A/N: Dedicated to my brother for his 18th birthday. Happy adulthood!
"Well, well." The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS. "This is interesting." He held the door open and let Rose out.
"Where are we? Some kind of hospital?" She looked around the room with wide eyes, her hands running against the panels on the walls. She knocked. "It sounds hollow. What do you think this is?" The Doctor walked around the room slowly, bending to look at the spotless white floor and squinting at the cameras in the corners of the ceiling. He stopped. Then he took his hand and waved it vigorously above his head. It was hard to tell, but the red eye of the camera moved slightly.
"Well, wherever we are, we're being watched. Come on!" He nodded to Rose and she fell in step beside him.
"No ideas at all?"
"Oh, I've got plenty of ideas. It looks to me like some humans are doing some things they ought not to be doing! They're ahead of their time."
"Is that good?" The Doctor took out his Sonic Screwdriver and pressed to a cracked panel on the wall.
"No, not in the least. Especially not for them. Look at this place." Rose took her eyes off the motions of the screwdriver and looked around the chamber. While the place they landed looked spotless, the floor on which she stood now was dirty. Vines crawled up the walls, and Rose followed them to a hole in the wall. She took a step forward when she heard faint chirps.
"Birds!" Rose pointed to a gap in the ceiling tiles. A family of small birds flew around a nest. "There's life here. It can't be all bad." The Doctor stowed his tool and peered to the end of the room, balancing on his toes.
"That may be so. We've got a lot to find out!" He led the way down the middle of a huge room.
"Are you telling me you haven't been here?" Rose turned to him in her walk, glee spreading across her face. "For once, I know as much as you do!"
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," he replied, a cheeky smile lighting up his face. "My history's better than yours."
"Then how come you haven't heard of this place?" Rose wasn't going to give this one up.
"Could be several reasons." He stopped abruptly in front of a door. "Could be undercover, recently altered in time, too boring for me to notice…"
"But everything is interesting. I mean, I've thought so." Rose gave him a sheepish smile. "You don't really think time travel is boring, do you? Even though you've done it for so long."
"Nope! Just ruffling your feathers a bit. Acting a little like you. Besides, it's none of those things. We're in another timeline." He rubbed his hands together and tapped the screwdriver against the side of the door. It beeped, and the door unlocked. "Time to go!" Rose shook her head and followed him through the door. He was always like this, giving half an answer and leaving the rest to ferment in her mind. But she'd let it slip this time.
An unsolved test chamber remained behind them. The camera on the wall shook itself out of its stupor and focused on the strange, unlabeled test subject and his companion.