"A stakeout? Really? Are you serious?"

The Doctor tugged at the sleeve of his tweed jacket, straightening it out after checking his watch. "Indeed. C'mon Pond, it's a classic set-up! An homage to film noir, even!"

Amy sighed, using a series of rolled up yellow papers in her hand to tap the back of her head. "But how do you even know it's going to work? Aren't we going to get caught and kicked out?"

"No, because I have a brilliant plan!"

"Please tell me you're involved in it," Rory pleaded. He was already flashing back to an hour previous, when he and Amy were listening to a woman that would certainly not look out of place surrounded by cats, Professor Lofaso. On and on she went on a program they had no genuine interest in, but whenever Rory felt himself nodding off, his eyes would wander and they'd always meet Blaine's.

His eyes were blue. Creepy blue. The kind of eyes that you didn't want to stare straight at, and doing so was trying on the soul. They were the kinds of eyes that always seemed to belong to superiors when Rory was giving them some ridiculous theory on why a patient was ill.

"Of course I'm involved," the Doctor snapped, breaking Rory's thought bubble. "I'm always involved!"

"Not with the part that involves buying others time…" the nurse mumbled. Either the Doctor didn't hear or he chose to ignore him, since the next thing he did was look out the doors (the group being on the second floor again) and letting out a nondescript 'hmm'.

"So how are we even going to do this stakeout thing?" Amy asked, flinging herself off the wall she had been leaning on. "This is a school building, it gets used, and then it gets emptied. We'll be thrown out – unless you were planning on hiding somewhere?" She paused. "Or…breaking and entering?"

"Huh? Did I not mention?"

The blank stares confirmed that notion.

"They don't kick students out," the Doctor answered to his own question. "They lock the doors from the outside at a certain time but people aren't forced out. And I'd like to avoid the 'breaking and entering' part. There are cameras at all the entrances, didn't you notice?"

"We went through one, how was I supposed to notice?"

"Oh, well – I noticed it."

Rory flatlined his eyes. "Good for you." He glanced around the niche they had settled themselves in, rather uncomfortable at every passer-by. Most were students, lugging large but flat mesh bags (portfolios), laptop cases, or backpacks. Occasionally, a professor or administrator would walk by, but it was either the way they had squared themselves off or their mere appearances that led to no one speaking to them. "In the meantime, what are we supposed to do?"

"Good question." The Doctor tapped his wrist. "We have multiple options, take the one that's most convenient for you."

"We could…snoop around? Do a bit more investigatin'?" Amy offered.

"We could, but we don't want to seem suspicious."

"Aren't we already suspicious? What difference will it make?"

"Because." He let that word hang in the air for a bit too long, as Amy and Rory leaned forward slightly, eyebrows raised, though also a look that suggested they were preparing themselves for disappointment from the epic build-up. "When I talked to a professor upstairs, while you two were gallivanting with the fibers, I asked him if he thought anything was odd about this place, and the way he answered me suggested that it's not something very well-known outside of here."

Rory hesitated before asking, "So that means…?"

"Well, for someone like me, a 'scout' to him, asking about something not supposed to be known raises eyebrows."

Amy was about to make a joke about the Time Lord's lack of them, but instead chose to pass by the opportunity. "Need to be quiet, then."

"Preferably. Well – not too quiet, quiet's boring." The Doctor began to bounce on his toes. "In fact, this is quite boring too." He encompassed his jaw in his hand, cradling his elbow with his other hand. "What can we do for seven hours…"

It was probably best not to let the Doctor ask and then complete the phrase "what can we do for x amount of time", because as it turns out, his answer was "the TARDIS!" What then proceeded to occur was a cross-your-fingers roulette for advancing ahead by seven hours, give or take a minute. Their first journey out the doors was about fifty years ahead, with the return trip sending them back seven hundred years too far.

After several more tries and mistakes, the Doctor masked his caution with a grin and poked his head out the doors, feeling a surge of pride at seeing mostly night with a faint glow of light from around a corner. He sniffed the air and nodded, again with caution, before he heard the confirmative tapping of Rory's finger on his cell phone.

"Finally got it right."

"Of course I did, I always get it right!" The Doctor tweaked his bowtie, smiling as if he had never done anything wrong - ever. "I sometimes choose to take the scenic route is all."

Amy rolled her eyes and had to grab Rory's hand and drag him out of the TARDIS in order to get him to budge. Once outside, she shivered, the air noticeably colder than it had been earlier that day.

"Ahh, an autumn night in northern Illinois…it is quite brisk." Spreading his arms out, the Doctor breathed in the chilled night air deeply, heaving it out with an almost heavenly sigh.

"Doctor," Amy said patiently, poking around his side to try and get his attention. "Not to distract from the…the breathing, but don't we have something we need to be doing?"

"Huh? Oh, right, quite right Pond." After an affirmative nod, the Doctor leapt into action, literally jumping into the air and going down the same path and through the same doors he had done hours previous. His companions followed in a similar fashion, and soon, they were staring at the set of elevator doors that stood next to the stairwell they had taken earlier.

"…Where is it?"

"It has to be coming. The light on the button is on. It's coming."

"But the number isn't lit up."

"Maybe it's broken."

Suddenly, the 1 on the panel lit up, accompanied by a ding and the doors slowly shuffling open. Amy gave Rory a satisfied smirk before hopping inside, beckoning for the two males to follow by wiggling her fingers at them.

The elevator chugged slowly upwards, but stopped once it hit the second floor. The Doctor sighed, impatient, but almost started laughing when the doors opened and revealed who was waiting.

"…Why are you still here?" the familiar student tour guide asked, her voice distraught. In her arms were three brown paper bags, splotches of grease staining the sides. She entered without much hesitation, however, and glanced over at the button panel, seemingly satisfied at the 4 being lit up before the thought hit her.

The Doctor, in his typical way, managed to get in the first word of her open mouth. "How lovely to see you again, Miss Ginger. Is there class running this late?"

She closed her mouth and snorted before shaking her head. "Nah. Latest class goes is 8:40."

"So why are you here?" Amy couldn't help herself asking. Ginger shot her a look that certainly lacked any sort of masking from earlier.

"My friends and I are here to finish up some projects. We got hungry so we ordered Chinese, and no, I'm not giving you any."

Rory edged his eyes over to Amy, who returned the glance and mumble-mouthed something that seemed to state disbelief.

"We're not hungry anyway," the Doctor brushed off, smiling. That did nothing to remove the suspicious scowl from the girl's face, and the eye contact she kept up with him was nothing but remarkable when the doors opened and she walked out – backwards.

"I shouldn't say this," she said, raising her voice as she distanced herself, "But you're not where you should be." She stopped at a doorway opposite the fibers studio, shifting the weight of the paper bags in her arms. "And seriously, I'm probably gonna call the police unless you get out."

Once she had disappeared into the room, the Doctor led the way out of the elevator, Amy and Rory almost stuck by the doors closing on them. The two of them stared after where Ginger had gone, but the Doctor seemed to have gone past that, sonic screwdriver already whipped out and humming in the air.

"I didn't get the chance to precisely locate where this field is open," he answered to their unasked questions. "It's here, but not here." He then bolted forward, sonic held in front of him awkwardly, squinting at the readings as he criss-crossed the narrow halls, darting from door to door – studio to studio.

The married couple followed, Rory stopping deliberately at the door he had seen the non-correlated student tour guide duck into. There was a small room immediately inside the door that appeared to be some sort of storage space, but that gave way to a larger, warmly lit room. The walls were punctured a thousand times over with small marks, though judging by a few watercolor paintings hanging up, it was due to student work being mounted and marveled. (Well, to him, it would be pretty marvelous. Any art student in their right mind would call it the dreaded "critique".)

Rory quickly moved on when one of the room's occupants – some Asian girl with her hair in a ponytail – started to look up. He almost panicked when he noticed neither Amy or the Doctor straight ahead of him, but around the corner to another right, he was able to breath a little easier.

Then they turned into another door on the left, causing him to snap into action after them.

"Woah."

They had entered a massive room, ceilings stretched high, lined with numerous tracks of lights and slotted windows adorning the far side. Dozens of easels, massive in their height, were posed haphazardly around the room, accompanied by small metal carts of sorts. There was a clear path through the mess, though, and once the initial shock of seeing everything splattered in paint wore off, there was remarkably little to actually look at.

The Doctor, however, seemed far more interested in the space more than he had before. "This is it," he said, snapping the sonic shut and sliding it back into his coat pocket. "It's here, in this room…somewhere."

"…What are we looking for?" Amy had to ask, realizing specifics were not coming her way.

"Something. Anything." He turned to look at the two, a bit perplexed, but also very, very excited. (Typical.) "This field is being held within an object, but what that object is I don't know." He paused, twisting his lips upward in thought. "Aaand you know what that means."

"Two words, two syllables?" Rory offered sarcastically.

"Split up," Amy won without much enthusiasm. The Doctor, however, was back to his beaming grin.

"Exactly! You two have learned so much, couldn't be prouder."

The room was somewhat split in the middle by a conglomerate of cabinets and platforms, though on either side were wide paths easily connecting the room. The Doctor took the far side through one path, Rory through another, whilst Amy stuck to the part they had entered through.

Rory's path led him to the back wall, which revealed small but clearly defined areas that students had set up to work in. They were three in total, made up by lines of the metal carts, with reference pictures and sketches taped to the walls. He raised an eyebrow at the first that he saw, which consisted of a screaming face splattered in blood. Spot number two was dedicated to an intricately detailed piece of a beetle or…something. He could only give that a guess based by the pictures and books that were lying around the area, some scientific in nature.

The third, however, was what caught his eye. It wasn't gory, it wasn't intricate, but it was…interesting. A canvas taller than him was off by itself in a specific corner, surrounded by carts littered with paint tubes and jars of oddly-colored liquids. It seemed to be the beginnings of an intricate endeavor, with a few areas built up in the middle but rough gesture marks and blank white canvas taking up most of the sides.

But there was something about it. It was like a story was instantly forming in his head the moment he looked at it. There was something about the serene of the greens blending with the soft yellows, echoing in the enchanting blues that bled off into violets and desaturated to grey.

Then something. Something happened. Rory looked at his hand and noticed his fingertips stained in a smear of colors. That was odd. But it was odder to look up and see where he now was.

It wasn't the painting studio he was in. It wasn't even a physical place that he knew was real. Everything around him consisted of globs and chunks of the same color palette he had just seen on the canvas. Farther off, the colors began to fade before stopping completely, casting themselves into blazing white.

Rory whipped his head around, hoping to maybe see something, some sort of inkling of reality, that maybe there was – oh, dunno – a portal somewhere. Something.

Of course there was no such luck.