Disclaimer: Sorry, but I don't own Doctor Who. I know, it's hard to believe. :P

A/N: Yes, this is a new update. Will miracles never cease? O_o If any of you are still reading, enjoy!


Chapter Three

Donna launched herself at the Doctor. She landed on top of him just as he turned the knob all the way round, knocking both of them heavily to the concrete floor. All the breath was forced from her lungs, and she heard the Doctor grunt in surprise. "Dee-Dee! The door!" she managed to gasp out, the image of both of them being turned into piles of dust by the x-tonic sunlight all too clear in her mind's eye.

If the Doctor got them both killed like this, then she was going to bloody kill him.

She heard the sound of running footsteps, then Dee-Dee was leaning over her, jerking the door shut just in time. The opening mechanisms clicked and rolled, swiftly sealing the door again. The girl sagged against the wall beside the door, relief very evident on her face.

"Donna?" The Doctor shifted slightly under her, and Donna quickly climbed to her feet. She busied herself with smoothing out various wrinkles and brushing invisible dust from her suit to hide her worry. He rolled over onto his back, a groggy expression on his face. "Where are we? And…why am I still dressed in this thing?" he added, gesturing down at the leather diving suit he was still wearing.

Donna exchanged a glance with Dee-Dee, whose dark eyes were owlishly round. "You don't remember?" she asked suspiciously, still trying to catch her breath.

"Well…I remember you two pulling me out of the slyvivin fish enclosure, then…nothing." The Doctor narrowed his eyes, strangely enough not even trying to ramble. He was being almost uncharacteristically silent.

"I think it's happened again, obviously," was Dee-Dee's quiet remark to Donna. "He claimed not to remember what happened when he fell in the enclosure earlier, just like he's doing now."

Donna fixed a stern look on the Time Lord, folding her arms. "I think this has got something to do with what happened on the Crusader 50," she stated. "And that creature."

Dee-Dee looked afraid. "Do you really think so?"

"What are you two on about?" the Doctor wanted to know. "And can I get changed back into my suit? I can't think very well in this thing. It must be the magnetic state of the grade twelve nanochips woven into the material. Also, I'm starving."

"Yeah, whatever, Spaceman." Donna reached down and roughly grabbed his arm, hauling him back to his feet. "The food's probably cold by now, since we had to look all over creation to find you."

The Doctor, back on his feet, stumbled slightly. He nearly fell right back down onto the floor, but Donna managed to catch him just in time. She swung his arm around her neck to support most of his weight, pretending not to be as concerned as she actually was.

"Shall we head back, then?" Dee-Dee questioned softly, looking awkward.

"Yeah," Donna agreed, nodding once. "And we'll get Spaceman here caught up on what he's been up to lately, since he says he doesn't remember."

"Oi!" the Doctor exclaimed with much outrage. "I can't remember anything! And don't act like I'm not here," he added as an afterthought. His voice was full of an unsteady sternness that didn't exactly strike fear into the hearts of his two companions.

"Shut your gob," Donna told him firmly, "so we can tell you what's been happening while you've been gallivanting round the entire bloody spa."

"She's right, Doctor," Dee-Dee advised solemnly. "I'm afraid that talking in your weakened state can use up a lethal amount of energy."

The Doctor scowled, obviously not in the best of moods. "Blimey. I think I liked it better when you two were fighting."


Approximately ten minutes later, the Doctor, Donna, and Dee-Dee were all settled onto the couch in their little rented suite of rooms, chowing down on the cold food. The Doctor had already worked his way through most of the food inside the bag with the X marked on it, and Donna and Dee-Dee had just finished filling him in on the situation.

"Are you two sure about this?" the Doctor asked dubiously, stuffing something that sort of resembled a chip, only a strange blue color, into his mouth as he spoke. He had already changed into his normal suit again, during a quick side trip to the TARDIS, and Donna had also dug up some of her own clothes. "I don't remember any of it, which is very interesting in itself. Time Lords have brilliant memories, and I can remember just about everything that's ever happened to me. But there's always a first, I suppose." He grinned cheekily, rummaging round in his bag for more food.

Donna socked him in the arm, ignoring his wounded yelp. "So, got any ideas then, Spaceman? Since you're so brilliant?" she demanded cynically.

The Doctor shrugged, his mouth once again crammed with food. "Whale, pusechion it cmng t' mank," he managed to say around the food, words coming out in a garbled mess of nonsense.

Donna arched a brow, exchanging a look with the bemused Dee-Dee. Then she calmly took a bite of food from her own sack, waiting patiently.

The Doctor swallowed, then cleared his throat. "I said that possession comes to mind," he repeated himself with exasperation, crumbling his empty paper bag into a ball.

"Wha'?" Donna croaked with shock, nearly choking on a blue chip.

"I've been having strange dreams lately," the Doctor replied, seeming obvious to her concern. "About…you know. And these gaps in my memory are pretty alarming. Plus, nearly drowning? Blimey, I won second place in the Scækænævian version of the Olympics. And that's saying something, since you had to swim through a gravity field with seventy-pound weights tied to your legs." The Doctor pulled a face at the memory.

"So you're saying that you think that thing from the shuttle is possessing you?" Donna demanded, blue eyes wide.

"Yeah, basically," he answered nonchalantly, brushing crumbs from his shirtfront. "Donna Noble, you're brilliant, you are."

Dee-Dee looked slightly embarrassed. "Um…Doctor? I never said…I'm sorry about what happened on the Crusader 50," she murmured awkwardly. "I should have at least tried to stop the others, instead of hiding in the corner like a coward."

The Doctor carelessly waved a hand, dismissing her apology. "Ah, don't worry about it, Dee-Dee. Everyone makes mistakes. Well, I say everyone. Mostly just you lot, humans." He shrugged, then his brow furrowed. "Ummm…no offense."

Dee-Dee looked more puzzled than offended. "You said something like that on the shuttle," she remembered quietly. "Like you weren't human, weren't one of us."

The Doctor grimaced as he recalled the way everything had finally gone down the drain at that moment. His little slip of the tongue had turned everyone else against him, and the use of his John Smith alias hasn't exactly worked. Why humans found the name so hard to believe, he'd never know.

He swallowed the irrational moment of fear he then experienced as the time he had spent frozen, drowning in darkness, surfaced in his memory. He gave Donna what he hoped to be a suitably sufficient look, trying to ask her mentally to change the subject. He didn't really want to talk about what had happened on the shuttle any more than was necessary.

"Could we please get back on-subject now?" Donna demanded loudly, getting the meaning behind the look the Doctor shot her. "We've apparently got Spaceman here being possessed, which I'd say is a little more important, yeah?"

Blushing, Dee-Dee quickly nodded. "Right. I'm sorry," she said apologetically.

"So, Doctor." As Donna turned back to face the Time Lord, she couldn't help but notice the strange look that flashed through his expressive brown eyes. But it was gone before she could manage to place it. "What would that thing want with you? You said it possessed that Sky woman, and was only draining you, right? So did it decide it wanted to be best mates or something?" As weird as that sounded, Donna had seen much stranger during her travels in the TARDIS.

"Somehow, I doubt that," the Doctor said with a wry grin. "But it's a good idea, Donna. Very Friends."

"Uh-huh. And what's your theory about all this?"

"I think the creature unintentionally created a biometrical connection between us when it was draining me through Sky. It probably didn't expect me to escape alive, after all. And now it wants me to show up at its lair so it can finish the job." The Doctor shrugged. "But that's just a theory, of course. What do I know?"

Donna gawked at him. "Its lair? As in, out there in the poisonous sunlight somewhere? That's mad!"

"I expect that the creature's lair is somewhere safely underground. Even a creature that can be present outside in the x-tonic sunlight surely needs to get away from the rays at some point," the Doctor mused, tapping three fingers against his lips. "Or maybe it astrally projected its spiritual form to the Crusader 50, and its real body exists somewhere deep underground."

"Doctor…you're not going to go to the creature, are you?" Donna asked nervously. "Just because it's making such a big deal about calling you to it and all that?"

"No, 'course not. Why would I go and do such a daft thing?" the Doctor scoffed unconvincingly. "I'm going to stay right here at the resort, where it's nice and safe. Well, I say safe."

"But won't the creature try to summon you again?" Dee-Dee spoke up tentatively. "And over and over until you finally come?"

"Naw. I'm not going to pop in for tea, no matter how many times the creature asks me to. I doubt it serves very good tea at all."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Well, creatures who astral project and try to lure their prisoners to them usually don't serve very good tea, to be brutally honest," the Doctor informed her. "It's a well-known fact, all across the cosmos."

"She means, how are we supposed to keep you from getting yourself hypnotized and sauntering off to be burnt to a crisp?" Donna said bluntly, crumbling up her empty food sack into a ball.

"Oh. Right. Well, that's an easy enough answer. You'll restrain me," the Doctor said, like this much was obvious.

"Restrain you? How the hell are we supposed to do that?"

The Doctor tapped his chin with a single finger. "I've got a glass jaw. One hard punch in the right spot usually puts me out cold. That would give you enough time to tie me up with some rope or something," he said casually. "Then I'll be right as rain whenever I'm myself again. As opposed to burnt to a crisp, that is."

Donna stared at him. "We're supposed to punch you in the face?" She would never have admitted it, but she didn't fancy purposefully hurting her travelling companion. They were the best of mates, and showing him her best right hook didn't sound that appealing.

"C'mon, Donna. Don't tell me the thought doesn't appeal to you," he said, flashing a disarming smile.

"Not really, no," she snapped. "If I kill you, who'll fly the TARDIS?"

"I have one small question," Dee-Dee interrupted. "What's going to happen if the creature can't get you to come? Won't it be angry?"

"I'd imagine so! All that energy wasted on summoning me with no results! That would equal one angry bloke."

"What's it going to do? And how did it expect you to get to its lair in the first place?" Dee-Dee questioned insistently. "Even with some sort of special suit, it's not possible for a human being to survive more than 2.3 seconds under the x-tonic sunlight."

The Doctor shrugged. "Wellllll, I haven't exactly figured that out yet, actually. It'll come to me soon enough, I expect."

"She's got a fair point," Donna said. "If the creature really wanted you to come to its lair that badly, it wouldn't just force you to incinerate yourself, now would it? It must have some idea on how you can get there, without instantly dying."

The Doctor stood and began pacing the length of the small living room, while Donna and Dee-Dee stared at him. "A way to get to the lair…without burning up…x-tonic sunlight…" He was silent for a brief moment, then sudden realization dawned on his face. "Ah-ha! Molto bene!" he suddenly shouted, making both women jump.

"What?" Donna demanded irritably.

"There's got to be some kind of tunneling system connecting its lair to the resort!" he exclaimed excitedly, turning round to face them again. His eyes were wide and shining.

"Is that bad?" Dee-Dee ventured.

"Oh yes. Very very very verrrrry bad. Think horribly, catastrophically bad. With three scoops of bad on top of that. If the creature can make it here, into the resort, it could drain hundreds of innocent people of their life forces."

"And the not-so-innocent," Donna said cheerfully, thinking of all the people who had been standing round and staring as the Doctor drowned, not lending a hand to help.

"Couldn't it just astral project itself here, like it did before?" Dee-Dee wondered.

"I've been thinking about that," the Doctor said, starting to pace again. He clasped both hands behind his back. "Maybe, unlike its real body, its astral form can only exist under direct rays of x-tonic sunlight. The ultimate opposites. That would explain why it can only infect those venturing out into its domain, the unexplored terrain of Midnight."

"So what you're saying is that the creature's real body could probably come here at any time?" Donna asked, raising her eyebrows.

"Yes, basically. It's probably going to wait until it sees that I'm not going to come right to it. Then it'll make its move. Probably. If I were guessing, which I am, that's what I'd say."

"Then we need to find out if there's any sort of tunneling systems leading away from the resort," Donna decided.

"Donna Noble, you are a star. That's exactly what we're going to do!" the Doctor said brightly, starting for the door.

A buzzing sound loudly rang out, coming from Dee-Dee's pocket. Shooting Donna and the Doctor an apologetic look, she pulled out her communicator and studied the small screen. "Oh. It's the professor again," she told Donna sadly, face falling. She quickly slid the small device back out of sight.

"Shall we go?" the Doctor asked awkwardly, not really wanting to talk about the professor right then. That would doubtlessly lead to fresh questions about the events of the Crusader 50, courtesy of Donna.

"All right," Donna agreed. "One question: where are we going, exactly?"

"To security," the Doctor explained. "Hopefully, I can get some of the blokes there to let me study a map or two of the place."

Dee-Dee and Donna exchanged sly smiles. "We already have an in with security, actually," the dark-skinned girl said wryly. "We can introduce you."

The Doctor looked pleasantly surprised. "Lovely. Allons-y!"


Donna pushed open the door of the security office, Dee-Dee and the Doctor right behind her. The Scottish security guard, Daniel, still sat behind his desk. He visibly perked up when the two women entered. "Donna, Dee-Dee! Did you find…" He trailed off when he saw the Doctor, who rocked back on his heels and politely wagged his fingers. "Oh. So this is your brother, then?" he asked suspiciously.

The Doctor blinked with confusion. "Brother…?"

"Yeah, this is him. Daft bugger that he is," Donna declared brightly. "We just came to ask you another favour, if that's all right. Very important, Daniel." She leaned across the counter and delicately batted her eyelashes at him. "If you're not too busy, that is…"

Daniel cleared his throat, accidentally knocking a stack of papers to the floor when he tried to straighten his uniform. "Oh! Yeah, I'm not. Too busy, that is. What d'you two lovely ladies need?" he asked hoarsely, sparing the Doctor another suspicious glance.

"We need a look at any maps of the resort that you happen to have handy, Danny boy," the Doctor proclaimed enthusiastically. "Anything showing service tunnels, maintenance exits in the basement, that sort of thing."

"It's Daniel," the security guard said flatly, frowning at the Doctor. "Not 'Danny'."

"No Danny?" the Doctor asked, obviously disappointed. "Not even a Dan? Blimey, you're formal."

"Ignore him," Donna said loudly, stepping between the two men and giving the Doctor a stern look.

"We really need to see those maps, Daniel," Dee-Dee murmured. "It's very important."

Daniel chewed his lower lip, obviously thinking hard. "You're not going to be using them to sneak about the resort, are you?" he asked waveringly.

"Of course not," Dee-Dee said. "We just want to look them over, that's all."

Daniel was obviously not the brains behind the security of the resort. He nodded reluctantly, then used a key from the lanyard round his neck to open a drawer of the desk. He pulled out a thin stack of maps and handed them over. The Doctor instantly grabbed them and began flipping feverishly through the various sheets of paper.

"Thanks very much," Donna told the guard. "We'll bring them back soon, I promise." Fingers crossed, she added silently.

"What? You're taking them?" Daniel bleated, leaping to his feet and nearly tripping over his chair. "I could get fired for something like that!"

"I'm really sorry, Daniel," Dee-Dee said soothingly, backing towards the door. Donna followed her example, tugging the Doctor after her, even though he didn't look up from the collection of maps. "We'll bring them back shortly, all right? Then we'll get together and do something. Without Donna's brother?"

Daniel nodded eagerly, eyes lighting up. "All right, then. Come back in a couple of hours, when I get off duty!"

"Sure, we will," Donna lied convincingly. "Bye for now." She hurried out into the hallway, closing the door behind them. "Fat chance," she muttered scathingly. "He may be a handsome bloke, but he's spare a few brains, to tell you the truth."

Dee-Dee giggled as the three of them began to walk along. "I think you're right, Donna."

Donna smiled; she was beginning to like the girl, despite their rough start. Dee-Dee Blasco was growing on her a little. "Oi, Doctor! Find anything yet?" she asked him loudly, stepping aside to avoid a pair of women hurrying past. They both waved coyly at the Doctor, who predictably didn't seem to notice.

"Yes, actually," he announced, brow creasing as he glanced up from the maps. "There's a service tunnel directly under the resort, not far from where you pair found me earlier. From what I can figure out, it leads to a work station about three hours walk from here, fifty or sixty feet under the surface of Midnight. This map isn't the best I've ever looked at, mind, but–"

"The creature's lair," Donna realized, eyes widening.

He nodded. "I'd expect so, yeah."

"It's going to come when it realizes you're not," Dee-Dee whispered.

"Probably."

"And what do you intend to do about it?" Donna demanded, stopping and firmly planting both hands on her hips. "We can't just stand round and do nothing!"

"I'm not standing round and doing nothing," the Doctor declared, looking outraged. "I'm working on coming up with a plan, and I think I've almost got–" He broke off and stared straight ahead, maps fluttering from his hands to land softly on the carpet.

"You call me a drama queen! You're the bloody king of it!" Donna bellowed angrily.

"You call me a drama queen. You're the bloody king of it."

"Don't start trying to fool me, Doctor. I've had enough of that for one day! And we need to start figuring out what to do about the creature," she said heatedly, folding her arms.

"Don't start trying to fool me, Doctor. I've had enough of that for one day. And we need to start figuring out what to do about the creature," the Doctor echoed dully, staring straight ahead.

"Oh my God," Dee-Dee whispered quietly, grabbing Donna's arm. The Doctor repeated this as she went on in a hushed voice, "Donna, he's possessed again. That's exactly what the creature did to Sky on the Crusader 50!"

Donna's blood ran cold as she stared at the Doctor, who was expressionlessly repeating all of Dee-Dee's frantic words. "What do we do now?" she blurted, feeling an uncharacteristic surge of panic. She'd never seen the Doctor like this, and it was terrifying.

"I thought you would think of something!" Dee-Dee cried, sounding just as afraid.

"Give me a minute; I'm sure something will come to mind." But the bad thing was, Donna didn't have a clue.


Okay, if there's anyone out there who's still reading this story, who hasn't given up when I didn't update for ages, please review. :D