CHARLOTTE ::: DW¹

xxii. flesh and afresh part two

Rory lingers in the doorway. "Doctor, look... I'd better tell you, I haven't been quite straight with you-" What Rory wanted to say was cut off by Jennifer pushing him back into the hall as she locks the door.

Charlotte runs over to the door. "Rory!" She shouts as she reached the door, able to see his through the window on the door. She pulls at the door handle, but it didn't even seem to budge.

With Cleaves and Amy, the Doctor rushes up and tries the door to no avail. "Rory Pond!" He exclaims. "Roranicus Pondicus!"

"Rory!" Amy shouts to him, "What the hell are you playing at?"

Looking away from Jennifer, Rory faces them on the opposite end of the window. "They've been throwing away old Flesh and leaving it to rot, alive! I think the world should see that." He turns back to Jennifer.

"Rory, there is no time!" Knocking on the window, the Doctor tried to catch his attention. "This factor's about to explode!" The Doctor moves away from the door, and Amy replaces his spot in front of the window.

Standing at the side of the door, Charlotte stood before a control panel placed on the wall, in hope that there was some way of breaking the lock or some sort of emergency way of opening the door. But, of course, when she pulled open the hatch for the controls, she had to wave a hand in front of her face as smoke billows out.

"No, no, no! Come on," Charlotte cried out as her shoulders slumped when once all the smoke left the panel, she saw nothing but sparking wires and switches burnt to a crisp. Slamming the hatch shut, the brunette heard the last of Rory before he's pulled away by the Ganger Jennifer.

"I'm sorry!" He shouted. Amy pounds on the window, shouting out his name. She moves away from the door, quickly replaced by Cleaves, and leaned on a railing as she took in what happened.

Charlotte stood beside her. "Amy..."

"If anything happens to him." Amy left the sentence open for interpretation, but Charlotte knew what she meant, and knew that she had to make sure everything went to plan (while she always makes sure it does, this time especially).

While the Doctor looks over his results from the sonic's scan over the tub of Flesh, the two grouped up with him beside the vat. Seeing the results, his eyes widened. "This is going to overheat and fill the room with acid, just as a point of reference."

"Is there any way we can stop it?" When he became silent for a moment, Charlotte's eyes widened. "At all?"

"Well... No."

Yet again, Charlotte wasn't even sure if this problem was a part of the episode or not. Where her watch once was, she began massaging her wrist, a nervous antic she's seen popping up recently. There has to be something we can do, she thought. Charlotte looks around the room for anything- a working control panel, an emergency exit, something to ram the door with, but found none of the like.

Her eyes land on the vat, which still boils profusely in the room's center. Has it ever boiled this high before? Most cooking pots have lids to them just for that, so does this Flesh vat have its own? She looks above the vat and her eyes lay on its own lid, hanging above it from a pulley.

At her own cleverness, she beamed and rushed and bent down to the crank. Beginning to turn the crank that lowered the cap (which was quite hard to her astonishment, she really should take advantage one of the TARDIS gyms soon), Charlotte says as everyone's focus turns to her, "It won't stop it, but it sure as hell will buy us some time!"

"Oh, that's brilliant," compliments the Doctor as he watches it go down.

From the opposite end of the vat, Jimmy reminds them, "It'll never hold her."