This chapter starts the original material, as well as the day-to-day stuff. So this is where I'm going to start needing help. I've portrayed, as accurately as possible, what life for Donna Noble (or any other person, for that matter) is like in London, England. However, my information of what a "normal" life looks like across the pond comes from what I see on TV and what I read on the Internet. And while I'm pretty sure I got it at least mostly correct, I may have misspelled something here or called something by the entirely wrong name over there. If any of my readers lives in England, or has lived in England, and notices a mistake, please feel free to PM me so I can fix it right away. This goes for this chapter and any future chapters.

I'm going to try and upload new chapters every Sunday and Wednesday afternoon/evening. That's quite an ambitious schedule, however, so it may change to only once a week. All updates for the uploading schedule will be posted in upcoming chapters. I won't leave you hanging, promise! :)


6:38 in the morning is a ghastly time to be awake. Especially when the one awake has no reason to not be asleep, other than their own stubborn body.

Still, two could play the stubborn game. Donna Noble pulled her quilt up to her chin and resolutely refused to get out of bed. Well, to be fair, part of her defiance was due to stubbornness. The other part was due to the splitting headache currently burning its way from her closed eyelids all the way to the base of her skull.

The pounding in her head slowly solidified to a constant droning noise; a noise which, she was surprised, had a real-world origin. Reluctantly, she cracked one eye open to look around her morning-lit room, then gave up entirely and propped herself up on an elbow. The buzz was coming from ... there, close to her window. A wasp had found its way into her bedroom, and was now trying to get back out again.

Annoyed, she flopped back down onto her mattress. Normal people didn't get unbearable headaches because they heard a wasp. Or saw a red spider. Or used a pepper pot. But Donna's life had been anything but normal recently.

The headache was getting worse. The burning sensation intensified, until it felt like someone was drilling red-hot nails through her skull. Her head, her scalp, her face, all felt like they were on fire. And, like always, the visions came; brief snippets of time, like clips from a movie. But these were very real; just as real as they were impossible. A wasp, a giant wasp, had her cornered. She dodged its strike, slamming the door behind her, to have it strike at the door hard enough to break its golden stinger off in the golden wood of the door. No, the stinger and wood had been normal colors. The darkness on the inside of her eyelids had just turned gold, a glowing gold like something from a fairytale, except that this pixie dust burned.

Donna realized the headache had reached its final stage. Desperate, she tried to take her mind from the strange vision of the impossible wasp, and think of anything else. Think of how warm her purple quilt was. Think of how comfortable her new jim-jams were. Think of how annoying it was to be awake at this hour- no! That lead back to why she was awake, and that lead back to the wasp. Think instead of how annoying it was to be unemployed again. Think of that job at the paper company she was hoping to get. What would she wear to her interview on Wednesday? Planning her outfit, right down to the pair of earrings and the shade of eyeshadow she'd use, finally did the trick. The golden light retreated, her headache faded to nothing, the burning in her skull was extinguished, and she returned to normal.

At least, normal until it happened again.

They'd begun after Lance's betrayal, these vision-headaches. Completely random things in her everyday life would set them off, at times leaving her completely non-functional for the rest of the day. She had found that thinking about anything other than the trigger helped. It could be literally any other subject, anything other than the impossible visions playing out on the insides of her eyelids. The glowing golden light was the last step, the last warning. She had just seconds then to turn her mind to something else. If she didn't, she'd black out, sometimes for hours. Once, she had woken up in the back of an ambulance; someone had found her lying passed out on the sidewalk and called 999. The tests they had run in A&E had come back inconclusive.

Still, it was over for now. Of course, all the excitement had ruined any chance she might have had of returning to sleep. She added wasps to her list of potential triggers, pulled back the quilt, and got out of bed. It was a beautiful morning, anyway; might as well enjoy it. Right after she found that flyswatter.


There were a few phrases that no job-seeker liked to hear. "Not hiring right now," was one. "We'll call you if something comes available," was another. Unfortunately, on that Wednesday morning, Donna had heard both.

And she had worn her lucky necklace and everything.

Numb with yet another failure, she sat behind the wheel of her mother's car, still parked in the multistorey car park, and just thought. Here she was, about to turn 43 years, and job hunting. The thing her mother had been threatening all these years had finally come true - her habit of working as a temp or as a secretary for only a short time had come back to haunt her. No one wanted to hire a worker that would be retiring in less than twenty years; much less one with a history of job-hopping.

But admitting that would be admitting that her mother was right. Donna gave herself a mental shake, and turned the key in the ignition. Somewhere out there, someone was hiring. It was a big city, and everyone needed secretaries. It was only a matter of finding the right job; and she, Donna Noble, intended to do just that.

But maybe not right now. Now, a trip to the coffee shop may be in order. Just something to fortify her before sitting down to another lecture.

The coffee shop wasn't busy, but that was hardly a surprise. It was the middle of the workday, after all. Being a temperate one, Donna decided to take her drink out to the patio and people-watch. Which was the only reason she saw what happened.

Two men, one blond and one brunet, walking from different directions. It seemed that the brunet would simply walk around the blond, but at the last minute he stepped in just close enough to clip the other man. It looked like an accident, but something about it seemed off. The brunet man helped the blond man pick up the things he had dropped, both men exchanged pleasantries, and then both turned around and headed their separate ways.

The brunet disappeared into the crowd easily enough, in a way that almost seemed intentional. The blond, however, took three steps before stopping dead in the middle of the sidewalk. Donna watched with curiosity edging towards alarm as the blond man stood there, still as a statue, for several seconds before shaking himself vigorously and continuing on his way. Still, Donna wondered if something should be done, but the man seemed healthy enough now. He was walking just fine; and, anyway, had he needed help, she was sure in this crowd of people he would have simply called out.

She didn't even know she had half stood up to go to the blond man's assistance until she sat back down and turned back to her coffee. Nothing to it, she supposed. Just another one of the unavoidable quirks that happened when you crammed so many people into such a small space. She resolved to put the incident out of her mind, took another sip, and began watching the crowd again. Which is when she noticed a child, a girl no more than eight, watching her with interest. Donna smiled to the girl, to be awarded with a smile back (displaying two missing teeth). The girl then turned around and bounded off.

Donna finished the coffee and left. She wasn't surprised to find her mother waiting for her when she returned home, nor was she surprised by the lecture that followed news of yet another failed interview. Sylvia was calmed by the promise of other leads, however, and had calmed down by supper.

It wasn't until much later, as Donna was getting ready to go to bed, that she thought to wonder if the brunet bumping into the blond man, the blond man's strange paralysis, and the little girl were all related.


O'fila impassively watched the ginger woman finish her coffee and leave. Judging by her dress and vernacular, preliminary profile indicated that the woman was probably lower-middle class and held only a basic education; yet, her observation of the chip exchange was unnervingly astute. It was O'fila's opinion that, at times, the less "intelligent" a human was, the more dangerous they could be.

O'fila made her decision and briefly pressed the thumb and ring finger of her left hand together. "Ranger Eighteen to base," she muttered under her breath.

"Base to Ranger Eighteen," came the immediate response. A speaker and microphone had been implanted in all Rangers' jawbones, allowing them to send and receive communications without the need for conspicuous equipment.

"Target has been acquired. Implantation is successful." O'fila's reports were blunt and concise, another trait shared by most Rangers.

"Understood," Base replied. "Was the implantation witnessed?"

O'fila thought about the ginger woman. "Yes," she answered, wishing to be as precise as possible with her report. Let Base have all the facts, and then they could decide on a proper course of action.

"Understood," Base repeated. "Was the implantation recognized?"

Here O'fila hesitated. Just how much had the woman seen? How much had she understood? When the target first went into its implantation fugue, the ginger woman had acted alarmed; yet, when the target had begun to walk again, the woman sat back down. Scans indicated her heart-rate and adrenalin production had returned to normal. Had the woman understood what had really happened, remaining calm would have been impossible.

O'fila's people had long ago come to appreciate the difference between witnessing something and seeing something.

"Negative," she finally stated.

"If the civilian did not see the implantation, no rectification is necessary," Base answered. "The civilian will be catalogued, but not monitored."

The rest was no challenge. A scan of the coffee mug the ginger woman had been using (with a scanner disguised as a mobile cellphone, of course) was able to document the woman's fingerprints and DNA pattern. A quick shot with the camera on the scanner captured her body and facial structure. All information was downloaded into a vast catalogue, filled with similar data on hundreds of thousands of other humans.

If this human began to be sighted at other implantation sites, or at any other awkward moments, action would be taken. Otherwise, it would be acquired with the rest of the human race. O'fila finished the civilian's profile and hit "Send".