Episode 1: The Echo In The Corridor.

A scream echoes through the Tardis control room, but nothing can get past the shields. Or can it? The Doctor and Rose are drawn back to Earth to investigate an impossible sound, secret government experiments, and a young woman trapped in a deadly energy field. To save the world, the Doctor must choose: save a life, or save Rose?

This story takes place between Episode 8 and 9, Season One. Nineth Doctor.

The corridor was empty and had been for years. An overturned trolley was gathering dust against one wall, and a broken corkboard hung by one nail on the other, its gouged out surface still advertising tattered bake sales, long-grown up babysitters and a failed medical study that offered to pay volunteers five dollars a day for three weeks to suffer through crippling stomach cramps and headaches all in the name of science.

The corridor was empty, that is, except for the sound of footsteps.

"Hello? Is somebody down there?"

The footsteps were followed by a voice, and then, by a young woman carrying a white lab coat folded over her arm. Her long hair was tied in a braid down her back, its color impossible to tell in the dim security lights. She stepped into the empty corridor and hesitated, looking back over her shoulder.

"Micky, is that you?" she called. Her voice echoed down the halls. "We've got to get back before the doctor starts asking questions. This isn't funny, Micky!"

There was no answering call. The woman frowned and turned to go. She took two steps and then stopped, tipping her head to one side and listening intently. There, at the edge of hearing was a humming noise, a buzzing sound like a tiny heartbeat racing or the ticking of a clock on overdrive. It might have been the hum of the electricity in the walls or the failing fluorescent lights overhead, but it seemed to be coming from behind her, from the farthest end of the corridor. She turned around and her frown deepened. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the dim light and now she could see the two heavy, double-doors and a faint, red light that shone through the gap between them. But this part of the building was supposed to be empty; there wasn't supposed to be anyone down here.

"Micky?" she said, but she didn't call out this time. Her words were barely a whisper. She wasn't supposed to be down here, either.

But that light… that bright, beautiful light. Before she knew what she was doing, she was at the door. Her hand was on the doorknob. The strange sound seemed to vibrate through the metal, up her arm and into her heart. If that hum was on the edge of hearing, then beyond that edge, on the other side was another sound, like a song, like a scream. It was all so familiar to her, and the light…

She opened the door. The light poured out around her feet, orange and yellow and red, hot and sharp and tasting like copper. She stepped through the door and let it fall shut behind her. The click of the latch echoed back down the empty corridor. A moment later, a woman screamed.

.

The Doctor leaped through the Tardis doors, laughing triumphantly, and raced to the console; he began pressing buttons and pulling levers but with a little more urgency than usual. The Tardis doors slammed shut, nearly catching Rose between them as she darted in after him. She was laughing, too, if a little more nervously, and she leaned back against the doors to catch her breath. Almost, she managed to forget the giddy tingling that passed across her skin as the ship, and her inside of it, dematerialized from time and space, leaving yet another alien world behind them.

She had her breath back now and turned on the Doctor. "I cannot believe that you did that!" she cried, stifling her laughter beneath mock outrage. "That thing- That Grand New… she! She was gonna slap you." Rose shot him an accusing look.

"Her name is Granulier," the Doctor told her. "Queen Granulier of the Delconier Five, also of several surrounding territories. Some of them are rather nice." He pulled a lever and the ship lurched, throwing Rose against the railing. "And she was not going to slap me! We go way back, Granie and I."

"You call her Granny!?"

"Only when we're alone," the Doctor said, flashing his finest 'who-me?' smile. "You said you wanted to go to a party. Well?" His smile turned to a grin when she refused to answer him.

"It was a shame, really, we had to leave so suddenly," he went on, turning a dial on the console and noting the coordinates with a glance. "The canapés were very good. Did you have one of the green ones?"

"With the yellow bits on top, yeah." Rose nodded as she pulled herself up the ramp toward him.

"Gumblejack intestines," he said.

"What?"

"The yellow fiddly bits," he said without looking up. "Gumblejack intestines. Absolutely delicious, and a very worthy opponent for the expert fisherman so long as you use the right lure…" His hands stilled for a moment and he sighed. "I used to quite enjoy fishing."

"Is that where we're going?" Rose asked. The Tardis had held still long enough for her to make her way up to the console.

"Hm?" The Doctor looked at her, still half lost in his own thoughts. "Where?"

"Fishing?" she repeated. "Is that what we're doing next?" She tried to hide her disappointment and failed.

"You want to go fishing?" The Doctor stared at her blankly for a moment and then shook his head. "Not this time." He pushed a few more buttons and twisted a dial. "Are you hungry? I'm still hungry. Canapés do not a meal make. I know this great little place on Napir Prime that serves a brilliant cream of…"

But that was all he said. His mouth continued to move for a moment, but sound itself seemed to have been sucked out of the room. Even the groaning of the Tardis' engines was gone, although the Time Rotor continued its ponderous rise and fall above the console.

And then it began. The scream.

She had never heard anything so terrible. Rose doubled over against the console, pressing her hands to her ears, but the scream seemed to come from all around her, above and below, shrieking through the metal of the ship itself. At first, the Doctor tried to operate the Tardis sensors, to pinpoint the source of the noise, but eventually even he was forced to cover his ears.

And then it was gone. It did not fall silent or move away from them. It was there, and then it wasn't, and the silence rang in Rose's ears almost as loud as the scream.

Gradually, the engine sounds returned, the whooshing of the cooling vents, the whirring of the artificial gravity generator. But something was missing. Rose looked up and realized that she was seated on the floor next to the console. The Doctor had recovered much faster than her, and was looking up in amazement at the stalled Time Rotor.

"What was that?" Rose asked, pulling herself to her feet wiggling her fingers in her ears.

"The engine's stalled."

"Not that. I meant the… the…"

"The scream?" He looked at her. "A single, loud, long scream," he said. "A woman from the sound of it." He stepped to the other side of the console and pulled up the view screen and keyboard, touched a few keys and frowned. "Human, according to the sensors. The vocal range registers as pure human, but that's not possible. No human vocal system could even hope to reach these decibels."

"How did it get inside the Tardis?" Rose demanded. "You said nothing could get inside while the Tardis is flying, so how did it get in?"

"I don't know. I don't… the communications system doesn't register any incoming transmissions, or outgoing, not even any feedback." He pushed aside the screen in frustration. "How could it get inside?" he echoed, talking to himself now, and Rose let him, knowing that she would get more information that way.

"What is a scream?" the Doctor asked himself. "It's… sound. It's nothing!" He leaped around the console to a different panel and began turning dials and pulling levels.

"What are you doing now?" Rose asked, watching his hands move with dizzying speed over the controls.

"Sound is a wave, vibrations passing through the air, but this sound reached us inside the Tardis which means it's something more than that."

"But you just said it was nothing?"

"It is! Look, all you need to understand is…" He pulled a lever and the ship lurched. "I know how to follow it."

"But, if it was a human screaming…" Rose said slowly. He looked across the console at her, and she shook her head. "She sounded so scared and so..."

"Lonely," the Doctor finished for her. "So very lonely. I've heard that sound before." She looked expectant and he looked away. "In the swamps of Utraxia, they have an animal, like a dog, but the size of an elephant with legs like the trunks of trees. The Aiviq live in thick mud swamps, pushing their way through, but when they grow old… their legs become weak, they get stuck, and the family leaves them behind to sink into the mud and die. They abandon their own…"

He looked at Rose sadly. She said nothing. There was nothing to say.

The Doctor shook himself and stood up straighter. "But we won't abandon her, will we?" he said. He pulled a lever and the Tardis seemed to drop three feet down and six inches to the left, throwing Rose back against the console. "That was a distress signal if ever I've heard one, and we're going to save her!"

"But how?" Rose gasped. "How do you even know who she is?"

"I don't. Not yet."

"How will you find her, then?"

The Doctor's expression was grim and determined. "We start by follow the screams."

Cue title sequence and opening credits…

For a long time, I've resisted the urge to write this Doctor Who fic because I suspected how involved it would become. I caught the germ of this story more than four years ago and over and over it has returned to plague me in daydreams and sleepless nights. But now, the virus has woken up, grown restless and, like any good alien infection, it threatens to wrack and ruin me if I do not unleash it onto an unsuspecting world.

*Please review*

-Paint