TWO

It felt as though all of the moisture on Earth had been sucked out through a hose. Something hard and painful was pressed against Martha's cheek. She was cold; she had lost consciousness on a grey November morning, and as far as she could tell, someone had simply put a metal grate under her head and left her on the pavement in front of that cathedral in Surrey.

She attempted to open her eyes, but it was too dry; they practically creaked when she finally did push them open and look about.

She tried to push herself up into a sitting position, but the floor beneath her was inhospitable to her hands. She groaned at the little jab of pain it took for her to get to her feet, and once standing she examined her palms. The metal grating had left a plaid-like pattern pressed into her skin.

One more glance at her surroundings. "What the hell?" she mused.

This can't be.

She rubbed her eyes and tried again. She had seen correctly. She stood in one stop, but turned three-hundred-sixty degrees, staring at the room she was in. "Holy… whoa." It was most definitely the TARDIS console room but… something certainly wasn't right.

The console room had been bathed in golden tones, last she had seen it. The walls were a warm yellowish brown, and the complementary lights from behind the roundels were cut from the same part of the spectrum. Usually, there were a couple of pillars that looked organic, almost like trees made of coral, and the control console itself was a living document of repairs and makeshift solutions. The railings had been padded with soft foam pillows and tied with twine, and the one seat in the room had been repaired a few times with duct tape.

But not today. The console room in which she now stood could have been that of an entirely different TARDIS. The walls were silver like stainless steel, and blue light came from the roundel fixtures, giving the room an icy tone. The dome shape coupled with the strange décor reminded Martha decidedly of an igloo. The pillars had the same type of sterile, stainless look, though they were straight and cyllindrical, as cold as the rest of the room. The console and railings were all chrome, though no homey rigged-up or foam remedies softened the look. Silver, silver everywhere. The lone exception was a worn-in black leather seat near the display screen.

It wasn't unattractive, but it didn't feel like home to her. The TARDIS was normally a safe place, and she felt like she belonged. This, ironcally, was completely alien.

Perhaps she was in an entirely different TARDIS. Martha knew that the Doctor's planet had been destroyed and he now thought of himself as the last of the Time Lords, but… she had always wondered. The Doctor was a traveller. Was he really the only one? Part of the reason he had survived was that he wasn't actually on the planet with the war began, he'd been called home at the height of the fight. Couldn't there be other Time Lords who were travellers as well? Other individuals who had been off-world when the debacle began, expats who had relocated? Families on holiday? Maybe a time crash had happened. Maybe that swirly, wobbly feeling she'd got before blacking out is what happens when two TARDISes get too close to one another.

She remembered the Doctor once telling her that the TARDIS looks like a police box because it had turned that way in the 1960's, to blend in, but that it had got stuck. A TARDIS, when functioning properly, could look like anything.

That's it. I'm in a different TARDIS! This is so weird!

She ran for the door and swung it open. As expected, she saw the cathedral in Surrey, lots of poppies, the ceremony to honour Lieutenant Lattimer dissipating. But when she stepped outside and turned to look at the TARDIS, she was crestfallen. It still looked like a blue 1960's police box. What were the odds that another Time Lord would have a police box TARDIS, here, in 1985? This was, most likely, her Doctor's TARDIS – what the hell had happened to the inside?

Martha huffed in exasperation, and re-entered the mysteriously changed time vehicle. She walked slowly through the console room, cautiously looking at the unfamiliar features.

"Doctor?" she called out, suspiciously. Her voice echoed in the cavernous room. Even her voice sounded different in the cold space. "Doctor?" she tried again.

He didn't answer. There was no sign of him at all. There was no recently-used sledgehammer thrown across the controls, no long brown coat strewn anywhere, no tool box sitting open on the floor indicating some project on-the-go. She decided to try and look for him. The TARDIS was a big place, but the Doctor had his usual haunts. Bedroom, kitchen, library, media room, casino…

"Doctor?" she called again, approaching the hallway. "Are you here?"

The corridor walls matched the console room. The layout, as far as she could tell, was the same, just with the blue light and chrome instead of the gold and tan.

"Hellooooo?" she sang into the empty spaces. "Blimey, what's going on?"

"Martha?" she heard at last.

"Yeah," she said, moving toward the voice. "Where are you?"

"Don't worry, I'm coming, just give me a minute," the voice said.

But it wasn't the Doctor's voice. Not by a long-shot.

It was a man, but the voice was much more resonant, not nasal like the Doctor's. Relaxed, almost sickly, rather than intense like the Doctor's. And tellingly, it spoke with an American accent, not the Londoner's to which the Doctor's alien tongue had adapted.

Martha's brow furrowed. Who was in the TARDIS with her? Who was invading their home? Was this the same person or thing who had changed the interior of the TARDIS? And if so, how the hell had he done it without the Doctor's consent? And if the Doctor gave consent, then why? And if he hadn't, then where was he? What kind of danger was he in?

She began to back slowly away, moving back towad the console room, as it was the only way out. If someone was here, she needed a means of escape. Mentally, she tried to run through things in the console room that she could use as a weapon, but all of the normal "loose" debris had gone. No tools, no hammers, Doctor's coat to rifle through for a screwdriver.

"Oh, don't trouble yourself," she said uneasily.

"I'm coming," the voice said. Funnily, it didn't sound hurried or worried or concerned in any way. It knew her name, but didn't seem perturbed by the fac that Martha might think it didn't belong there. It wasn't afraid she'd attack or run or sic the Doctor on it.

Martha heard the shuffle of feet. She was in the console room now, her back to the door.

"Martha?" the voice said. "Where are you?"

It was just there, right around the coner. She needed to get ready to bolt!

But when she saw him, her urge to flee totally left her.

He was a tall man, about six feet and thin. Very, very thin. His blue eyes were sunken, and the area around them was discoloured. He was wrapped in a grey plaid blanket, was wearing a tee-shirt and a pair of hospital scrub trousers, and the shuffling of his feet upon the strange TARDIS floor had been made by puffy bedroom slippers. He coughed a few times and cleared his throat violently, and pounded on his chest, before saying, "Excuse me. Don't mind me. The invalid hacks again."

"Yeah, sorry," Martha said. "Who the hell are you?"

From his basic build, she could see that he'd once been a big guy, probably a formidable man at some point. And when he smiled at her question, she could see that he'd probably once been an incredibly handsome man as well. But she felt no threat, nothing other than total confusion and wariness.

"Martha," he said, smiling. "It's me. What's the matter with you?"

"What's the matter with me? What a question!"

"Are you feeling all right?"

"I should ask you the same thing!" Martha exclaimed, looking the man up and down. "Now who are you?"

"It's me! Jack!"

"Jack who?"

He smiled again, and looked at her sideways as if to see whether she was winding him up. "Jack Harkness, you silly goose!"