THE MUMMY ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS
edited as of january 18th, 2020
As stated in the brochure for the Orient Express, this train drove in space smoother than any other. With traveling past the swirling colors of this universe, it gave a 1920s immersive experience to the passenger with the decor, music, and even the clothing each wore. After the pitstop on Solspir, more passengers arrived for a four-day journey.
Among these passengers was a woman keeping to herself, not speaking to any of the other passengers when she sat down at the back of a car. When sitting down for the beginning of the journey, Charlotte Bolton pulled out her Solspirian newspaper. Like everyone else, she was dressed as if it were the '20s wearing a green dress and a felt hat.
After two nights on the train, in the same spot, Charlotte opened the same newspaper again. Immediately going to the crossword, which she never had time to finish, she sets that page on the table. After writing in Medusa as their Queen's name, Charlotte looked out the window thoughtfully.
The reappearance was ugly. Reappearing in a forest on an alien planet, Charlotte found herself too sore to get up and laid in agony for hours. Luckily for her, after staying with a local for a few nights, she gained enough energy to go on her own. She didn't dare call the Doctor or anyone else on her phone for that matter. While it would've made her life easier, the last thing she wanted was for him to worry for her and to be humiliated by him seeing her in that state again.
After the Solspirian housing Charlotte came back with the newspaper, and seeing the advertisement for the Orient Express, the first thing she did when beginning to feel better was get tickets with the money she had stacked away.
With no familiar faces, the last week has been hard for Charlotte. No texts or calls were sent to her phone nor a simple fairytale of a man, a blue box, and, well, her. Hell, for the first time, she would have responded 'nothing' for what she did that day. Charlotte found she didn't know what to do on a normal day anymore- walking in a market made her nostalgic, a lack of danger made her nervous, and the same grass being beneath her feet day in and day out felt foreign.
No, this definitely isn't her normal anymore. Yet, this wasn't a well-needed break to her either, this was a vacation to a place you've already been to. Just, to her, this place was unfamiliar yet so similar to her life on Earth at the same time.
An elderly woman at the front of the car calls for a nearby waiter in distress. "You! You!" she called to him. "Throw that man out of my dining car. It's disgusting." Her nose scrunches up in the direction of the empty hall.
"I'm sorry madam, which man?"
"Which man?!" she shrieks. "I'll have your job. The one dressed as a monster."
A young woman, sitting across from her, couldn't see the person she was talking of. "Mama, there isn't anyone there. Are you feeling okay?"
"Don't dare lie to me, girl. I won't be made a fool of." Putting both hands at the sides of her wheelchair, she looked back to the anomaly. "Stop. Stop it at once! Right now!" She pushes her back as far as she can into the back of her wheelchair. "Get it off! Oh, no! Get it off!" The woman falls on the table, lifeless.
With every scientist and doctor in the room standing up when the call for one came, Charlotte stood out well when joining the group surrounding the body.
---
Swinging a chair out from the desk in her room, Charlotte sits down with her eyes squinted to a man with a full mustache and a wild head of grey hair. "Now, tell me... What does her autopsy show?"
The scientist blinked. "She just died. Mr. Loom and I believe a heart attack is what happened, but there is no definitive proof."
Charlotte nods, rubbing her chin. Humming, she waved past the evidence. "How is your health lately, sir?"
"Good?" he guesses. "My doctor says I'm doing better than other people my age."
"Okay, and your mental health?"
"Good too, I think. Why?"
Charlotte shrugged. "Part of the interrogation. You're good, bring in Rian." And after interrogating the next and next person, she found she wasn't any closer to finding who'll die next than she was a moment ago, even with the guise of both a detective and therapist, she has nothing.
Once Henry leaves to retrieve Penelope for her, Henry enters the lounge car where a woman sings a '20s parody of "Don't Stop Me Now." Passing by two new passengers, the man in this pair took note when Henry whispered in Penelope's ear suspiciously. With her back straight, Penelope leaves the lounge car in the same direction Henry entered it.
---
After comforting Penelope through a breakdown, the scientist leaves Charlotte's room with her eyes puffy. Once passing by the Doctor and Clara, the former remembering her leaving the lounge car, Clara rolled her eyes at the Doctor.
"No," she simply said.
"There could be a clue in there."
"... Or, it could be someone who doesn't want to be bothered." Nevertheless, the Doctor approached the door with Clara following in toe.
---
Giving a sigh from the room now being rid of the sobbing, at least, for now, Charlotte threw the tissues into the trash.
Hearing a knock, she prepped herself for the next interrogation. Pressing on a smile, she opened the door up only for the plastered smile to turn into a smaller, real one. "Oh! It's you two!" she exclaimed when seeing the pair standing outside of the door. "I thought you were someone else. How'd you find me?"
"We followed the trail of crying women," said the Doctor. "What are you doing, therapy sessions?"
Charlotte thought of it for a moment. "Something like that." Ushering the two in, she looks back at them. "I've been on this train since the last pitstop, saw Mrs. Pitt die soon after, and began interrogating the passengers."
"Find anything?" asks Clara.
"Nothing you didn't know already."
The two catch Charlotte up to speed and she catches them up on where she's been. A few minutes later, though, they left for their own rooms. Considering they came here on the TARDIS, she wasn't sure how they could've got a room without a ticket but didn't question it.
Once doing the final interrogation of the night, Charlotte took off her shoes. As she stands up, she meets her eyes in the mirror. Gasping, Charlotte backs up to the wall. Her breath became rugged as she met her own, brown eyes. Her unfamiliar, brown eyes. Terrified and shaken, the woman took a blanket and swung it over the mirror.
Charlotte, her heartbeat going back to its regular speed, blinks at the blanket-covered mirror. "When was that put there?" she questioned herself, laughing as she took it off, setting back on the bed. Looking back into the mirror, she rubbed her eyes before sitting down in bed, beginning to finish the crossword while waiting for either the Doctor or Clara to leave their room.
---
'The first planet to colonize Solspir.'
Charlotte hums to herself, looking at the available letters in the five-letter word she guesses this one by writing on Earth. But, once hearing a door close, the crossword became the least of her priorities. Setting it to the side, Charlotte quickly put on her shoes to then see Clara walking down the corridor, turning when Charlotte's door opens.
"What, were you gonna go without me?" asked Charlotte.
"Come on then."
Walking down the corridor, they were soon passed by the granddaughter of Mrs. Pitt, holding a shoe in her hand while panting.
"Hello?" says Clara. "Are you okay? Hello? Excuse me?" Glancing at each other, Clara and Charlotte immediately follow the woman to the luggage car. "Miss Pitt, was it? Are you alright? Do you need help?"
The blonde turns to her with her eyes wide. "My name's Maisie. I'm not mad," she claimed.
"We don't think you are," Charlotte assured her. "But with everything that happened today, I think anybody would need help."
Maisie gave a tight smile, turning to the door of the vault. "Computer, open the door."
A robotic voice turns on. "Call me Gus," it replied. "I'm afraid this door can only be opened with an executive order."
Maisie began shaking. Looking at her, Clara asks her, "Are you okay?"
Trying to type on the vault's keypad while sniffling, every attempt failed for Maisie. "They won't let me see her body," she sobbed out. "They should let me see the body, shouldn't they?"
"Er, yeah, I should think so," Clara agreed. "It's in there, isn't it?" Maisie nods. "Okay, I have a friend who's good with locks. Do you want to come with me, see if we could find him?"
Instead of responding, Maisie uses the shoe in her hand to smash the entrance keypad. With wide eyes as the door to the vault slid open, Charlotte said in response, "Could do that too, I guess." With Maisie going in first, they follow after her into the vault.
---
The three women were now stuck in the dark vault. At a box keeping the wires that connected this room to the keypad, Charlotte tried to figure out how to fix the keypad to get out. However, Maisie's heel must've sparked up the wires.
"Do you know what you're doing?" asked Maisie, where she stands next to Clara.
Charlotte sighed. "Not really, I mean, a little? Can't be that hard." A wire sparks. "Nevermind," said Charlotte, causing the three to chuckle to themselves.
"Do you ever..." Maisie drifted off, unsure if this was a good question. "-wish bad things on people?"
Charlotte smirked. "Every day, but I never mean it, really."
Nodding, Clara said she did too. "The person who designed this door, for starters." Charlotte nods in full agreement when another wire sparked.
"She wasn't really my mum. She just made me call her that," Maisie tells them. "She was my gran. Do you know why I wanted to see her body?"
As Charlotte peers away from the wires for a moment, Clara takes a guess. "Because you loved her very much and were missing her?"
Maisie gave a dry laugh. "You've obviously never met her. No, I just felt really guilty. Like I'd been picturing her dying for years. Like a daydream." She glanced at Charlotte. "Not really meaning it. At least, I don't think I did. But now, it just feels like I made this happen."
Clara immediately put a hand on Maisie's elbow for reassurance. "Hey, listen. You didn't do anything wrong," she tells her sincerely, giving her a kind smile. "Difficult people, they can make you feel all sorts of things. But you didn't do it. You didn't kill her. She just died."
"... Are you sure about that?"
Charlotte, knowing the wires were a lost cause, gave Maisie a friendly nudge. "Hey, even if she didn't just die, you still wouldn't be responsible in any way."
"Thank you- both of you."
---
Charlotte sits in the middle of the two with her head resting on Clara's shoulder as she begins to zone out in the vault.
"Charlotte?" says Maisie.
The woman turns her head. "Yeah?"
"This Doctor. He's your what, exactly?"
Charlotte's head lifted up from Clara's shoulder immediately but her shoulders slumped. "I mean, we're friends but sometimes we're not."
"I don't think that's true."
"It is," replied Charlotte with an exasperated shake of her head. "I would look at him, and he'd look at me like- like I'm not even there."
"Do you know why?" Maisie asks her, liking this distraction from her own problems.
Charlotte sighed. "No! There was this one thing that happened, but he said he got over it soon after... Yet he's still... ugh!" she groaned. "Hey! I'm the one who does the therapy on this ship." To be fair, she thought she was doing a better job at that than she did, but Charlotte wanted to bridge away from this topic.
Clara chuckles to herself. "We're stuck in this carriage, probably all night, and all you two are talking about is some man?"
"A very frustrating, annoying man," Charlotte corrects her.
"Why is he frustrating?" Clara asks, already knowing the answer.
"He was ignoring me, of course."
Listening along, Clara raises an eyebrow. "And how is that frustrating to you?"
Far quieter than before, Charlotte replies with, "It just is," to Clara's astonishment at the woman's obliviousness. However, both Clara and Maisie were left unaware Charlotte came up with an idea as to why. A humiliating idea, an idea that brings out her stupidity, and one where it can never come to life.
---
They soon changed the subject from Charlotte to Clara. "Oh, he was wrong," Maisie said in reaction to the information Clara gave her.
"Yes. Yes, he was," Clara agrees.
"And high-handed and thoughtless and- and- and arrogant beyond belief."
Charlotte nods. "Uh-huh."
"And you got on a train with him," said Maisie.
"I was saying goodbye. You can't end it on a slammed door."
Maisie shook her head. "Yes, you can," she corrected Clara. "Anyone can do it. People do it all the time. Except, of course, when they can't." Maisie sighed, looking around the room. "Life would be so much simpler if you liked the right people. People you're supposed to like."
"Life would be boring," Charlotte realizes.
Maisie gave a small smile. "I guess there'd be no fairy tales."
Lowering her head, Charlotte repeats herself, "Life would be boring, but it'd be practical. It'd be easier." Maisie wanted to say more but, when Charlotte's phone rings, she takes it out of her pocket to answer. "Doctor?"
"Wake up," he calls back. "It's time for breakfast and knowing this train, it'll taste amazing."
Charlotte scrunched her eyebrows, becoming focused. "Doctor, we're in trouble..."
"Can't even get that right, huh?"
"Doctor," stressed Charlotte.
"Bad food on trains is traditional."
"Doctor, can you-"
As he continued to speak, Charlotte took in a sharp breath. "Listen, there's been another mummy murder. You need to come up here..."
"Doc-"
"... because this is just a bit more interesting."
"Will you just listen to me?!" shouted Charlotte. "We're trapped!"
"What? Where are you?" he asked immediately. "Charlotte." There is a knock at the door and it is easily assumed it's him on the other side. "Is that you?"
"Yes. Hello," she said. "Can you hear us?"
The Doctor attempts to open the door, only for both the sonic and the keypad not letting him in. "Screwdriver's not working," he said at the other side of the door. "Must be some sort of suppression field. And it has to be a guess because, as I said, the stupid sonic screwdriver's not working. What are you even doing in there?"
This time, with the phone on speaker, Clara replies, "Well, I was looking for you, Mr. Nothing To Worry About."
"What, was I supposed to wake you up?" he questioned her. "Drag you out of bed because I had a hunch? I thought you didn't want to do this anymore."
Clara gave a puff of air. "Look- look, please, can we just not do this now? I think we might not be alone in here..." both her and Charlotte glance to an alcove in the vault, where a futuristic version of an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus stands. "There's a sarcophagus," she tells him.
"Is it in there?"
The sarcophagus begins to hum as the door opens slowly automatically. "I think we might just be about to find out," Clara says. "Turns out the sonic working. Just not on the door we needed."
"Clara," said the Doctor. "It's coming."
The sarcophagus' door finally opens all the way, but looking at the inside of it, they turned confused when seeing bubble wrap. "Doctor, it's okay," Clara responded. "It's, er, it's full of bubble wrap."
"But the lights?" On the other end of the call, the Doctor began speaking to someone else before continuing, "I'm going to have to call you back." Then, he hung up and they were left in the vault with the now open sarcophagus filled with bubble wrap and blinking lights inside.
_______
Next up: The Mummy & The Weak (Mummy on the Orient Express Part Two)
GIF FROM ottabenga ON TUMBLR
a/n: i had a different plan for this chapter but I changed out the thing that gets revealed (hehe) with something else to fit how the plot changed