Chapter 2

I woke up on a large leather couch on the left side of the Big House.

"What? Where- why am I here?"

"You fainted from over exertion."

Ana smiles down at me. "We found you miles down into to the forest! What were you doing?"

Miles? I thought to myself. I didn't think I went miles… Then I start to recapitulate all that had happened.

"But- that man, he… Did you see him?" I say, a distressed airiness to my voice.

Ana stares at me with her pale violet eyes blankly for a couple seconds. Then she turns suspicious.

"What man? You were the only one there. What, did someone terrorize you? Was it some grouchy old mortal man who managed to walk into the camp borders to"-

"No," I say calmly but sternly. I take slight offense that she chose to believe the imaginary fact of me being terrorized by a puny mortal man. I dismiss it, nevertheless. Then my eyes soften. "It was-… Actually, it was a much stranger situation than that," I sigh, partly to myself. But Ana hears it. "Spit it out, then," she remarks, and grins in anticipation.

In between small sips of nectar, the drink of the gods by big proportions and of the demigods by small (or trust me, you'll die), I tell her about running away from everyone as far as I could, seeing that strange blue box, watching the man step out who called himself The Doctor, and the people with him. Then, me running about trying to find the right direction to get back to Chiron to tell him about the odd happening.

And… Yes, also the part where I knock my head into a tree.

And then, sitting down in pain and blacking out.

As I pile on each topic, Ana's eyebrows rise higher and higher, and when I'm done, she says,

"Damn, Quinnie. You sure you weren't having some form of hallucination? I mean, besides knocking your head into a tree obviously, because you have a gigantic purple bump on your head."

I reach up to touch my swelling forehead, and wince with pain.

"Ow! Ugh…" I try to put my head in my hands, but, also trying to avoid the injury, I pretty much end up just putting my nose in my hands. Ana chuckles at me, and pats me on the back. "You'll get over it, don't worry. Hallucinations are probably natural for every demigod."

"No! I'm positive it wasn't a hallucination! You have to believe me Ana, it"- I pause, and see that she's already by the door.

"Sorry," she says, but I can completely tell she isn't. "I'm just really quite hungry for an appetizer before lunch. I hope you don't mind," she says, with a mock modesty. I sigh, slightly annoyed at my best friend's hopeless need for excess food.

"Yeah, go ahead," I mumble.

She walks out the door, and I lie there for ten minutes, contemplating getting out of bed and being productive. I'm just about to drift off again, when I see a face peeking through the window. I gasp.

"Oh, why hello again," the man says casually, blood going to his upside-down face, and his wavy brown hair flopping up. He looks a bit like a duck of sorts.

"Really sorry. There was no way of going unnoticed except coming round on the roof and meeting you this way through," he adds, considering the situation.

I'm almost speechless, but I manage to muster, "You're… Mortal..? H- How did you get in?"

"Ah, that," he says, as if just beginning to realize it. "The TARDIS can go pretty much anywhere. Actually, definitely much anywhere…" Then he begins to mutter something about supernovas and another thing that sounded a bit like "Pancake Dora," and mumbles about something happening only once. At this point, my courage was thoroughly back.

"But you're mortal. At least I think you are. And I've never even heard of a Todless, or whatever the hell you said. So… Who are you?"

"Oh, dear…" he says. "Where do I start?" He suddenly realizes that most of his blood has congregated in his head. "One second. I'll come down," he manages to muster through his upside down lungs.

I hear a loud "THUMP!" and then some padding footsteps. Those two other people I heard must be with him. Then the door bursts open.

In the doorway stands the man, a woman with flame red hair, red lips and freckles wearing fishnet tights, a black miniskirt and a sage colored shirt with a white scarf, and a modest looking and quite short man, with light brunette hair, almond shaped blue eyes, and pair of cargo pants with a light grey pullover sweater.

"Hello," the man says once more. "I'm The Doctor, and these are my two companions, agent A. Pond," he gestures to the girl playfully as she glares at him, "and agent R. Pond." He points to the man in the grey pullover sweater, who rolls his eyes.

"You've got to be kidding me," agent A. Pond says through clenched teeth. "Never mind him," she says, pushing him out of her way like some celebrity. "I'm Amy Pond. I'm not an agent, but Mister clever over here makes awful jokes-"she pauses and eyes him sarcastically- "and I'm his translator, so I'd be ready, if I were you, to expect a lot of technibabble from him. Just warning you."

The shorter man looks expectantly at Amy, and then steps up, unsure. "Yeah," he says with surpressed manliness. "And- um- I'm Rory, Amy's husband. Definetely and in no means Agent R. Pond. Not at all."

Amy bites her lip, and closes her eyes in amusement, raising her eyebrows.

I am again speechless. It's almost unfair how many times this particular three has knocked the words out of me.

"If you may, Amy, it's Doctor Clever! But really, I do prefer The Doctor, you know that," he replies with a silly pout.

"Well, my question is… How did you mortals get into the borders of Camp Half Blood?" I finally ask them.

"Exactly as I told you," The Doctor says with a grin.

"The TARDIS, T-A-R-D-I-S, stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space. We travel through space and time through the time vortex, which is basically a massive void of space and time meshed together into a spacery-timery thingy, and"- He pauses and makes a perplexed face, raising one eyebrow particularly high. "Actually, I don't know exactly how I got here." He again begins his mumbled fast talk, while an extremely serious expression is pasted on his face. This time I can hear it clearly.
"I'd imagine the temporal rift, being periodically opened automatically within a chronological period of ten to twelve time travelling years as the laws of inverse gravity allows, there would have to be an exact order of years that perfectly cancels out provided the integers ten, eleven or twelve combined of our last two time travels, which would be 2088, and right now it is 2100 exactly… which subtracts evenly into twelve- Which means," he then raises his tone, "That the temporal rift elapsed, and the power was so strong that the consumption of energy from supernovas and radioactive elements drew the TARDIS plippity-plop to the spot. The question is…" he pauses for suspense, and walks up to me, staring into my eyes directly. "Where would such a strong energy be hiding?"

"Lesson number one," Amy says to me in a sarcastic and hushed voice, "Never listen to a word he says until you hear 'the question is'. It'll probably make more sense that way." I give a nod, and raise my eyebrows. Then I look back to The Doctor, a confused look on his face, as if nothing happened. He obviously doesn't buy it, but I dive directly back into the conversation.

"Do you think I know?" I ask. "Also, I've never heard of a mortal travelling through time and space. Heck, I haven't even heard of a god doing that!"

The doctor breaks his stare. He laughs, and says, "You may suppose so. Seems I haven't broken that record yet."

It doesn't make any sense to me, but I just nod at what he said. By that time, he's already scanning the room. He pulls a small, pen-sized object out of his inside coat pocket. It's bronze-colored, and very odd-looking. He presses a button on the end I didn't even know existed, and something very much resembling one of the grabbers from a stuffed toy machine at an arcade folds out of the tip. A bright green light illuminates it, and a slightly earsplitting, squeaky but spacey sound emits from some area of it. I resolve that this is just too much to handle, and the only conclusion I come to is that the man is completely and utterly insane. As well as his few companions. A couple of mortals should be easy to contain.

"I need to tell Chiron about you. He can come and help. I don't know what you're ranting about, but, to be safe, I can't just let you loose."

"No, no no no, there's absolutely no need for that, as long as we can figure out thoroughly what's going on and be through with our business here, we'll get back to our devices and fly away in our little blue box, and you can forget we even came. No harm guaranteed."

"Yeah, like that's going to happen," Rory says under his breath.

The Doctor points at him with his sonic screwdriver accusingly. "You keep your mouth shut!" He says, as if a judge in court. I am overwhelmed at this point. I decide there is no hope in keeping this madman with his little flashlight pen contained, so bringing the crew is really the only option to pry the details out of him.

"Alright, alright, I give up," I say in surrender. "Just, please let me get my friends here. They may be important. Jo knows a lot about the general area within a mile radius of the camp," I continue, playing along with his nonsense.

"Ah, just what we need! All the information we can get. Amy Rory, explore the camp and figure out where we are and what exactly the reason is that we landed here. I am going to figure out what this thing is exactly that's bothering the TARDIS."

I interrupt the conversation. "Wait, you can't just send your little crew to"-

"Oh, yes I can, because listen here," he says. "I'm The Doctor, and I'm authority here, unless you think you're life isn't at stake, which, when I'm here, is a very rare occasion. You do what I say, when I say, and whenever I want you to. No questions asked. Do you understand?" He says, even harsher and sterner than Elika's worst insults. This surprises me a tremendous amount, and I'm slightly offended. I would've ranted out, but I give up.

"Fine," I huff.

I'm outside the door of the Big House with Jo, Elika and Ana.

"Okay, you will believe me when you see him. I think he's insane, but he is really stubborn! He gave me no authority!"

"I don't think that's going to be a problem from now on," Elika says, and winks at me. I laugh. "You and your big ego…" are my last words before I open the door.

There stands The Doctor, sitting on the couch, a dissected TV belonging to Chiron on the coffee table.

"Oh, what in the River Styx are you doing now?" I snap at him, extremely agitated.

"You! Shush! I'm concentrating," he replies to the air, most likely intended for me.

Meanwhile, Jo is almost tearing up at the sight of his outfit. Especially at his bright red fez, I think. She whispers to Ana and Ellie, and she winks at me again. Ellie walks to the other side of the coffee table, facing the back of The Doctor. "Hmm… You have some bug on your head. Oh god, it's a cockroach!" she fakes a squeal, and flings the fez off towards Jo's direction. "Hey, don't"- The Doctor can barely finish his sentence before Jo tosses it in front of Ana, who throws her electric spear straight at it, burning it to a crisp and leaving a very large, irreparable looking burnt hole in the floor where it lands.

I giggle, intended to be to myself, but it ends up being quite loud. "Aww, look what lengths my friends are going to in order to improve your fashion sense," I spout jokingly.

"But, really, a bow tie?" Jo adds in disgust. "We're going to need a little mini spear to throw at it that wont burn a hole in his chest!" She says in mock exasperation.

"How dare you!" says The Doctor says, seeming ashamed. Then he wiggles his bow tie formally. "Bow ties are cool." He says with an intended suave, I think.

Me and my friends bite our lips. I wonder how we are going to explain the newly opened chasm in the living room.

"You four are going to be difficult. Very, very difficult."The Doctor continues through clenched teeth. "And you know," he says with the crescendo in his voice I recognize from before, "That might not be the greatest idea in this situation. There may be a force, somewhere out there, which is unknown to your entire"- he searches for the words, and "campy-thing…" is what falls out.

"You need to be ready," he continues, "Because when I'm here, there is no way anything is going to be completely safe." His speech dies away, and he looks around guiltily.

"But don't make a fuss or anything… Trust me; you'll be fine and dandy by the end... I think." He says the end under his breath. I roll my eyes at him.

"I doubt that will be a problem for us, being demigods and not just plain old humans," I sigh.

"What? Come again?" The Doctor asks. "If you're not human, I've probably met your species."

"De-mi-god." Ana spells out the syllables for him. "Ever heard of it, mortal?"

"Okay, the very number one thing you need to learn if you are going to help me with this," he remarks, as if a PE coach, "I am by no means mortal. And, ah, of course…- demigods. Yes. Got it." He says this with a hint of uncertainty.

There are a couple awkward moments of silence, and he says,

"Okay, fine… What species are you? I've never seen such a human like species before, other than myself, anyways. So what are you, and how come I haven't heard of you?" The Doctor looks truly puzzled, and it almost surprises me that he thinks he knows so much about everything. He reminds me a bit of Ellie, and her ego. We've got so far into the conversation that I have to tell him.

"We're half human, half god. We have one mortal parent, and one godly parent. Mine is Athena, Ana's is Zeus," I point to Ana as she waves comically, "Ellie's is Poseidon," I divert my forefinger to her, and she smiles, and snickers somewhat, "and Jo's godly parent is Aphrodite."

The Doctor is pleased with this. "Oh, that is absolutely fantastic! A species like you, disguised almost, so human-looking," He walks up to us, examining and poking us like lab rats, "But so much more than that. Oh, we are going to have so much fun!" He says, rubbing his hands together like a child getting a new toy. I think he is sarcastic, but it turns out he isn't. We all stay silent, staring at him blankly. He slouches.

"Okay, I stand corrected. I am going to have so much fun."

At this point, Amy and Rory burst into the room, panting.

Amy has a rip in the shoulder of her shirt, and Rory looks even more exhausted. They're both covered in dust. "Well," says Amy. "That was a very, very useful discovery."
The Doctor runs over to them. "What is it, Ponds? What did you find? Amy, you must've been running, you look worn. Did you figure something out?" he pounces on the two with questions.

Rory, still panting violently, says, "They… They tried to get… Amy… They're coming… Th"-
"What are you talking about? What tried to get Amy? What is coming? Rory, tell me." The Doctor looks distressed and stern.

"At least we found something, however bad it is," Amy says, disturbingly monotone.

"What? What is it? Tell me already!" The Doctor snaps.

Amy lowers in to tell him. "There's something down there. I don't know what it is, but it's down there," she says with a wavering uncertainty. "And it's trying to Come up to the surface."

"That's interesting. Very interesting. What could any underground species want from this camp? There are many things, but I have to pinpoint it. I must." He looks over to the dismantled television on the coffee table.

"I need to continue that immediately." He quickly materializes back on the couch, pointing his flashlight pen at the circuits in immense concentration.

"So," I inquire to Amy, "What, exactly, is that… Thing, he's got there?" I point to the little flashlight pen.

"Lesson number two. The Doctor's 'thing he has there' is a sonic screwdriver. He can use it to open any door. I'm quite sure it comes before us in importance," she sighs, matter-of-factly.

"There we are!" the Doctor shouts, and we flinch at the sudden loudness of his voice.

"Amy, Rory, you should thank me for being so extremely clever. I just rerouted the security cameras of some underground system to this television unit, and we can now watch every detail of what is going on underground from it! Every signal, or sound, and every movement will be captured on the security cameras, and rerouted up to this dandy little device." He pats the TV like a good friend. "Now, we just need to wait for exactly one hundred and twenty seconds, and we will see what's on the screen. We will see what's down there, if we get lucky timing. Or maybe if we're even luckier, we'll catch it right when the camera starts rolling."

"Why one hundred and twenty seconds?" Elika asks.

"Because that's the exact amount of time it takes for a standard system to reset itself and reboot according to its new program. I don't know its individual standard longevity frequency, but one hundred and twenty is the most standard among many electronic systems. Ah, I think… Only fifty seconds left. Prepare yourself!" The Doctor does a small hop in the air, and plops down on the couch in front of the television, which is beginning to emit subtle churning sounds.

Elika is floundered by his explanation, but shrugs her shoulders, looks at us hopelessly, and sits down next to him on the couch. I sigh, and sit on his other side, while the rest of my friends file in. Amy and Rory lean their elbows on the back of the couch, right over his head. The Doctor rubs his hands together in anticipation. "Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven…" He seemed to have been counting ever since he said one-hundred and twenty. He must have amazing multitasking skills, I think to myself.

He finally makes it down to descending from ten, and although my friends and I still doubt his sanity, we start to feel his anxiety as well. It sparks a surprising amount of fear in me, actually.

"Five, four, three two…" The Doctor is finishing the countdown, and I grip the sleeves of the two beside me.

The TV lets out a loud grunt, and I hear more circuits churning. The screen lights up and I hear an awful white noise as the black of the screen erupts into many small black and white specks, like switching between channels, and finding one that doesn't connect. Then the screen goes black again, with a faint backlight. It stays like this for about 10 slow seconds, and then there is a clicking sound.

It comes from the television, and it sounds like fingers typing on a rusty typewriter. I starts to make a pattern. Click… click click, click. And then a rapid sound, like rewinding a disposable camera to take another picture, and then the click… click click, click starts again. This repeats about five times, and then I look straight at The Doctor. "Are you sure this is the security camera?" I whisper.

"It has to be! I know exactly how I rerouted it, and the programming should be correct. No flaws at all," he says, with deep question to his statement.

Suddenly, we all jolt, moving the couch about four inches back.

There, on the screen, is something I nor anyone in the entirety of Camp Half Blood has ever seen. That I am certain of.

On the screen is an ancient-looking stone angel, with blank grey eyes. A creepy, innocent smile is creasing its lips, and it is staring directly at us.

TO BE CONTINUED…