More Than a Man [closed to the Doctor, bendytimed before Fauxbellion]

[on_your_nerves]

Sherlock Holmes would have preferred to keep his head down as much as possible as far as the Daligig were concerned. To investigate them properly, he needed freedom of movement and given the current atmosphere, with people apparently getting repodded all the time, it seemed that to keep his freedom, he really needed to avoid their attention.

However, one really couldn't run an investigation without actually investigating.

It had started with the smallest clue, a strange substance that had been oozed at about knee level on the side of a building in the City. Most wouldn't have noticed it or just assumed it was mud if they had seen it and very few people would have actually seen it, as it was far, far away from the usual places the crew inhabited.

Chemical analysis, courtesy of the Contagion and Containment lab and the scanners on the omnicoms (which took the fun out of things just a bit, as far as Sherlock was concerned) had registered it as a viscous colloid containing glycoproteins and water. There were also various antiseptic enzymes, immunoglobulin, and inorganic salts.

In a word: mucus. Alien mucus. Mucus that had epithelial cells that matched one of his samples taken from the crew areas, left behind when a touring entourage of Daligig, Kessek, and Ghyll passed through a hallway. He hadn't been able to see which species left the substance, but the Daligig and Kessek didn't seem prone to oozing anything. The Ghyll, on the other hand, looked a bit...moist, as if they had a protective coating of something over their skin.

Ghyll mucus then, at knee level, which was arm level for them. It fit. It was on a city street that wasn't often used or inhabited, though, which begged a very important question: what were Ghyll doing wandering around the City, which for the most part seemed to be lacking any vital technology or structures for them to be working on?

That led to him discretely monitoring their movements until he stumbled on exactly what he suspected was there: a secret entrance that possibly went to the restricted areas of the ship, perhaps one of many. It was hidden right behind the very mundane front door of a building, which as far as he could tell was actually just built around a large nubby juncture of Stacy, where the stone and asphalt of the city met Stacy's flesh. So far, he had determined that it didn't seem to be guarded and also that it wasn't entirely solid flesh on the other side of the door. There was some sort of membrane there, semi-transparent and resistant to use of force, that was blocking off a long tunnel, one lit up with tiny phosphorescent lights like the Pod Caverns.

Finding it was an accomplishment, certainly, but getting through it like the Ghyll did was another matter entirely and that was why he was risking exposure a great deal by prodding around the entrance, trying to find a way to let the membrane open up and let him in.

How did that saying go? He tended to delete trite sayings. Oh yes.

"Needs must when the devil drives," he muttered to himself.

Given what Kerrigan had shown him, given what the Daligig had done to her, it was fairly safe to say that devils were driving.

Little did he know that within the tunnels, the Ghyll had been making some interesting modifications to Stacy's nerves, which were giving out signals that were quite detectable to those that were keeping an eye out for anything interesting...

Comments

[makeherblue]

The thing about a good snoop was you had to keep practicing at it. It also helped to have loads and loads of things that looked like they needed a good snoop. He had both. So much that even he almost didn’t know what to do with all that snooping that needed to be done, which was saying something when you thought about it considering all his centuries of experience at exactly this sort of thing.

The Doctor had more or less had time to recover from what had happened on Kalimba. Sobek was…well. Not just a bad memory but he was a thing of the past and there was the whole mess with the Daligig to keep him busy. It helped, keeping busy. Usually did. Most of the time. Well, all right, 70% of the time. 70% was a nice number. He liked 70%.

He had to stoop to squeeze into the tunnel, the way lit by pin-points of glowing green light, pulsing with a throbbing beat like blood rushing through a vein. It was a maze, hot and humid, and he could feel a bead of sweat already trickling down the back of his neck. The Doctor pushed on ahead with the sonic screwdriver, its head buzzing away and doing its own kind of snooping. With the Daligig on high alert, there was really no better time to snoop where he wasn’t supposed to than right this very moment, this very second and he dove into it, squishing along the tunnel and happy to ignore the slime slopping all over his feet.

He certainly didn’t expect to run into a human in the middle of his snoop deep inside Stacy’s bowels. The Doctor nearly snooped right into him and drew himself up straight, almost as if he was offended that someone had decided to just – just block a perfectly good snooping route.

“Oh!” The Doctor said, taken aback, his sonic snapping off. “You’re a bit farther out than the rest of them, aren’t you? The Doctor,” he shoved his hand at the human. "Pleasure. I'm sure."