CHAPTER ONE

The TARDIS doors were flung open and a small green humanoid creature was unceremoniously dumped onto the brown dusty ground. It scrambled backwards in terror, then leapt to its feet. The Doctor was framed in the doorway, his usual cheery demeanour replaced by a solemn anger.

"And don't you ever try to hijack my ship like that again, or you'll not just be dumped onto the ground!" snapped the Time Lord. He stepped back and the doors crashed shut in front of him.

Sitting on the top step of one of the two staircases, Amy and Rory were giggling uncontrollably. Or, at least, they would be if they weren't both tied to a banister support, their wrists bound behind their backs and gags shoved roughly into their mouths.

The Doctor turned from the doors and brushed the dust off his jacket, then sneezed as the particles went up his nose.

"Sorry about the delay, you two," he said, "You can't rush these things, you know."

"Et eh gagfh off!" yelled Amy through the gag.

The Doctor's brow furrowed and he took a step forward, turning his head a little bit closer. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that?"

"Et...eh...gagfh...off!" she screamed. The Doctor darted up the stairs.

"Hang on, I'll get the gag off. What was that?"

Amy gave no reply but an icy stare. The Doctor looked shaken. "What?"

"Just get these cable ties off, will you?" she snarled through gritted teeth.

With show and panache, the Doctor whipped out the sonic screwdriver and pointed it in the vague direction of the bonds. There came a crack, a puff of acrid smoke, and the cable ties disappeared into the cavity underneath the control room, probably to remain there for the next twenty-odd years.

Rory ripped off the gag and started massaging the circulation back into his wrists. "So what part of, we need your help come quickly, didn't you understand, then?" he demanded.

The Doctor shrugged. "As I said, I was having problems of my own."

Amy's husband chuckled. "Like whether to have another mojito or switch to mimosas?" he retorted.

The Time Lord looked embarrassed. "Well, I, uh, ahem, suppose I was enjoying myself quite a lot," he admitted.

Amy gave a devilish grin. "Oncoming Storm? Oncoming hangover, more like."

The laughter filled the control room for about half a minute, until everybody recovered sufficiently to stand up.

Doing something completely unprecedented, the Doctor slid down the banister to the console. Only trouble was, his shoes provided more grip on the floor than he expected, and he cannoned headfirst into the console. There cascaded a shower of sparks from the central column, and three cables fell from the ceiling. The time rotor began heaving up and down.

The Doctor leapt back from the console and looked on in horror. Controls began activating themselves spontaneously and at apparent random. The cooling system gauges went off the scale, then exploded, jettisoning hot coolant all around that side of the console. The forwards/backwards controls clicked into reverse, then both handbrakes disengaged simultaneously. The dematerialise lever slammed forward, the atom accelerator zipped up to full power, then burnt out, and the space/time throttles went all the way forward, the yellow lights flickering slightly. Even the Heisenberg Focusing Device couldn't cope with monitoring either the position or state of an atom, the gearstick slotting randomly into different positions. The inertial dampers and gyroscopic stabilizers kicked in, and the TARDIS lurched to uprightness once again. Finally, the whole circuit blew with another shower of sparks and, rather alarmingly, a tongue of flame, and the whole control room went dark. All the controls clicked back to default.

Silence. A mild creak.

Then every device stored in the ceiling cascaded down, dangling on their cables. Amy screamed and cringed, then, ever so slowly, uncoiled.

The Doctor extended the head of the sonic screwdriver, held it aloft, and pressed the button. Emergency lighting blinked on, casting the control room in a harsh, fluorescent glow.

He circled the console, randomly pressing buttons and flicking switches. Nothing.

He looked up to Amy and Rory.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so, so sorry. But we're dead."