[Fic] "How To Win Friends and Influence People" -- Doctor Who/The Magnus Archives

[edenfalling]

Summary: In which Rose Tyler and Jonathan Sims have an extremely unpleasant experience in Henrik's department store one evening shortly after closing. [13,050 words]

Note: Written for wingedflight, in response to the prompt: Doctor Who/Magnus Archives, Rose & Jon, Rose runs into mannequins of the Stranger rather than the Nestene Consciousness.

I am attempting to keep the series timelines vaguely correct, which means Jon is also about 19 at this point, in university, and not aware of the Entities (though he's quite clear that Leitners are a thing).

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How To Win Friends and Influence People
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The five minute warning had broadcast, the shop had emptied, and Rose was in the middle of her last round of tidying up when she stumbled across a skinny, long-haired bloke in the world's rattiest jumper, stuffed into a corner in the back of the men's shoe section on the third floor and reading some dismal-looking uni textbook. The stumble was literal; she tripped on his outstretched feet as she rounded one of the shelving units and fell badly on her left wrist.

The next two minutes were a confusion of swearing, apologies, and muddled explanations until they both got clear that Jon Sims (the bloke with the textbook, and also an accent so posh Rose was half-convinced he was putting it on) had been overwhelmed by people while trying to find a new pair of boots, sat down to clear his head, and utterly lost track of time. He hadn't meant to startle Rose and Rose hadn't meant to startle him, but now she had to escort him out of Henrik's because the doors were locked and she couldn't just let him wander about unsupervised. And no, the security cameras didn't count as supervision.

"Look, I promise I'm not going to steal anything," Jon said for the third time, his tone increasingly sharp as he shoved his heavy book into his backpack. "I don't want to inconvenience you. Just point me toward the exit and I'll let you get on with things."

"I don't care how honest you are. Store policy's store policy, and getting fired would be a lot more inconvenient than taking a couple minutes to haul you out," Rose said, equally annoyed. "Shake a leg, I don't have all day."

Jon followed her through the shoe department and into active-wear, grumbling just quietly enough that Rose couldn't make out his words though the general intent was perfectly clear. And then, abruptly, he stopped dead in front of a trio of mannequins -- two shaped like implausibly skinny women and one like an implausibly buff man -- displaying the new outdoor spring fashions along with a frankly overdone collection of backpacks, sunglasses, and clunky digital watches.

"Miss Tyler, did you see--" he started to say.

"What, the two hours of work I put in last week getting the bloody things dressed up all fancy and posed like rich idiots pretending to rough it the Lake Country?" Rose said. "Thanks, I did do a good job. Now come on."

"No, I meant-- I think the one on the left moved," Jon said.

Rose blew an annoyed breath through half-pursed lips, sending stray blonde hairs flying. "Right. Sure. Course they did. 'Cause plastic mannequins move on their own all the time."

"Obviously things that aren't alive don't usually move," Jon snapped. "That's why I stopped, because it was-- it seemed odd."

There was a weird tension in his voice that cut short Rose's instinctive dismissal. She closed her mouth and took a step back toward Jon, studying the mannequins. She'd spent so long arranging and rearranging them -- and not just these three last week, but dozens of mannequins over the months she'd been working at Henrik's -- that it was hard to be sure what poses she'd settled on for the latest display. But now that she was thinking about it, hadn't she decided the left-hand mannequin's arm should be up like it was adjusting the brim of its hat? Now it was closer to the shoulder, like it was holding the strap of its rucksack (which she'd spent ten minutes stuffing and unstuffing with wadded up garment bags until it met Derek-the-arsehole-manager's ideal picture of someone carrying a water bottle and snacks but not doing serious hiking).

Rose frowned up at the plastic figure. Was she misremembering? Had her boss tweaked the poses without telling her?

Something moved in the corner of her right eye.

"There!" Jon hissed into her ear. "The middle one turned its head. I was looking right at it -- did you catch that?"

"No?" Rose said. Because she hadn't seen anything, and mannequins coming to life was horror movie nonsense. But she was very nearly one-hundred-percent sure the male-shaped mannequin had been facing forward just ten seconds ago. Now its bare, eggshell-colored head was turned directly toward her and Jon.

There was another flash of motion, this one just to the left of what she could see clearly. Her eyes snapped back to the leftmost mannequin. Its arm was outstretched in a parody of an offered handshake and its plastic mouth curved upward in a rictus smile.

"Hello, new friends!" it said in a too-bright voice. "We never get to meet anyone new, not since the security guard! We've been so very lonely!"

"The security guard?" Rose asked blankly. Wait. Mike who worked the front door and collected the lottery money -- hadn't he missed his shifts since the weekend? Did that mean--?

"He wasn't a very good friend! But we're sure you'll do much better!" the leftmost mannequin said, too-bright voice issuing from between its unmoving plastic lips. Its painted eyes were fixed blankly on the middle distance, but she could feel the weight of its attention on her.

"Oh, fuck."

Jon edged closer, holding his backpack in front of himself like a shield. "I think-- I think we need to--"

"Run? Yeah. Now."

The rightmost mannequin lurched to impossible, unnatural life and lunged off the display stand like a cat in a wildlife documentary, springing from ambush at a hapless antelope or whatever. The other two followed, but by that point Rose had whirled and pelted toward the lift and the exit. She didn't dare turn to see if Jon was still with her.

"Duck!" Jon shouted.

Rose reflexively dropped into a somersault. Something crashed over her in a rush of air and then a clatter of plastic against the floor tiles.

"Don't run away!" another too-bright voice called from far too close behind. "Friends don't run from friends!"

"There's more of them by the lift," Jon panted, reaching down to grab her hand without slowing down. Rose hauled herself to her feet and stumbled after him. "Where are the stairs? We have to go up or down -- we can't keep running in circles forever."

They slewed around a corner and scrambled into the women's handbag racks.

"Down's no good," Rose said. "There's mannequins on every floor and dozens more in basement storage. Up's just the roof and I don't fancy jumping."

"Shit," Jon said under his breath. "What if we hide -- will they keep searching for us? What do they want? Why come to life now and not earlier?"

"I don't know! None of this makes sense!" Rose hissed. "I've lugged those mannequins around for ages and they've never been even a little bit creepy until tonight."

"Shhh!" Jon clapped his free hand over her mouth and nodded toward the main pathway where two male-shaped mannequins were click-clacking their way over the tiles, blank faces swiveling from side to side as if they were searching without functional eyes. Rose shoved him a little further back behind a rack of designer-label diaper bags.

"Please come out, new friends!" one of the mannequins called. "It's rude not to introduce yourselves!"

Jon shuddered, the motion of his body all-too-evident where he was pressed up against Rose.

The mannequins passed on. Rose peeled Jon's hand off her face.

"I just had an awful thought," she whispered. "What if we get out but they keep following us? I don't think they've left the store yet -- the doors are locked and I'm pretty sure we would've heard glass and screaming if they'd broken out. But we can't just chuck other people into danger."

"I-- I think there's-- rules, sort of, for this kind of thing?" Jon said. "That is, I've never seen killer mannequins before, but there was one time when I was younger that-- anyway, it stopped after it-- took-- someone else. So I think they'll keep chasing us because we're the ones who saw them move, and not bother with anyone else while we're still alive. They might stop altogether if we get out of here, or if we die."

"Or they might start hunting someone else. And I don't want to die!" Rose peered around the front rack, which was mostly sequinned clutches and little pastel purses that couldn't hold more than sunglasses and a wallet. No mannequins in sight. She didn't hear any click-clack footsteps either. "We have to stop them. I'm not letting a bunch of plastic kill people in my store."

Jon coughed quietly. "Brave. Very admirable. How?"

"I don't know! I don't do creepy stuff. You're the one who saw something weird before -- what do you think?"

"That-- look, giant man-eating spiders summoned by creepy children's books and killer mannequins are completely different kettles of fish. At least you can-- can squash a spider, even if you need a cricket bat or a sledgehammer. I don't think that works on things that aren't alive in the first place," Jon hissed.

Rose stared at him. "Giant man-eating-- you know what, never mind. Later. Killer mannequins are the important bit right now. So if we can't kill them, we have to make sure they can't move anymore, right? What ruins plastic?"

Jon shrugged. "Fire? I have a lighter -- if we can make a fire big enough and hot enough, and somehow get them to walk into it, they'd probably melt or burn. Or pressure. Everything breaks eventually."

Rose pulled one of her hoodie strings to her mouth and chewed while she thought, furiously working through their options. "I don't think they'd just walk into a fire, and anything big enough they couldn't dodge it would probably kill us too. A bomb might work, but we haven't got one and I'm not blowing up the shop, either. I don't know what's heavy enough to smash them, and if I did I don't think we could lift anything big enough or keep them still long enough."

"What about electricity? You must have power mains in a building this size," Jon suggested. "Can we use those?"

Rose gnawed harder on her hoodie string. "Maybe? I've been down in Wilson's office once or twice -- he's the chief electrician, works out of the-- oh, shite. Wilson's down in the basement, with all the old storage rooms. We have to go see if he's still alive."

"The basement, which is probably full of killer mannequins, and which we can't get to anyway because the lift is guarded by -- oh right! -- more killer mannequins? That basement?"

"Don't be a wanker. Obviously there's stairs. Fire safety codes are a thing, yeah? We just have to get back into the employee-only areas and hope nothing spots us."

"This is a terrible idea and I want it on record that I argued against it," Jon said.

"On record with what? Nobody's here to know except me and we'll probably both be dead soon," Rose snapped. "Also who wants to be on record that they voted against saving people?"

"It's just-- it's a saying, you don't have to make it a thing. And I didn't vote against saving people in some abstract sense. I voted against throwing ourselves into certain danger to try and save someone who's almost certainly already dead."

"Whatever, come on." Rose grabbed his hand and tugged him out from behind the diaper bag rack. They scuttled from rack to wall across the second floor, twice diving to ground when the sound of plastic feet on hard tiles sounded too close for comfort. Finally they reached a door, tucked away behind some racks and mirrors in the women's shoe section, and marked "Employees Only." Rose carefully turned the knob.

It was locked.

"Fuck."

"I don't suppose you have a key," Jon said.

Rose shook her head. "Only managers and security have keys. Which they take with them when they go home, so no use looking for a spare. Um. I could try picking it? My old boyfriend showed me on padlocks a couple times -- he was kind of shite at it, but I've got some bobby pins and it might work."

Jon rolled his eyes. "Spare me from amateurs who think the size of the padlock actually means anything when it comes to security." He held out one hand, made a grasping gesture, then rolled his eyes again at Rose's confusion. "Your pins, give them here. I'm out of practice, but I should be able to open something this basic in a minute at most."

Rose blinked. "What, you're gonna pick the lock?" Mister posh uni student who obviously had enough money not to care that he was wearing horrid old clothes?

"I-- might have had some unorthodox hobbies when I was younger," Jon said with a shifty expression. "Look, it's not important. Just give me the pins and let's get on with not dying horribly, all right?"

Rose fished a handful of bobby pins from her pocket and slapped them into Jon's palm. "So now you're fine with going to the basement?"

Jon quickly bent one of the pins into something that looked unpleasantly like a tool from a dentist's office. "I never said that. But I can't get anywhere with access to the stairs, now can I? I figure I'll get this open, you can go down, and I'll head up to the roof and see if I can make enough of a stink that someone will call emergency services." A second pin turned into a sort of flattened V-shape.

"Who'll come in and get massacred by living plastic, because nobody'll believe a thing you tell them," Rose said, eyes darting back and forth from where Jon had started maneuvering his two mangled pins in the lock, to the tiled paths where mannequins might be patrolling. "Brilliant plan."

There was a moment of pointed silence. Then Jon sighed explosively. "Fuck."

"Yeah. S'pose we'll just have to handle it ourselves."

"Right. So, basement?"

"Basement," Rose agreed as Jon made a triumphant little noise and turned the knob.

The door swung inward silently (Rose spared a moment to be thankful for the cleaners, or whoever was in charge of oiling hinges), revealing the empty, utilitarian stairwell with its concrete walls, metal-edged steps, and unsoftened fluorescent lights. Jon waved Rose ahead and then slipped in after her, withdrawing the bent bobby pins from the lock and dropping them into his trouser pocket. The door clicked shut behind them.

"We could probably stay here until morning," Jon said, then twitched at the way his voice echoed from the bare, hard surfaces of the stairwell. "I don't think the mannequins have keys, and they might go back to normal -- or at least stop moving -- once the store opens again."

"We could," Rose said. "But then what about Wilson? And what if they don't stop?"

They both looked down the stairwell. Neither made any move to descend.

Jon slung his backpack off his shoulders and dropped it onto the concrete floor with a heavy thump. "I hate this. This is-- this whole thing is nonsense. Why killer mannequins? Why here? Why now? Why us? What do they want? There isn't a scrap of logic in this whole scenario and I hate it. Even Mister Spider made more sense than this-- this-- whatever this is!" He shoved his hands into his hair, scrabbled around until he undid his sloppy ponytail, and slipped the hairband around his left wrist. "Giant spiders want to eat and have impossible ways to lure in prey, fine, it's terrifying and wrong but it still makes some kind of sense. Plastic mannequins rampaging under the guise of looking for new friends is just-- it's wrong, and I hate it, and I hate that I'm going to die from something this completely stupid. I don't even go looking for spooky things, not like Georgie!"

He pulled the hairband taut and let it snap against his wrist. He repeated this several more times, breathing heavily.

Rose gnawed her lip. "I-- look, this is mad. No argument here. But the only way we get out of this alive is if we stick together and stay focused. Can you do that?"

Jon snapped his hairband one more time, then wrapped his left hand around his right wrist as if locking down his own body. "No guarantees. But I'll do my best to keep any breakdowns to when we have a little time and space to breathe."

"That's fair," Rose agreed. "So. Down?"

Jon took a deep breath. Then he yanked his hair back into an even sloppier tail and picked up his backpack. "Down."

He held his right hand out in Rose's general direction, without quite meeting her eyes.

After a moment, Rose slipped her fingers into his grasp.

They walked down the stairs together, slowly, listening at every step for the sound of plastic feet on concrete or metal, or the sound of opening doors. They passed the second floor, the first floor, then the ground floor. The basement level doors loomed at the foot of the steps, their solid metal surfaces unpainted save for a yellow diagonal stripe on their bottom halves. A narrow glass window in each door showed tiny slices of a dark hallway, ceiling covered with pipes and ducts, bare concrete walls occasionally cluttered by clothes racks or shelving units. Nothing was obviously moving. The only sounds were the sort of mechanical clanks and hisses Rose associated with boilers and plumbing, and a subliminal hum that suggested electrical equipment running at a heavy load.

"This is still a terrible idea," Jon said.

Rose blew some stray hairs away from her face. "Yeah. But what else can we do?" She set her shoulders, squeezed Jon's hand, and pressed the push bar on the right-hand door.

The hallway remained dark and empty.

"This is weird," Rose whispered. "I thought it'd be crawling with mannequins. I know they're down here -- I've hauled them up and down the lift enough times."

Jon licked his lips and tightened his grip on her hand almost to the point of pain. "Maybe they only start moving if they see prey? Sense prey, I mean; obviously they don't have functional eyes. But if no one was in the storage rooms, perhaps they're still standing around pretending to be harmless."

"That's not actually reassuring," Rose said.

"I was trying to find an answer, not spout treacly nonsense," Jon hissed back.

"I didn't mean that you should-- oh, never mind, here's Wilson's office. Workroom? Whatever, let's just see if we can get his attention without, er--"

"--without getting the mannequins' attention in the bargain?" Jon finished.

"Yeah, that."

Rose tugged at the metal handle on the blue-painted door, on the off chance it was unlocked. No luck. She glanced over her shoulder toward the other closed doors along the hallway, then turned back and risked a brisk two raps against the metal. "Wilson, are you there?" she said, mouth pressed close to the seam where door met frame, and then because she knew he was terrible at recognizing or remembering faces and voices, she added, "It's Rose Tyler, I bring the lottery money each week?"

On the bright side, no mannequins burst out of the other doors in response to the noise.

On the dark side, Wilson didn't respond either.

Rose eyed the lock underneath the door handle. "Right, time for plan B. Can you pick that?"

Jon favored her with a withering stare as he let go of her hand and pulled the bobby pins out of his pocket. "Do you honestly think that's any more difficult than the lock on the stairwell doors?"

"There's all kinds of dangerous equipment in there. Why wouldn't they use a better lock?" Rose said defensively.

"Because most people respect locks enough not to bother trying to break through them, and even most people who don't respect them haven't bothered to learn how easy it is to pick most locks," Jon said, kneeling and inserting the vaguely V-shaped pin into the lock. "Also, anyone who tried to get down here would usually have been stopped by a guard or caught on camera a long time ago. It's not cost-effective to install anything beyond a basic deadbolt."

"Right, got it. That's my new fact for the day, along with 'sometimes mannequins come to life and try to kill people'," Rose said.

"I'd stick to the former in casual conversation," Jon said in an absent tone. "I've found that the reactions one gets in response to tales of unnatural experiences are rarely helpful."

Rose considered that for a moment. "Yeah, that sounds about right. Best case, they don't believe you and think you're just having a laugh -- that'll be Mickey, my boyfriend. He's dead sweet but he'd never believe this in a million years. Or they don't believe you and think you've gone mental -- that'll be my mum, and won't that be fun to sort out. Or they get shirty because they survived their own horror flick and want to pretend it all away. Or maybe they turn out to be horror groupies and then you're stuck with a creepy stalker who won't shut up about it."

"That's a remarkably accurate summation," Jon said, glancing up with a surprised expression.

Rose rolled her eyes. "Just 'cause I work in a shop doesn't mean I'm thick. How much longer with the lock?"

Jon glanced back down, his fingers steady as they gripped the bobby pins. "I just finished. But, ah, Miss Tyler--"

"Oh, leave off being posh. Just say Rose -- it's my name, and it's faster to shout if monsters pop up from nowhere, Mister Sims."

"--Rose, then. Are you sure we should open the door? We haven't seen any mannequins yet, but if Mr. Wilson were alive, don't you think he would have answered when you knocked? Or come to see who's talking outside his office?"

"I do. The whole thing's creepy and fishy and this is exactly where you yell at the actors to go hide and not take stupid risks. But I have to try." Rose paused, bit her lip. "Will the lock stay open if you take out the pins?"

"It's a deadbolt, not a tension spring," Jon said. Then he sighed. "Sorry. Yes, it will stay unlocked. I'm only still crouched down in case you decide to retreat, in which case I want to re-lock it as a delaying tactic for whatever might be lurking inside."

"I can wait to open the door until you're back in the stairwell."

Jon made a sort of raspy hum in the back of his throat. "I really ought to. It's the sensible thing to do."

"But?"

"But I want to know what's going on, and if I hide I'll never find out."

"That's an even dafter reason than trying to save a man who's probably already dead," Rose pointed out.

"I know. Let me console myself by pretending that it's a safety in numbers thing. We're more likely to survive if we stick together, regardless of how objectively inadvisable our actions become."

"All for one and one for all?"

"Why not?" Jon pulled the bobby pins out of the lock and got somewhat creakily to his feet. "On three. One. Two. Three."

He opened the door.

The room revealed was dark, the only source of light the dim illumination of the hallway pouring in around Rose and Jon, and a handful of blinking LEDs on what Rose assumed must be various bits of machinery or computers. "Wilson?" she called softly.

No answer.

She fumbled around the door frame and switched on the lights.

"That was anticlimactic," Jon said after a moment.

Rose finished blinking away the sudden spots in her vision and nodded. "Yeah. I mean, I'm all in favor of not getting murdered by mannequins! But I was expecting something other than an empty room full of monitors, storage shelves, and the world's messiest pair of worktables."

"How much chance is there that Mr. Wilson left early tonight?" Jon asked.

"None, unless he got food poisoning or had a heart attack, which I would have heard about because someone would've had to stay late to let the cleaners in at ten. Wilson always works swing shift, so he can mess around with ladders and hammers without customers around." Rose paused. "He might have gone out to buy cables or light bulbs. Is that something electricians do?"

"I think they're more likely to get those delivered," Jon said, with an uncertain upward tilt to his voice. "A shopping trip at nine o'clock seems unlikely in any case. Possibly he was already elsewhere in the building on a repair job?"

"That's probably it." Rose looked around Wilson's cramped workroom once more, on the off chance he'd fallen down with a stroke or heart attack or some other normal crisis. But the floors were still bare concrete, where they weren't littered with bits of old wiring or the occasional dusty sheet of paper. She sighed. "Right. We tried our best and whatever happens to him isn't our fault. Now we just have to figure out if there's anything down here we can use to kill the mannequins."

"Or how to get ourselves out of here alive," Jon said. "We should secure an exit route before we start planning any sort of-- of violence."

Rose gnawed her lip for a moment. "Let's see. The main stairs and the lift are no good, obviously. There's the freight lift, but that just goes back up to the shop floors and there's probably mannequins lurking about anyway. I know there's a back exit off the ground floor, but I don't know how to get there from down here -- especially not without letting the mannequins know we're here. I think we're stuck with the delivery bay. You need a keypad code to work the garage door, but there's a human-size door beside it and that's probably only got a normal lock."

"It's certainly worth a look," Jon agreed. He glanced around Wilson's workroom, then leaned over to grab a heavy-duty torch from one of the tool racks attached to the walls, which he handed to Rose. For himself, he snagged a few more bits of wire, a penlight, and a handful of small screwdrivers with varying tips. "For the lock," he said in response to Rose's questioning look. "And because I don't want to turn on the lights in the delivery bay if they're not already on. They're bound to be noticeable and I'd rather not be noticed. If all else fails, the big torch may be some use as a bludgeon."

Rose weighed the torch in her hands and swung it back and forth experimentally. Yeah, you could bash someone's head in with this, no problem. "All right. Shall we?"

"We shall."

Jon shut the door behind them, tugged the handle briefly to make sure it was still unlocked, and fell into step beside Rose as she walked down the dimly-lit basement hallway toward the delivery bay, pushing through a barrier of transparent plastic flaps. They passed through the trash room -- still lit, which was oddly more nerve-wracking than darkness -- before reaching a T-junction. To the right, past another plastic barrier, the freight lift stood at the end of the hall. Unfortunately, a trio of mannequins leaned against one of the walls.

"Glad we didn't bank on going that way," Rose muttered.

"Shhh!" Jon hissed.

They tiptoed down the left-hand corridor, through a broad doorway with plastic flaps rather than a door, and into the dark, echoing delivery bay, with its sunken driveway and cluster of carts and little forklift machines on the wide, smooth concrete floor.

Luck was with them: the side door proved to have a mechanical rather than an electronic lock. Admittedly there were two of them, one of which stumped Jon for nearly five minutes and had him muttering irritably around the penlight clenched in his teeth. Rose stood guard with her torch pointed at the concrete floor as a compromise between making sure Jon had enough light to see and keeping her eyes sensitive enough to spot any signs of motion through the windows of the double-doors that led from the delivery bay back into the basement hallways.

Finally Jon made a little noise of triumph, spat out the penlight, and pushed the door open.

Cool night air spilled in, carrying the noises of a spring evening in London: cars on the streets, the whirring hiss of Henrik's air vents blowing into the driveway, and off in the distance two women cheerfully mocking some bloke's notion that he was good in bed.

Rose took an involuntary step toward the open doorway. Mickey was out there, and her mum, and her flat and her bed and her nice, safe, normal life where the worst she had to worry about was gossip and bills and the nagging sense that she ought to be doing something more than just slide into the place where everyone expected her to settle. She wanted all that so bad she could taste it, evaporating off her tongue like the memory of childhood sweets.

Jon stood from his crouch and leaned out beside her. "We could leave," he said.

"Yeah. We could, couldn't we?"

"We're not going to, though, are we."

"No. Not yet."

Jon sighed. "Right. In that case, we need a plan to destroy an unknown number of supernaturally animated murderous mannequins. Which is not a sentence I ever expected to hear myself say, but here we are."

"Right. So, I've been thinking about that while you were twiddling the locks," Rose said. Jon huffed indignantly, but she pressed on before he could say anything out loud. "There's no way we can get all the mannequins. First, they were hunting in pairs and groups, and we can't handle more than one at a time. Second, they're made of evil magic plastic, so I bet they don't feel pain and even if we take them apart, their bits might still move on their own. I'd like to not die strangled by a disembodied plastic hand if it's all the same to you. And third, even if we lure one or two into the power mains, that'd short everything out and that's us out of a weapon and with a horde of mannequins still out for blood."

Jon's face had dropped steadily over the course of her summary. Now he took hold of the door frame and glanced back out into the night with a yearning look. "I can't argue your logic. I assume you came up with a different plan, though, or else we'd be out the door and well away from this disaster."

Rose brushed her hair out of her face and nodded. "See, I'm pretty sure things like this don't just happen. There has to be someone or something making it happen, yeah? Like, you said your spider monster came because of a magic book. Maybe there's a creepy book somewhere in the store, or maybe there's a monster turning the mannequins into minions. We need to find that, whatever it is, and destroy it. Then the mannequins should go back to normal."

Jon was scowling, deep furrows in his forehead, but it looked more like a thoughtful frown than a 'you're barking mad' frown. He opened his mouth, shut it, then sighed. "I could argue that logic six ways to Sunday, but something about it feels right. And I think-- I think horror stories operate as much on emotion as they do on logic. It would have a certain poetic symmetry if actual horrors operate similarly."

"Thanks for your vote of support," Rose said dryly.

Jon looked blank for a moment, then grimaced and held up his free hand. "Yes, sorry, that was out of line. Please feel free to tell me when I'm a, oh, what's Georgie's phrase...? When I'm an overbearing arse, right, that was it."

"Can do! So, what I figure is we need to do three things. First, find whatever's behind this nightmare. Second, find a way to get rid of it. Third, actually do that. Oh, and fourth, not die in the process. That's very important."

"I should certainly hope so," Jon said. "Hmm. Tasks two and three will have to wait until we resolve task one, since they depend heavily on who or what is animating the mannequins. Can I assume that you would have noticed something new or out of place in the public areas of the store?"

Rose tilted her head, considering. "In the clothing departments, yeah, absolutely. Not sure about the registers, or the accessories and perfumes, especially not if it's something small like a book. But there's not as many mannequins around there anyway, and a lot of them are just busts to show sunglasses or necklaces, so that doesn't feel like the most promising center for an evil magic spell, you know?"

"It's not magic," Jon said in an offended tone. "But yes, I see what you mean. How about the offices? There must be some management facilities on site, even if most of the financial work happens elsewhere, and a restricted access area could be a sensible place to hide a supernatural object."

"There's a couple rooms on the third floor, and a security room with all the camera feeds on the ground floor," Rose said. "Oh, hang on. We should check Wilson's office again first. We weren't looking for magic books or-- or pictures of haunted dolls, or anything like that. I don't think we'll find anything, but we'd feel like complete idiots if we look everywhere else and it turns out the evil whatsit was down here all along."

Jon sighed. "Yes, fair point. And we should probably grab some hammers in case of hostile encounters with-- whatever."

He pulled the door closed, shutting out the sight and sound of the normal, everyday world and closing them back in with the monsters.

"Test it!" Rose said.

She hadn't known Jon long, but she was fairly sure the lack of sarcastic commentary meant he shared her urgent need to know their exit wouldn't disappear. Fortunately, the door remained unlocked and opened just as easily as the first time. Rose let out a deep breath of relief.

"I'll go first. Stick close," she said, and led the way back to Wilson's office, with pauses at the delivery bay door and the junction to check that the mannequins by the freight lift were still inert and that no new, interesting horrors had appeared. The basement remained empty and silent, save for the whir of fans and the subliminal hum of electricity, which was no less creepy than it had been before.

As they reached the door to Wilson's office (and the junk room door across the hall, which Rose suddenly realized might make an excellent place to hide a creepy magic book, just like all the storage rooms down here), the main lift dinged its arrival.

Jon blinked. "What on--?"

"In, in, in!" Rose whisper-shouted into Jon's ear, and shoved him into Wilson's office, pulling the door shut behind them.

"That-- what-- there shouldn't be anyone using the lift!" Jon said in an indignant whisper.

"I know! Which means it's either killer mannequins or the person who's controlling them. Now cross your fingers they don't come in here."

They waited. And waited. And waited some more, until Rose's eyes had adjusted to the bare trickle of light from the scattered LEDs and she could make out Jon's shadowy form beside her. Somebody or something was clearly moving about in the hallway, but without a window or peephole to look through, Rose couldn't tell anything further. She wasn't even sure how long it had been.

"I'm going to crack the door open," she murmured. "Maybe we'll hear something useful."

"That's a terrible idea and I wish I'd thought of it first," Jon muttered. "Actually, let me handle the door. I'll crouch down and you stand over me ready to hit them."

Rose struggled for a moment between anger that Jon didn't want her controlling the door and bewildered satisfaction that he thought she'd do better at protecting them than he would. Emotions were horrible and she hated them. Maybe Jon had the right idea and hitting a monster would make her feel better.

"Fine. But for the record, you're getting close to the overbearing arse line."

"Shhh," Jon said, and eased the door open a tiny crack. Light spilled in around the edge, objectively dim but still bright enough in contrast to the dark workroom that Rose blinked rapidly to clear the spots from her eyes.

Footsteps drew close down the hall, from the direction that led to the freight lift and the delivery bay. Someone pushed through the hanging barrier, setting the plastic strips rustling and squeaking. And then a human voice, mid-range and mumbled, faded from meaningless noise into words:

"--here somewhere, they can't be dead, they just can't. But I don't understand why this is happening! I didn't even read the book tonight, I've been so careful since poor Mike. They just woke up on their own and they won't go back to sleep and they took the book and-- I have to find whoever's here, have to get them out and get the book back before the cleaners come. It's all my fault and oh god, what they did to Mike, I can't let them--"

Rose gripped the heavy torch so hard she thought she might squeeze right through the plastic like a soggy sandwich, or else slice her fingers off one by one against its hard edges.

The footsteps passed on toward the main lift, and the voice faded back into a vague, rise-and-fall murmur.

"Close it," Rose managed to find breath enough to say.

Jon eased the door shut and turned to her. He was probably frowning, but even that tiny scrap of light had blown her night vision and she couldn't see.

She didn't want to see.

"Jon, that was Wilson," she said. "Wilson who we came down here to save. He's the one behind all this."

"What," Jon said.

"I said that's Wilson, he's--"

Jon flicked on the workroom lights. "No, I got that. I just-- that's-- what on earth can an electrician get out of summoning killer mannequins? If it were an angry customer, or a manager, or a former employee who got fired, that would make some kind of sense. This is just--"

"I know!" Rose threw up her hands, nearly whacking Jon in the shoulder with the heavy torch. "But that was his voice. He's been doing something with a book, and he didn't burn it even after the mannequins killed Mike--"

"Who?"

"The security guard they were talking about when they came to life, remember?"

"Oh, right. Him." Jon raked one hand through his hair, tangled his fingers in his hairband, and pulled it loose in annoyance. "So let's see what we know. One, Mr. Wilson had a book with supernatural powers. Two, he's been using it to animate the mannequins for an unknown reason. Three, the mannequins recently killed a security guard, after which Mr. Wilson stopped using the book but didn't destroy it. Four, tonight the mannequins woke on their own and now have possession of the supernatural book. Five, they probably want to kill us. Six, the cleaners will arrive sometime in the near future, at which point the mannequins will most likely attempt to kill them too. Seven-- Wait. How is Mr. Wilson walking around making noise without drawing the mannequins' attention?"

Rose bit her lip. "Um. That's a good question. Maybe it's because he's the one who woke them up the first time? So they already think he's their friend and don't need to-- tear him apart or whatever they did to Mike."

"Mmm. Plausible. And yet, the mannequins can't entirely trust him or they wouldn't have taken possession of the book."

"Oh! And they wouldn't have taken it unless it can still control them somehow." Rose smacked the torch into her open palm. "Right, new plan. We need to get the book away from the mannequins and destroy it. If they spot us, we're dead. But Wilson can probably get close without them turning on him. So we need to find Wilson, get him to talk to the mannequins, make a distraction so he can grab the book, and then run like hell to some place we've set up whatever we need to burn the book."

Jon's face twitched like he was trying to have three or four different expressions at the same time, before settling on sarcasm over fear. "Of course. And no part of that plan can possibly go wrong in any way, leaving us, Mr. Wilson, and the cleaners torn to pieces at the hands of a mob of murderous mannequins."

"Obviously there's lots of ways it can go wrong and we all die," Rose said. "If you've got a better plan, let's hear it."

"Leave the building, find a bunch of explosives and a timer, and blow the whole place up? That sounds about as likely to work!" Then Jon held up his empty hands, took a deep breath in through his nose and let it out through his mouth. "Sorry, Rose. You're right, it's the least awful plan we've got under the circumstances. Shall we start by following Mr. Wilson or setting up a method to destroy the book?"

"Wilson first. It's great that you've got a lighter, but I don't want to assume that's enough to kill an evil magic book. Wilson'll have a better idea on where and how to start a proper fire without it getting out of control," Rose said firmly.

"Right. So. After you?"

"Right." Rose breathed in, set her shoulders, flicked off the light, and opened the door as quietly as she could. The hallway was empty as she peered out, and she let her breath out in a relieved huff. "Looks clear, come on."

She led Jon past the main lift and several closed doors to another T-shaped intersection of corridors. "I've got no idea what's down this way," she said over her shoulder. "Might be safest to stay here and hope Wilson comes back around again. I'm pretty sure there's no stairs or lifts on this half of the building, but he might have gone up while we were in his office."

"I vote we wait closer to the stairs," Jon said. "At least there we know what's behind two of the doors instead of risking Schrödinger's mannequins if we have to duck into a room for safety."

"What, you don't trust me to bash their faces in?"

Jon rolled his eyes as they turned and walked back toward what had begun to feel like their little fortress within a nightmarish kingdom. "I have every faith in your ability to hit things. I have less faith that the mannequins will be inconvenienced for more than a second or two. They're made of plastic, after all -- no bones, nerves, or blood to damage."

"Fair." Rose swung the heavy torch back and forth, then lifted it to rest on her shoulder. "'S weird, you know? Being the one who's supposed to defend someone else with violence and all that. Usually people look at me and think, 'Oh, she's blonde and pretty and likes pink, must be delicate even if she is a chav.' But if one of us is going to faint, my money's on you."

"No bet," Jon said dryly. "Right. Should we wait in the hallway, the office, or the stairwell?"

Rose considered the options. "Stairwell, I think. The hallway's too open, and there's no window in the office door. Also if we're in the stairs, we can hear if the mannequins realize we left the third floor door unlocked behind us."

Jon made a disgusted face. "We did, didn't we. That's almost certain to come back to haunt us."

"It might not. It could be a convenient escape route," Rose said as she pulled open one of the stairwell doors.

"In what universe does an escape that involves running up four flights of stairs qualify as convenient?" Jon grumbled, but he followed Rose into the stairwell and they settled in to one side of the doors, where Jon could sit on the steps and Rose could peek out the window into the dim hallway.

Jon opened his backpack and rummaged around in the main compartment. "Um. We should probably keep our strength up. I've got a couple protein bars and a can of Monster if you don't mind sharing."

"You are every stereotype of an overworked, cloud-brained uni student come to life, you know?" Rose said without heat. "Yeah. Toss me one of your gross health bars and your gross caffeine overdose pretending to be something drinkable."

Jon looked vaguely embarrassed, but not enough to stop him from chucking a protein bar at Rose and unscrewing the cap on his giant energy drink. "You get used to the flavor, and it's very effective when I need to finish a project on short notice."

He drank a long swig, then stood and offered Rose the can.

She wiped off the rim with her hoodie sleeve and drank. It was predictably disgusting, and she stuck her tongue out in a vain effort to let the taste evaporate. "Blech."

Jon rolled his eyes as he screwed the cap back on. "It's no worse than coffee, and less bad than most of the excuses for tea people have made me sample over the years."

"Yeah, but at least those are made of plants and not radioactive-- oh, shush, something's moving. Duck down so they can't see."

Rose shoved the protein bar into her hoodie pocket, then flattened herself into the corner where the door met the stairwell wall and peered through the small window into the dimly lit corridor. Jon scuttled over to the other corner and crouched, gripping his backpack by the straps. "Good thinking," Rose murmured. "They've still got legs and feet -- one good swing ought to trip them up."

"We can only hope," Jon muttered back. "Do you see--?"

"I think... I think... maybe..." Rose squinted into the distance. "Yeah, no, that's definitely Wilson. And I'm pretty sure he doesn't have any mannequins with him. Should we--?"

Jon took a deep breath, swallowed, and said, "Yes. Let's."

"Here goes nothing." Rose pushed the stairwell door open and called softly into the hallway. "Wilson? It's me, Rose Tyler. I bring the lottery--"

But Wilson wasn't listening. He backed away, head shaking and hands raised like she was a monster he had to ward off. "No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO! You can't be here. You can't be here! Nobody can be here!"

"Shhhhh!" Rose hissed. "Wilson, shush, it's all right, just shut it before they hear you and come 'round to see what's wrong!"

"Too late," Jon said, and pushed Rose's head around to show the storage room door opening and plastic figures creaking out, their movements growing faster and more fluid with each step.

"Fuck."

Rose lunged into the hallway, grabbed Wilson's right hand, and hauled him bodily into the stairwell.

"Can you lock the doors?"

"Not from this side," Jon said grimly, hands busily threading what looked like copper wire through two holes on the push-bars. "This tie is just a stop-gap. They won't have to pull too hard to snap it."

"Fuck."

"Yeah. Run."

They ran up the stairs as the doors began to rattle behind them.

"This is-- you can't-- what--" Wilson stammered as Rose yanked him upward.

"Maybe they won't kill you, but they definitely want to kill us and we can't stop them without you," Rose said as they hit the turn at the first landing. "Do you want to save us and the cleaning crew or not?"

"I-- I can't-- they won't--"

"He's not hearing you," Jon panted as he reached the ground floor.

Rose bit down an inarticulate scream of frustration. "I know! Wilson, come on! Pick up your bloody feet and let's get out of here."

Below them, a door slammed open. "Don't run, friends! Friends don't run from each other! We only want to be friends!" a medley of eerily bright and cheerful voices chorused, accompanied by the awkward, relentless creak and clatter of plastic feet.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck--" Jon chanted as he pelted upwards. "Third floor, right?"

"Unless any of the others are unlocked!"

"Fuck," Jon said again, rattled the first floor doors -- locked, apparently -- and hurried onward, gasping for breath.

Wilson tugged at the cuff of Rose's hoodie. "Key-- I have--"

Rose stopped dead on the first floor landing. "You have keys? What am I saying, course you have keys. Open the door!"

Jon leaned over the railing from the landing midway to the second floor. "Killer mannequins!"

"They're on the third floor, too, and at least the first floor's got the break room and some offices we can lock ourselves in!" Rose hissed back as Wilson fumbled a ring of keys from his jacket pocket and jammed one into the lock. "Get down here."

"When we die, I'm going to say I told you so," Jon snapped as he slithered back down the stairs. "Right. Thank you, Mr. Wilson. Let's go get torn apart."

"Quiet!" Rose said before Wilson could yank the door inward. She tugged the key out of the doorknob, pushed him aside, and opened the door a tiny sliver. No mannequins were immediately visible. "Okay, sneak like your lives depend on it, 'cause they do. And you, lock this back up as soon as we're through."

She gripped the heavy torch firmly in her right hand and slid into the back corner of the first floor. As on the third floor, the stairwell door was next to the dressing rooms and a couple racks of not-yet-reshelved clothes provided a bit of shelter -- while unfortunately also blocking her ability to see if there were any mannequins lurking nearby. They were noisy when they moved, but they didn't breathe and probably didn't shift about the way humans did. If they were standing still and not talking, she could miss a whole busload just waiting to tear her and Jon and Wilson to bloody shreds.

Still, if they didn't move the mannequins coming up the stairs would definitely murder them. "I don't see anything. Come on through," she whispered.

Jon followed, and then Wilson, who locked the door with an unfortunate jangle of keys.

"Did you hear that?" an eerily cheerful voice called from somewhere toward the front of the building.

"It sounded like a friend!" another voice replied.

Jon grabbed Wilson's keyring and shoved it into his jeans pocket. "Fuck."

"Yeah," Rose agreed. "Run?"

"Run."

They ran.

The first floor was mostly menswear, which was why it had room to spare for offices and such. Rose careened around shelves of trousers, neatly folded and arranged by waist and inseam measurements, hurtled past racks of dress shirts, eeled between a sunglasses kiosk and a watch display case, and dove for the break room door.

Jon pelted close behind, crashed into the door, caught himself, and started jamming keys into the lock. "Not that, not that, not that, oh fuck, not that-- yes!" He turned the handle as Wilson puffed up and shoved the door open. "In!"

Rose slammed the door the moment Wilson was inside and leaned hard against it as the knob began to rattle.

Jon reached around her to twist a lever and shoot the deadbolt home.

"I am so glad that wasn't an exterior-only lock," he said as Rose slid down the door to the cold floor tiles.

Rose choked on a gulp of air. "Don't even start. Just-- just find a table or something and drag it over to barricade this, yeah? They're only plastic, but I don't think they get tired or feel pain, and I wouldn't bet against them finding a way to bash the door in."

"Right." Jon untied his hair, ran his hands through the dark strands in a futile attempt to tidy himself, and refastened his hair-tie. "Right. Mr. Wilson, will you lend me a hand?"

The tables were lightweight folding contraptions, so after a bit of confused discussion Wilson unplugged the refrigerator and helped Jon slowly shove it across the linoleum to take Rose's place securing the door. Then they all collapsed into the cheap folding chairs and tried, with varying degrees of success, not to fall to pieces.

This was not made easier by the chorus of eerie voices calling for their "new friends!" to open the door. Wilson flinched at random intervals. Jon pressed his hands over his ears in a futile attempt to block them out. Rose looked straight ahead and counted her breaths, one after another after another, until she lost track somewhere around eighty-six.

She sighed and reached across the table to snap her fingers in front of Jon's face. "Hey. Break's over -- time to work on the plan."

Jon blinked and scowled, but removed his hands from his ears. "Yes, I suppose we have to. We'll have to adjust for the minor problem of being under siege in this room, but the rest should hold up."

"Plan?" Wilson asked in a blank tone. "What plan? There's nothing to do. They'll kill the cleaners and then come back to kill you. Maybe this time they'll finally kill me too, or maybe I'll be stuck trying to clean up the blood. Again. Like I did with Mike. And then they'll do it again, and again, and--"

"If it's all the same to you, Mr. Wilson, we'd prefer to avoid that fate," Jon said, voice sharp despite his lack of volume. "Hence the plan. Thank you for confirming that they don't seem inclined to see you as a target. If you don't want to have more deaths on your conscience, I suggest you follow our instructions and do you best to provide the information we require."

"What he said," Rose agreed in a murmur, in case any of the mannequins got the bright idea to listen instead of shouting at the door. "So what we need, first, is a good place to start a fire, where it can get big enough to burn your evil mannequin zombie book but not so big it burns down the shop. Second, we need you to talk to the mannequins and either grab the book or find out where they're keeping it and play distraction so Jon and I can grab it. Third, we burn the book. Jon's got experience with evil magic books and he thinks if we get rid of it, the mannequins should go back to normal."

"Or at least lose enough of their power that we can toss them into the fire as well," Jon added.

"Yeah, that." Rose tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and gave Wilson her best customer service smile. "So, how 'bout it? Want to help us all get out of here alive?"

"Decide fast. Rose says the cleaners come at ten, and it's already nine thirty."

Wilson gaped at them. "I-- that is-- what?"

"Step one, find the book. Step two, steal the book. Step three, burn the book. It's hardly rocket science, Mr. Wilson," Jon snapped. "We'll do it without you if need be, but we'll have a much higher chance of ensuring this never happens to anyone else if you lend even minimal assistance."

"Do you really think that--" Wilson paused, swallowed, and tried again. "This won't even happen again? They'll go back to sleep for good? Nobody else has to die, like-- oh, god, what they did to Mike, it was-- it was--"

He buried his face in his hands.

"If we burn the book, this all goes away," Rose said in a soothing tone, and sliced her hand in a quick 'shut up' gesture when Jon looked like he might protest.

"You're sure?"

"Yeah. Nobody else has to die. You can help us make sure of it."

"All right. I-- all right." Wilson sucked in a thick, ragged breath, then lowered his hands. "What do you need me to do?"

Rose glanced over toward Jon, who quickly schooled his face from frustration into a practiced blandness that reminded her a lot of a customer service smile. "The first thing we need is a place to start a fire, a method to do so, and a way to ensure it won't burn out too quickly or spread too far. We'll have to start it before we acquire the book, you see, but we may not be able to leave someone tending it all the time. What would you suggest?"

"This is a terrible idea," Wilson said.

Rose patted him on the shoulder. "We know. But doing nothing's worse, yeah? So where's the best place for a bit of minor arson?"

They strategized for as long as they dared, which in practice was about three minutes -- the cleaning crew's scheduled arrival didn't leave them much time to play with. Then they set to work.

The first part of the plan was both the simplest and the biggest risk: getting out of the break room. There were no alternate exits, but there was a small unisex bathroom tucked in the back corner. If they were very lucky, the mannequins hadn't seen exactly who was running from them -- had merely heard the jangle of Wilson's keys -- and wouldn't bother to search the room when he unlocked the door.

Rose crossed her fingers and pressed her ear against the inside of the bathroom door.

"Well?" Jon whispered from the other side of the toilet.

The mannequins' terrifyingly cheerful voices overlapped each other in an incoherent muddle, but Wilson wasn't screaming. That was probably a good sign. There was a loud clatter of plastic, which then slowly moved away.

"I think they bought it," Rose murmured. "Dunno if they left a guard, though."

"There's only one way to find out."

"Yeah." Rose took a deep breath, steadied her grip on the heavy torch, and turned the knob.

The break room was empty, and nothing was immediately visible through the open door to the public parts of the shop.

"You've got the keys?"

"Yeah," Jon said. "And, ah, Rose? If this all goes horribly wrong and we die screaming? I'm glad I met you, and I wish it had been under better circumstances."

"Same here. All right, here goes nothing."

They crept as quickly across the first floor as they could, taking cover behind displays while trying not to jostle any clothes on hangers that might give them away. Henriks was eerily silent: no creak or tap of plastic in motion, no dissonantly cheerful voices. Even the air system had gone quiet.

Rose grabbed hold of Jon's hand halfway to the stairs, needing the reassurance that he was still there with her, still alive and breathing. He squeezed back almost desperately.

No mannequins lurked at the door or in the stairwell, and the basement halls were also clear. On the one hand, this meant their plan was working; Wilson had talked the mannequins into stopping their hunt and gathering to welcome the cleaners at ten. On the other hand, this meant their plan was working; the mannequins were in a giant mob waiting to murder the cleaners, and there was no way to tell if Wilson would be able to find and steal the book.

"What fabrics burn best?" Jon muttered as Rose shoved open the door to one of the junk rooms.

She rolled her eyes. "How should I know? I just sell them, it's not like I've got a degree or anything."

"I know wool is flame-retardant, but I've heard that some synthetics melt and smoke, which doesn't sound helpful. I'd rather not poison myself trying to use, what's it called... rayon? polyester? to build a fire."

"Then let's just use cotton and linen and call it a day, come on," Rose said. "You check labels since you're so picky about kindling. I'm going to grab some of those old shelves and whatnot. Meet me in the delivery bay when you're done."

She made three trips back and forth lugging wood while Jon gathered his fabric kindling, but finally they got the boards arranged in a sort of pyramid shape with a bunch of shirts and dresses ripped up into rags and stuffed in and under the gaps.

"Do you think it'll catch?" Jon asked.

Rose shrugged. "There's only one way to find out," she said, echoing Jon's words from the break room. "Go on, light it up."

Jon flicked his lighter and held it against a rag until the fabric began to smoke, then char, and then burst into a small tongue of bright yellow flame. He shuffled sideways around the pile and repeated the trick three more times as the flames licked inward and upward.

Rose held her breath as the wood pieces slowly started to darken. Paint cracked and peeled on one of the shelves. Finally a two-by-four caught alight in a burst of sparks.

"Okay," she said shakily, then cleared her throat. "Yeah, okay. I think it's safe for a few minutes. Let's check the lift and go find Wilson."

The path from the delivery bay to the freight lift was still clear of mannequins, and illuminated both by light spilling out from the open door to the trash room and by fluorescent ceiling lights in the corridor just in front of the lift itself. If she ignored Jon's presence and the heavy torch in her hand, Rose could almost fool herself she was down here during business hours on a perfectly normal errand.

The lift's exterior signal showed it on the ground floor.

"Thank you, Mr. Wilson," Jon murmured. "So far, so good."

Rose nodded. "Fingers crossed it keeps on like this. All right. D'you want to stay down here and keep an eye on the fire while I head up? It's probably safer."

Jon paused, then shook his head. "It would be safer, and probably wise to have someone watching the fire, but I need-- I need to see it. Does that make any sense? Whatever happens will probably be horrible, but not knowing would be worse."

"I think I'd be just as happy not knowing any of this," Rose said, "but since I'm here already, I just want to make sure all the monsters die. And no offense, but I think I'm more likely to get away from them in a pinch than you."

"None taken. It's true. But I still want to come along. Besides, what if the mannequins locked the doors behind Wilson? You'll need me to open them."

Rose shrugged. "True enough. All right. Let's go kill some monsters and save the cleaning crew."

They took the stairs back up to the ground floor, and then walked across the sales floor to the staff-only areas in the back of the building. The light and noise of a London night carried dimly through the display windows, and Rose had to fight against the urge to glance constantly over her shoulder to make sure nobody had mistaken her and Jon for thieves.

It occurred to her, in a sudden and unpleasant cold wash of knowledge, that most of this mess had probably been recorded on the shop's security cameras.

"I'm going to get fired."

"What? Why?" Jon asked.

"Security cameras, yeah? Nobody's going to believe a bunch of mannequins came to life, so they'll think-- I dunno, that I let in a bunch of uni students for a prank or something, and they trashed the shop. And that's me fired with no references."

"I'm sorry."

"Not your fault. Sometimes life's not fair and you just have to deal with it."

"I know." Jon sighed deeply. Then he added, in a lighter tone, "Oh look, the door to the hallways where dozens and dozens of evil, animated mannequins are waiting to murder any unsuspecting humans who cross their path. What fun!"

"Is this really the time for sarcasm?" Rose asked as she tested the knob. It turned easily, and she peered through in case any stray mannequins were wandering about. "Looks clear."

This was the second biggest risk in the plan, and had missed being the biggest only because opening the break room door had offered no way to escape if the mannequins had decided to search inside. Here, if they stumbled across any mannequins at the edges of the mob, they at least had a slim chance of running away and making it out of the building. But there was no way to guarantee they'd be able to reach the freight lift undiscovered, let alone stay there until Wilson could steal the book and get away.

Jon took a deep breath. "Right. Let's try not to die horribly."

Rose pushed open the door and they tiptoed into the staff-only part of the ground floor. It wasn't quite as creepy as the basement -- white tiles rather than bare concrete, and the cleaners obviously went through once a day to mop and such -- but had the same unwelcoming feel, a place only meant to be occupied at certain times and in certain ways, and which looked unkindly on anyone outside those bounds.

Also, there might be bloodthirsty supernatural mannequins around any corner or behind any door. That would make anyone edgy.

Her fingers were sore from gripping the heavy torch so hard. She flexed them, carefully, and tried to think of something other than getting brutally torn apart.

"You know, it doesn't make sense having the stairs on the opposite side of the building from all the staff rooms," Rose murmured. "This'd be so much easier if we could just run down instead of mucking about with lifts."

"It's probably something to do with plumbing," Jon said tightly. "Please stop talking."

"I don't think we're close enough for-- wait. Did you hear that?" Rose paused, tucked her hair behind her ears, and strained to interpret the faint noise had snagged her attention. "Is that Wilson talking to someone?"

Jon cocked his head. "I think so. But why aren't the mannequins answering?"

"Can't be anything good. Hurry," Rose said, and tugged Jon onward toward the corner.

Wilson's voice grew clearer as they approached, until it was suddenly obvious that he was reading aloud from a written text:

"There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody to do anything. Did you ever stop to think of that? Yes, just one way. And that is by making the other person want to do it. Remember, there is no other way. Of course, you can make someone want to give you their watch by sticking a revolver--"

"What is he doing?" Rose hissed.

Jon grimaced. "I think-- I think he got the book. But if he's reading it -- best case scenario, he's trying to keep the mannequins focused on him. Worst case..." He trailed off ominously.

Rose gnawed on one of her hoodie strings. "Fuck. Right. Possession, or they're forcing him. No way to tell without getting closer."

She peered around the corner, hoping no mannequins were looking in this direction.

The hoard of plastic figures -- how many were there? -- stood stiff and lifeless in the junction between two corridors, spilling back in all four directions. Wilson stood within a tiny circle of empty space at the center of the junction, a small book in a crinkly plastic library jacket clutched in his hands.

"The only way I can get you to do anything is by giving you what you want. What do you want?" he read. "What people want is twofold: first, they want not to be alone. Second, they want to be important. By reading this book--"

Wilson's face gleamed with sweat, and his eyes darted nervously from side to side even as his words rolled out smooth and even.

Rose ducked back around the corner. "I think a little bit trying to keep the mannequins stuck in one place, and a little bit possession," she muttered to Jon. "If I wave and get his attention, can you think of a way for him to pass us the book without anyone dying?"

Jon looked dubious. "I can try."

Rose adjusted her grip on the torch. "Yeah. All right, here goes nothing."

She walked around the corner, heart like a jackhammer in her chest and pulse ringing in her ears. There was no way the mannequins standing beyond Wilson couldn't see her -- but they didn't move, didn't blink their painted eyes or raise their eerie voices. They just stared at the book in Wilson's hands and listened to the steady rhythm of his voice.

"William James said: 'The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated," Wilson recited. "He didn't speak, mind you, of the 'wish' or--"

Rose tapped the heavy torch against the tiled wall and waved her free hand in the air.

"I can't possibly push through to get the book," Jon said beside her. "Maybe if he starts moving they'll let him pass?"

Wilson's eyes locked on Rose and Jon like a drowning man catching sight of a ship. His words rolled on, though he was no longer even looking at the pages: "Here is a gnawing and unfaltering human hunger, and the rare individual who honestly satisfies--"

Rose gestured for him to come.

He shook his head and snapped the book shut. The words kept rolling on, pushing out of his mouth as if they had a mind and will of their own. "and 'not even the undertaker will allow him to die.' To feel truly appreciated, you must first learn to see yourself as a stranger might."

Wilson hurled the book over the close-packed plastic bodies of the mannequins that separated him from freedom.

Jon flailed forward and grabbed it just before it hit the ground. Off-balance, he fell to his knees.

The mannequins began to stir. Plastic creaked and popped as pale heads turned and unarticulated limbs moved in ways they'd never been designed for.

Wilson pointed down the corridor toward the freight lift and continued reciting: "Only then can you begin to alter the face you show to the world. As a first step--"

"You are not acting like a friend!" one of the mannequins said.

Rose yanked Jon to his feet and ran for the lift.

Wilson's voice was growing ragged, but still the words rolled on. "--and mirror back the faces of those you walk among. The desire for a feeling of importance is one of the chief distinguishing--"

"You are trying to criticize us!"

"You do not share enthusiasm!"

"We will help you remember how to be a friend!"

"Then we will make new friends!"

Jon lagged behind, looking over his shoulder. Rose grabbed his arm and pulled him onward.

"To illustrate: when I was a farm boy out in Missouri, my father once took me to a traveling circus that had set up next to the county fair. A pair of free tickets had been the prize for--"

Something snapped and tore with a wet, echoing crack and Wilson's voice cut off with a thick gurgle. There was no scream.

Plastic feet clattered on the tiled floor and a cheerful voice called, "Friends! Come see! Our other friends are running away!"

Jon stabbed the lift button. The doors slid open. Rose dove inside and mashed the basement and door close buttons.

The doors slid shut as a dozen mannequins rounded the corner.

Jon slumped against the lift wall, panting, book clutched in his hands. The front cover proclaimed How To Win Friends and Influence People in a rounded, friendly-looking font. Rose would have bet twenty pounds she'd seen the exact same edition on Derek-the-arsehole-manager's desk last winter, only less beat-up and without the library plastic and bar code.

"How long will it take for them to get down the stairs?" Jon asked after a moment.

"Not long enough," Rose said. "How much of that has to burn before the mannequins die?"

"Too much, most likely."

They looked grimly at each other.

"Do you think Mr. Wilson...?"

Rose dug her fingernails into the plastic casing of the heavy torch. "He's dead. There's no way-- and it would be worse if-- you heard--"

"But we didn't see."

"If we'd been close enough to see, we'd be dead and the mannequins would have the book again," Rose said as the lift dinged and the doors slid open on the gloomy concrete basement hallway. "Now come on, run!"

They pelted toward the delivery bay, not bothering to try for stealth. Somewhere behind them, the stairwell door banged open and the air filled with the sound of creaking plastic and loud, cheerful voices.

The fire was in full flame, all the wood now caught and blazing, sending a stream of sparks up toward the ceiling.

Rose shoved Jon toward the fire and swung around to "Make sure the book burns! I'll guard the doorway!"

The delivery bay was the best place for a fire, in the sense that the ceiling was so high that any heat or smoke would take longer to set off the automatic sprinkler system, and also they could be nearly sure of not burning anything important by accident. It was also a terrible place for the fire, because it didn't have a door to shut behind them.

In the end, making sure the fire stayed lit until the book burned to ash and nightmares was more important than making sure Rose and Jon lived through the attempt.

But Rose wasn't going to go down without a fight.

A horrible smell washed out from the flames behind her as Jon chucked the book into the fire.

"Is it burning?"

"Not yet, just the library plastic," Jon said. "I think-- I think it's charring a little? At the corners?"

Rose had no chance to answer or look for herself. The mannequins were upon her.

"Let us through, friend!" they said. "Friends shouldn't fight!" they said. "Friends don't betray or hurt each other!" they said.

Wilson's blood spattered their clothes and skin.

"Fuck you," Rose answered, and swung the torch at the shoulder joint of the one in front. The joint popped free with a sound like a drain unclogging, and the arm fell stiff and lifeless on the floor.

The mannequins stared with their blank and painted eyes. Then they pushed forward in creaking unison, stiff fingers uncurling from manufactured poses as they grasped for her clothes and arms.

It wasn't like fighting people. People screamed and winced and bled. Plastic just bent or cracked and kept on moving. The closer the mannequins got, the more obvious it was how inhuman they were -- and not just for how they moved. The proportions were wrong, the angles were wrong, they were just wrong, wrong, wrong. How could people ever think monsters like this were close enough to human to wear human clothes, let alone act as examples or ideals?

It was like Red Riding Hood opening her grandmother's door and finding something that wore her grandmother's clothes and spoke with her grandmother's voice but was completely and utterly not her grandmother.

Grandma, what big eyes you have, Rose chanted in her head as she swung and kicked and dodged. What strong hands you have. What beautiful clothes you have. But no teeth. You're not going to eat me. The book would catch fire -- it would, she refused to believe anything else -- and no monster was going to gobble her up.

She didn't have an axe, but that was all right. She didn't need to be a huntsman.

She wasn't Red Riding Hood.

She was the Big Bad Wolf.

Another mannequin reeled away, plastic head caved in and leg smashed out of its socket, but they'd forced her back and back, into the delivery bay, and now one had gotten around beside her.

Smooth, room-temperature hands closed around her throat and squeezed. Rose twisted, hooked her foot behind the mannequin's feet, but the hands never wavered as they fell. Another set of feet clattered past, toward Jon and the fire. Rose rolled sideways, tried to get leverage. Another mannequin caught her legs. Darkness gathered in the corners of her eyes.

And then the pressure lessened. The plastic hands were still locked tight around her neck, but like a too-tight necklace instead of a garrote. The hands on her legs slid free as plastic clattered to the concrete floor in a thunder like collapsing shelves.

Rose gasped for breath.

Then she raised both hands, slipped them between herself and the mannequin's left arm, and shoved until the plastic limb popped out of its socket and fell away. She grabbed the torch, scrambled to her feet, and looked toward the fire.

Jon sprawled on the floor, a pair of mannequins beside him in an awkward heap. Another lay over the fire, starting to melt and give off hideous black smoke. There was no sign of the book.

"Did we-- are we alive?" Jon said.

"I am. Are you?"

"Yes. Yes, I think I am. Oh. Oh, I was not expecting that." Jon sat up and ran his hands through his hair. "Well. Yes. Now what?"

Above them, the oily smoke from the burning mannequin finally set off the sprinklers and the fire alarm. Lukewarm water poured down like a fitful, musty shower.

Rose looked around the disaster of the delivery bay, then walked over to offer Jon her hand. "We head upstairs. We wait for the police. And we hope at least one of them believes us."

Jon breathed out heavily through his nose. "Right. Let's go get arrested. At this point, that almost sounds relaxing." He took Rose's hand.

"I'd get arrested with you any time," Rose said as she hauled Jon to his feet.

"Likewise," he said. "Though I hope the next time we meet, it's under much less stressful circumstances."

Rose bumped his shoulder with her own, and they set out toward Henrik's front doors hand in hand.

---------------------------------------------

End of Story

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I cannot believe I forgot to post this until I saw a few last-minute WIP Big Bang fics go up on the Dreamwidth community. In my defense, this has been a very peculiar month, to say nothing of a very peculiar year.

Anyway, I'll probably edit this a bunch before I post it on AO3, but what the hell, it's done. :)