- Chapter One -

Over The Fence

Twelve year-old Eva Marrow hated playing indoors. Games consoles and televisions were boring, and she'd much prefer to be playing basketball and skateboarding any day of the week. Currently, she and her friend Kenny Smith were playing football. Well, improvised football at any rate. There was only one player per side, and lacking a real football they were using a tennis ball. Instead of a goal, they had designated bricks in the walls as the net, although they were having difficulty remembering which bricks were which.

They had been playing for over an hour, and Kenny was winning. Eva ran towards him, ready to tackle him and shoot the ball all the way to the other end of the make-shift pitch.

'Don't think you'll get this one in,' she jibed at him. 'This is it now. I'm going to win this time...'

'Yeah right, Marrow,' Kenny sneered back, dodging her. 'Don't get your hopes up. And by the way, whoever wins this gets an extra milkshake on Monday. With topping.'

That was a huge incentive. Milkshake was pretty much the only good thing about Mondays.

Eva wheeled around as Kenny began aiming at the goal and dived for it in his hesitance.

'Hah!' she shouted in triumph as her foot connected with it. The ball flew up towards the other end of the pitch, higher and higher until...

'Nice one,' Kenny said sarcastically.

The ball had gone over a tall wire fence, and bounced into a large rubbish skip on the other side.

Eva picked herself up from the floor, rubbing her arm which had scraped across the floor. 'Yeah...' she mumbled, 'still... at least you didn't score.' She grinned at him. He didn't return the expression.

'That was my last one since Thomas "The Idiot" Jennings threw the other one in the pond that time we went to the park.'

'All right,' Eva said, rolling her eyes. 'I'll go and get it.'

Behind the fence was a large factory that manufactured car parts. There was security at the main entrance that stopped anyone but employees from getting in, but Eva didn't much fancy having to ask some burly guards for her ball back.

Fortunately, the local kids had figured out a way to get past, because the factory had all kinds of interesting places that were ideal for dens and hideouts. The ball had fallen into the bigger of the two huge, rusting yellow skips along the wall that provided an excellent place to swap trading cards, as long as you didn't mind the smell.

'I love a good dumpster dive in the morning,' Eva muttered unenthusiastically, now wondering whether an extra milkshake was worth all this.

She crept towards a hole in the fence, the regular entrance for everyone under five feet tall, and squeezed through. Looking around quickly for any sign of adults, she ran towards the corner of the factory, and peered round. There were a couple of people milling about during their lunch break, but they had their backs turned, and so Eva rushed past them before they noticed. She ducked in between the dumpsters and was going to breathe a sigh of relief until she thought better of it. She hesitantly looked inside.

The garbage was piled high, and flies buzzed over it. Although it was mostly metal and junk, there were still a number of bulging black bags, dripping unpleasantly. Hoping the ball hadn't fallen to the bottom, Eva grimaced and began to dig through the rubbish, looking out for something spherical and yellow. She turned over the bin bags and moved aside old scrap metal. Finally, her hand closed around the tennis ball, and she retrieved it. It was caked in grime, but she was pretty sure it was the same as the ball she'd kicked over the fence.

'Gotcha!' She punched the air and pocketed it. She made to jump out, but her foot slid on something and she heard something bleep, like a computer turning on. Eva looked around for the source.

She crouched down again, and moved aside a sheet of wood that had a huge split down the middle. Beneath it, lay a strange looking device, a bit like a stereo. Eva picked it up and examined it. It was black, approximately thirty centimetres long, and had two circles of thin metal mesh on either side that resembled speakers. In the middle of the speakers, were a number of buttons and dials that Eva didn't recognise. Maybe not a stereo, then. She had kicked a switch, and now a little LED next to it was flashing red and a steady bleep was emanating from it, like the sonar in submarines.

Eva jumped down from the dumpster, still holding the device. Evidently no one wanted it, because it had been thrown away and therefore it wasn't stealing. In fact, she mused, she was saving the world by making sure the thing didn't go into landfill, so she definitely had the moral high ground. Eva ran back to the hole in the fence and hurried back towards the orphanage, the device under her arm.

She ran upstairs to stash the stereo - or whatever it was - in her room before anyone asked her what it was. She knelt on the floor to shove it under her bed, hoping that she might be able to listen to her favourite CD later, but hesitated. Surely stereos didn't make noises. At least, not until you pressed play. But the thing was still bleeping. When she examined the buttons, she noticed they were labelled with strange symbols she didn't recognise. No play, pause, or rewind, just indecipherable squiggles and lines. She pressed a button anyway, hoping a secret compartment would open up and reveal what the device was for. Instead, the bleeping became a single, held tone, and got higher in pitch.

Eva clamped her hands over her ears as it became so high it was an excruciating whistle. Higher and higher, until it was filling her head. It was blocking out everything but the sound, becoming louder and louder. The whole orphanage could hear it now. Someone was knocking on the door, shouting for her, but the noise was so painful in her head that she couldn't move.

'Eva? Are you in there? What's that horrible noise?'

'I-It's this... this thing!' Eva shouted above the sound, like microphone feedback in her head.

'Turn it off!'

'I c-can't!'

Her head was spinning, and she could barely see. Eva closed her eyes, but it didn't make a difference. There was no escape.

The door opened, and Kenny rushed inside. Other children peered around the door, but they all soon collapsed to their knees as the noise filled their heads too. Everyone looked as if they were screaming in pain. Blackness began curling into the corners of Eva's eyes. She felt like the world was crushing in around her, like her head was about to explode. She had to turn the device off.

Mustering all her strength, she pushed through the thick air, and flicked the switch. Silence finally fell. Completely exhausted, Eva and all the other children sank to the floor, out cold.


'What's that?'

'A polarity regulator.'

'And that?'

'A cyberkinetic transmorphograph.'

'What about that one?'

'A teletrophic physicality receptor.'

'Uh huh. And that one?'

'You know you two really are very inquisitive for your age. Most of the time I'd say it's brilliant, I mean, I like inquisitive. Inquisitive is my middle name - The "Inquisitive" Doctor, that's what they call me - but you're just a little too inquisitive.'

'We're just asking,' Jenny replied innocently, grinning at Matt who was sitting on the TARDIS control desk, as the Doctor darted from one side of the console to the other. 'Besides,' Matt said, 'you were blatantly making those words up. I mean, what's a cyber-whatsit transformer when it's at home? Sounds like some kind of cartoon.'

'It probably is. He's totally into that kind of stuff.'

'I was not making it up,' the Doctor retorted, looking hurt. He moved towards Matt. 'You, get down from there. You're in the way of the somatic response reticulat-- Look, just... just get up. And you,' he pointed at Jenny, who was laughing at him, 'stop trying to be clever.'

Matt jumped down and grinned at the Doctor.

'It is really interesting, though. I mean, time travel! You see it on the TV and stuff, but it's different when it's actually happening.'

'Time and space,' the Doctor reminded him. People always seemed to forget it travelled anywhere in space too, which, in the Doctor's opinion, was just as impressive as something travelling in time. After all, if you'd travelled in time once, it was easy to do it again, and you usually didn't end up anywhere too nasty except Elizabethan England or the 1980s. Travelling a million, billion miles across the stars, on the other hand, took skill and knowledge. To travel in space you had to know where you were going.

'Anyway, she's being a bit placid at the moment,' he said, placing a hand on the transparent blue column, as if feeling the TARDIS' pulse. 'Adjusting to having you lot around, I'd bet.'

'I'm not complaining about that,' Ivy said. She was sitting on one of the benches, watching the three of them with amusement. 'I'll take smooth, peaceful TARDIS over jolting, exploding TARDIS any day of the week.'

'Hang on, what's that?'

The Doctor wheeled round to face Jenny, 'stop -'

'No really, what is it? This thing just started flashing. I think it's a warning light of some kind. A distress signal...'

The Doctor raised a perplexed eyebrow and moved over to the monitor hanging above the desk.

'Hmm... It's not a distress signal, and it's nothing in this part of space. It's coming from way off. Hold on...' He manipulated the controls and tapped some keys. The TARDIS shifted and the column began to move faster. The Doctor rushed round the console, twisting dials, pressing buttons and pulling levers, sometimes with both hands and a foot, as the TARDIS transported them through the vortex.

Ivy, Matt and Jenny were flung from their seats. Something exploded, and smoke began to fill the room.

Finally, with an almighty shudder, the TARDIS landed.

The Doctor disentangled himself from the controls.

'Right!' he said. He jumped up and swung a screen towards him. 'Where are we?'

Matt's voice drifted out from somewhere, 'Does it matter? I think I've broken something...'

'Ooh we're on Earth. 2009. London. Broad Street. '

'What? The orphanage?' Ivy asked, joining the Doctor.

'Apparently.'

'What's a place like that doing with an alien signal? We only got broadband six months ago!'

'I dunno, but d'you know what?'

'What?'

The Doctor grinned excitedly. 'Let's be inquisitive!'