covered in a gel that reminded her entirely too much of KY jelly. Her shoulders ached and she wiggled them only to find they were suspended above her. She blinked her eyes a few times and looked up as if she couldn't comprehend it until she saw. And then she did see: her wrists were lashed together with a thick, abrasive rope as were her ankles, preventing her from kicking. To her horror, she found that the two men who had coated her were now sloughing the gel off and depositing it back into the buckets.

"You sick perverts!" she yelled, raking her body this way and that. It was all she could do to fight back and, though it pulled at her already aching shoulders, she continued to do so until she thought they'd dislocate. The drugs had worn off now, leaving her capable of fighting back, but still sluggish and with a throbbing head.

"Let me go!" she continued. "Find someone else for your demented fantasies. Not that you'll ever find anyone willing to do this because you two are seriously insane!"

"Please stay calm, Miss Pond. We'll be done in a moment." He scraped the gel from her toes and, though she squirmed and fought, she didn't laugh at the tickling it caused. The situation was too serious for that.

"You know my name? How the bleeding hell do you know my name?"

"Your Time Lord spoke it," replied Aldrik.

Amy's jaw dropped. Hoarsely, she uttered, "How do you know that?"

He continued, "Imagine! A Time Lord appears when we most need him. It is so like the stories we've heard. The last of the Time Lords, flying around in his TARDIS, saving those who need saving." That was the answer. She and the Doctor had discussed the TARDIS in front of this conniving little twit.

"Yeah," Amy asserted sharply. "He saves those who need saving and he destroys those who deserve destroying. I hate to burst your bubble, Aldrik, but in this story, you're the bad guy!"

"Oh, no, Miss Pond," he said, standing and looking her in the eye. He whispered, "We are not the bad guy. We only wish to go home."

"Well, you're going the wrong way about it!"

"This is the only way we could have gone. Desperate times, I believe the saying goes, call for desperate measures." Aldrik picked up the bucket, bringing it to the far end of the room, leaving her relatively alone with the man still removing goo from her left calf and foot.

"Please," she whispered. "You've got to see this is wrong. Please get me out of here."

Then something horrifying happened. The man stood at precisely the same time Aldrik turned to face her and they spoke as one. "Our survival is not wrong, Miss Pond," they chorused. "You are necessary to our survival."

Professor Röntgen had fallen asleep not long after Aldrik brought tea. The young man had offered some to the Doctor, but he'd refused, going out again to look for Amy. He'd long since started scanning for anything unusual, but everything kept leading back to Professor Röntgen's office.

"That makes no sense!" he insisted to his screwdriver. "There's nothing abnormal about X-Rays!" Sheepishly, he glanced at the professor and saw the man was still asleep in his chair. "Out like a light. All right, you," he said, addressing his screwdriver once more. "If you insist on giving me the round-about, I'll have to find her the old fashioned way. Looking." He tucked his screwdriver into his breast pocket and closed the door quietly on his way out.

Amy fell to the floor of a dimly lit supply closet and stood immediately, but not before they closed and locked the door behind her. She threw herself at the door, attacking it with fists, knees, feet. "You let me out of here this instant or so help me God I will make you regret every instant of your miserable existences!"

"Existence," said a voice from the corner. Chills rode up her naked spine, even though this room was as boiling hot as the last had been. That voice was familiar. It was…

Aldrik rose and took a step toward her. All too aware of her nakedness, she shied away and pressed herself toward the door, eyes darting around for a weapon. She grabbed a mop and aimed it at him, dried strands slapping at her leg.

"They're a collective species," he said, holding up his hands to show they were empty. "That's what the gel is. It's them. There's only one of them even though they have more than one body."

"Stay away, you," she warned, shaking the mop for emphasis. "I don't know how you got in here… or how you changed clothes so fast, but-"

"I'm not him," he insisted. "Or rather, he's not me. He's the thing. They just stole my likeness."

"What are you talking about?"

"The gel…" he said at length. "I don't know how, but they cloned me."