Rose wanted to turn away. She closed her eyes and wished that he had not said anything at all. But someone grabbed her arm and was gently holding her back.
"You have to tell me what happened, Rose, I need to know!" Jack asked eagerly.
As her eyes filled with tears, she answered, "How can he not know who he is?" Her voice was no more than a whisper, but Jack still understood her because the same question had been bothering him for a while now, but he could not answer it. This situation was as much a mystery to him as it was to Rose. But he felt that he had to stay strong for both of them as he always did for his team.
"Just tell me what happened," he repeated calmly, but Rose was too worried to listen to him properly. She kept glancing over at the Doctor as if she expected him to faint at any moment. She noticed that he looked pitiful. His face was paler than usual and his expression was one of a child that just woke up and couldn't find his mother.
"Rose, are you okay? Do you want to sit down?", Jack finally asked.
"No, I'm fine, it's okay. I'm fine," she said absentmindedly.
"You know, I think we should get him into the Tardis. It's the only place where he's safe."
"But I don't know where it is," Rose answered, her eyes still fixed upon the Doctor who seemed to slowly get out of his confusion and to regain some of his self-confidence.
"What do you mean by 'you don't know where it is'? You came in the Tardis, didn't you?"
"Yes, yes of course we came in the Tardis, but after I got out, there was this sort of light…thingy, and suddenly I was on a different street and I did the only thing I could do, I went looking for the Doctor and here we are." Rose eventually turned her head away from the Doctor to look at Jack.
"So we don't know what happened to the Tardis or the Doctor and the only man who could tell us has lost his memory… oh, that's great," Jack rambled.
"And we have even more problems!", Rose said as several Daleks appeared suddenly out of thin air. Immediately, Jack jumped to his feet and took out his weapon. A jet of blue light shot through the air and hit the nearest Dalek, causing it to explode.
"Rose, you have to get out of here!" More Daleks appeared. Their demands filled the air as they also took aim and fired.
"I'm not going to leave you with them!" Rose answered in shock.
"Get the Doctor and run!" Jack demanded eagerly. Rose ducked just in time to miss a shot fired from a Dalek, while the Doctor lay on the ground motionlessly. Greater fear than he had ever felt before crippled his body. He did not know what to do or what these things were. Everything seemed like a very bad dream and all he hoped for was to wake up as soon as possible.
"They'll kill you!" Rose yelled over the noise of bursting Daleks and their mechanical voices.
"They'll kill you too if you don't do as I say! GET AWAY!"
Rose wanted to reply something but Jack interrupted her and shouted: "RUN! NOW!"
And this time she did what he said. She grabbed the Doctor's hand and gave him a leg-up. Together they ran as fast as they could. She led him into a side road and then she turned left into another road. But in the distance, they could still hear the noise of the fight behind them and sometimes, Rose thought that she heard the painful screams of Jack between the yells of the Daleks, but she didn't want to imagine what could have happened to him.
After some time, when the screams were long gone, Rose stopped in the middle of a street. The Doctor panted heavily behind her but he was relieved that they finally stopped running. Though, he couldn't remember anything from his life before he wake up about half an hour ago, he was pretty sure that he was no runner for he was definitely not used to running.
After he had caught his breath, he asked the one question that was waiting to come out for a while now.
"What on earth is going on?"
