“Yeah, I’ll bet you he already had money, probably from family,” Yaz mused.

Jo looked at her quizzically. “What makes you say that?”

She took a drink from her water before going on, “he had to pay for the warehouse somehow,” she cocked her head for effect, “and I guarantee no one is buying those curtains. I mean the room was practically full, and those boxes had dust on them. And he said they’d been in business for a few months.”

Jo stared at her for a beat, before dropping her head back in laughter. Yaz smiled, feeling as though Jo’s joy was somehow infectious. Jo finally stopped laughing to say, “I don’t doubt it, those curtains were hideous!” They both chuckled again. “Brilliant observations,” Jo added, “I didn’t think about the dust.” She cocked an eyebrow at Yaz, impressed.

Yaz blushed at the compliment, “it was nothing.”

“And the way you took over the explanation like it was nothing so that he would talk to us?” She was angled toward Yaz and held her gaze as she took a sip of the new drink she had apparently acquired, “as I said before. Police skills. Thought they might come in handy,” Jo said with an easy grin.

Yaz froze slightly at the look the Doctor—Jo, not the Doctor— gave her. She looked away and focused instead on her water as she replied, “thanks, yeah, I guess that did come in handy.” She avoided looking at Jo, but she could still feel Jo’s eyes on her from out of the corner of her eye.

“Gotta say, Yaz I’m glad we got paired up on this,” Jo said frankly. Yaz finally looked back at her and saw that Jo was now turning the condensation coated glass around in her hands. She looked back up at Yaz and continued, “always nice to have a partner you can rely on to be helpful,” she said and glanced at Yaz up and down again, “and that you like. Not always that lucky,” she smirked and winked at Yaz, and turned away to drink some more.

Yaz stared at her for a few seconds. “Yeah, I get that,” she finally got out. It wasn’t much, but she was having trouble finding anything more competent to say given that her brain was somewhat short-circuiting over that wink.

They sat a little while longer at the bar, chatting and drinking until eventually opting to head back to the room and make a plan for the next day. By then it was after six, and Jo pointed out that people were likely to already have gone home, so there was no point in checking out another location that day. Yaz added that Jo might be too inebriated to continue interrogating anyone. Jo tried to argue, but almost immediately tripped over a plant near the wall of the corridor which she adamantly claimed she did not see there. Yaz laughed at her. “Okay, but that might be worse,” she said, to which Jo responded by sticking her tongue out. She relented but insisted that she could still work through files with Yaz with little issue. They reached the room’s door after a short ride in the elevator, and Jo let Yaz in before her.

Jo got to work showing Yaz around some of the more detailed files and reports they had skipped over earlier in the day. Jo showed Yaz the four remaining warehouse lease forms they had copies of. All of them had been rented out in the past few months, and none of them had particularly specific descriptions of the reason for the rental. One said “shipping for a small business,” another simply read “building.” Jo explained that she had combed through many more leases, most of which went into more detail about whatever they were storing or selling, some even including names and social media handles for their businesses in the descriptions. She had thoroughly checked out those businesses and decided they seemed to check out. These five were the ones she had a feeling would house the aliens’ work unless they had broken into an empty warehouse, in which case the search would probably become even more tedious, and she was just hoping this would work out first. After hours of going over everything they could, Yaz felt like an expert on the previous arrival of the Ralmaeth and anything that they could throw at them now, and both Jo and Yaz were ready to collapse, wanting to get an early start to the second warehouse in the morning.

It was then that Yaz realized that she didn’t have a change of clothes or any pyjamas. She opted for just sleeping in her clothes but wondered if Jo had any luggage, mainly because the Doctor always wore virtually the same thing, and she wondered if Jo was the same. Jo helped Yaz pull out the sofa bed and put sheets on it before heading to the bathroom to take a shower. Yaz sat on the bed to go back over the events and revelations of the day.

She sat there processing everything for what must have been the fifth time, but just so much had happened. After spending half the day with Jo, she was starting to like her. She felt conflicted knowing that she was still the Doctor, and would ultimately turn back into her —by Yaz’s hand no less— but for now, she was someone completely different. And it felt strange because she missed the Doctor too. She was her friend, maybe her best friend.

And if she was being honest with herself, she even wanted her to be more than that. But she was the Doctor. She was an alien, apparently thousands of years old, and functionally immortal, not to mention probably completely out of her league. She was brilliant and kind and mad. Yaz got distracted thinking about her. That seemed to happen quite often. And now she was different. Human. Jo was almost nothing like the Doctor. She made snide remarks and drank. She flirted with Yaz. The Doctor never did that. And now that Jo had, she wondered…

Just how different was Jo? Her personality and memories were different, but what about her feelings? She seemed to share the Doctor’s affinity for adventure, and she was definitely brainy. But what did the flirting mean? Was she just flirting for fun? Some people were like that, Yaz supposed, they just flirted with no real intention behind the words. It could be just part of her personality. But what if it wasn’t? What if she did like her? Was that something she shared with the Doctor? Or was that just Jo? And what if it was just Jo? What did that mean for Yaz? If what she felt for the Doctor was returned by Jo, what happened when Jo disappeared? And what would the Doctor remember of this?

Yaz obsessed in circles. She waited for Jo to emerge from the bathroom before they both got ready to go to sleep. When she got into bed, she found herself laying down, staring at the ceiling, and continuing to obsess, the woman who was the object of her obsessions lying in the bed just a couple meters away.

An hour later, Yaz had parked and was making her way up to the entrance of the hotel. It was nice, about four stories high, and surrounded by nice bushes on the path. She made her way through the lobby, noting the check-in desk on her left, and the entrance to the bar and restaurant. She looked around to find an elevator and made her way over. When the doors slid open, the back of the elevator was a mirror, and Yaz found she was face to face with herself. She pressed the button for 3 and waited. The trip was short, and she was soon in front of room 310. Still a little confused, she raised her fist to knock on the wooden door.

A few moments passed, and a familiar voice came from the other side. “Who’s that?” she asked abruptly. Yaz could tell she must be just beyond the door.

She eyed the peephole with slight confusion, and called back, “it’s Yaz.” She waited for a moment, expecting the door to swing in, and the Doctor to welcome her in and explain everything.

Instead, “Y-A-Z?” the voice called back with it’s thick, northern twang.

Yaz blinked. “… Yes?”

There was another beat before the door rattled slightly, the sound of disengaging locks. Finally, it swung open to reveal… the Doctor? But she was dressed in a black leather jacket, dark jeans, and combat boots, and her hair was styled wavier than usual. And she was wearing makeup. The Doctor never did that.

She looked Yaz up and down and spoke finally, “I thought they might be initials,” she said simply.

Yaz blinked again, more confused by the second. “What?”

“Yaz. Y-A-Z. I thought they were initials,” she dug into her pocket and produced an envelope, smoothing it out slightly. “I’m Joanna. Jo to my friends. If I had any,” she said, “nice to meet you.”

Yaz stared at her, “meet?”

The Doctor — Joanna? — held the envelope out to Yaz, “I’m supposed to give this to you, apparently.” She waited expectantly for Yaz to take it.

Completely lost, Yaz reached out to take the envelope. As she took it, she noticed the Doctor was wearing a few random silver rings. Those were new. She examined the envelope. Scrawled across it were two sloppily spaced sentences. “DO NOT READ.” The words were underlined angrily. Under them, it said, “Deliver to YAZ.” With her name capitalized, it did look like they could be initials. But that didn’t answer even the least pressing of her questions.

She slid a fingernail under the lip of the envelope, but was interrupted by the Doctor saying “you gonna read that in the hallway?” Yaz looked up at her, she was stood in the doorway, arms crossed over chest, giving Yaz a sort of amused look. She moved to open the door more to let Yaz into the room. Yaz stepped in and looked around while the other woman clicked the door shut behind her and slid the locks back into place. The walls were covered in pictures, documents, and pages that seemed to have been torn out of a notebook and taped up. It was like something out of a film, the only thing it was missing was a bunch of red string. She saw there were a few open files sitting on the desk as well and a laptop pushed into the corner. The Doctor stood beside her, her arms crossed again.

Yaz glanced back at her and gestured to the wall, “what’s all this?”

The Doctor surveyed the chaos. “Our mission,” she stated. She then turned her attention back to the envelope in Yaz’s hand. “You gonna read that letter? I’ve been carrying it around for days, I want to know what it says. Although I’m not the one who’s supposed to read it. So…” she nodded to punctuate her point.

“You’ve been carrying it for days? But you only called me an hour ago?”

The Doctor stuck out her bottom lip in thought and shook her head slightly, “no, I didn’t,” she replied, “this is the first we’ve talked.”

Yaz stared at her again. Finally, she opted to just read the letter and give up asking questions. She broke the seal of the envelope as carefully as she could.

She drew the letter out and unfolded it. It held the same handwriting as the envelope.

Yaz, Don’t Read Aloud

“So?” said the Doctor, “I’m curious to know what I’ve been carrying.” “It says not to read aloud,” replied Yaz.

The Doctor looked slightly dejected, but then shrugged. “Damn. Makes sense, though. In case someone is listening.”

Yaz looked back down and continued to read.

I know what you’re thinking. The woman you’re with — yes, she is me, but no, she’s not ME. Long story short, I’ve temporarily made myself human. The woman you see has no idea she is the Doctor, and for the time being, you can’t tell her. Right now, her name is Joanna — she is a UNIT Field Operative currently investigating some aliens known as the Ralmaeth. The thing is UNIT doesn’t currently exist, their operations were suspended, but she doesn’t know that she’ll just think her mission calls for total radio silence to UNIT because the Ralmaeth might intercept any transmissions or messages.

This is where you come in, the Ralmaeth would be able to sense me coming, we’ve crossed paths before, so I’ve had to disguise myself for this, but they need to be stopped. Now in this form, I’m not as durable as usual, so I need you to keep an eye on me, if I’m reckless, don’t let me get myself killed. And don’t let me get you killed of course. She’s expecting you to be a fellow operative teamed up with her, so she’ll trust you. Ask Joanna to brief you on the mission and she’ll tell you what she knows. Help her investigate, help her stop them. When you’ve done that, I have one last task for you.

She’s carrying a fob watch. She won’t really think about it or even really notice it, but when your mission is done, I need you to have her open it. That’s how I’ll return to normal. I have faith in you, Yaz.

The Doctor

P.S. Obviously, don’t let Joanna read this. Tell her it was just a quick memo on the mission or something.

Yaz looked up at the woman in front of her. Joanna. The Doctor, but human, and unaware of the Doctor. She folded up the letter and pushed it into her jacket pocket.

Joanna raised an eyebrow. “Just a memo on the mission,” she recited the excuse from the Doctor, “can you brief me on what you know about our mission and the Ralmaeth?”

Joanna smiled, a glint shining in her eye, “Absolutely,” she replied and made her way to the wall of pictures and documents.

Yaz stared at her for a moment. Gallifrey should not be something Jo was aware of. But Jo didn’t seem to notice anything strange about her remark. Yaz wondered if she should ask what she meant, to test Jo for any residual awareness of the Doctor.

Before she got the chance, Jo turned on her heel, facing Yaz and preparing to explain something, as usual.

“Right, so, we clearly found the Ralmaeth, and based on the big machines, I’m going to consider my previous theory that they were building bigger versions of their old sleeping battery headsets all but confirmed.” She gestured toward her drawing and the old headset plans pinned up just next to them. “So now, we transition into the ‘stop them’ portion of our mission.”

Yaz nodded and decided now would be her only time to interject with questions before Jo really kicked off. “So how come those two guys looked the same? Were they like twins or something?”

Jo shook her head, “no, that was a perception filter. Good with brainwaves, remember? My guess is they are using something to make us see them as humanoid since usually, they aren’t,” she explained, “normally they’re big and greenish with antennae, so they’re using perception filters to blend in. But their filters only do one guy, so the brain replaces all of them with that one guy, ‘Mr. Al Armet.’” She drew quotes in the air with her fingers, “which, mind you, isn’t even a clever name. An anagram? How thick do they think we are?” Jo chuckled.

Yaz hadn’t even realized, but Jo was right. The name was an anagram for Ralmaeth. She shrugged, “I guess they were hoping we wouldn’t make the connection to the Ralmaeth,” she said. “What was on the lease?”

Jo turned and found the paper in question. “Um, it just says ‘Thiokol Co.’” Jo shrugged, “so there was no actual name, just a fake company one. That’s why I didn’t notice them. Thiokol is a polymer used in sealants, so I thought they might be a chemical company.”

Yaz walked over to study the drawings of the machines, “so now we find a way to destroy them, yeah?” She looked at Jo and asked, “so how do we go about that?”

Jo looked at the wall and thought for a minute. “First we find a weakness, and then we exploit it,” she said, pointing at the drawing, “for example, these machines are structured very similarly to the old spaceships the Ralmaeth came in in the ‘70s. Looks like the same metal and the same rivets.” Jo grinned, “we can use that.”

“How do you mean?”

Jo went into her files and pulled out a series of papers about the Ralmaeths’ ships, showing photographs of a ship both intact and disassembled. “So back in the ‘70s, when the Doctor chased the Ralmaeth off-world, they left one ship behind,” she looked at Yaz, anticipating her question, “engine problems. They landed in five ships, but only left in four. They were in a hurry, and must not have felt like fixing it was all that worth it. The Doctor has that effect.” Yaz was still thrown off by hearing Jo refer to the Doctor in the Third Person, especially using masculine pronouns, but she brushed it off to focus again. “Since they left it, UNIT took the opportunity to study it. Took it apart, put it back together again, ran tests on it, learned all the ins and outs of that ship. And there are some pretty crucial flaws.” She showed Yaz an image of a few sheets of metal riveted together. Jo was right, they looked exactly like the machines in the warehouse. But the metal shell in the picture looked bent and cracked.

She pointed at the photograph, “why is it all bent up and broken in that one?”

Jo grinned at Yaz, “good eye, that’s the flaw. The metal the Ralmaeth used in their ships is sensitive to the cold. It becomes unstable and warps and breaks easily,” she explained, tracing a crack on the metal with her finger. “It doesn’t even have to be that cold. Rubbish for space travel, honestly, so the Ralmaeth had a heat shell. It could be activated from inside, and would keep the metal warm enough not to warp.” She pinned up the photograph on the wall, “If you were to take off in less than warm conditions, the ship would start leaking, and might explode. That’s what basically happened to the Challenger,” Jo gave her a serious look.

“So how do we apply that to these machines?” Yaz wondered aloud.

“Exactly,” Jo was smirking again, “did you feel how hot it was in that warehouse?” Come to think of it, she had. Yaz nodded as Jo continued. “They know that their metal is weaker in the cold, so they use the warehouse’s climate control to keep it stable. So we can do the same, but in the opposite direction.”

Yaz blinked at the wall. “We’re gonna destroy their machines… with climate control?” she asked, somewhat disbelieving.

Jo shrugged defensively, “not just climate control,” she clarified, “making it cold would destabilize the metal, but it wouldn’t do any serious enough structural damage to stop them, and it’s easily fixed by just turning the heating back on or moving them. So we’ll need something else.”

Jo got to work drawing a new device in her notebook. Yaz wandered over to look over her shoulder. She couldn’t tell what it was meant to be or do from sight alone, and she questioned how Jo would even get it.

“So what’s that then?” Yaz asked Jo.

“Seismic Device,” Jo said simply.

“Seismic? Like an earthquake?”

“Exactly,” Jo tore out the completed blueprint, and Yaz was once again shocked by how quickly Jo had drawn it.

“So where are we meant to get that?”

Jo looked at her dead in the eye, “we build it.”

Yaz stared at her. She knew that the Doctor was the building type, but she questioned why her human persona who was meant to be a field agent would be able to. “How are we gonna do that exactly?” Jo scoffed, “are you doubtin’ me, Yaz?”

Yaz shook her head, “no, it’s just I don’t know the first thing about how to build a seismic device, how do you?”

Jo smiled and winked at her smugly, “I studied Mechanical Engineering in Uni. I’m a woman of many talents,” she stated.

“No kidding,” Yaz muttered under her breath. Jo gave her a quick, smug look, and she realized she had been heard.

As Jo started to work on something on her computer, Yaz remembered Jo’s previous comment about having wanted to be a Doctor when she was young, and she wondered how she moved from that to Mechanical Engineering.

It was a few minutes before she suddenly remembered that Jo wasn’t even real. Her motives for changing intended careers or study paths were irrelevant because they didn’t even exist. They were all false memories compiled to make her believably human, even to herself.

It was just then that Yaz suddenly realized that she would soon be saying goodbye to Jo. She’d been so focused on the Doctor returning, she hadn’t really thought about it, but now she was hit with the weight of what she would have to do. Regardless of the realness of her memories and her past, Jo was real for now. Yaz knew that she was different from the Doctor. And all of that was going to disappear when Yaz made her open the watch.

Jo stepped up to greet him as Yaz cast a glance around the entrance hall, catching sight of a single surveillance camera over the receptionist desk. So he had seen them coming. She looked around and down the hall, but didn’t see anymore. She didn’t remember seeing one outside the entrance but would have to check to be sure.

Yaz zoned back in when she heard Jo introduce her, giving the same bogus explanation for their arrival as she had at the previous locations they had seen. Jo extended a hand for the man to shake. He stared down at it, and back at Jo, the look on his face grumpy, and possibly hostile.

After a few awkward moments during which Yaz swore Jo was having a staring contest with the stranger, he shook her hand. “I’m Al Armet,” he said in an American accent. Yaz scrutinized the man warily. He released Jo’s hand. “I signed the lease. I’m sorry you had to come all this way for nothing, but I can assure you, everything here is totally up to code.”

Jo nodded, disbelieving, and shared a quick look with Yaz. “I’m sure it is, Mr. Armet, if we could just take a quick look around-”

“No, no,” he interrupted hastily, “I’m sorry, but I’m just too busy for this.” Jo cocked her head slightly, and he rushed to continue, “if you come back in, say, three days, I’d be happy to give you a tour then, but I have to get back to work.” He moved toward the pair, clearly intending to push them back toward the door.

Jo stood her ground for a minute, thinking, before finally saying, “okay, sure. Three days then. Yaz?” she turned toward her as if confirming the plan. Yaz nodded uncertainly, and Jo grinned back at her. “Great, we will see you then.”

Mr. Armet gave a half-smile, and Jo turned to head out the front door. Yaz watched as Mr. Armet retreated into the warehouse, and followed Jo out. She stopped just outside the door to scan the entryway quickly and jogged to catch up with Jo, who was now leaning against the car.

“We’re not actually leaving, are we?” Yaz said.

“Course not, he’s obviously hiding something,” Jo replied with a chuckle. She nodded toward the door before asking, “what were you looking at?”

“Inside, he came to intercept us in the entryway, but we didn’t do anything to alert him. So I noticed that there was a security camera mounted on the ceiling above the receptionist’s desk.”

Jo nodded, “but there wasn’t one outside the front door?”

“No,” Yaz confirmed, “I think the one in the entrance hall is the only one.”

Jo furrowed her eyebrows, “how can you be so sure?”

Yaz smirked, “it wasn’t built into the ceiling, it was just a small one screwed in and plugged into an outlet up there. It was more like a nanny cam. They usually stream live to one account over the WiFi, and there aren’t usually more than one of them.” Jo nodded, impressed. “Since it’s a short-term rental, and they don’t seem to have much staff, they probably don’t have much of a security system, just that camera.”

Jo grinned at Yaz, “very good point, officer,” she winked playfully. “That’ll make it easy enough to break in, then,” she added as she started toward the right side of the building.

“We’re breaking in? How?” Yaz walked quickly to catch up to Jo and walk by her side.

“Well, it’s a big enough building,” Jo said making a wide turn around the corner, “there’s bound to be another entrance.”

Sure enough, in the middle of the right side of the building, there was a plain door. Jo smirked again and made a bee-line for the door. The wall was also lined with windows, through which Yaz saw unused office spaces and empty rooms full of folded up chairs, some of them also containing tables. The warehouse was huge, clearly intended for some large business to use the large warehouse as well as multiple offices and conference rooms, but the whole place seemed deserted outside of whoever hid within the main room. She came up alongside Jo, who was working to pick the lock. Yaz thought about the Sonic Screwdriver. That always seemed to do the job, and she wondered where the Doctor had left it.

After a few minutes of work, Jo got the door open. She winked at Yaz and put a finger to her lips. She tugged the door open quietly. They were greeted by a darkened hallway and not a soul in sight. Jo and Yaz made their way into the building, looking up and down the hall. On one side, the hall was lined with doors into the office spaces she had seen from the outside, a small amount of sunlight streaming in through the windows on the doors. On the opposite side of the hall, she could only see one door, a few meters to their right. There were some distant sounds coming from the door, and Jo and Yaz made their way to it. Through a small window on that door, Yaz noticed that the view of the room was obstructed by a large stack of crates. Yaz and Jo exchanged a look, and together, they pushed into the main warehouse. They peered around the crates at the space. It was much larger than the others they had been to, the ceiling checkered with lighting fixtures and skylights, and covered with latticework. Yaz noticed a metal balcony toward the back of the warehouse. She tried to visualize how to get onto it, guessing that the staircase to reach it was at the end of the hallway they had entered from. She then turned her focus to the five massive machines standing scattered across the floor of the warehouse. She noticed that Jo was studying them closely, her forehead creased in concentration. Yaz looked at them as well, taking in their massive shape. They were rounded on the tops with three long antennae mounted on top. They were made up of sheets of metal, held together by rickets. On one of them, she saw that there was an open face, hundreds of wires and cords exposed. Lying nearby was a panel she supposed would eventually be installed onto the machine to act as controls. Yaz opened her mouth to ask Jo about the machines, but before she could, she heard voices come from somewhere past the machines.

Jo heard them, too, and the two of them squatted down against the crates, getting out of sight. One of the voices she recognized as Mr. Armet’s, but the other one was almost exactly the same as him. Jo turned to look around the crates. The men apparently did not notice her, so Yaz leaned over to peer around as well. She saw Mr. Armet and… a second Mr. Armet. Twins perhaps? She tuned in, straining to hear their conversation.

“As you can see they are almost all complete. Even the ones that haven’t been fully assembled are completely tamper-proof,” one of the Mr. Armets explained.

The second Mr. Armet surveyed the incomplete machine. “How long before they’re ready?” he asked.

“Three days, I predict,” he responded, “and we are undiscovered?”

“There were some inspectors by, but we chased them off for a few days,” the other one replied.

“Good, then let’s get back to work.” The two Mr. Armets nodded at each other and split up, walking off in two different directions.

When they were out of sight, Jo tried to turn to talk to Yaz, only to find her leaning over her, now only a couple inches from her face.

Yaz and Jo looked at each other, startled. Yaz hadn’t realized just how close she had been to Jo, and she pulled back, blushing awkwardly. Jo raised an eyebrow at her before saying, “we’ve found our place, now we have to destroy these things.”

Yaz stared at her for a second, “destroy?” she repeated, feeling a little dumb, but still a little flustered, and vaguely distressed by Jo’s general casualness about the situation.

Jo nodded, “Mr. Armet said they’re tamper-proof, so we destroy them, and see to it these things don’t come back.” Yaz nodded thoughtfully. “Now shall we go. Or we could just stay here while I watch you get all cute and blushy again,” she winked at Yaz, smirking mischievously.

Yaz felt her face burn even more, as Jo just chuckled and stood, making her way back to the door. Yaz stared after her for a moment, completely at a loss. She followed Jo helplessly back to the car.

Once back on the road, the pair sat in quiet for several minutes. Yaz considered asking about the machines but was still struggling with how to say anything to the women. She glanced at the woman to her left. Jo was looking out the window with an unfamiliar look of anxiety. Well, unfamiliar for Jo, Yaz mused. She actually seemed to look more like the Doctor at the moment. Less cool and certain, more brooding. And maybe a little nervous, although that didn’t seem as much like the Doctor.

Before Yaz could manage to speak, Jo did. “Sorry… If I made you uncomfortable. I was joking,” Yaz saw her glance at her quickly, “mostly.”

Yaz was quiet for a minute. She couldn’t tell if Jo was expecting a response or not, she was staring back out the window. “It’s fine, I was just… surprised is all.” She looked over and caught Jo’s eyes for a second. Jo nodded hesitantly. Yaz weighed her next words in her mind, debating whether or not she should say them. “I think you’re cute, too,” she said finally. She bit her lip nervously and kept her eyes trained on the road ahead, though she could see Jo’s head snap toward her in surprise out of the corner of her eye. Yaz panicked slightly, suddenly worried that she had said the wrong thing.

Then she noticed Jo grin. Jo looked pleased. Yaz cast a quick look at her, noting the tint to her cheeks.

“Right,” said Jo after a second, giving a satisfied nod, “good.”

Yaz smiled slightly, but she felt it drop a few moments later. She probably shouldn’t have done that. What would the Doctor think? Would she even remember this? And what did it mean that Jo seemed to like her? Did it mean that the Doctor…

Jo glanced over to Yaz. She hesitated for a second before answering. “Huddersfield,” she finally responded. Yaz nodded thoughtfully, the answer made sense with the Doctor’s accent. She wondered if the Doctor had planned that specifically. If not, how much of Jo had been automatically generated by whatever process the Doctor had undergone to become human? Jo cut into her thoughts. “What ‘bout you?” she said.

“Here, actually,” Yaz replied, “I’m from Sheffield.”

Jo nodded, “convenient mission for you, then,” she commented.

Yaz looked at her briefly. “Yeah, it is.” So much for no aliens in Sheffield, she scoffed internally. She decided to press a little further. She was curious to ask about UNIT but decided to avoid it, in the case that asking triggered some realization. Instead, “chasing down aliens. Not really where I saw my life going growing up,” she said.

“No kidding,” Jo chuckled lightly, “when I was a kid, I wanted to be a Doctor,” she said. Yaz blinked but didn’t say anything. “How I wound up doing this, I have no idea.” Jo threaded her fingers together behind her head, leaned back in her seat, and turned her head to look at Yaz more fully. “What did you want to be?” she asked.

Jo was doing the small talk for her, Yaz thought with amusement. She considered how she would answer, and decided the truth wouldn’t be too dangerous. “I was a police officer, actually,” she said.

Jo raised her eyebrows. “You were a cop?” there was a hint of mirth in her voice.

“Well, I was a probationer,” she said. She cocked an eyebrow at Jo. “Why? What’s that look for?”

Jo shook her head lightly. “Nothing,” she said, “just, I’ve met a few police, had to deal with them on the occasional mission. So many of them are so stubborn, refuse to believe even what’s right in front of them.” She looked back at Yaz. “But not you?”

Yaz thought of the first time she met the Doctor. She wondered if Jo’s comment was based on some residual memory of that day, and of her. “Actually, I kind of was,” she mused.

“What changed?” Jo asked.

Yaz suppressed her instinct to respond, “you.” Instead, she went the vague route. “Saw something I couldn’t deny,” she responded. “Once I knew what was out there,” she looked over to Jo, holding her gaze for a moment, “well, there’s really no going back to normal after that, is there?”

Jo studied her. “Guess not.”

Yaz turned her eyes back to the road. “What about you?” she asked, “what were you doing before this?”

Jo looked back out the window of the car. “I was just traveling. Got dragged into this stuff by chance.” A very vague answer, Yaz thought. “We keep up this ‘getting-to-know-each-other’ talk, and this’ll start to feel more like a first date than a mission,” Jo quipped. Yaz scoffed, slightly shocked by the comment. She saw Jo drag her eyes over Yaz from out of the corner of her eye. “Not that I’m complaining,” Jo drawled.

Yaz felt her face get hot, and she looked over at Jo. A smirk played across her face when she met her eyes. Yaz looked away quickly. Her thoughts raced for a minute before she realized they had arrived at the warehouse.

“We’re here,” she blurted, looking for anything to kill the buzzing in her head. She parked and started to unbuckle and get out when Jo stopped her.

“Hang on just a second,” she said. Yaz stared at her in confusion. “We’re going to go in there and talk to the renters and find out what they’re using the warehouse for.”

Yaz suddenly remembered what they were her to do. “Right, so how do we get them to talk to us?” she asked.

Jo reached into a pocket of her jacket and produced a familiar leather object. “Psychic paper,” Jo announced, “this’ll get us in.” She smiled confidently.

Yaz nodded. “Okay, that’ll work,” she said.

Jo went to unbuckle her seat belt as she explained, “since I have the psychic paper and the info, I’ll do most of the talking. Follow my lead, keep an eye out for anything weird that you might see,” she looked up and met Yaz’s eyes, “and use those police skills to see if they say anything shifty.”

Yaz nodded again, “it’s a plan,” she said.

Jo grinned and climbed out of the car, Yaz following suit. She locked the car and they approached the entrance together.

The building was large and relatively plain. There was a set of steel stairs leading up to the door. She could see big metal panels she guessed could probably be opened for loading and unloading trucks. Jo and Yaz climbed the steps together. Jo tried the door, which opened easily. It lead immediately into the main warehouse. The ceilings were high, there were boxes all over the room on palettes, and there was music echoing around the place from a stereo somewhere in the back. The echoes garbled the sound too much to actually identify what was playing. Yaz and Jo scanned the room, but there was no one immediately visible. Yaz heard someone laugh from somewhere to the right of the large room. She and Jo exchanged a look, and she knew Jo heard it, too. They made their way toward the sound. They discovered a small office in the back right corner of the warehouse. Through the window, Yaz saw a man sitting in a chair, facing away from them, and on the phone.

They approached the office, and Jo knocked on the open door. The man turned in his chair to see them, and Jo gave a small wave. He turned to speak into his phone. “Hold on just a minute, mate, someone’s here to talk to me I think,” he said. He waited for a few beats, and Jo gave Yaz an exasperated glance. “Alright, I’ll call you back in a bit,” he said and tucked the phone into his pocket. He stood and wandered over to where Yaz and Jo stood. Yaz took in his jeans, ripped at the knees, his plain grey tee, and his ratty flannel jacket. Unimpressive, but not particularly alien, she thought. “Hi, can I help you?” the guy said.

Jo produced the psychic paper once again, showing it to him. “Hi, we’re from the rental company,” he squinted at the psychic paper and then looked at Jo, “we just wanted to ask a couple questions,” Jo explained. “What’s your name?”

He looked between the two women. He was only an inch or two taller than either of them. “Carl Mason. I’m not in trouble for anything, am I?” he said nervously, “I thought all of our rental stuff was in order.”

“It is, we just need a few details about your usage of the space,” Jo continued. Her voice was level, professional in a way the Doctor rarely was.

Carl looked confused and a little suspicious, so Yaz decided to add in, “don’t worry, it’s nothing bad. We just had an issue with a renter using a space,” she paused for effect, “inappropriately.” Carl nodded, as if knowingly. “So now we need to check in with the renters with more vague descriptions of usage in the application.”

Apparently satisfied, Carl started to walk over to a small filing cabinet in the office. Jo gave Yaz an impressed look. Carl came back with a manila folder. “Well, no issues here, just me and some mates selling our curtains.” He handed the folder to Yaz, and she opened it to find a series of curtain designs.

Jo leaned over to look at the folder. “Curtains?” she asked, looking back up at Carl. Yaz flipped through at least five pages of some of the ugliest curtain designs she’d ever seen.

Carl nodded proudly. “Yep! Me and my mates designed them ourselves!” he announced happily.

“It shows,” Jo muttered under her breath, just loud enough for Yaz to hear, but not so much that Carl seemed to notice. Yaz glanced at Jo, stifling a chuckle.

Yaz closed the folder and passed it back to Carl as Jo said, “Right, thanks, mind if we take a look at some of your boxes? And then we’ll be out of your hair.”

Carl nodded and said, “sure, go for it.”

Jo and Yaz split off to explore the warehouse. Yaz scanned the whole room, looking for anything out of place while Jo pulled open a few cardboard boxes and dug through their contents. Neither found anything noteworthy. They came back together, Jo shook her head and Yaz shrugged slightly. They turned to say goodbye to Carl, but he had already disappeared back into his little office, now typing something on his computer.

Jo looked at Yaz. “D’you just want to go get a drink or something?”

Joanna nodded, apparently satisfied, and went on, “so the Doctor had been suspicious of their arrival on Earth, and he insisted on investigating them further. What he found was these plans.” She pointed to a print out of some complicated plans for what Yaz thought looked like a headset. “This is a device that when placed on a sleeping person can keep them asleep indefinitely, and from what I understand, transmit their brainwaves in the form of something they can somehow use to power machinery.” Joanna looked back at Yaz, who was studying the plans with a baffled look and breathed a chuckle. “Yeah, I don’t know, either. Apparently, it can turn a sleeping person into a living battery. Not too good for the person, though, seeing as they never get to wake up and just deteriorate slowly.”

Yaz stepped closer to get a better look at the stuff on the wall, the blueprint for the alien device, and the photograph apparently of the Doctor. She saw Joanna standing next to her, watching her, and she realized she was waiting for her to give some indication that she understood everything explained. “Okay,” Yaz started, “so if these aliens were here in 1972, and the Doctor dealt with them, then they were stopped from using these things, right?” She looked to Joanna, who nodded. “So what are they doing back? And,” she paused, leaning in to scan the old document hanging at about eye level, “this all happened in London. So why are they in Sheffield now?” Joanna seemed to study her for a moment. “Last time, they tried to land discreetly in some random part of the moors, but UNIT noticed them, and brought all business with them to London.” She indicated a satellite image of Sheffield, “this time they came here specifically for this. We know that they have advanced technology, I think they may have studied us. They came here and appear to have rented a warehouse.”

Yaz gaped at Joanna. “A warehouse?” she said, “they’re aliens, what do they need a warehouse for?”

“To build something,” replied Joanna. She leaned back against the desk and crossed her right foot over her left. “Last time, their device would have worked on a small scale. This time they’ll be looking to work on a much bigger scale, which means bigger machinery, and they need somewhere to store it all. Hence the warehouses.”

“How did you find out about all of this?” Yaz asked, mostly to see how she would respond. She was curious to find out how deep this disguise ran.

Joanna narrowed her eyes a little, “I read the mission briefing,” she answered. She reached over and picked up one of the files on the desk she leaned against and extended it toward Yaz. The look on her face and her tone told Yaz that she thought it was obvious, and a bit of a ridiculous question to ask.

Yaz decided she needed to say something else. If she wanted Joanna to trust her and work with her, it would help if she didn’t think Yaz was some idiot. “Right, ‘course, I meant how did UNIT find out?” she tried as Joanna scrutinized her. “About them returning, that is,” she looked for something to ask that Joanna wouldn’t judge her so much for. Even though she knew Joanna wasn’t exactly the Doctor, she still didn’t like the idea of the Doctor thinking she was stupid.

Fortunately, Joanna seemed to accept Yaz’s clarification, and explained, “UNIT detected the Ralmaeth landing again, and knew pretty certainly that they would be up to no good. They located them in the warehouse district, and to be honest, the machinery stuff is mostly speculation based on their previous activity and reasonable use for a warehouse. They sent us to determine exactly where they are, what they are up to, and stop them if need be.” Joanna craned her neck to study her information-covered wall, and hummed thoughtfully, “I think that’s most of it. You can consult the files for more details from UNIT. Oh, and,” she pointed at a cluster of papers on the wall and explained, “I went through the rented warehouses in the area and narrowed down these five, which when rented did not give clear answers for what they would be used for. That’s our first lead. If those don’t pan out, we can take a look at the ones that haven’t been rented in case they’re using one illegally. Take your time going through this stuff, we’ll head out to one of the warehouses whenever you’re ready to go,” she finished. Joanna patted the desk as if to punctuate her sentence. She picked up the laptop on the desk and walked over to the couch. She sat down as if she was falling, crossing her legs in such a way that her left boot was on the floor, and the right boot was on the couch under her left knee.

Yaz studied her for a moment. She relaxed so differently from the Doctor. The Doctor would sit down and lean forward, always eager, and listening. Joanna sat with her shoulders back against the couch, as if nothing in the world affected her. Yaz kept looking for differences, her general posture, the way that despite the fact that it was the same face, her resting expression was completely different from the Doctor’s. When the Doctor looked neutral, she still kept her eyes wider, always alert, and ready for the next exciting thing to happen. Joanna’s eyes were lidded, and her mouth turned down in the corners. She had what Yaz thought was the most attractive resting-bitch-face she’d ever seen. Joanna had a devil-may-care attitude totally different from any the Doctor ever had, but damn if it didn’t work for her.

Yaz pulled her focus away from the other woman. She felt her cheeks burn, suddenly hyper-aware that she had been staring, and not wanting to get caught. She turned instead to the files Joanna had given her and flipped the folder open. She scanned them. Joanna had already gone over most of it, and what she hadn’t gone over was technical specifics on how UNIT had supposedly detected the Ralmaeth’s arrival. She looked up at the old document documenting similar events in the ’70s. She had only heard of UNIT when the Doctor had occasionally mentioned them in passing, citing some time she had apparently spent working with them. It seemed that she had been referring to some time in the ’70s if these documents were to be believed about the Doctor’s involvement then. But the letter had explained that UNIT’s services were suspended, which meant the files she held were fake, put together to perpetuate the illusion for her clueless human self. Yaz thought about the logistics of Joanna’s mission. Sending just one or even two operatives to investigate and stop someone already known to be hostile and potentially dangerous? Yaz didn’t know much about UNIT, but she knew it was absurd for a military operation to send two people to deal with something so potentially threatening, and with no way of requesting back-up. It was a flimsy story, and Joanna must really not have questioned it, or she would have probably seen through it in a second. It was definitely not how the police would handle something, mused Yaz, but the Doctor had asked her to play along, and that’s what she would do.

Yaz considered the information Joanna had given her and the explanation from the Doctor's note and tried to piece together the full picture. The Doctor had encountered the Ralmaeth in the ’70s and now felt the need to literally become a human to face them again. Yaz’s best explanation was that the Ralmaeth likely had some way of detecting the Doctor. If a criminal thought the authorities were onto them, they disappeared, went underground. Joanna said they had technology that dealt with brainwaves, and the old documents said that they had demonstrated proficiency with understanding brainwaves outside of their sleep-inducing headsets. Maybe they had some way of detecting differences in brainwaves. The Doctor, being an alien, and a genius, would have very unique brainwaves from humans, hence needing to be disguised. Yaz considered if UNIT was still in operation, they would likely actually be dealing with this. With them gone, the Doctor must have seen this convoluted plot as the only viable option for stopping whatever the Ralmaeth had planned without scaring them into hiding, making it that much harder to find and stop them. Yaz looked at the five sheets with rental information Joanna had put up, and wondered briefly if aliens doing something probably horrible that they didn’t want discovered would bother renting a warehouse. She looked at Joanna and decided that if she saw this as a lead, it was a start at least.

While she studied the wall and files, the room was quiet, the only sounds came from traffic outside, the soft shuffle of papers, and Joanna typing on her laptop. Yaz puzzled over where the Doctor even got a laptop. Finally, she decided to break the silence. “Okay, so which one of these places are we going to first?” She asked, laying the file back on the desk.

Joanna looked up at her and to the wall. After a moment, she shut the computer and stood to put it back on the desk, connecting it to the charging cord. She turned to Yaz and looked her up and down. “D’you have a car?” she asked.

“Yes,” Yaz replied.

“Great,” Joanna pulled a phone from her pocket, “I’ll navigate, you drive.” She brushed past Yaz as she made her way to the door. Yaz looked after her as she pulled the door open and looked back at her. “Comin’?” she said, tilting her head slightly.

Yaz nodded and followed her out of the room. They made their way down to the parking lot together, and Joanna followed Yaz back to her car.

As they climbed in, Yaz realized that she hadn’t driven the Doctor since the first day they met, it had always been her taking Yaz places in the TARDIS since then. She looked over at the woman who was the Doctor but wasn’t the Doctor. She was pulling up a map on her phone. That’s when Yaz noticed that it appeared to be a different phone than the Doctor normally had.

When had she gotten it? And now that she thought about it, Joanna had mentioned having Yaz’s letter for days, and all of the stuff in the room seemed like it would have taken time to put up. She wondered just how long Joanna had been… Joanna. She’d spoken to the Doctor on the phone only a few hours prior, but more time had clearly passed for the Doctor since that call. Joanna had been alone for a few days.

Joanna shifted in her seat and help up the phone, the map ready. “Okay, so you’re gonna take a right out the lot, and then go straight for a while,” she said.

“Right then, come on, Jo,” she said as she started the car and made to pull out. Joanna raised an eyebrow at her, and Yaz grinned slightly. “I’m calling you Jo, ‘cause we’re friends now,” she echoed.

“Morning,” she grumbled back. “Where did you get all that?” she leaned forward and gestured to the pile of random metal.

Jo looked down and shrugged, “here and there,” she said vaguely, “you can always find some good scrap metal if you know where to look.”

The smell told Yaz that most of it probably came from the garbage. She smiled and shook her head. Jo was turning a screwdriver over in her hand, deep in thought as she stared at the hunk of metal in her hand. Yaz stood to get some water and leaned against the desk to watch Jo work. “So, how’s that thing coming?” Yaz asked, turning her head and trying to compare the odd contraption in Jo’s hand to the blueprint laying on the floor next to her. The paper now had a bunch of red scribbling that wasn’t there the previous night, so Yaz supposed that Jo had made some changes to her original design.

Jo put the prototype she was messing with on her leg and picked up the blueprint. “Uh… I’ve had to improvise a bit given that I’m working with random scrap metal mostly, but I did manage to find an old computer, so I think some of the circuit boards and wires from that may come in handy. The primary issue is rigging up a mechanism that will create a powerful enough shake to accomplish what we want. Not to mention, I have to make at least three for them to be effective, and none of them are going to be the same because I’m making them all with different materials,” she explained as she pulled a red pen from behind her ear to make another note on the paper. “Basically, it’s a lot, but it’ll be fine,” Jo mumbled as she returned to tinkering with the device.

Yaz nodded, watching Jo work quietly. She suddenly heard her stomach growl. Jo grinned softly and looked up at Yaz. “You don’t have to hang around here and watch me work, it can’t be all that interesting, you should go get some breakfast or something,” she said, leaning back on her palms.

Yaz felt her cheeks warm slightly. “Sorry, I guess I haven’t eaten in a while,” she chuckled awkwardly.

Jo shook her head, “don’t worry about it, I just don’t want you to feel like you have to stay here for my sake.”

“Well,” Yaz thought for a second, “I suppose I could go out. I could bring you back something if you like,” she said, fetching her keys already.

“Sure, thanks, I’ll have a black coffee, that’s all,” Jo said as she started prying a piece of metal off of a beat-up circuit board.

“Got it,” Yaz replied as she opened the door, “see ya,” she called and heard Jo repeat it back as the door shut behind her.

Yaz made her way to her car and made her way to a cafe that she knew was nearby. When she arrived, she ordered a black coffee for Jo and a scone and water for herself. She sat down at a table against the window to eat. She studied the coffee cup that steamed in front of her. The Doctor had too much of a sweet tooth to ever drink black coffee. She sighed as she let her thoughts drift back and forth between Jo and the Doctor again. The realization that had struck her the previous night was still gnawing at the back of her mind. Jo was so different from the Doctor. She was completely her own person. But… was she really? Yaz knew that the Doctor had to come back, and she was struggling to reconcile the idea of effectively killing Joanna with the fact that she wasn’t really Joanna at all. Yaz could see similarities between Jo and the Doctor, they were both intelligent beyond compare with incredible mechanical skills and deductions and observations. But personality-wise, it was hard to see the Doctor in Jo, and she had shown tastes that the Doctor didn’t share like coffee and alcohol. Yaz kept coming back to the thought of how much of Jo was… planned. Presumably, the Doctor had some control over who she became. She left all this material for Jo to use during the investigation, she sent for Yaz to come to help her. With so little information on the process that turned the Doctor into a human, Yaz was left to wonder how it was done and how much control the Doctor had over the transformation. Did she predict a need for mechanical engineering skills and give Jo that hobby intentionally? Somehow she must have, there was no way Jo was a UNIT agent by chance.

So with that in mind, Jo was fiction. Invented by the Doctor while she needed to disguise herself, and there was nothing to worry about. Jo was the Doctor, opening the watch wasn’t going to do anything. Yaz tried to rationalize as much as possible, but she was still having trouble believing herself. She sighed, discarding her half-finished scone and leaving with the coffee. She should probably get back before it got cold.

When she opened the hotel door, she found Jo staring at three devices that were sitting on the bed now. Yaz greeted her and placed the coffee on the desk.

Jo smiled at her, “Thanks, Yaz,” she winked as she grabbed the cup. Yaz smiled back and looked away quickly. Instead of thinking too hard again, she walked over to investigate the devices on the bed.

There were three round devices, each about a foot across. They looked similar to each other, though it was clear they had been assembled with very different parts. One had pointed deformed hooks on the bottom and the others had bent nails. All of the devices had a small red light on top that blinked occasionally. She also noticed that they all had little stopwatches attached.

Jo stepped up next to her, sipping her coffee. “Each one of these gizmos has a vibrating motor inside. I rigged the motor to the stopwatches so that when they hit zero, they’ll activate,” she explained.

Yaz nodded, “and what are the little hooks on the bottom for?” she pointed to one of the devices.

Jo picked one up and turned it over. “These little prongs will latch into the floor so that when the device shakes, it won’t just rattle around on the ground, it’ll shake the ground with it.” She opened a little compartment on the bottom of the device, revealing the motor inside.

Yaz stared incredulously at the destroyed fan. It had blades broken off and some other scrap metal attached to its axle. “I know it doesn’t look all that impressive, but I did the best with what I had,” Jo chuckled, “I think you’ll be surprised by the amount of power we’ll get out of these things,” she said as she screwed the compartment closed again. “It’s basically like the motor that makes your phone vibrate when you get a call, but I rigged it up with a pretty powerful battery, so these things altogether will shake pretty hard. At least hard enough to shake apart those machines in the warehouse,” she continued, “… I hope.”

Yaz grinned as Jo started to dump the devices into a big duffle bag, “I’m sure they’ll work. I have faith in your skills,” Yaz said as Jo zipped the bag shut. Jo paused and looked at her. Yaz froze as Jo seemed to study her before smiling at her.

“Thanks, Yaz. Smooth,” Jo said. Yaz felt her heart jump.

“I didn’t… I wasn’t trying to…” Yaz stuttered. Jo was focused on packing more supplies into the duffle bag, and Yaz forced herself to relax. She was still surprised and unused to how flustered Jo could make her. She tried to refocus and approached Jo again. “So if those devices are ready, when are we going to go back?” she asked.

Jo pulled up the map of the warehouse and studied it for a second. “We need to be clear on what our plan is, we’re going to have to sneak around the Ralmaeth, set the devices, and set the climate control to make the room colder. I think we should set all of that up, and then we could go tonight,” Jo turned to Yaz, “what do you think?”