Chapter Four

Two and a half hours later Jenny tried knocking on Roland's door again. When he didn't respond she cracked the door open and peeked in. Roland was sprawled on his stomach with one foot hanging over the side of the bed. "Too tempting," Jenny thought. She just had to. Besides, he was being kind of rude lately.
She crept into the room and crouched down next to Roland. She leaned forward and reached for his foot. Checking to make sure he wasn't already awake, she pinched the bottom, just below his big toe, and ran out of the room.
She watched quietly from just outside the doorway as Roland shot up into the air with a yelp. He pulled his foot back onto the bed and, not seeing anyone, peered over the edge of the bed at the floor. "Jenny..." he called warily.
No response.
"Jenny, I think we might have a bug problem," he said, a little louder this time.
"A bug problem?" Jenny walked into the room and acted like she had just come from the laboratory. "What makes you think that?"
Roland glanced back at the floor and began his tale. "Something was in here just now... and it bit me. On the foot. Just there." He raised his foot with his left hand and pointed at the red mark on the bottom with his right.
"Well..." Jenny was about to fabricate a string of nonsense that wouldn't exactly classify as a lie, but she made the mistake of staring at his confused face too long and burst out laughing. "I'm sorry, I couldn't help it," she admitted, still laughing. "You were all sprawled out with your foot hanging over the side and you just looked so ridiculous."
"Jenny!" Roland tried to scowl, but it had been a while since he'd seen her laugh, so he just huffed and waited for her to calm down.
"In my defense," Jenny said, "you were rude to me when I knocked on your door earlier."
Roland shrugged and looked down at his lap. "Ah. Sorry about that. Let's get some breakfast and check out that location you found." He got up and reached for his robe.
"I've already had mine. You can eat yours in the shuttle, can't you?" Jenny said innocently.
Roland sighed and picked up his jacket instead. "Sure."

"It wasn't until shortly after we saw him again at the diner that I realized what it was all about. The Doctor had invited Amy, Rory, a younger version of him, and myself to his death, knowing that his past self wouldn't show up at the right time and we would have an adventure together. What I didn't know, was that the adventure was intricately tied into my own life. That is, until we went back to Florida on the 8th day of April, 1969..."

Jenny read the entry to Roland as he set the coordinates on the time module. River hadn't said the exact location that they went to, only that it was a warehouse near Cape Kennedy, so Jenny and Roland agreed to set back the date a bit so they would have time to track them based on the details in the diary.
When they landed in Florida Jenny's first impression was that it was very hot, despite it being just early spring. She removed her jacket and tossed it back through the shuttle door. She wouldn't be needing it anytime soon. "It almost feels as if this place is closer to the sun, though that's impossible."
"You don't think aliens have something to do with the temperature do you?" Roland jested. "I wouldn't be surprised considering all the things River and your dad got involved in."
"Hardly!" Jenny giggled as she closed the shuttle door. "I'm sure it's a naturally hot climate," she continued. "I've just never been to a place like this before. There's lots of little buildings. How do we tell which one is a warehouse?"
Roland looked around. They had landed in an alley between two three-story buildings. At the end of the alley was a paved road surrounded by more large buildings, most with shops in them. At the corner of each block was an old-fashioned lampost. The town resembled the pictures he had seen of ancient New York, and he realized most cities must have looked the same in this century.
"I...um. I think warehouses have less windows on the ground level," he replied. "So people won't see the storage units and try to steal them."
"Great!" Jenny said excitedly. She grabbed Roland's arm just above the elbow and led him down the alley, walking briskly. "This should be easy."
They walked down the sidewalk for several blocks, examining each building in turn to see how many windows it had and what was inside. There was one building that they thought for a moment might be a warehouse, but it turned out to be a nightclub. Jenny was curious about the strange display of Floridan culture, but the noise and lack of personal space bothered Roland and he convinced her to leave.
"What was that unusual noise everyone was flailing to?" Jenny asked as they left the building.
Roland glanced at her strangely as he realized she had never heard music before. She had been progenated only a few days before meeting him at the most, and she had never heard music in that entire time. "It's called music," Roland explained. "People listen to it for enjoyment; and that 'flailing' is called dancing. People dance to music if they like it."
Jenny mulled the concept over in her mind. "Dancing...hm. That sounds fun. You'll have to show me how to do that some time."
The road they were travelling along now led into a residential part of the town, so they turned a corner. A few blocks away from the residential area were more tall buildings which appeared to be less used. Jenny looked up at the street sign (she had been doing that frequently, wondering what the names meant) and saw that it had three names on it, because the road split in three directions. "Jefferson, Addams, Hamilton," she read aloud. That sounded familiar.
When they reached the sign Jenny stopped walking and Roland turned to look at her. "What is it?" he asked.
"Those words. I've seen them before. I think River mentioned them in her diary. Do you see a warehouse nearby?"
To their left was a building with more windows on the second floor than the first. "That might be it," Roland guessed, pointing at it.
Inside the warehouse it was dark, with very little light coming in through the few windows. Jenny and Roland stayed near the walls of the room so they could easily hide if they encountered River or the Doctor at the wrong moment. On the second floor they found a large box full of straw opened in the middle of the room.
Upon further inspection Jenny saw that whatever had been inside before had now been removed, and seemingly recently as there was no dust around the box.
"Why would your father want to come here?" Roland asked. His shoulders were hunched forward like those of a scared cat. Jenny smiled when she saw this.
"You don't have to hunch, silly," she said before explaining. "There's nothing here to attack us. My father just came here to rescue a frightened girl. River said there was a apacesuit in this box when they were here, so we must have arrived too late." As Jenny spoke Roland looked over her shoulder at something behind her. He looked as if he was seeing a ghost.
"Are you okay?"
Roland broke his gaze with whatever it was as his attention switched to her. "Wh-what? Yeah, I'm fine. What were you saying?"
Jenny looked at him curiously. "I was just saying we've arrived too late again. There should have been a spacesuit in this box but someone has removed it since then."
"Did your dad do that?" He rubbed his arms anxiously and shivered as he looked at the empty box. Jenny followed his gaze. Her brow furrowed in thought and then she gasped. "What?" Roland asked.
"He didn't," Jenny whispered. Her tone became dark and serious and she took another step towards Roland. "River didn't either and neither did their friends. Which means..."
"Something else did," Roland moaned. He was looking over Jenny's shoulder again and this time Jenny turned to see what he was looking at.

Nothing.

No, wait. She was looking back at the box again, and Roland was standing on the other side ready to karate-chop something. That was...strange.
"Roland, what are you doing?"
He jumped and turned to look at her. "I was...er. I don't know. What am I doing over here?" He looked down at the box and then up at Jenny again. "Let's get out of here."
Jenny nodded vigorously and grabbed his arm to run. Out in the night air she notcied that something felt different. Apart from her headache and slight nausea she also felt... lighter. She patted her jacket and realized River's diary wasn't in the pocket anymore. She must have dropped it in the warehouse, but when did that happen?
Long, wrinkly white fingers reached out from the shadows to pick up the vivid blue book, but retreated when the crature they belonged to heard Jenny's footsteps approaching. She saw the diary on the ground, picked it up and left- never remembering that she had just survived a fight with formidable alien beings.