This is set before the events in "Journey's End." I wrote it several years ago, and it's been languishing on my hard drive ever since. I thought I'd at least put it out there.
Time Lord.
The Doctor stopped, looked behind him, then completed the circle as he saw no one near. The square was noisy, the buzz of a few hundred eight-legged shoppers filling his ears with people static, the red sun high in the sky giving the square a lurid glow. Glancing ahead he saw Donna, also stopped, examining a puffing, purple, pastry thing available at the next stall. She was paying him no mind and clearly hadn't just called out so, shrugging it off, he moved to catch her up.
Time Lord.
He stopped again, but this time remained still. It wasn't his ears that heard the words, but somewhere in between, which, considering the natives of this planet communicated primarily by clicking their mandibles together in a way that could seem slightly alarming, set off the warning bells in his head. His curiosity easily smothering his poorly developed sense of self-preservation, he listened carefully, opening his mind yet also braced for the unknown. People who approached him like this were typically not offering him a cup of tea.
What do you do here?
Bit pushy, that. Why shouldn't he be here? He considered giving a fluff answer, but decided instead to draw his inquisitor out.
I don't talk to disembodied voices. Show yourself.
Immediately he felt a draw down the alley between two tall, narrow buildings to his right. The square wasn't particularly bright to begin with, Human and Time Lord eyes having evolved to a slightly shorter spectrum, but the alley was positively dismal. Glancing again at Donna and seeing her still occupied at the pastry stall, he stopped short of calling her away. Deciding there was no need to bother her just yet, aware even then that might not be the wisest course, he set off down the way into the gloom alone. He hadn't gone ten steps before the darkness descended.
Donna wanted that pastry. Never mind it was moving in a way reminiscent of breathing and oozing something that might be jam and might not, right now it looked like a three-course meal. All afternoon she'd been following the Doctor around this market, apparently looking for a part to fix some knob he'd broken off the console (again), and now she was starving.
"Doctor, have you got any money...?" She trailed off as she realized he was no longer right behind her. Damn it, now what? She wondered how strongly he would object to her putting him on a leash. Her stomach growled angrily as it was taken away from the food.
The square was still full of people, still humming with commerce, but to Donna's suddenly uneasy mind, it had taken on a slightly sinister air, as if all these people were somehow in on a plot: first to starve her to death, now to hide the Doctor from her. She retraced her steps, looking from side to side for someone with less legs and no antennae, but saw only strangers. They took no notice of her, aliens weren't uncommon in Kinixal's shopping district, but to Donna it almost appeared if she were getting a cold shoulder. Stupid. She had no reason to suspect anything more than the Doctor's easily distracted curiosity at work, and yet...
For over an hour, Donna searched the reaches of the market without luck. Despite stalls selling an amazing variety of items, none of them seemed to have attracted her companion's attention. It was starting to get dark, and she considered returning to the TARDIS in the hopes he was already there, fixing the console, and had just forgotten about her. If he had, so help her, she'd make his ears bleed.
The Doctor's eyes popped open and he was fully awake, as was normal for his kind, and tried to fix his surroundings without moving. You never know; there might be something unsavory right behind him. Except he was on his back so there was no behind. If there was anyone there, they knew he was awake now. Oh, well.
The room was dimly lit and he found it hard to make out the ceiling, like it was a little blurry, and when he moved his head to the side to find the walls, they were blurry as well. He was cocooned in this blurriness and fought the desire to close his eyes against the lack of anything to focus on. It was a little disorienting, even for someone used to navigating the fourth dimension and living in a dimensionaly transcendental time capsule.
Slowly, feeling the stiffness in his back and the lump behind his ear, he sat up and looked around more fully. Still nothing. Well, not nothing exactly, just this blurriness. With alarm, it occurred to him it might not be the room. Just how hard had they hit him?
Carefully he stood and took a few steps towards a blurry wall, arms outstretched to compensate for his depthless viewpoint. Abruptly his fingers touched a tingly fuzziness that told him he was inside a force field. Well, that was a good thing! Last thing he needed now was dodgy eyesight. He reached automatically for the sonic screwdriver and stepped closer to the force field.
The alien behind the monitor watched his captive closely. Finally he had the Time Lord safely contained. It felt like he had been following the creature for months, he skipped around so much, even though it had only been a few days. His employer would be pleased.
"Doctor?"
Donna slipped inside the console room with a gasp of relief. All the way back to the TARDIS, she'd felt unseen eyes on her and found herself first walking faster and faster, then almost running the last hundred feet or so to the doors. Spooky. But now she was safely back inside, she felt her annoyance returning as she swept the room looking for her traveling companion. "Doctor!"
Just the green glow of the rotor column and a soft background hum. She wasn't used to seeing it this empty, without the Time Lord bouncing around the panels, talking a mile a minute and generally filling the space with his presence. Now that's spooky, like a school at night or an empty parking garage. Donna felt a shiver run down her spine as genuine fear began to touch her for the first time.
She walked over to the display screen, a bizarre, flat-panel instrument that seemed to tune itself, and thought hard at it about the Doctor, hoping it would suddenly light up with relevant information. It always seemed to do that for him, but for her? Nothing. Just a blank square with a slowly rotating circular symbol in the bottom corner that reminded Donna of her computer back home downloading updates. Maybe that knob the Doctor was shopping for was the "on" switch.
She sighed and considered going back outside to look for him. Without ever having discussed it, Donna just knew in the event of separation, they were to meet back here. It was obvious, or it would be, assuming the Doctor wasn't in trouble. The moment the thought crossed her mind, she rolled her eyes. Of course, he was. If Time Lords had a middle name, his was definitely "Trouble."
Sighing theatrically to hide her genuine unease, she grabbed the rubber mallet hanging underneath the bullnose and headed for the doors.
The Doctor was getting bored. He considered again whether to try forcing his way past the force field, but knew from experience it would only hurt him and inconvenience his captors not at all. His fingers still tingled from his initial exploration, the sonic screwdriver being the first casualty of his imprisonment. Its remains continued to smoke slightly on the other side of the barrier.
That said captors were watching him right now, he had no doubt. Who where they this time? Daleks? No, they'd have been in here already to gloat about their plans. Sontarans? Too direct; he'd be dead by now. Cybermen? They had no interest in him as an individual. He'd have woken already upgraded. That was the worst part of being a prisoner, he thought; the waiting. He did not tolerate boredom well. His stomach gurgled softly as he remembered the last time he'd eaten, well before the truncated shopping trip.
Kinixal had seemed the ideal aside, an interesting and safe place to visit, find parts and lunch, show Donna a part of the universe that wasn't trying to kill her. So much of their travels involved danger and running and death, planets and races at risk, and yes, Donna had stood up to all that with strength and compassion, but why couldn't they just have fun? Why was it always like this? No wonder his companions never lasted very long, and it's not like they even died, which fortunately was very rare, but more like he just wore them out. The Doctor in the TARDIS, the most hazardous treadmill in the universe.
Sighing, he settled onto his back again to stare at the fuzzy ceiling and wonder if Donna was all right.
Mallet held out in front of her like some sort of handgun, Donna began retracing her steps all the way back to the last time she'd seen the Doctor. Kinixalans looked at her curiously, but evidently decided to leave the strangely behaving alien alone. Perhaps it was some sort of mating ritual? Very rude to interrupt something like that and Kinixal was known as a hospitality planet. Still, it might be wise to alert the authorities to keep an eye on her. You never knew with some of these off-worlders.
Donna made it back to the pastry stall and began looking at the other vendors, some of whom seemed determined not to meet her eye. Instantly suspicious, she began advancing on the nearest stall, intent on asking the merchant if he'd seen the Doctor earlier, when she spotted the alleyway right by the last spot she'd seen him. She looked up, half-expecting to see "evil plot this way" blazing in neon overhead, but it was innocently blank.
Gathering her courage and her indignation, Donna squared her shoulders, cocked the arm with the mallet behind her head, and walked stiffly into the darkened passageway. The nearby merchants watched her go in utter confusion.
The alien behind the monitor noticed movement on one of its security sensors. The Time Lord's companion. Well, she was bound to appear at some point and might even be useful. It signaled one of its servitors to secure her.
Time passed slowly for the Doctor. His stomach continued to complain, and he became aware of growing dehydration as well. He usually wasn't imprisoned long enough to worry about sustenance, but now began to wonder if his captors were aware of his bodily requirements. Be a hell of a thing to starve to death through simple neglect, especially after surviving so many universe-ending events.
He could slow his metabolism, of course, and put himself into a sort of hibernation. Time Lords with enough training and preparation had been known to survive months in such a state, but that wouldn't get him out of here nor keep him ready for the coming confrontation. Not to mention his general lack of such training and preparation.
Nor would it help him find Donna. He had no doubt by now she was looking for him, probably stirring up the locals and getting herself into trouble. She might even be in another cell similar to his, wondering the same things about him, frightened and alone. Was she hungry, too? Maybe she'd had a chance at that puff pastry thing before following him into the dark. If she hadn't, the Doctor decided he wasn't all that eager to meet up with her too soon.
Gradually he became aware of a faint whine coming from all around him. It was irritating at first and he tried to shut it out, but it was getting louder and more piercing, beginning to make his head ache and he found that even putting his fingers in his ears had no effect. The sound seemed to materialize within his skull, much like the words that had brought him here earlier. Just as the volume was beginning to cause him pain, the frequency slowly shifted down to a low throb that pushed into his chest from all directions making it difficult to breathe. Up and down the frequency rotated, pushing the Doctor from holding his head to gasping for air in turns. It certainly made it easy to forget about lunch.
Donna advanced cautiously into the alley, mallet at the ready. She was already regretting coming in here; the dark and relative silence were unsettling even though she could still hear the buzz of the market a few dozen feet behind her. Up ahead the shadows increased and detail faded away, making her squint and cock her head from side to side, but there was nothing to see, except... what was that? Donna could just make out a small, red dot not far ahead, next to the wall. And it was moving. Towards her.
She stepped back and raised the mallet threateningly, but the red dot still advanced. Suddenly noticing a recessed doorway to her left, she pressed herself into it and waited, peeking slightly around the corner at the dot. As it approached, Donna found she could just make out a matte-black body and spindly arms, the dot being at the very top on a short stalk rising up from the center mass. Funny looking body, if that's what it was, dark-skinned and hard-looking and... were those wheels?
Donna realized then that she was dealing with a machine, but was it even looking for her or merely using the alleyway to get to the market? She didn't know and was reluctant to attack it when it might just pass her by if she were very lucky. She waited, holding her breath as the machine came abreast of her position and stopped, servos whirring faintly. Donna was just about to jump out and whack it as hard as she could when it suddenly started moving again, down the alley and away from the direction she wanted to go. Stepping out quietly behind it, she tiptoed down the passage to the area where she first saw the red dot.
The whining, throbbing sound had finally stopped, but it was a few moments before the Doctor realized it. He was lying on the floor, arms wrapped around his chest waiting for it to explode, when the pressure gradually eased and his head cleared. Sitting up slowly, he looked around his cell and breathed deeply for the first time in what seemed like hours, but probably wasn't, his chest still aching dully.
"Is that it?" he called out, hoping for a response. "What do you want? You know, I might just be able to help you, if you ask nicely. I mean, not world domination or the ultimate weapon or nonsense like that, but I'm always open to a reasonable request. Of course, I'm generally more reasonable when I'm not hungry or thirsty, or imprisoned or tortured, or other general inconveniences, but in this case I'd be happy to make an exception." He stopped as he realized he was beginning to ramble. Talking to fuzzy air was pointless and probably slightly neurotic.
The more he thought about it, the more he came to the conclusion this whole thing really wasn't making much sense. Was he supposed to be frightened? Hurt? Confused? Well, he certainly was confused. Usually the unpleasantness started after the demands, not before. Apparently his captors hadn't read the manual. He considered briefly the idea that he was being softened up, but that didn't hold much water either; to be honest, his "torture" simply wasn't that torturous. He'd be disinclined to reveal his favorite fish 'n' chip shop after this, much less fashion an ultimate weapon.
Hang on, was it getting hot in here?
Donna crept down the alley towards the shadowy end and stopped, looking around the dim space and finally spotting an archway hidden behind some sort of buttress. It was pitch black inside and she debated the wisdom of entering when it was all too likely the machine would come back and trap her there, but what choice did she have? If the Doctor were anywhere, it would certainly be down a dark, dangerous passage that no doubt led to some creepy alien monster intent on destroying the world or altering some terribly important timeline or even eating all the puff pastries. She had to go inside.
Squaring her shoulders and hefting the mallet again, Donna stepped through the archway and began carefully inching her way down the passage, her left hand brushing along the wall to guide her. She wondered what she would do if the passage suddenly turned right and she found her nose connecting with the wall and decided she needed both hands to navigate, so sticking the handle of the mallet through the belt at her back, she proceeded with one hand to the side of her and the other out in front.
As it turned out, that was exactly what the passage did, and after making the right turn, Donna could just make out a dim rectangle at the far end, an open door back into the light... or the monster.
It was indeed getting hotter in the cell, much hotter. Gallifrey was a chilly desert planet and subsequently its inhabitants had developed a high tolerance for cold, but not so much for heat. As the air got stuffier, closer, and more humid, the Doctor slipped off his jacket and unfastened a few more buttons on his shirt. It didn't help much. Before long, he found himself lying on his back again, but this time spread flat in an attempt trap as little heat as possible and expose as much surface area as he could to the air. His breathing accelerated as his body tried to expel heat through respiration, and he was beginning to sweat.
Gradually he noticed the temperature falling again and as his breathing slowed, he sat up and pulled his damp shirt away from his body with two fingers. He was uncomfortable and sticky, but basically fine. Another confusing experience. If he didn't know better, he'd think he was being evaluated, analyzed for strengths and weaknesses. How insulting.
Without realizing it, the Doctor began doing up the buttons he'd opened earlier, slipped his jacket back on, and then stuck his hands in the pockets, but he didn't catch on until his saw the breath in front of his face. It was getting colder.
The alien studied the Time Lord trapped in his holding cell and recorded the readouts from its instruments. It didn't care why the data was required; it was only interested in fulfilling its contract. It didn't do to disappoint this particular employer.
Donna advanced on the brightening rectangle as quietly as she could, and then, with mallet poised, peeked carefully into the light. Another corridor. Well, that was hardly surprising when you thought about it. Perhaps she should run down it for good measure, but reason prevailed and she tiptoed silently down the passage towards another doorway, this one closed.
Cautiously, she put her ear against the smooth material of the door and listened. Nothing. Resisting the temptation to sigh audibly, Donna very slowly, very carefully, pushed on the door. Again nothing. Then she noticed the recessed panel to one side and just knew if she pressed that the door would whoosh open very quickly and loudly, exposing her to the inevitable monster on the other side. Not good. And was that a noise behind her? Glancing back, she saw her worst case scenario materialize before her eyes; the red dot was advancing down the gloomy first passage towards the open door behind her.
Frantically, she threw her gaze around the corridor, hoping against hope there was another passage or recess or something to hide in, but it was as smooth and barren as only something artificial can be, and then she looked at the mallet still in her hand. No way. Finally she looked at the floor and saw the fine lines of a square outlining an access panel.
Okay, this was getting a bit tedious. Flat on his back, sweating again, the Doctor was losing patience with his captors and their bizarre agenda. Sound. Temperature. Maybe it would start raining in here next.
There had to be a point to all this, but he needed more information. That was the great thing about barging in, taking the bull by the horns, and confronting the evil-doer in the heart of his operation. It was a quick way of finding out what was going on. All right, it had its drawbacks, like the inevitable gunplay, incarceration, and attempted execution, but as an information-gathering strategy it couldn't be beat. This isolation was beginning to worry him. Words were his best weapon, but they didn't work sitting here alone.
And where was Donna? He knew he'd been captive for several hours at least and for sure Donna wouldn't be sitting in the console room doing her nails. She'd have missed him long before now and undoubtedly gone looking. Did she find the alley? Did whatever coshed him cosh her? Or worse, was she dead?
She wasn't dead, but this cat and mouse game with the red-dot machine was trying her nerves. The release for the access panel hadn't been the most obvious thing in the world and finding it had wasted precious seconds. Finally dropping into the maintenance shaft or whatever it was below had reminded her briefly of the feeling she had when leaping onto her bed as a small girl so as to avoid the clutching hands of the monster underneath. Figuring out how to close the thing again was another exercise in frantic groping and pressing.
The machine was audibly trundling overhead now, its wheels making a sort of clicking sound on the synthetic floor above her as though the treads were made of individual metal grips. Was this what had gotten the Doctor? It seemed unlikely he would fall prey to something so slow and rather easily evaded. She had a fleeting image of pushing it over, watching its wheels spin uselessly, while giving it a little kick just to show it who's boss. The Doctor might as well have been nabbed by a shopping trolley.
Slowly she began crawling along the small passage, hoping it came out somewhere, anywhere, and didn't just drop down into an alien sewer. The noise from above had ceased, so either the machine was gone or merely stopped, right on top of her. Either way, she wasn't going to risk popping her head up.
The way was dimly lit by a source Donna couldn't identify, so it wasn't difficult to see the various openings off to either side as she went along. Should she take one of them or stick to the main passage? The Doctor would know, somehow, just as he always knew which way was out or, as was often the case with him, which way led to the biggest, meanest monster hell-bent on destroying humanity. She was about to continue straight on when she heard an odd noise down one of the openings to her right, a sort of distressed sound within a background hum. No one who traveled with the Doctor for any length of time could ignore something that sounded like that.
The temperature fluctuations has ceased some time ago and the Doctor, after warming himself up with a few jumping jacks, was growing increasingly anxious waiting for his next "experience." For some reason he really expected to get wet, but that probably wouldn't happen as there wasn't a drain in the cell floor and presumably they didn't want to drown him.
He was still puzzling his circumstances when he began to realize he'd been shifting on his feet and hopping a bit for several minutes now. Once he focused on it, the tingling in his soles became more apparent. Oh great, they were electrifying the floor. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath; the stakes were climbing...
... along with the charge in the floor. He knew eventually it would reach the point where he couldn't stand on it anymore and would fall, only to put his entire body in contact with the current. Perhaps his captors were measuring the level at which that occurred? Should he fall down now, give them false information? He considered that, but found he just couldn't do it, like being unable to cut a foot off to escape a trap. It was too hard.
The floor was really painful now, forcing the Doctor to constantly switch from foot to foot, knowing his date with the floor was fast approaching, the thin rubber soles of his trainers offering little protection. Walking, jumping, skipping, it made no difference to the level of pain; finally the inevitable happened and he was abruptly forced to his knees as his legs refused to support him anymore.
Instinctively he tried to get up again, but in so doing thrust out a hand. With a cry he snatched it back, only to fall forward onto his other hand. At this point all his limbs failed him and he collapsed onto his side, jerking uncontrollably as the current coursed through his body. Getting up now was impossible as he dimly realized there was nothing he could do until they turned it off.
Donna continued down the side passage, the hum growing louder and the noises overlaying it becoming more distinct. It was hard to make out, but the urgency of the sounds was unmistakable. Donna hurried forward to the grill she could see not far ahead and cautiously peaked through.
It was hard to see much though. There was a room, yes, but most of it was filled with a blurry, dome-shaped object. Deep within the blurriness, she could just make out a moving shape on the floor and it was from that shape the urgent sounds were issuing, only now they were much quieter. All she could hear over the hum of the dome's force field was a sort of gasping catch deep in the throat, repeating in sync with the figure's spasmodic twitching.
And there was one other thing Donna could see in the room. The sonic screwdriver, or what was left of it, right below her perch.
Frantically, she began pushing at the grill with all her strength, but it was fastened tightly to the wall. Hefting the mallet, she smashed it as hard as she could against the metal, denting it, but not much more. Then she began hitting the edges of the grill, hoping to dislodge its mountings and finally, with a twisted screech, the entire barrier crashed to the floor.
Donna hopped out and rushed to the dome, but it was as impenetrable from her side as from the other, the mallet bouncing harmlessly off its blurry surface. She looked around for some sort of off-button and saw a large box mounted on the wall adorned with blinking lights. It would have to do. She began smashing at the box and, like the grill, it soon succumbed to the mallet's fury. The dome blinked out.
The figure on the floor stopped jerking and slowly tried to sit up, a task made more difficult by its apparent weakness. Donna ran over to help, worried he might really be hurt and knowing there was no way she could rescue him alone. He gazed over at her blearily, looking rumbled and tired, but otherwise all right.
Cocking his head slightly and blinking slowly, he looked her over. "Is that a mallet?"
She laughed with relief and made as if to bash him on the head with it.
The alien watched the female human enter the holding cell with alarm. As she began bashing the equipment to free the Time Lord, it realized belatedly that the servitor sent to secure her was a poor choice and it should have taken care of the capture itself. It had intended to increase the charge until the subject was rendered unconscious, but as the dome collapsed, the alien leapt out of its chair and grabbed the weapon it kept near the door. All would be lost if it failed to act quickly.
The Doctor climbed unsteadily to his feet and looked around his recent prison. Without the sonic screwdriver, effecting an exit might be a little harder than usual, but nothing he couldn't handle. Spying the rather obvious door along one wall, he strode over to it with Donna close behind, then stopped. Perhaps the door wasn't the smartest choice. Whomever had imprisoned him here undoubtedly now knew of his rescue and would surely be heading for this very door. Should they not exit the same way Donna had entered?
Swinging around suddenly, he headed back towards the grill lying on the floor, picking up the corpse of his poor old sonic friend on the way, then made as if to give Donna a leg up into the shaft.
"Come on then, hop to it!"
Donna raised her eyebrows and opened her mouth to ask him what the hell he was thinking, then she glanced back towards the door and apparently reached the same conclusion as the Doctor. Without a word, she placed her foot in his cupped hands and climbed back the way she had come, hearing the Doctor haul himself up behind her as she made room.
"Uh, you do remember the way out?" he asked, the potential problem only just now occurring to him. In response, Donna began scurrying down the shaft as fast as she could.
The alien reached the holding cell only to find it empty with no sign of its prisoner either in the room or in the maintenance duct halfway up one wall. Damn! It knew even now the Time Lord and his companion could be exiting the ducting system in any of several places, although the most likely was the access panel near the outer corridor of the alleyway it had used to trap its quarry. It swiveled on one foot and ran back through the door.
Sure enough, Donna and the Doctor emerged into the corridor just as the alien was discovering the empty cell, and to Donna's relief, the red-dot machine had moved on. She began to head for the door to the dark passage outside, but the Doctor was already facing the closed door she'd shied away from earlier. Of course he was going to open it. Without any hesitation at all, the Doctor pressed the recessed panel.
The room on the other side was small, brightly lit, and full of bizarre alien equipment. Donna's eyes were immediately drawn to the large screen on one side, a bank of instruments and a chair arranged before it, the display showing a smallish green creature with four tentacle-like arms and a ring of eyes completely encircling its head standing in the cell they had just escaped. It held a rather large gun in one of its tentacles and, as they watched, spun quickly on its heel and charged out of the door. They didn't have much time.
The Doctor spent that time at what had to be a computer terminal, data flashing before his eyes at a phenomenal rate, apparently looking for something. She wasn't even sure he'd seen the creature on the screen.
"Doctor, we really don't have time for this! That octopus thing will be here any minute and did you see the size of that gun?"
Not pausing even to look at her, the Doctor continued his frantic search through the computer. "That was a Zirian. Touchy bunch. No one outside their own hatching circle can much stand them, so they tend to work alone. Specialists. Black ops. Do the jobs others disdain or are too scared to do." And here he looked up at her briefly, "You know, hunting and catching Time Lords. Talk about having a tiger by the tail."
He was already back at the computer while Donna kept looking out into the corridor, waiting for the nightmare to emerge from some door she'd missed. Except she hadn't seen anything like a door earlier, so how was it going to get back to them? Eyes widening, she turned back into the room and saw what had to be there on the other side. Another door... and it was open. The Zirian stood there, its large gun leveled at them.
"Ah. Hello! Been waiting there long?" The Doctor was already backing towards Donna, his hand behind his back waving her towards the other door. "That was quick. Must be a shortcut to the dungeon. Speaking of which, are you always this hospitable?"
The Zirian raised its gun threateningly. "Halt." They did.
"You know," the Doctor didn't even need to think about running his mouth; Donna was convinced it came with an automatic setting. "That cell, very ingenious. Couldn't even dent it with my screwdriver. Is that why you let me keep it? Now not to brag or anything, but I've been captured by, oh, just about everyone and you're right up there with the very best."
The Zirian raised its gun even higher. "Silence." Donna almost laughed, but the impulse faded quickly when the frightening creature stepped closer, pushing the muzzle of its weapon into the Doctor's stomach. He was silent.
"You will return to the holding area now."
Completely unfazed, the Doctor picked up where he left off. "Ah, well, you see, I've been browsing around your database and you know what I found?" The Doctor backed up slightly away from the weapon, then began pacing the short distance between walls. "Well, of course you do, it is your database after all, but I found it quite interesting. This employer of yours, you do know you haven't a hope of actually collecting your fee, don't you?"
The Zirian paused in the act of closing with the Doctor again and twisted its head in what looked to Donna like a human raising its eyebrows. "Explain."
Popping back over to the computer console, the Doctor brought up another file. "This fellow, your employer?" Donna leaned closer to see the image of a rather odd-looking alien. "I know him, quite well actually - we've got history - and I can tell you now he doesn't pay his stooges. In fact, he tends to leave as many bodies in his wake as I do, difference being with me it's not intentional."
The Zirian also looked at the image on the screen and then back to the Doctor. While it was hard for Donna to determine its expression, she had to conclude it was doing the equivalent of narrowing its eyes. She didn't blame it; it was a pretty blatant attempt to talk it out of its mission. She'd have wasted no time telling the Doctor to stuff it.
Raising its gun in an obvious rejection of the Doctor's information, the Zirian again began to close the distance between them. The pair of them backed slowly towards the door, clearly in no position to even attempt to make a break for it, when both were brought up short by something behind them. Turning, Donna found herself reunited with the red-dot machine.
Instantly the Doctor whirled about, pushed three buttons on the servitor's front control panel, then stepped aside, pushing Donna to the other side as he did so. The servitor pushed its spindly arms out in front of it and rushed forward towards the Zirian, for all intents looking like it was going to plow straight into it. The Zirian was forced to dive to one side, which gave the Doctor and Donna an opportunity they seized in a flat dash down the corridor towards the darkened passage back to the alley.
"Look out!" Donna called ahead to him. "It makes a sharp left up here somewhere." She winced at the thudding sound and grunt that indicated he'd found it.
"Thanks."
They continued on down the passage towards the dim rectangle of light at the far end, where they paused, listening for pursuit, but there was nothing. Quickly they pressed out into the market, wanting to disappear into the crowd, but it was already shutting down for the evening. The Kinixalan merchants noticed the two humanoids and shrugged to themselves. Clearly the female had found her mate.
Back in the TARDIS, Donna turned to her companion, eyebrows raised, hands on hips. "And WHAT was all that about? Who was that creature? Does he really go around hiring hit men, and why is he after you?"
The Doctor sighed, collapsed onto the bench seat next to the console, and began rubbing his eyes in a tired gesture. It was only then Donna remembered the state in which she'd found him and thought perhaps he wasn't quite as indestructible as she tended to assume. A verbal assault right now might be a bit much; besides, wasn't it past time for dinner?
She softened. "Never mind, it can wait. Do you want anything to eat? I'm starving." The Doctor nodded absently, still distracted by whatever was dragging at him, and she headed off to the kitchen.
Truth was, he was confused. He did indeed know the person he'd found in that computer and had no idea what was going on. He'd made up that drivel to distract the Zirian and didn't believe any of it, but the fact remained the mercenary hadn't been torturing him for fun. The Face of Boe had hired him.