Ten past Midnight
I cracked my knuckles while I let my computer shut down. One essay down, one more to go. But not tonight, I'm too tired tonight. I'll start the second in the morning, but right now, it's time for bed.
I was already in my Minnie Mouse pajamas and had my hair in a tiny pony tail, with my favourite black head band pushing it out of my face. Not the most attractive look, but I don't think Shakespeare would mind that I tore apart Romeo & Juliet, and Othello dressed that way. My thighs were still pink from the heat my laptop produced.
After my laptop was safely stashed under my bed, I got up to make my customary cup of tea (earl grey, drowned with honey) before bed. It was sickly sweet, but the honey felt good running down my throat and it helped calm my mind and allowed me to think of more trivial matters. Am I almost out of strawberry shampoo? I should stop by the Library soon, haven't been in a while. What television shows have I missed recently?
I finished my tea, dumped the excess honey down the drain and left my cup to soak in soapy water so it'll be easier to clean in the morning. I headed back to my bedroom, turned off the lights and snuggled down in my blankets for some well needed sleep. Just as I got in that perfectly comfortable position, I heard a strange whir noise from the bathroom. Damn, I thought, I left the ruddy fan on. I should turn it off what with bills being as high as they are.
I flipped the sheets off me (regretting it already, I'd never get that comfortable again) and got out of bed, the whirring noise stopped. Great. I lost my spot for nothing, I thought. But it wasn't nothing.
Not thirty seconds later did I hear a faint humming sound, and someone mumbling something to themselves. My survival instincts kicked in. Someone is in your house, phone the police and grab the nearest heavy object. No, I said to myself, it could just be the neighbour's television. But just to be safe…
I dug my baseball bat out of my closet, and started down the short hallway. I kept the lights off, I'd need every advantage I could get. I'm rather short, and not athletic in any way shape or form, and I was close to being underweight. In order for someone to get to my second floor flat, they'd had to have climbed up the fire escape which isn't easy.
A strange blue glow was leaking out from under the bathroom door. As I reached the door, I took a deep breath. Ok, you can do this, you have a rather heavy baseball bat, and have taken several self-defense courses. And what do they have? A humming blue flashlight? You can take'em.
I kicked through the door and swung the bat blindly, nearly breaking my mirror and hitting my target in the head. But he had ducked just in time.
"Woah there! You nearly took my head off!" The man standing in my bathroom exclaimed. He was a tall bloke, no more than 30 years old. He had strange hair that stood up at the ends and wore a navy blue suit with a red tie and matching red trainers, on top of that was a heavy brown trench coat.
What was stranger than the man's appearance was the blue Police Call Box, that now stood in my bathroom.
"Wh-who the hell are you? What the hell are you doing in my bathroom at midnight? And why the bloody hell are you wearing a trench coat in June?" I damn near shouted them at him. He had at least a foot on me in height. I guess I was trying to make myself appear bigger. I widened my stance and held the bat up high.
He raised his hands slowly. "My name is the Doctor. I don't know what I'm doing in your bathroom, I ended up here accidentally, and I am rather fond of this coat."
In his right hand was a small strange object. He must have seen me looking at it because he began to put it away. "What is that thing?" I barked at him. He stopped moving. "It's just a screwdriver. Please put your bat down, I do not wish to harm you."
"I'm not putting it down till I know why and how you're here." I was trying my best to stay in control. I guess I was succeeding because he looked scared.
"If you put the bat down, I can try to explain. I have no weapons on me, you can check if you'd like, but I am unarmed."
"Fine." I lowered my bat. He straightened his tie. There were some small beads of sweat on his forehead. I'm not sure if they were from nervousness or from the overwhelming heat of his trench coat.
He reached into his coat inside pocket. I raised my bat again. He flinched. "I'm just putting away my screwdriver." He put his so called screwdriver in his pocket and pulled out a blank piece of paper. Scrawled across the paper in messy writing were the words 'Help me please! I've done nothing wrong! Please someone, anyone! Please listen to me!' "I'm here because of this. I used my TARDIS to-"
"I'm sorry your what?"
"Oh my TARDIS. Time And Relative Dimension In Space. That's the blue box behind me," he said it with this big smile on his face, much like a five year old who knew the answer to a question his teacher asked.
"You're completely looney, you know that. Totally Bonkers."
"Yeah, I get that a lot. Well since you know I'm not here to harm you, and you no longer have a bat to my head, I think it's time we better got to know each other. I'm the Doctor, I travel in a TARDIS and respond to urgent messages I receive on pieces of paper. And you are?"
"I'm sorry I don't give my name out to mad men with funny hair who appear in my bathroom in their blue box at midnight."
"Alright then, moving on. Why I'm here. You haven't made this distress call have you? Maybe seen something strange or peculiar going on lately?"
"The only strange thing I've seen is this. I must be going mad! It's the stress of that damned literature course I'm telling you. I knew I shouldn't have taken it. Now I'm hallucinating! Funny men with Police boxes and trench coats and light up screw drivers in my bathroom! I need another cup of tea…"
"I'll go put on the kettle!" He said as he ran past me and down the hall.
"Are you sure I'm not just mad?" I asked staring blankly into my cup of untouched mint tea. The Doctor was already on his third cup.
"No you're not mad. Well you might be, I don't know you too well, hardly at all really, in fact I don't even know your name. You can tell a lot about a person from their name. Background, family life, history-"
"It's Hazel," I said flatly still staring into the steam of my mug, "Analyze that Sherlock."
"Hazel! Lovely name. Brilliant. You're a smart one aren't you? Study hard, very creative, yes…" He trailed off. I took the opportunity to try and sort out my thoughts.
"So you want me to believe that you Travel through time AND space in a tiny blue police box, and you came here by mistake because a piece of paper received a message that you tracked to my bathroom?"
He snapped back into focus. "Well you don't have to believe it if you don't want to. I help people, so when someone's in trouble I come running."
"Could've used you growing up," I mumbled into my cup of tea, finally taking a sip. "Well I'm sorry I can't be much more help to you than give you tea, and apparently give you biscuits," I said as he found my secret stash of jammie dodgers and grabbed a handful. "I'd show you the door but, it appears you have your own mode of transportation."
"Yes well, quite right, I shall be off then. Allons-y as I always say!"
"Not Allons-y. That's plural. I'm not going with you."
He opened his mouth as if to say something. He was quiet for a while, and his eyes had this far off look, as if remembering something. He closed his mouth, shoved his hands in the pocket of his trench coat and looked down. "yes, I suppose you're right. Well off I go then…"
He began this slow sad march back down the hall. He looked like a dog that had been kicked in the stomach. Damn, was I a sucker for wounded creatures.
"Well I suppose since you're going to be in the area, and it can get dangerous at this time of night, you'd need someone to protect you and make sure you don't get lost. And, well, you've seen me swing a bat…" I said lamely after him. He stopped and turned around. There was this big ear to ear grin on his face. He ran over and grabbed my hand.
"Oh you are Brilliant Hazel! Absolutely brilliant! You know that?"
"Yeah, yeah, sure. Just gimme a minute to change out of Minnie Mouse alright."
"Oh don't worry, there are plenty of extra clothes in the TARDIS."
"OI!" I yanked my hand out of his. "You expect me to get in that tiny box with you and strip down to me undies? No way in hell am I going with you now!"
I began to march away, but, like I said, he was bigger than me. He grabbed my hand and spun me around. "Well obviously I wouldn't look! It's a lot bigger than you think, honestly."
We continued down the hall to the bathroom. He snapped his fingers and the door of the TARDIS opened. He walked inside. I hesitated. He popped back out and gestured for me to follow. Slowly I stepped in. He was right. It was bigger than I thought. Much bigger.
"Well? What do you think?" He asked smiling at the shocked expression that, no doubt, was stuck to my face.
"How can all this fit into my tiny bathroom? There's barely any room for a tub, never mind whatever this is."
"Time Lord design," was all he said.
"I'd ask what that means but it probably involves some long and confusing explanation that would make me feel even more silly than my pajamas do."
"Fair enough. Now if you follow down that corridor to the right, make a left past the third door, two rights and take the stairs up and make a left, a left and a right and the fifth door on the right hand side should be the costume room. I hope."
I got lost a fair amount of times (was it three lefts or two lefts and a right?) but eventually I found it. I was not sure what I was expecting, but there were costumes and outfits from every time period all over the world! Kimonos, flapper dresses, poodle skirts, hoop skirts, even several pairs of Go-Go boots. After trying on several different outfits of varying points in time, I found something from my era. Just a simple shirt with the Union flag (it's only called the Jack when it's flown at sea), and a pair of jeans.
I got back to the main room and found the Doctor tinkering with some buttons and screens on, what I assume is, the control panel. He looked up at me with this big grin when he heard me enter as if he were proud of something. But when he saw me his big goofy grin faded into that far off look, like something was wrong.
"What? Is it my hair? Is it standing up on all ends?" I said stupidly trying to fix it.
"No," he said snapping back to attention and looking down again, "that shirt belonged to a friend of mine. Not sure how it got in the closet. Anyways, I found the location of the signal. Turns out, I was a few degrees off. And so was the message. The psychic paper translated it for us. But after figuring out the original language it was sent in, I tracked it back to its original point of origin. Rome, Italy."
"Rome is a few degrees off?!" I said flabbergasted.
"And I was a couple centuries off too. The message came from Ancient Rome to be precise."
"I thought we'd just be going down the street because someone was getting mugged, or arrested for something they didn't do, or I don't know! But Ancient Rome? I can't. I Can't! I have a class tomorrow, and a paper due on the filth of renaissance drama, and a presentation on the metamorphosis of cells, and a job interview at this tea shop down the street!"
"What part of time machine don't you understand? We could go to Ancient Rome, the third moon of Galzar, and watch Earth collapse in on itself and be back for your morning cup of tea! We can go anywhere you want in all of space and time Hazel."
"Please just give me a minute to process all this. My brain may work faster than most, but this, this is a LOT to take in."
"I was wondering why you haven't been asking so many questions. Like about the TARDIS, Time Lords, my Sonic screwdriver, psychic paper, Third moon of Galzar, Doctor W-"
"Alright, I get it. I'm a new interesting phenomenon to you. I don't ask questions. I've learned to hold my tongue and I've figured out how to get more information out of people by staying silent. I've got the whole Sherlock Holmes thing going on."
"Really now? Well what have you deduced from me then? Impress me." He challenged me with his arms wide open but the big goofy smile on his face.
"Well first off, you're a mad man with a big blue box, but that's an obvious one. Second, I think you had full intention of dropping by my flat first. You knew where the message came from because I read it in Latin first, then English second because it's psychic paper which generally implies it reads minds so it knows what I want to see. I digress though. You travel through Time and Space apparently, this shirt belongs to your friend but no one is here. She left or you were separated for some reason. Not used to travelling alone, you swung by my place in hopes of finding someone to travel with you. You found me. TARDIS, Time machine, Time lords, Lords of Time, their design. Time has the ability of cramming as much as possible into one second, just like this ship, cramming as many things as possible into one little box. Tell me you're not impressed. Doctor. Who."
He sat there stunned for a minute with a look of rage, excitement, and sadness spewed together on his face. I probably shouldn't have said anything. Damn it Hazel! Why would you ruin something like this? Your chance to see Ancient Rome, to get a more accurate portrayal of it, To prove to your professor that the Coliseum was also a stage for theatre and not just for bloody deaths. But it was too late now. Just apologize, and leave. That's all you can do.
"I-I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that. Sometimes I-I just get a bit out of hand. I-I'll leave now."
I began to head towards the door, head hanging low from embarrassment and self-loathing. I didn't even notice the whirring sound start up. It's possible I stumbled (it would explain the bruise on my fore arm), but I didn't notice. By the time I got back up and reached the door, the whirring had stopped.
I was about to step out into my bathroom, expecting it to be in a state of total disrepair, when I noticed something strange. The events of this morning left me completely dazed and confused, and I might have just been hallucinating from exhaustion, but I was certain that the Pantheon was not in my bathroom. I was in Ancient Rome.
Looking around in total shock, I took in everything I was seeing. Vendors, milling about trying to sell their merchandise, civilians going to pray to their Gods asking for who knows what, beautiful horses hooked up to shining chariots, and a great deal of strapping (shirtless) gentlemen. If I had had any doubt that the Doctor was a time traveller, those thoughts were immediately eliminated.
The Doctor placed a hand on my shoulder. "Now Hazel, with a girl as brilliant as you, what would ever make you think I'd turn you away?" he stepped out of the TARDIS, and headed over to a vendor that appeared to be selling rugs of some kind.
After what felt like forever, I stepped out of the TARDIS, and into the busy street. I headed over to the Doctor and found him picking up some of the carpets and throwing them over his shoulders like a shawl.
"So tell me, where can I find the nearest bazaar? I'm trying to find a new vase with Hercules on it, I broke my other one. Don't tell the wife." The Doctor said to the vendor. I don't think he had understood since he only spoke Latin. To my surprise he answered in English. "I don't think you'll have to worry about me telling her, you just did." He laughed lightly, and the Doctor turned around to me.
"And what exactly did you break this time, Sparticus?" I said thinking fast on my feet.
"Nothing honey, let's go." He said turning me around. "You really are witty aren't you? Almost clever. But not as clever as me. I found something out that is very interesting. There's a bear baiting going on today at the coliseum."
"Yeah? What's so strange about that? Happens all the time they have a convict to be executed. Always thought it would be interesting to watch." I said. The Doctor gave me a strange look. "What? Everyone has a violent side. Even you."
"That's not the point. The point is there is a bear baiting today. But what's strange is the convict, is a woman."
We hurried to the coliseum (wow never thought I'd say that in my life) in order to try and sneak into where they keep the convicts before the match. There were guards all around the entrance, some with swords, some with spears. Either way, we were outnumbered and out-weaponed.
"You have a plan right? The only thing I can think of is pretending to be royalty but we don't exactly look the part now do we?" I said while we 'hid' beside a fruit stand a fair distance from the entrance.
"No I usually just make things up as I go along. However, your plan sounds like a great plan. Follow me, one of these stalls should be selling togas." He said grabbing my hand.
"But how exactly are we going to pay? I don't keep spare gold coins on me. Hell, I barely carry any coin on me!"
"No need to worry, I do happen to have some on me. You really should carry some kind of money on you for emergency sake."
"Or incase I go travelling with a crazy man in a suit." I mumbled under my breath. "What was that?" he said. "Nothing, it's toga time."
"Good afternoon Gentlemen. We are here to inspect the prisoner for today's bear-baiting," The Doctor said with a flourish of his hand.
"And who, exactly do you think you are?" The Guard said with a stupid but low and rough voice. He was taller than the Doctor and by far more muscular.
"Oi! How do you not know who this is? I'm telling you we never should've come here the people of this city have no respect for the Royalty of the expanding Empire!" I said with all the confidence I could muster.
"Now, now, dear," The Doctor said, "No need to get upset. This man is a guard and not a man of proper authority, he cannot be expected to know such things based purely on sight. My apologizes good sir, I am Sparticus of Bluebox and this is my wife Percisa of Bluebox. We would like to see if the prisoner is fit enough to have a fighting chance. Those ones are always more interesting as you know. If not we have special permission from the Emperor to keep them under watch at our palace and give them some training."
The guard looked at us dumbly, checking us both out. I couldn't decide if he was trying to decide if he could beat us in a fight or if we were liars. He must have decided we were telling the truth because he let us pass. "Seventh cell on the left is who will be fighting today, your majesties." He gave an awkward little bow before adding, "And this one will be interesting. Today's convict is a woman."
"A woman you say? By heavens what could she have done that would doom her to here, and not just make her a palace slave?" The Doctor asked turning around.
"Well, way I heard it, she was a slave. But she messed up real bad, broke her masters prized stone, and then tried to cover it up by stealing it. Her master says it was a Emerald, largest one he ever found. Took him 5 months to dig it out of the mine he had been digging. She messed up bad."
"Well, thank you for your time," The Doctor said as we turned to walk down the dark corridor of cells. "Something is not right about that stone. There's more to it than that. See Emeralds are not found in this region, they never are until the year 3458 when they are being genetically grown all over the place because the make great hyperenergy conductors for power hamster wheels. Also they don't crack by simply dropping them. No, it's more than that."
"Okay so knowing that, and also knowing that her master has been digging a mine and finding whatever it is for the past five months at least, we know there are plenty of them and they have probably been sold. Which means at least a couple wealthy people have whatever it is. Let's hope it's not dangerous."
"Knowing my luck, it is. 7! Here we are!" He said as we reached the cell. We peered inside. It was dark and hard to see anything. But as our eyes adjusted we could make out shapes; an unlit torch here, a pile of chains there, but eventually we were able to see a figure curled up in a ball of dirtied white fabric curled up in the far corner. "Hello," The Doctor said. There was a small shift in the figure, but that was the only response we got from the shape. "I'm the Doctor, and this is Hazel we're here to help. What's your name?" He said. There was a murmur but that was all. "What was that?" He said.
"Pomfreina. My name is Pomfreina. And I do not wish to talk. I am about to die, leave me be." The figure said without moving. Her voice echoed around the cell, without echoing anywhere else.
"Listen, we got your cry for help. We know you're innocent we want to save you so you won't die today. I will not allow it. Now come on, get up so we can get you out of here." I said. Something about her wasn't right, if she just called so desperately for help, why would she have given up so fast?
"I cried 5 weeks ago. You are late. I am beyond help. An innocent soul is sent to die today. And so it shall be." Her words were left hanging in the air. I could almost feel them on my skin.
"No one is too far gone. Now get off your bottom so we can rescu-"
"Hazel," The Doctor cut me off, "It's no use. If she doesn't want to be rescued there is nothing we can do."
"No. No I don't believe that. You have a screw driver or whatever, you can open the cage and the chains and we can get her out of here. I am not leaving her! I am not leaving anyone behind to die!" I was screaming and tears were streaming down my face. At that moment the Doctor closed his eyes and touched my temples.
I could feel something moving around my mind. A slow creeping but not a menacing creeping, like a snake just crawling enjoying the sun on his skin rather than hunting for his prey. Images started quickly popping into my mind's eye. This nights events, my literary paper, My flat, everything from today, the month, the year. The images were flying faster by.
I realized it was the Doctor in my head. And he was searching for something. I didn't know what until he found it. A younger me stood in front of me. I wasn't smiling, but I was happy I remembered. My Mum had gotten promoted that day and was making dinner for a change. My little brother, Casben, and I were never told what my father or my mother did, I figured out that my mum was a police officer and my dad was in the government. They never talked about work. Said it was too dangerous for my brother and me to know. And they said they weren't allowed to anyways. But I knew.
My parents were always away because of work, so I always made supper. And packed our lunches for school, and made sure we ate a big breakfast. Mum and Dad always left before we did. "Good bye sweety, take care of your brother. Make sure he does his homework and eats his lunch. Talk to the teacher if he's getting bullied, and call us if there's an emergency," it was like their mantra. Sometimes I wouldn't even hear it directly, it was left in a note on the counter. But always the same words. And I lived by them.
Anyways that evening, while my mum was cooking, I went to go finish up some homework. Science was particularly difficult for 8 year old me, and required my full attention. I sent Benny to go play with his trains while I memorized the planets. So it was Mercury, Neptune, Earth, Mars, Venus, Uranus, Saturn, Pluto, Jupiter? No, Pluto's the farthest, Venus is next to Earth I think. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Pluto. Sounds almost right, what was that rhyme we learned? My Very Evil Microwave Just Served Us Nacho Plates. So I was completely off. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. There it was.
I was about to move onto the constellations when something smelled off. I took big wiff of air through my nose and knew what it was. Smoke. Something was on fire. I ran down to the kitchen knowing the most probable cause was my mother's cooking. The entire stove was engulfed in flames, and my mother was nowhere in sight. I ran back up stairs and found her getting changed in the bedroom. I yelled at her to get out of the house and call the fire department.
My survival instincts kicked in. I was only 8 but I knew where my brother would be better than my mother. She would've gotten lost, or try to put the flames out herself and been killed, so I had to send her out. I checked his room first, just to be sure he wasn't there. He liked to hide under his bed when he was scared. He wasn't there which was good. Next I checked the basement.
It was coolest, and father had set up all his tracks down there, so if he had continued to play with them he would've been there. I checked the laundry room down there, my father's office, furnace room, and the train room. Nowhere in sight. The fire was starting to spread rapidly, because when I looked up I could see the smoke and some flames leap through the cracks in the floor boards upstairs. It was mesmerizing and terrifying at the same time. But there was no time to lose.
The last place he would've been was the nursery. By the time I got there, it was almost completely engulfed. There was a thick cloud of smoke blocking my view but I could see him. Pressed close to the ground, because he knew smoke and heat rise. He was crawling slowly towards me. I shouted at him to get up, but just as he stood, a beam from the ceiling came crashing down and caught his leg. I ran over, arm over my mouth to block out some of the smoke. I grabbed his hands and tried to pull him free, but it only shifted the beam so it pressed down more on him. I moved over to his leg and tried to wiggle it free but it wasn't working, his foot was caught too. Using all the strength I had, I tried to lift the firey piece of wood that was trapping Benny. I could feel my hands and arms burning and blistering, but I was not going to leave him. Not like this. I heaved with all my might, but I was fading fast, the smoke was getting to me. Stinging my lungs, blurring my eyes, and my hands, god did they hurt.
I heaved one last try, but it didn't move. I wanted to get something that would make it easier to move, but I couldn't leave Benny. Not like this. I tried breaking off pieces of the beam, leaving me with charring splinters in my fingers. Suddenly there was a crash. The wall of the room started to fall in, and the floor was breaking away. I checked on Benny, he had passed out already because of the fumes. Good. It will hurt him less. He won't feel a thing. With tears streaming down my face I kissed his head, and turned away.
Suddenly I was somewhere else. A new world with orange skies and people in long funny robes. The word Gallifrey came up but I didn't know what it meant at first. It didn't take long for me to realize that it was the name of the planet and I was in the Doctor's head.
A younger version of the Doctor appeared. At least, he looked younger, about ten years old. He was holding the hand of an elderly woman. Who looked to be about 80 but was probably older than that. "Hurry along child, we don't want to be late." She chided dragging him faster down the street.
"But I don't want to go!" he said tugging at her arm.
"That's enough of that! It's about time that you went and met the…
The Doctor broke contact with me. "Well," he said, "That's, uhm, well, we best be going." He started to walk away.
"Sorry!" I called following after him. What is it about me that keeps messing everything up with him? I don't love him but it's rare to meet someone who thinks like me. For someone who is so proud of her intelligence, I sure can be stupid sometimes.
"We're not talking about it. We need to find that stone," he said as he walked quickly, stretching his long legs farther with each step. I felt like a pony trying to keep up with a Clydesdale. God was he tall.
"Don't you think maybe we should save her first? I mean she is sentenced to die in about an hour," I shouted after him, "And could you please slow down, track and field was never my forte."
"No time to lose! We have to find the stone, possibly plural, within the hour so we can save her!"
"Well wouldn't it help if we knew her master's name?" I shouted. This brought him to a halt. He turned on his heel and was quickly walking towards me, angrily. He got right up to my face and opened his mouth to say something. He shook his finger, like you see angry parents doing in cartoons, but he closed it into a fist and stomped instead. "Damn it you're right," he said running both hands through his hair. "Come on," he said grabbing my hand and dragging me back to the seventh cell on the left.
"Alrighty then, what was your masters name?" he asked Pomfreina. She still hadn't moved. It looked (and smelled) like she hadn't moved in 3 months. Yet her clothes remained clean.
"Why should I tell you?" she said without turning to look at us, yet her voice sounded like it was right in front of us. "So you can save me? That's it isn't it? You want to save me. Well I don't want to be saved, so save yourself the trouble."
I was tired of this. I didn't care that she didn't want to be saved. I wasn't going to leave her like I left my brother. There was more I could've done for him and there is more I can do for her. I grabbed the Doctor's sonic screwdriver, and held it to the lock. It made a high pitched whining sound and the lock blew in a shower of sparks. But I didn't care about the sparks, I'd felt burns before, fire didn't bother me.
I walked right into the cell and grabbed her by the shoulders. She didn't move or say anything. I hauled her up with more force than I expected out of me. She was a lot lighter than I thought she'd be. "Now listen here," I began to say, but I stopped. I turned her around and saw the reason she was so light.
She was only bone.
I dropped her. Well, what once was her. She was literally a skeleton now. I was shocked and didn't know how to react. I didn't scream. I did however curse at a considerably loud volume. The Doctor had joined me inside the cell by this point. He was looking her over, examining the bones for a cause of death or a recording device that was making her speak.
"Well that's just great. How the bloody hell, are we supposed to find this damn stone if she's fockin dead? This is unbelievable! I mean we come so close to rescuing her and and she's not even alive! All that talk of her dying in a couple of hours when she was dead the whole bloody time! For once I thought we could save someone, but nope. Dead. Dead Dead Dead Dead Dead! I mean how could she even be talking? How can they have that kind of technology that allows a corpse to respond to what we are saying? Do you think there was another Time Lord here and they're messing with things?"
"Can't be, all the Time Lords are dead. I'm the only one left." He said half listening, half searching the ground for something.
"Really? I'm just the biggest mess up today aren't I? God I'm so stupid! Uugh there isn't a sensitive bone in my body!" I said to the ceiling. The Doctor still wasn't listening. He was examining something. It looked like a pendant of some kind. "What is that?" I asked looking down for a better look.
"A necklace, it was around her neck. But doesn't that look a bit out of place?" He said holding it up to me.
"The chain work, looks almost alien. Like I've never seen it in history books, or anything from my time. But the stone. It's been polished from a rock tumbler, it's very smooth. But even better than that, it's green. Almost emerald in colour, wouldn't you say?"
"I would say that yes. And I know who we can talk to find out who her master was." He said grabbing my hand and dragging me out of the cell. We ran down the hall, me clutching his hand and the necklace.
We exited the dark hallway, and stepped into the sunlight outside. The guard was still standing there staring straight ahead at nothing. A crowd was starting to gather, it was almost time for the event.
"Doctor," I whispered, "Don't you think someone will realize that we were the last ones to see her, and then suddenly she's dead?"
"We'll worry about that later. Right now, we speak to the guard. Oi! You sir! Yes, I was wondering, who was her master? She was not inclined to tell us."
"Well, Uhm," The guard said taking his eyes off the air he was staring at, "I believe it was, Uhh, master Petriticus. Yeah, he's a wealthy bloke, not married, he has a lot of servants though. He's a treasure hunter they say. Gives each of his servants jewelry in place of payment. Course they usually sell it, mind you, or trade it for food, or clothes, or for an education for their kids-"
"Thank you very much Wilfred, we'll be off now." The Doctor said giving him a pat on the back, and walking off. I curtseyed as I walked by, and hurried to catch up to the Doctor. I cannot emphasize this emphasize this enough, his legs were as long as a giraffes neck. "Any second now a guard is going to go in and check on her, when you hear shouts, we run." He said to me from the side of his mouth.
"Oh god not again, I'm going to need a head start." Just then we heard shouting from the guards and people behind us. "Right then, off I go!" I bolted. It wasn't long before the Doctor came up beside me grabbed my hand and started dragging me along.