In the early hours of the morning before dawn in the quiet streets of London, two women climbed out of a blue police box that hadn’t been there when the sun went down, an eccentrically dressed woman chattering without a care to her companion, a young dark skinned woman wearing a comparatively plain leather jacket and jeans who was more careful to keep her voice down. The two wandered down the streets for some time, the younger of the two’s eyes constantly flickering around for any unwanted watchers while the older blonde made each step with unflappable confidence. Eventually they arrived outside of a weathered old warehouse, or to be more precise across the street from the warehouse hiding in an alley, the two peeping around the corner.

“You know, when I picture a bunch of aliens hiding in a warehouse, I picture something way out in the middle of nowhere, not five minutes from a department store.” Yasmin “Yaz” Khan commented, not seeing any security guards to her relief.

“Even Autons would probably get tired of making the round trip.” The Doctor said, specifically the thirteenth incarnation of the enigmatic figure. “Much easier to keep everything within arm’s reach.”

The two of them had been investigating what the Doctor had deduced was the latest scheme of an old foe, the synthetic beings known as Autons. Typically resembling common mannequins, they were also known for impersonating humans, making them prime suspects in an ongoing series of events involving a number of people acting suspiciously out of character growing at an alarming rate. After investigating a number of suspects and being unable to find a clear lead, Yaz had suggested tracking their phones to see if they had a common gathering point, an easy feat with the futuristic technology the Doctor had at their disposal. They had quickly found this warehouse as their converging point, and so had set out to take a look for themselves.

“So, what’s the plan?” Yaz asked, the two emerging and crossing the road. They circled around the building, finding a back door that would hopefully be more inconspicuous than simply waltzing in through the front.

“Stroll in, take a look around, see if we can find the location of the Nestene Consciousness that controls the lot of them, and rescue any victims we might happen to stumble across. The usual.” The Doctor said, pulling out her sonic screwdriver and instantly unlocking the sophisticated electronic lock that was out of place on the otherwise aged door. Yaz winced at the creak of the door, expecting to be set upon at any moment.

“Well, I don’t see anybody on this end, but don’t you think there’ll be a trap?” Yaz asked nervously

“Of course there’ll be a trap. I’ll be disappointed if there isn’t. ” The Doctor said breezily. The lights were on inside, the warehouse being a collection of boxes and quite creepily a number of what seemed to be normal mannequins, and the two hid behind a box as they watched several Autons working a large console, the futuristic computer terminal clashing with the primitive interior. There were some strange pods attached to it, one opening with a hiss as one of the Autons placed a blank mannequin inside and, curiously enough, one of the ordinary store mannequins.

“Are you sure these aren’t Autons too?” Yaz whispered nervously, uncomfortably close to a male mannequin with its hands on its sides. It seemed middle aged and overweight, a poor fit for what was meant to be a fashionably neutral mannequin.

“Well, let’s see, if they aren’t already trying to kill us, they probably aren’t Autons.” The Doctor said, staring one dead in the painted eyes with a confident smile. “That said, the Autons aren’t one for inefficiency, so the question is, what’re these doing laying about? Have they figured out how to convert them into functioning Autons as well? Usually they make these from scratch...”

They watched the pod eventually open, a perfectly human looking Auton emerging, complete with clothes, joining the others.

“Where’s the other one?” Yaz wondered, her question soon being answered as bizarrely, the ordinary mannequin was retrieved from the pod without any visible changes. The Autons soon left, leaving the two puzzled.

“Maybe they were already here when they moved in? Or maybe they’re like, reference material?” Yaz suggested, the two emerging from their hiding place once they were confident they were alone. “Come to think of it, can aliens even own a warehouse? This place is old, but I don’t think it was just abandoned.”

“They can if they abduct the landlord and replace him.” The Doctor said more grimly. She reached into her coat and pulled out a small device, the screen having a number of readings on it that Yaz couldn’t make heads or tails out of. She left the Doctor to it while she explored the warehouse further, soon calling out to her.



“Hang on a moment.” The Doctor muttered, holding it up to the mannequin that had been in the pod. Yaz soon noticed that the imitation human that had been created by the machine looked just like this mannequin, and she was about to voice her theory that this was indeed reference material. “I’m picking up brainwaves from these things.”



“So they are Autons!” Yaz instantly got on guard, jumping away from the nearest one.

“Autons don’t have brainwaves, they’re robots!” The Doctor said. “So why are these…”

The two caught on at the same time, Yaz’s discarding her theory as she was reminded that the Autons weren’t just pretending to be humans, they were replacing normal humans.

“Then these are…” Yaz gasped.

“Humans.” The Doctor said grimly. She rushed up to the terminal, pointing her sonic screwdriver in it with the intent of bypassing any security it might have. “Conscious ones, at that. The Autons abduct humans, create copies of them, and then stash the originals and pretend they’re mannequins.”

“We can turn them back, right?” Yaz said, horrified at the idea that this entire warehouse of frozen figures were watching them, silently begging for help. She leaned over the Doctor’s shoulders, unable to read the alien machine’s screen. “Maybe if we put them back in the pod…?”

“There’s always a way.” The Doctor declared, searching through the terminal for clues. “Strange, there doesn’t seem to be anything that says the pods the things that-”

She was interrupted by a hidden panel on the terminal opening, giving the two no time to react as a torrent of gas was blasted in their faces, the two emerging from the enormous cloud it created coughing and spluttering, rushing out of the front door without any care for stealth.

“I told you there’d be a trap!” Yaz coughed violently, unable to keep herself from gasping then coughing again even as they stood in the fresh air. “Did you expect that to happen?”



“No, actually, I expected an alarm.” The Doctor admitted,  having reacted slightly faster and gotten less of the gas down her throat. However, it had been impossible to avoid completely, and she too had breathed it in, to say nothing of its total exposure to her body. The Autons had expected them, to the point of having a trap set for anybody who could make it past the terminal’s first security layer. She had foiled their plans a few too many times, and it seemed that they were finally one step ahead of her.

“Let’s get back to the Tardis before we wake up half of London, then figure out what we’re going to do.” Yas spluttered, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand before pausing, staring at the back of her hand. She scratched it for a second, then her eyes widened.

“Um, Doctor?” She asked, raising it to show her. “I don’t like the look of this.”

The Doctor immediately grabbed her hand, running her thumb over the strange discoloured patch on it. Her thumb traced a smooth pattern.

“Plastic!” The Doctor exclaimed, her usual humorous expression replaced with one of urgent worry.

“Doctor, I think it’s getting bigger!” Yaz noticed that it was starting to spread down to her wrist and around her hand, scratching at it as if it would somehow peel off the layer.

“Run.” The Doctor said.

“What?”



“Run!” The Doctor took her hand and began sprinting full-pelt the way they came, knowing that there was no time to waste.



“I’m guessing they hit us with some sort of bio-transformative chemical.” The Doctor began to ramble as the two ran, starting to feel stiff patches on herself as well. “Probably not a virus, at least not an infectious one given they had to use it directly. Or perhaps it’s- turn left!”

The Doctor and Yaz swerved into an alley as they saw the Autons from earlier marching towards them, taking a detour to try to shake them off.

“Or perhaps it’s a nanobot solution?” The doctor theorised while Yaz focused on trying to use what oxygen she had left in her lungs after leaving the warehouse to propel herself forward. “I do recall a certain society using nanobots to efficiently alter the structure of their waste in order to recycle them into-”

“I don’t care what it is!” Yaz snapped, noticing that her hand seemed to have turned fully plastic and her elbow was almost so stiff it couldn’t move. “Whatever it is, it’s turning me into plastic! And-”

Yaz tripped, crashing to the ground as she realised to her horror that not only could she not move her hand, but she couldn’t move her right foot either. She hobbled to her feet with the help of the Doctor, but she ambling shuffle soon turned to one-legged hopping as her entire leg turned to pure plastic.

“This isn’t good, there’s no way we’ll make it back to the Tardis in time like this.” The Doctor muttered, practically dragging the panicking Yaz behind her as her neck started to take on the unnatural plastic sheen of what was becoming most of her body. To make matters worse she could feel her own foot starting to solidify, and ran as best she could  at a significantly slower pace, enough that even the seemingly relaxed Autons would be able to catch up to her soon The Doctor looked around the shopping district they had emerged into, her goal shifting from making it back home safely to the best compromise she could think of, if her estimates were correct.

“You have a plan, right!?” Yaz asked desperately, now totally unable to move save for the Doctor dragging her along, made easier by how light she was starting to become.

“I do. You might not like it, but it is a plan.” The Doctor said with gritted teeth, turning back expecting to hear Yaz complaining only to see that her features had frozen solid, her expression of panic replaced with a totally blank, neutral expression devoid of any emotion. Yaz’s pose turned to one of hands on her hips, one foot placed in front of the other like some sort of catwalk model, her transformation seemingly completed by this shift in posture. She still looked like herself, but her lips and eyes were painted on along with her eyebrows, and her hair, drawn back in a ponytail, had turned shiny and straight, clearly a wig attached to the head of the mannequin she had become. She had a realistic mould, but her skin lacked any texture and was slightly off from a real person, unmistakably not a real person even from a slight glance.

“I can’t move, I can’t move! Doctor, I can’t… oh god, I can’t even speak!” The Doctor heard Yaz’s panicked thoughts through telepathy, a skill she was glad she had put effort into mastering in the last few years that was rarely of relevance, but allowed her to hear the exceptionally powerful mental voice of her companion with ease. “And the Doctor is about to change too! We’re going to-”

“Calm down!” The doctor replied silently. She tried to keep her humour up, even as Yaz despaired. “I can still hear you, and we can at least still talk. By the way, I must admit that you’re a lot more convenient when you’ve lost this much weight.

Knowing that this fate was soon in store for her, the Doctor picked her up, rushing towards the multi-storey department store she had seen in the distance. She grunted as she held Yaz’s weight in one arm while she fished around in her pocket for her sonic screwdriver to open the front door, but found that her hand had frozen and was no longer able to wield it, swapping hands as quickly as she could and using her thankfully still flesh one to open the door and disable the security cameras. She peered back over her shoulder, her neck stiffening and making the act extremely difficult, seeing the Autons just across the street and closing in fast despite being at no more than a brisk walk. They had little reason to rush and attract attention, given that it wouldn’t be long until the two of them could no longer move.

“Why aren’t we going back to the Tardis?” Yaz demanded to know.

“I’ll explain later!” The Doctor hopped in, only one good leg left, and managed to stumble through to the clothing section of the store, rounding the counter and finally making it into the employee backroom. She just barely managed to place Yaz upright before she felt the last of her body control leaving her, stiffening and arching her back as her hands were placed against her will by her sides, her legs tilting slightly to give her more of a natural pose as she too felt her breathing stop, her face freezing as her hair too became a glossy wig, and the two fell entirely silent.

“Now what’s the next step in your brilliant plan?” Yaz asked sardonically. The Doctor failed to respond, and the Autons marched in, peering at the two silently for a minute before leaving, seemingly satisfied that the two were now harmless.

“Why didn’t they capture us?” Yaz asked, the Doctor letting out a mental sigh of relief.

“What’s the point? We’re two dummies in a department store, we fit right in.” She explained.



“And how’s that any better than being in the Tardis where we could have tried to fix ourselves?”



“Fix ourselves? We’d have just fallen on the floor and been done for then and there.” The Doctor disagreed. “We’ve got a better chance out here.”

“So… now what?” Yaz asked, realising that there was no point in panic now that they were completely inanimate.

“Now we wait.”

A few hours later, the two began to hear the sounds of the lights turning on and the employees entering in the distance, Yaz getting her hopes up as the place began to bustle and prepare for the busy day ahead.

“Come on, come in here!” She mentally yelled, nearly cheering as a young woman in a uniform eventually walked in, double taking as she saw the two out of place mannequins.

“What’re these things doing here?” The employee wondered out loud, staring the two down suspiciously. “Is this another one of Joel’s pranks?”

Her lip curled in distaste at the Doctor’s outfit. “This thing’s a fashion disaster. I bet Margaret is responsible for this.”



Yaz snickered, knowing that the Doctor would have pouted if she could.

“Okay, now!” Yaz thought. “You’re gonna use your telepathy to reach out and get her to help us, right?”

“Um, well, you see, that’s the thing.” The Doctor thought awkwardly. “The tricky thing about telepathy is that it tends to work better with somebody you know, and they have to have a strong open mind, and…”

“You mean you stuck us in here and you can’t even actually ask anybody for help!?” Yaz exclaimed. “This telepathy is useless!”



“I think you should be grateful we can talk at all!” The Doctor seemed slightly wounded. “Hey, what do you think you’re doing? Keep your hands to yourself?”

The Doctor began to protest as the employee suddenly began to yank off her coat, tossing it carelessly to the ground as she slipped off her shirt, then her bra as she was left with her bare plastic nipples exposed to the world.

“They aren’t going to put us on display, are they?” Yaz asked a rhetorical question as she noticed that the Doctor had certain lines running across her joints, ones she likely shared as well. She finished removing her shoes, socks, pants, and underwear, leaving her totally naked before getting to work on the protesting Yaz too.

“Do we even sell this jacket?” The girl wondered as she stripped her down, oblivious to her silent begging to cease.

“I don’t see how this could possibly get any worse.” Yaz groaned, only to gasp in shock as the employee roughly grabbed her breast, but only to use it as leverage when she grabbed her shoulder in the other hand and popped it clean off.

“My arm! My arm!” Yaz wailed as if it had been cut off, but it was completely painless, and the pieces were placed onto the ground as she was steadily disassembled until she was little more than a torso and a head, her limbs lying in a pile. Despite being no less inanimate with or without her limbs, she couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable without them. Out of the corner of her eye she watched as the same was done to the Doctor, who babbled out a stream of overly hopeful attempts to make first contact with her that went entirely unheard. Yaz noticed that one of her detached legs had a slot for a mount, supposing that she wasn’t even able to stand upright without leaning against something or the help of a stand.

“Kate! I need your help with this!” Somebody called from a distance, causing the employee to place the last of the Doctor’s limbs on the ground and wander off, leaving the two in a pile of each other’s pieces. The Doctor’s hair seemed crooked from her tilted placement, her wig seemingly attached slightly more loosely than Yaz’s pulled-back ponytail.

“Well, this is a fine plan you’ve come up with.” Yaz complained. “Are we just going to wait for a psychic to start working here or something?”

“Oh, like you’ve got any better ideas.” the Doctor said grumpily, the two forced to sit and stew in a heap.

“Oh dear.” The Doctor said as her torso and a couple of her limbs were carried away. “Don’t worry, we should still be able to talk from a distance!”

The girl returned a minute later to pick up the rest of the Doctor’s pieces, then took just Yaz’s limbs away, then finally carried her torso to another part of the store as Yaz wished her plastic skin could turn bright red from the embarrassment of being both disassembled and totally naked even as customers were starting to enter the store. She felt her leg pop back into the slot in her hip, and suddenly felt the sensation of pressure from the ground return to her as her foot was placed down, and she instantly felt the girl’s hand holding her as her arm was reinserted. This continued until she was fully reassembled, and she breathed a sigh of relief at being whole again.

She noticed that she didn’t seem to be anywhere near the Doctor, and her eyes would have widened if she could have when she noticed that she was starting to be reassembled in the lingerie department, realising that the position of her arms made her a poor fit for anything with sleeves unless dressed and reassembled at the same time. The employee seemed to be on the lazy side, simply picking a lacy pair of bra and panties that could be put on in a few seconds before abandoning her to her fate. She could see herself in the window she was placed behind, and told herself that she’d never wear something this lacy if it were up to her.

“She’s put the most awful dress on me, they can practically see up the skirt from this angle!” the quite clearly embarrassed Doctor complained as she watched women size her up and the occasional man ogle her outfit, clearly imagining a real woman in something so skimpy. “I heard her say to herself that she just picked whatever was fastest to put on? By the way, what’re you wearing, out of curiosity?”

“Oh, you know, something boring. You know, pants, a t-shirt.” Yaz lied. The two passed the hours with occasional smalltalk and wishful thinking, unable to do much besides watch customers occasionally glance at them like the display pieces they were, totally unaware that they were being stared back at. Halfway through the day one of the male employees picked undressed Yaz and picked her up, strong enough to not need to disassemble her as she was moved to another area where to her surprise she was placed down next to the Doctor, who had been changed into a simple sundress in a sunflower print pattern that gave off an appropriately summer feel. Yaz was placed down in her mount and redressed in what was this time a pair of shorts and a loose similar flower-print top, the man popping off her arms and putting them back on in the process of dressing her. Yaz suddenly became totally aware of the fact that this would be every day for them from now on if they weren’t rescued, ending up in some dusty storage room if they were unlucky.

“I’ll definitely find a way out of this for us.” The Doctor promised as the two posed next to each other, watching through the glass as the Doctor’s attempts at telepathically calling out to any potentially sensitive customers foiled by distance weakening a potential connection even further.. The two desperately wanted to shout, to move, to raise their hands and reveal their predicament, but could only passively watch as the animated world went by “I’ll figure something out, you’ll see.”

“Whatever you say.” Yaz said glumly. “By the way, your dress is ugly.”

“Shut up.”