Soufflés, Skype and Sherlock Holmes

Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

Sherlock awoke, his head throbbed painfully. At first he thought his vision was damaged but red pulsing lights were blaring across the room. His back was pressed uncomfortably against the bottom of the consul. Sherlock rose onto his aching feet realising that wherever he was, was upright a second ago. The floor was a wall, the double doors were the ceiling. Sherlock stood on the slanted stand of the consul, which now worked as a floor. His blue silk dressing gown was shredded.

Just as Sherlock was contemplating the leap to one of the railings, the ship lurched. Sherlock was flung forward and his body bashed into the doors, flinging them open. He tumbled into a mess of wires, some sort of smoke from the ship pooled around him. Coughing, he slowly scrambled up again. "So you're still alive, eh?" Someone said.

"Where's Clara?" Sherlock demanded, his voice wheezing. The Doctor swallowed and absentmindedly straightened his bowtie. Sherlock's eyes flicked over him. Sure, he may be rattled, standing outside a blue phone box - that they had been in, which was bigger on the inside, which was impossible - but he needed to find Clara. He just needed to see her smile at him again. "You don't know, do you?" Sherlock deduced, dragging in a sharp, worried breath. Not like it was a hard deduction; the man oozed anxiety. Sherlock ran forward, his joints groaning in protest. He was an inch away from grabbing those stupid suspenders before two sets of hands wrenched him back. Sherlock snarled in protest.

"We'll get her back," The Doctor said. His brown eyes didn't waver. The phone box was dropped on its side again, making The Doctor sneer at the third man controlling the winch. He stroked the side of it like it was some sort of scared animal.

Sherlock shook off the brutes. There were two of them - dark skinned with angry glinting eyes and strange contraptions hanging of their dusty uniforms. One of them handed him a mask. Sherlock turned it over in his hands. Some sort of respirator - nothing he had ever seen before. The questions were drilling into "Where are we?" He hissed, turning to The Doctor.

"Don't worry about that," he replied and kicked the doors to the ship open. Smoke billowed out and they snapped the respirators on. The Doctor went in first, and then hollered for the rest of them to follow through. The three men shouldered past Sherlock. Seething, the detective went last.

He nearly fainted.

Where he had been subjected to the tilts and gravity of the ship before, it was perfectly level, despite obviously being on its side from the outside. "Wh-aat..." he stuttered.

"The TARDIS is special," The Doctor said, slapping the consul. "She has her own gravity."

"Tell me," Sherlock demanded. The mask made his voice a strange warble.

"Well I don't exactly have a white board and a pen, do I?" he snapped. The Doctor flicked a switch and the smoke was sucked into the invisible vents, littered somewhere on the ceiling. Sherlock dragged his respirator off.

"How big is this baby?" One of the crew asked, completely awed. He was bald and roughly shaven with

"Picture the biggest ship you've ever seen. Are you picturing it?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Now forget it. This ship is infinite."

Sherlock gaped. "Can't be," he told the Doctor. "It's impossible."

The Doctor looked at the piece of paper poking out of Sherlock's dressing gown pocket. A smile twitched on his face. "You tell me, wonder boy." Sherlock's heart missed a beat.

"It'll take you hours to find the girl," One of the men said, the second one who had grabbed Sherlock before. He was the tallest and jutted his chin out with a calculating, almost chilling stare.