Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who.

Dominoes

Chapter Three: Break Time

His coat (and its contents) splayed out in front of him like a picnic blanket, the Doctor sat cross-legged with the sonic screwdriver in front of him, pointed up to the ceiling. Something was wrong with it. Or something was wrong with everything else, he couldn't be sure.

"What is that?"

It was Katie, crouching down beside him. Craning his neck back, the Doctor saw Simon fruitlessly trying to sleep in his chair and General Pierce pacing around like a caged animal, hands firmly clasped behind his back.

"It's a sonic screwdriver," he said, giving the offending device a few slaps. "And it's not working properly."

"I used to have one of those."

"Really?"

She nodded. "Sony."

"Rubbish. You want to go custom." He grinned, tapping the screwdriver against his forehead. "Never fails."

"Except right now."

He scowled. "Well… yes, right now it seems to be failing me.But sometimes things interfere with it. Not many things, but still… it happens."

"Like what?"

"Um… another sonic device, maybe… hairdryers used to irritate it, but I thought I fixed that," he noted, frustrated with the device. Oh, the hours he had spent leaving a hairdryer on in the TARDIS while he tinkered with the screwdriver. And still it refuses to work.

He noted Suzanne out of the corner of his eye, trying desperately to stay unnoticed from quite a few feet away.

Katie moved her legs around so she was sitting on both knees, apparently finding it more comfortable. "So what's wrong with it now?"

"Not sure," he admitted, looking up to the ceiling. "I'm thinking there's something all around the Drum stopping the signal from getting any further out. It can detect everything in here just fine, but if I try and scan beyond the walls…"

"…nothing."

He nodded.

"Can you turn off the force fields?"

"Thought of that, tried it, didn't work," he sighed, looking at the screwdriver more with a look of dejected acceptance. It didn't look like he would be using it to get out of here anytime soon. He slipped the device away.

"Do you know why?"

"I'm guessing," he said slowly, resting his head on his hand, "it's because the emitters are outside the Drum."

The girl nodded, staring at the wall in thought. The Doctor enjoyed watching people when they were thinking; there was something so brilliant about watching the lights flicker away in their eyes as one possibility was taken in, considered, then discarded, only to be replaced by something else. It was something that had made humans so fascinating all those hundreds of years ago when he first set off in his TARDIS; Time Lords were usually so good at hiding their thought processes, they were positively dull by comparison.

"So is there a force field outside the Drum?"

"No way to be sure."

"Hm."

He nodded. "Yeah…"

Shifting about a little, she looked to him. "So what's your name?"

He frowned a little. "The Doctor. I said. Before. Remember? At the table?

She gave a startling approximation of Sarah Jane's 'stop being so condescending' scowl before speaking. "No, but I mean… Doctor is a just a title. What's your name?"

"Just… the Doctor. Honestly."

"What, so your first name's 'The'?"

"No," he scoffed. "I'm just the Doctor. Honestly, it's not hard."

"Fine. I'm calling you 'The' from now on."

He gave a wry smile before hopping up to his feet and walking to the wall. Acutely aware of how everyone in the room was suddenly watching him, he ran his hands along the smooth white surface. Felt like porcelain, only much thicker.

The Doctor shot back to his coat, snatched out his stethoscope, and pressed it to the wall. After rapping his finger against its surface and moving the receiver around a few times, he came back from the wall to find that Pierce was asking him something.

"Hm?" he said, yanking the earphones out. "Sorry, had things in my ears. What were you saying?"

"Have you found a way out?"

"What, this fast? Come on, give me a chance, I'm only human. I'm only using that as a turn of phrase, understand. Don't want you thinking I'm something I'm not."

Pierce looked like the Doctor had winded him. "You're not human?"

"Well," he groaned, having a distinct feeling this wasn't going to go well, "now that you mention it… not really, no."

The General's hands were on his lapels and slamming him into the wall before he could do much else, knocking the stethoscope from his hand.

"You're behind this, aren't you?"

"Oh, that's right, go for the first non-human," the Doctor moaned, rolling his eyes. "Honestly, you military types. I've met about five who are agreeable. Five. That's a bit shameful, don't you think? Considering they're always trying to take over negotiations in first contact situations, you'd think they'd have to be more open-minded."

"Don't you mouth off to me!" he barked, thick American accent echoing all around the Drum.

Over the General's shoulder, the Doctor could see Simon peering over nervously from where he sat at the table on the other side the room.

"I want you to tell us why you've brought us here, and what this has to do with the 456!"

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Oh, for… look, if I was the one who did this, 1: why would I lock myself up in here with you, and B- wait, no… sorry, 2: why would I tell you I was an alien when you would just kill me? Hm?"

A comparatively small hand came to rest on the General's shoulder. Stressed veins throbbing at his temples, Pierce glanced at Katie.

She looked positively petrified, as though he may go for her next. The Doctor didn't think so, though. As much as he found military types distasteful, he knew that Pierce was just acting out of fear.

Didn't stop him from finding the General very tiresome, though.

"Look…" Katie said steadily, visibly trying to keep her gaze locked on Pierce's, "I don't know what you've got against non-humans, but… he does seem to know what he's doing."

"Exactly," the Doctor urged, although a little more gentle this time. "Give me a chance to get us out. If I can't, then feel free to beat me to a pulp. Sound fair?"

Breathing heavy but calming down, Pierce glared at him for a few tense moments longer before another quick glance at Katie made him relax and let go. The Doctor slipped to the floor, and only then realised that Pierce had managed to lift him off his feet. Strong fella. Might come in handy.

The General stalked off, heading for the table. Simon vacated quickly (wise boy) and let Pierce take a seat wherever he pleased. The young boy scurried over to them, curly hair bouncing a little as he glanced between Pierce and the Doctor.

"That was…" he pointed to where Pierce was sat, arms folded and staring intently at the table. "That right there? That was scary."

"You thought it was scary," the Doctor mumbled, turning back to the wall. He reached for his stethoscope and remembered he had dropped it.

Turning around, he found it waiting for him in Suzanne's gentle hands. He offered her a smile as he gratefully took the stethoscope.

"Thank you."

She just nodded, almost imperceptibly. The others didn't seem to pay her much mind, which irritated the Doctor a little bit. The human capacity for ignoring the less desirable aspects of their society was something he had never really appreciated about them. Mostly because it was how the Time Lords has viewed him, once upon a time. Usually he would be the one being ostracised, so it always tweaked him when he saw it happening to others.

Although, it could also be put down to the smell. Although the Gallifreyan sense of smell was much more sensitive, Time Lords had the ability - as with so many other senses - to just ignore them without too much difficulty.

The Doctor tried to push aside the pity he felt for Suzanne, because if there was something he couldn't stand from others, it was pity. Treat others as you would like to be treated.

He tried to stick to it, but most of the time he failed.

"What are you looking for?" Simon asked, edging away from Suzanne a little as he spoke.

"Nothing," he mumbled.

There was a pause, presumably as Simon and Katie exchanged a glance. "Nothing?"

"Yeah…" This was getting annoying. Concentration was difficult to achieve with humans wittering on in his ear.

Blimey, that sounded a little too much like Six.

"Doctor?"

"What?" he said, a little sharply.

Suitably chastened, Simon shut up. Katie, however, wasn't going to pay his rudeness any mind.

"Why are you looking for nothing?" she challenged, rising to his irritable comeback. Good girl.

"I'm not looking for nothing, I'm checking for something. I just wasn't looking for a specific thing. Now, if you'll just…"

Instead of finishing his sentence, he just tapped his finger to his lips. Once he was fairly sure he would get no more interruptions, the Doctor rapped his knuckles against the wall again. He slowly started to move along the curved wall, tapping his fist against it as he went. Slowly but steadily, he made his way around.

He sighed.

This was going to take a while. He pulled out the sonic screwdriver and used that to resonate against the wall instead. Using his knuckles would get tiresome after awhile. Not to mention painful. The screwdriver would give him a more accurate reading anyway. Measuring the thickness of walls was a very precise art.

"Doctor?"

"Hm?"

"How long are you going to be?"

"Oh, sorry, Simon, have you got somewhere to be?"

"No, I just… wanted to know if we could talk or not."

Feeling a little bit like what Donna would no doubt call 'an arsehole', the Doctor nodded.

"Yeah, Simon. Yeah, you can talk. Just keep it down, I need to… hear things."

Watching the Doctor work was an interesting experience. He seemed all at once engrossed in what he was doing, but equally prone to distraction at the slightest provocation. His shoe scuffs against the wall by accident? Apparently worth a look. An irritated one, at that.

"Weird," he said quietly.

"What?" Katie asked beside him.

"Him."

Katie looked to the Doctor, who was now squatting and pressing the side of face against the wall, flicking his little torch thingy off and on before shifting just a few inches to his left and repeating the process.

"Yeah, but… he knows what he's doing, right?"

Simon looked at her. "He's not even human."

"And?"

"You're kidding, right?"

"What?"

"He's an alien. An alien."

Still looking a little bemused by the whole conversation, Katie just shrugged. "…and?"

"And… aliens invaded the planet forty years ago! I mean, we haven't heard anything since, but, still… alien invasion!"

"Quiet at the back, please!" the Doctor warned. As he turned back to the wall, he seemed to think of something and half-heartedly added, "Simon, you wouldn't happen to know anyone by the name of Susan, would you?"

Completely befuddled by the question, Simon looked to Katie just to confirm that it was a weird question. Her expression made him feel a little bit better.

"Uh… no. Why?"

"Oh," he said loudly, "no reason, don't worry about it. I ask everyone that question. Katie, do you know a Susan?"

She opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off, barely letting the sentence stop.

"No? All right, never mind. See? I ask everyone. I'll ask Pierce and Suzanne later, you watch." His gaze lingering on them a little longer, he slowly turned back to the wall, before slyly throwing over his shoulder, "Oh, and the correct term is 'Daleks'."

Still wierded out by the earlier question, that extra little titbit at the end just pushed him over the edge. Gesturing frantically but keeping his voice down, Simon looked to Katie. "See? He knows! That's what I'm talking about!"

"So what?" the girl dismissed again, parking herself on the ground and undoing her ponytail. "You know about it as well."

The way she was throwing her hair about as she re-did the ponytail was very distracting, and Simon tried to concentrate on what he was saying.

"Well, yeah, but… I know about it from history books."

"So do I. Official friendly first contact was-"

He put up a hand, scrunching up his face. "Wait… do I… want to hear this?"

Finished with her hair, Katie frowned up at him. "How do you mean?"

"I mean will this mess up… time, or something? I've seen enough TV shows and movies from the archives to know that talking about future stuff can be bad."

She shrugged.

Simon suddenly felt a little dizzy from the implications of messing up the space time continuum as he knew it, and slumped to the floor beside Katie.

"Let's not take the risk, huh?"

Katie laughed a little in response, then dropped her head to pick at something on her shoe.

They both watched in silence as the Doctor continued on, the whirr of his device suddenly a lot clearer.

"So, uh…" he dared a few glances over at her, and found she was looking right at him. Which just made things more awkward, really. He wasn't really used to pretty girls paying attention to him. "…what, uh… what's it like in the 42nd century?"

Looking a little taken aback by the question, Katie blinked a few times. When Simon actually thought about the question, he supposed it was sort of a weird one.

"It's… home. Nice, I suppose."

"And aliens are everywhere?"

"Not… everywhere, but they're not uncommon."

He felt a mix of excitement and caution rise up in him. Sci-fi nerd's dream as it was, the actual reality of it was pretty daunting. "And everyone's okay with that?"

"Well… yes. And we don't call them aliens, we just call them by… whatever they're called."

Simon nodded at the Doctor, who was now lying on the ground, face pressed into the corner as he shuffled along the floor like a worm.

"And him? What would you call him?"

"Um… the Doctor. I mean, he said he wasn't human, but there are quite a few species who look like humans."

Simon nodded his agreement. "If he hadn't said so, I would have thought he was human."

Smiling a little, Katie leaned over as if to divulge something when the entire room exploded in sound.

Pierce was on his feet in an instant, glaring at the Doctor. "What did you do!?"

The alien man was also on his feet, letting the stethoscope hang around his neck as he backed away from the wall. "It wasn't me, I didn't do anything!" He looked at the device in his hand and put it to his ear. "I don't think I did anything…"

Blue light encompassed the room, reflecting from the wall of energy now moving towards Katie and Simon. The older lady, Suzanne something, was also stood nearby, and backed away quickly as it approached.

His hand unconsciously holding onto Katie's arm, he slowly started backing up in tandem with her, mindful of the table behind them. The wall continued to follow them until they were on the other side of the Drum, all five of them stood in a cramped row.

He looked to the Doctor, since he seemed to be the only one who didn't get freaked out by these events.

But he was just watching the other side of the room with an intense frown. Following his gaze, Simon saw that a hatch had opened on the wall they had just been stood beside. Four black plastic trays were pushed through by an unseen hand (or machinery, he couldn't tell). On each tray was the same grey paste and plastic cup of water that he had been served since he arrived here.

On the one hand, it was good that they were feeding him. On the other, he had no idea what they were feeding him.

Job done, the hatch closed, and the force field blinked out of existence.

Nobody moved except for the Doctor, who instantly raced over to the other side of the room, slipping on his glasses as he almost skid to a halt in a crouch before the now-invisible hatch. He ran his hands over it intently, fingers grasping for some kind of seam or break in the wall. The way his hands dropped and his shoulders slumped suggested there wasn't much success on that front.

He took out the screwdriver thing and poked it against the hatch, pressing his ear to it. Simon didn't see his face, but he heard the Doctor mumble something to himself before turning on the spot, still crouching as Suzanne moved to the first tray.

Simon and Katie followed suit, their stomachs urging them on rather angrily. While Suzanne was content to eat her food sat on the floor, Katie and Simon moved to the table. They both watched as Pierce slowly walked to where the Doctor was poking at his serving of paste.

"I believe that's mine," the General said.

"Hm? Oh, right you are."

"Why didn't you get one?"

The Doctor poked out his bottom lip for just a moment as he thought about it, looking back to the hatch as he did so.

"Don't know," he said, getting to his feet and looking Pierce in the eye. "Not that I get hungry very often, but still… makes me feel singled out! Never did like piggy in the middle."

Ignoring the comment, Pierce slowly picked up his tray, took it back to the table and started eating. After tossing his stethoscope onto his coat, the Doctor slipped into a chair at the end of the oval table and watched them eat, his eyes staying on the food rather than them.

After a few minutes of hungry silence, Pierce glared over at the Doctor. "What?"

The Doctor, ignoring the angry outburst, just continued staring at the grey paste on the end of Pierce's spoon.

"What is that?"

Everyone looked at everyone else, until they all looked back to the Doctor, clueless.

"I'm not sure," Katie said slowly, looking a little wary of the food now. "They started giving it to me a few days ago, after I first arrived. I was just so hungry when it came through the door, and it smelt and tasted okay, so…"

The Doctor produced a rather ornate looking spoon from his jacket pocket and leaned across the table to Katie's tray.

"That's a… shiny spoon," Simon noted.

He grinned. "Do you like it? I got it from Henry the Eighth when I had dinner with him. Well, I say had dinner with, he thought we were catering staff and put me to work in the kitchens. Can't imagine why. Might have been the long scarf, I never was good at blending in back then…"

"Doctor…" Pierce droned, looking ever the impatient military man.

"Hm? Oh! Yes. The food. May I?" he asked, pointing the spoon at Katie's tray.

She looked a little reluctant at first, but then nodded. "But just a little bit."

The Doctor nodded his head to the side as though to say 'fair enough' before scooping some of the paste onto the tip of his spoon. He brought it to his face, inspected it, sniffed it and even tried listening to it before finally stuffing it into his mouth.

He froze and spat it onto the floor. After a few moments beneath the table, he reappeared, his face looking like everyone else was insane.

"That's not food," he said simply.

Simon poked at his serving with his spoon. "I dunno… I mean, it's not pizza, but…"

"No, I mean… it's not food. As in, not meant for consumption."

Pierce put down his spoon. "What do you mean?"

"It-" the Doctor huffed a little while he tried to think of an explanation. "It would be like eating… a brick, or a, or a… window, or something. It's just… well, you can eat them, but they're not meant for it, just like that," he emphasised, nodding at the food, "is not meant for eating."

Getting a little worried about what he had been eating over the past few days, Simon put down the spoon and pushed the tray away from him.

"Then what is it?" Katie asked.

The Doctor tapped the spoon against his cheek thoughtfully. "Don't know. It's not there to keep you healthy, but it's obviously doing something, or they wouldn't be giving it to you. And I take it the taste doesn't bother you?"

"There is no taste," Pierce said cautiously, still grasping the spoon like a lifeline.

Their alien companion nodded thoughtfully. "How often do you get it?"

"Uh… I think… once a day, maybe?" Simon looked around the people at the table, and to Suzanne, who was sat behind the Doctor on the floor. She had finished hers, and was now beginning to look like she regretted it.

The incredulous frown on the Doctor's face wasn't helping Simon's nerves particularly, either.

"Once a day? And you haven't been hungry in-between?"

"Well, usually…" His throat suddenly dry, Simon swallowed. "…usually only just before the food arrives."

In what was quickly becoming a recurring motif, everyone around the table looked at everyone else, this horrible sinking feeling surrounding them. Only the Doctor seemed immune, just staring off into space, inscrutable eyes clearly elsewhere.

Another alarm noise sounded, and everyone looked up, no-one being able to muster the energy to stand.

The force field sweeping towards them from the other side of the room served as quite a good motivator.

Everyone was on their feet in an instant, the Doctor rushing back to his coat and gathering everything up before slinging it over his shoulder and joining the group again.

"What's it doing?" Simon muttered.

"Back to the lift," the Doctor noted, looking up at the descending platform. "Playtime's over, back to school, I suppose."

They watched the force field approach them in a sort of resigned silence. Some of the questions the Doctor had been asking and raising in Simon's head… he was glad to have some time alone to think about things, to be honest. On the other hand, he had time alone to think about things. He over-thought stuff like what shirt to wear to a party, let alone the fact that he had been eating brick-window slush for the past three days.

As the force field passed over the table and the food, the Doctor spoke, abruptly knocking Simon from his thoughts.

"Speaking of which, I've got some homework for everyone."

They all looked to him with interest, even Pierce.

"Tomorrow - well, I'm guessing they'll let us out to play again tomorrow, socialising and exercise and… stuff, it's good for you, apparently - when the force field comes to push you out of your room, check if it goes over the bed or through it."

"Why?" Katie asked, eyes on the force field as it came disturbingly close to them. They all backed up to the lift, which had now arrived properly.

"Well, if it goes through it," the Doctor said, standing at the back of the platform and watching neutrally as the force field bent around them into a cylinder shape, "then I've got nothing. But if it goes over?"

He smiled, nodding to himself in that way people did when they had a potentially amazing idea but didn't want to spoil it yet.

"Well, I might just have found us a way out."

Simon tried to sleep at what he guessed was the usual time for him. It was hard to tell in here; the light switch was at his disposal, so his captors didn't decide his sleeping hours for him. It was down to him to choose when he went to bed.

Not that he would be able to get much sleep tonight, anyway. Way too many stressful thoughts. Not to mention the fact he hadn't changed his clothes for three days. He had showered though, but he wasn't sure if dirty clothes cancelled that out or not.

A noise from the other side of the room interrupted his train of thought, and he sat up in his bunk. Slipping out of the stiff covers, he pressed the large button on the wall beside the door, bringing the lights up.

It sounded like scratching coming from the other side of the room, near the entrance to the bathroom.

Breathing anything but steady, Simon crept forward towards the sound. The wall was blank, just like the drum. It was possible that there was another hatch here somewhere.

Maybe it was some rats in a ventilation shaft or something.

Maybe it was a way out.

Then the hatch opened. There was something silver inside.

In an instant, it was on his face.

Then, nothing.

(A/N: All credit goes to Derek Metaltron for reminding me that Simon's home timeline is 40 years after the Dalek Invasion of Earth. I'd also like to throw out a disclaimer that I wrote Katie calling the Doctor 'The' before I read MakeLoveNotSense's wonderful 'Time Was' ficlets. No plagiarism intended!

But yeah, anyway, what did you like, what didn't you like… keep on reviewing, it's great!)