Chapter Two
"You just had to go and insult the Emperor, didn't you?" Rose said as she hurriedly closed the TARDIS door, shutting out the angry mob that had chased them.
"That suit wasn't his best," the Doctor insisted, "that's all I said."
"You've missed out the part about his weight and bad breath!"
"I didn't say that!" he said indignantly.
Rose just raised her eyebrows at him.
"Okay, maybe I did," he admitted, as there was the sound of a hundred fists hitting the doors. "So shall we go?"
"Well I'm not staying out there!"
"All right then," he grinned, "Allons-y!" and he kicked a lever, while flicking and turning switches and dials. She rolled her eyes and skipped over to join him, before flopping down on the leather sofa to let him to all the work. He scowled jokingly at her laziness and she kicked him playfully in the shins.
It was several minutes before they landed. Several minutes of swaying violently in mid-air. He was just showing off and they both knew it. But the TARDIS did land and the Doctor punched the air dramatically.
"Come on then, where are we?" she laughed.
He flicked a switch and pulled the screen towards him. It flickered into life, displaying nothing. The screen was blank.
"Is it broken?" she asked.
He hit the side of the screen with his palm. It flickered again, but remained black.
"No," he said finally, "but if I'm right…" without finishing his sentence he strode over to the doors and opened one slightly, peering through, "I am right! Oh good, I love it when I'm right!"
"Why are you right? What's out there?"
The Doctor opened the door fully. Outside Rose could see… nothing. Blackness.
"We have landed haven't we?" she ran over to join him, "We're not just floating in space…again?"
Without answering her, he stepped out of the TARDIS and Rose was relieved to see that he didn't fall or float away, but was stood on a floor of some kind. She tentatively followed him, careful not to let the door shut, as the only light was the small amount radiating from within the TARDIS itself.
"Where are we? Can we turn any lights on?" Rose squinted into the darkness in search of something, anything. The Doctor pulled out the sonic screwdriver from his inside coat pocket and pointed it upwards. The blue light buzzed into the silent darkness and before she could say anything, Rose's eyes were blinded by bright lights.
When they had adjusted, she could see that they were in a well-illuminated corridor, with plain white walls and ceilings and a light wooden floor. At one end of the corridor was a door sealed shut with what looked like a card swipe mechanism and at the other was the symbol for a toilet.
"Three guesses what's in there," Rose nodded towards the door.
The Doctor smiled, but said, "I'm more interested in the locked door."
"Too bad we don't have a device that could unlock that machine," she joked.
The Doctor waved his sonic proudly and the two turned, strolled past the TARDIS and made their way to the door. The sonic unlocked the seal and they stepped through the door.
The room they stepped into was large and circular, lined with shelves and cupboards and glass cabinets. Every single one was empty, the Doctor had checked as Rose walked over to one of the several doors leading out, which was also sealed shut. After a few minutes they passed through this. They came to another corridor – larger this time – with many doors either side. Every door was sealed shut with the same swipe card mechanism. A quick look inside showed that each room behind these doors was identical. Each held a glass cabinet, a set of white wooden drawers and a bed. Well, Rose assumed it was a bed, it didn't look very comfortable. Apart from that, the rooms were bare, nothing in the drawers or cabinets. And all the while, the whole place had been silent, the only sound being their footsteps bouncing off the blank walls. Rose was starting to feel a little anxious, but the Doctor seemed curious if anything.
At the end of the door-lined corridor, the space opened into a long rectangular room. At the end at either side, two more doors were locked. But this room confused Rose; all along the walls, there were sets of small buttons and keypads paired together with a number painted above them. The Doctor bounded over to one labelled '12F' and ran a hand over the wall between the button and keypad.
"What is it? What's there?" Rose asked, her voice loud in the silence.
"Nothing," the Doctor replied, perplexed. He pointed his screwdriver at the wall and scanned. "Either these walls are concealing seriously deadlocked doors or there's literally nothing." There was a pause as Rose thought over the unusualness of the place they'd landed in. "Come on, let's see if we can't find out where we are," he said and headed off towards the door at the end, leading left. Rose followed obediently, not wanting to admit that every bone in her body wanted to leave this creepy place, whatever it was.
Wherever they went, they were always greeted with corridors, empty rooms and sealed doors. There were several more rectangular rooms with keypads that opened nothing and didn't respond to the sonic. Each room had numbers one to twenty painted on the walls, ten on each side. But each room corresponded to a different letter. The Doctor and Rose had found F at first and as they explored, they found B, C and J. They didn't seem to be in any sort of order, alphabetical or otherwise.
"Rose," the Doctor said eventually, making her jump, "Can you remember the way back to the TARDIS?"
"I'm not sure, I don't think so."
"Oh right…" he cleared his throat slightly, "because neither can I."
Rose's heart lurched in her chest, but she smiled and joined in his chuckling, all the while feeling like they were interrupting the silence somehow.