Girl, Deconstructed (audio story)

 was the first story in the audio anthology Respond to All Calls, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Lisa McMullin and featured Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor.

Publisher's summary
Marnie is missing. But she hasn't run away, as her dad fears - Marnie is still very much at home. But not quite as she was.

The Doctor joins forces with Missing Persons detective Jana Lee to help solve the mystery of a girl who's gone to pieces.

Plot
From inside her house, 15-year-old Marnie McDonald listens from afar as her father Kurt phones a friend, enquiring about her whereabouts as she had not come home last night, although she protests that she has never left the house and is right next to him, although admits to feeling strange. She cries out to her father to hear her as she feels "fractured". Kurt next phones the police to report Marnie missing as she begs for help, unheard.

Meanwhile, in the TARDIS, the Ninth Doctor responds to an alert, admonishing it for nagging him. He is informed about a nearby migration of the Serapheem but notices they are taking an oddly long way round. As he ponders this, he picks up the end of Marnie's distressed cry, to his confusion, and decides to follow it.

Kurt answers the door to DC Jana Lee, although is slightly surprised to see her. He points her to the local news reporting on dozens of newly missing teenagers that had seemingly vanished into thin air and explains that the force did not need to send two officers to his house, confusing her. Jana questions Kurt, and he explains that yesterday, he had another argument with Marnie, and she stormed off to her room. An hour later, she was missing, leaving her mobile phone behind. He had presumed she had come home overnight upon hearing noises but chose not to look for her until the morning.

Jana investigates Marnie's room, bumping into the Doctor. He tells her to be quiet, detecting a vibration of Marnie's almost-voice in the distance. The Doctor uses his psychic paper to identify himself as DS John Smith. Jana promises to search Marnie's phone, with the Doctor only then realising that somebody has gone missing as he was previously searching for the Serapheem. As they talk, Marnie's presence continues to try and make herself known by making a picture fall off the wall.

As Jana drives the Doctor to her police station, she explains they are in 2004 Dundee and he convinces her to explain the situation "as if I've just dropped in from outer space". Jana recounts that starting at 10 o'clock last night, teenagers started disappearing; a total of 62 in one hour. At the station, she shows the Doctor a spreadsheet of the missing people and he believes that they are still in the town. Asking if Jana grew up nearby, she explains that she used to live about three streets away, and he asks her to take him there on a hunch.

Kurt continues to listen to the local news coverage and thinks out loud about what he did wrong. Marnie says to herself that he never does anything, then accidentally breaks a china elephant that she gifted him from a zoo, being made more upset at hearing him deride it. He then starts crying to himself.

Jana drops the Doctor outside her childhood house, number 25, but the Doctor is more drawn to the empty house next door that he thinks looks stereotypically haunted. Jana says that houses are not haunted, people are. The Doctor knocks on the door despite the house being boarded up and tries to get inside on his own as the sonic screwdriver would not work on it. The Doctor smashes the window and enters alone, then uses his sonic screwdriver to look for residual molecular disturbance - a movement that makes something feel haunted. Theorising that the missing people are still around but invisible, Jana gets suspicious, and the Doctor admits he is not with the police but insists he is helping and leaves to pick up some equipment.

The Doctor lands the TARDIS back inside the house, startling and confusing Jana who just saw him leave, as he rigs up a quantum stabiliser to a pulse resonance chamber. He explains it will let them speak to people who are trying to speak but do not have the physical capability to, literally turning thoughts into voices. As he powers on the machine, a man's voice echoes through, calling himself Douglas. He recognises Jana and she explains how she was best friends with a Douglas that lived in the house twenty years ago, but he went missing when he was 13. The Doctor believes that Douglas' molecules were redistributed and deconstructed but are still ageing, though he cannot be seen. Getting an idea, the Doctor enters the TARDIS to take the resonator to Marnie's house and promises to meet Jana there.

Arriving at the house, Jana tells the Doctor that he has arrived half an hour late despite only being three miles down the road. Inside, Kurt describes more poltergeist-like events which the Doctor attributes to Marnie, so he takes the resonator to listen to her and the father and daughter share a reunion. The Doctor explains that her deconstruction is due to the Serapheem, a microscopic, lighter-than-air species that migrate on starlight via Earth for a stop-off. However, they cannot distinguish between voices and thoughts, so when they detected the teenagers' wishes to escape, they wanted to help. They tried to carry Marnie away by deconstructing her molecules but found that she was still unable to move on light so left her behind. Jana asks if the Doctor can track the Serapheem in the TARDIS, and he explains that was what he was doing all along.

The Doctor flashes back to receiving the TARDIS' signal, discovering the Serapheem's migration SOS and Marnie's cry for help. He attempts to lock onto her signal upon realising that the Serapheem have gone off track and tries to speak to them, but the TARDIS cannot translate so many of them at once. Upon asking for help with the human voice, however, he is met with silence. Back in the present, the Doctor explains he can use Marnie as a conduit to talk to the Serapheem in space via the TARDIS so she can get her body back, but there is a chance she could lose her mind in the process. However, she is willing to take the risk.

The group rearrange Marnie's furniture so the TARDIS can land in her bedroom, which he does a few seconds too early, briefly telling his past self to hurry up and take off. Marnie reminds Kurt that she loves him before her journey and the Doctor reminds her to keep a hold on her mind. She successfully connects with the Serapheem, but the Doctor warns her that they will talk via her brain, requiring her to empty her mind while they talk. Eventually, the Doctor's concoction allows him to talk to the Serapheem through Marnie's voice, though some of her thoughts filter through as well. They explain that they were forced to flee the Helios System to Earth to escape their dying sun. The Doctor asks them to reverse the humans' deconstruction, but Marnie begins to lose sanity as they talk. With Marnie beginning to only talk in random syllables, the Doctor severs the connection.

The Doctor begs Marnie to hold onto her mind, a beeping sound from the Serapheem is heard: a set of molecular instructions to bring her back to normal through the TARDIS' Block Transfer Computation and a tiny bit of artron energy, using the resonator as a form of 3D printer but hopes not to lose any parts of her. Marnie is slowly rebuilt from the feet up and she shares a tearful reunion with her father. Kurt briefly pretends to still be cross with her but quickly drops the act.

Returning to Douglas' house, Jana bemoans the Doctor turning up late again, but he defends taking four hours to reconstruct 61 other teenagers. He takes out the resonator to speak to Douglas but sadly reveals that the time window to return someone is only one day, and he has been deconstructed for twenty years. Although Jana wants the Doctor to travel back in time and fix it, he sternly tells her how all of history would change as a result, especially her glittering future career.

Marnie and Kurt share a conversation about why she wanted to run away, but she admits she never really wanted to and was just frustrated with her mother having moved to New York. The two make up. Meanwhile, the Doctor apologises to Douglas and promises to leave the resonator behind so he can talk to Jana at any time. The Doctor explains that he knew Jana was connected to the disappearances, especially as no other teenagers were taken when Douglas was, which is why he worked with her. In the meantime, he recommends Jana say hello whenever she walks into an empty room, just in case there is a deconstructed person there. She asks the Doctor what he is doing on 10 October to celebrate Douglas' birthday.

Everyone badly sings Happy Birthday to Douglas as Kurt insists on him making a speech. He explains how lots of old friends and family have visited him, including his mother, although his father has since passed away. Douglas tells Marnie to appreciate her father while she can. The Doctor brings up how the house has been sold and Douglas laments not being able to see those he cares about, but the Doctor reveals he bought the house himself - not for him to live in, but for others to visit Douglas. At that, he leaves in the TARDIS. When Jana asks where he is going, he replies, "I dunno! Exciting, eh?"

Cast

 * The Doctor - Christopher Eccleston
 * DC Jana Lee - Pearl Appleby
 * Marnie / The Serapheem - Mirren Mack
 * Kurt - Forbes Masson
 * Douglas - Benjamin Davies

Continuity

 * The Doctor's sonic screwdriver "doesn't do wood". (TV: Silence in the Library, et al.)
 * The Doctor implies he is still a member of UNIT. (TV: Spearhead from Space, et al.)
 * The Doctor's TARDIS can perform Block Transfer Computation. (TV: Logopolis)
 * The Ninth Doctor will utilise the heart of the TARDIS again. (TV: Boom Town, The Parting of the Ways)
 * The Doctor mentions how he has tried living in a normal house before, (COMIC: Fellow Travellers, et al.) but it nearly caused a temporal cataclysm. (AUDIO: Stranded)