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Vera struggled up, with the image of the creatures pursuing her burned into her mind.
"Llamas. In helmets. With guns. Mounted in saddlebags," she said, thinking that maybe she was suffering from caffeine induced hallucinations from an excess of the espresso machine in the office.
She turned to the Doctor who was distractedly feeling wall tiles. Doubting herself, she asked, "Llamas?"
"Hmmm. What? Oh. You mean the Glamaian mercenaries."
"The what?"
"The Glamaian mercenaries. From the planet Glama. Well, they evolved there as one of the two sentient species on the planet, but ended up fleeing. Strange. You don't normally see them doing this sort of work," he replied distractedly.
Somewhat bemused and confused Vera looked around, trying to find something normal. "It looks like your otoscope is broken."
"Ah. Got it. My what is broken?" the doctor said as he turned and Vera handed him the otoscope. "My screwdriver. Well, at least it's just a prop."
Suddenly, Vera heard a small part of her mind that had been clamouring for attention ever since she landed on the ground, and her face dropped. "My liseuse!" she exclaimed and pulled it out from her liseuse from her coat pocket. And a little bit of glass fell to the floor. "My liseuse… you've broken it!"
"I'm sure we can fix it," said the doctor taking it from her. Holding his otoscope which glowed gently, slowy repairing itself gluing its parts back together, he opened her liseuse as the otoscope made strange high pitched noise. "There; much better now!" and passed it back to Vera, who looked at the now apparently repaired, and very white screened liseuese. Tentatively she pressed the on button, and it instantly came on. And amazingly the network indication was on as well. Though the battery indication was very, very low. Somewhat mollified, she turned it off.
"I think we should be going. I don't believe those doors will hold much longer," the doctor said indicating the blistering blast doors as he pressed three wall tiles. A section of the tiles moved away opening onto a corridor that slowly started to light up. "It'll be a lot safer in here."
"Perhaps we should cover our tracks, Doctor," Vera observed indicating the footprints they'd left in the dust and debris.
"Excellent point," and with that he waved his otoscope and suddenly the debris rearranged itself making it look as if they had headed on down the corridor. And with that the section of the tiles moved back into place. Shortly down the corridor, the Doctor stopped at a door labelled BeaconGrove Institute, placed his hand on a little panel, which promptly lit up and a computer voice said "Welcome Doctor", to which the Doctor replied "and guests" and the door promptly opened.
"I think I deserve some answers. What are you?"
"Come in, and sit down, and I'll explain."
"I asked, what are you?"
"Okay. I'm a Thread Lord. From the planet Modifrey."
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