The Doctor walked slowly along the beach, his gaze fixed upon the damp sand. The tide was coming in, washing away evidence of recent tracks, but he hoped he might find some trace of footprints. He sighed in frustration and defeat when he realized that he would discover no hints about Donna's abductor in the sand.
"Something," he muttered, raking a hand through his hair, "there's got to be something…"
He looked up at the sky. The waning gibbous moon offered soft light, but there was nothing of note for it to illuminate. His eyes moved over the water then shifted to scan across the heath. He saw nothing out of the ordinary, and he began to fear that whoever had taken Donna had whisked her off in a ship. But that would leave traces of fuel, of distinctly unearthly energy, and he could pick up those. Oh, he'd been an idiot not to think of this first thing.
His hand dipped inside his pocket to retrieve the sonic screwdriver. He adjusted it quickly before holding it aloft. The scan took less than two seconds, but to him it felt like hours. Finally he lowered his hand to study the instrument with a satisfied nod.
He had noted an anomaly approximately one kilometer to the northwest. The energy trace was faint, but it was definitely foreign. He left the beach to walk with rapid strides over the marshy earth. This portion of the island was sparsely populated, so finding a spaceship should not prove difficult.
He increased his pace as he neared the suspected area. He looked about in every direction, expecting to find a vessel of some sort, since the energy signature indicated an atmospheric fuel burn. Yet his anxious eyes saw nothing but a few old, rotted boards scattered over the expanse of heath.
Had the ship already departed? Was it possible that he was too late? He would have to return to the TARDIS; his ship could track an alien craft easily enough. But the TARDIS was at least twenty minutes away, and time was of the utmost essence. His hearts hammered against his ribs as he acknowledged that it was possible—even likely—that he was already too late. If Donna had seen her kidnapper, the mere vision might have been sufficient to unlock the fragments of memory he had suppressed deeply within her subconscious.
He berated himself for failing to take everything from her mind. He had removed a great deal, the vast majority of what she had seen, felt, and experienced while traveling with him. But human minds were rather haphazard; the organization was not as precise as that within a Time Lord's psyche. Sometimes tiny remnants of images, sounds, or emotions remained hidden in some dark corner of the human memory. To wipe away every miniscule trace would have required him to remove the essence of her identity, to expunge her entire personality, and he simply had not been able to bring himself to do that to her.
Yet now he wished he had. Donna might have lost herself, but she would have kept her life.
The Doctor's hands had clenched at his sides, and he had ceased walking. He stood rigidly amid the tall grasses and scraggly shrubs. He closed his eyes and intoned, "I'm sorry."
In the dark stillness of the night, he caught the smallest of noises. He cocked his head to the side, listening. The breeze moved lightly through the marsh grass, barely a whisper as the blades brushed against each other. But nearby, to his right, there was an absence of sound.
He walked quietly through the grass, nearing the dilapidated pieces of wood. A house had stood here once, many years ago, but all that remained were a few bits of its roof or walls. He nudged a board with the toe of his sneaker before realizing that there was no grass in the immediate vicinity. The dirt was soft and loose here, too. He dropped to his knees. His hands moved through the soil, brushing it away to reveal a large door set into the earth. He pressed his ear over the wood. He heard muffled sounds: Someone was down there.
The Doctor reached for the rusted handle and pulled open the door.
Donna was dragged forcefully back to consciousness, kicking and screaming all the way. Admittedly, she couldn't kick due to the restraints strapped over her legs, and she was unsure whether the noises she heard issued from her mouth or from the roaring in her head, but still she resisted re-entry into the real world with all her might. Sadly, her might had grown a mite less mighty in recent hours, so she was powerless to resist when impelled back to awareness.
"Open your eyes," she heard. "I know you're awake and can hear me."
The voice seemed vaguely familiar, and Donna was just a bit curious to know who was speaking to her. If it was the person who'd interrupted the blessed blackness, she'd give him a piece of her mind. Still, complying with the simple directive proved extraordinarily painful. The light seemed to pierce her eyes and burrow deep into her skull.
"Bollocks," she groaned. When her vision cleared and she could discern the figure before her, she groaned again. "Oi, what d'you want now?"
The alien with the lip issue loomed over her. His eyes were still strangely blank, rendering his expression implacable. She realized that his hand was very near her head, and through the thrumming ache she felt something cold against her temple. She jerked her head to the side.
"What the hell are you doing?" she demanded with all the contempt she could muster.
"You were not conscious. You cannot tell us what we need to know if you are unconscious," the creature replied with perfectly staid logic.
"I can't tell you anything!" she objected. "I don't know who you think I am—"
"You are the one who has traveled through time," he reminded her.
"Time?" Donna repeated. "Time, dime, rhyme." She hissed in a breath as the pain intensified. "No," she moaned.
Another voice spoke. "You see, she is in too much pain to speak of it. We must obtain the information the other way."
"But she knows. I can see that she knows."
"Yes. But the pain may kill her if she tries to tell us. If the body dies, the information will be lost to us."
Through the reddish haze clouding her vision, Donna saw the second speaker take the shiny device from the first one's hand. He lifted it toward her.
"No," she groaned, "just leave me alone."
"We cannot."
The device was pressed against her temple, and again she felt a surge of cold. It began to numb the pain, but it dulled her thoughts, too. She opened her mouth, yet only a low gurgle came out.
"Prepare her," said one of the aliens, but she could no longer determine which one was speaking.
She felt her body jostled and wondered muzzily if she were moving. Really, it didn't matter. All she cared about was the cessation of her pain and the return to the lovely world of darkness.
Narrow stone steps led down into the dark cellar. The Doctor adjusted the sonic screwdriver to provide a beam of soft light then made his way down the stairs. Roots and cobwebs hung from the ceiling, but those in the path of the staircase had been removed. Someone had come down here recently.
He paused when he reached the last step, directing the light around the room. The cellar was large and empty; it had not been used in many years. A few rotted barrels lay in the corners, but aside from these he saw only the dirt floor and stone walls. Yet he had heard something; he was certain of it. He listened carefully. There, near the far wall, was a small noise. He hurried forward, pressing his hands and ear over the cool, damp stone.
He could not discern what he was hearing. The cadence seemed wrong for voices, though. Was it footsteps? He spun around, shining the light over all the walls, squinting in concentration as he tried to find a door or passageway that led to the adjacent area. All of the walls, however, appeared solid; he saw no apertures.
He returned his attention to the nearest wall, running his hands over it, tapping gently and listening to the resonance. This wall was solid. He moved on to the next. It was in the center of the third wall, the one opposite the staircase, that he found the loose stones. He began pulling them away, setting each on the floor as quietly as possible. As soon as he had cleared an opening wide enough to peer through, he shone the light inside.
There was a short corridor, and beyond it a closed door. Light glowed around the edges of the portal. He paused for a moment to listen again. Now he heard nothing. Undeterred, he removed more rocks until he had created a space sufficient for his lean body to pass through. He slipped inside the passageway, moving toward the door with muted steps.
He eased open the door, carefully and soundlessly, then peeked inside.
"Damn it!" he cried, flinging back the door with enough force to crack the wood as it collided with the stone wall. The Doctor stormed into the room.
She was definitely moving. Donna knew this for a fact, because she was sure that nothing else would leave her feeling quite so queasy. What the hell was wrong with her? While the searing agony in her head had temporarily retreated to a simmering ache, she remained bleary and confused.
They'd done something to her; she could almost remember. It was those sodding aliens with the weird, drippy lips and empty, ebony eyes. One of them had touched her temple with a device which seemed to assuage her pain but leave her in a thick fog.
Her body was jostled, and she was aware of a change in the air temperature. Before she'd felt warm, but now it was cold and damp. With great effort, she raised her eyelids to find darkness above her. She was outside, and she could hear the gentle murmur of the surf nearby.
Abruptly the movement ceased, and she realized that she had been lowered to the ground. Her wrists and ankles were still restrained by the metal bands, but she was able to wriggle her fingers and brush them over the moist sand. Somehow that single, small, willful gesture gave her a sense of autonomy.
She needed to get away from these creatures. Even her shrouded mind recognized that fact. They wanted something that she could not give them. What had they said about traveling through time? They were barmy, simple as that. Yet even as this thought tried to assert itself, Donna found her lips opening and a single word slipping out.
"Artron," she whispered. She felt the flames licking at the inside of her skull again.
One of the aliens bent over her, watching her with his large, blank eyes. "Tell us," it said.
She shook her head. "I don't know."
"Tell us the formula for artron," it persisted.
"Can't." She gritted her teeth against he onslaught of pain.
The creature straightened up and spoke to its cohorts. Through her pain, Donna tried to understand their words.
"…arrive soon… extract the information."
"…cannot remain in the vicinity…this planet… reconfigure the power coils once we've synthesized it."
"... at least half a parsec… further as soon as we can."
Donna blinked. A parsec was 3.08568025 x 1016 meters, or 3.3 light years, so they were planning to take her very, very far away. She groaned at the gnawing pain, biting at her lower lip until she could muster the strength to speak.
"Hey, dumbo," she panted.
One of the creatures leaned over her; she had no idea which one it was, since they all appeared identical to her.
"You have information for us?" it asked.
"Yeah, I do." She inhaled shakily, trying to steady her ragged breathing. "You can't synthesize artron energy in space. You can't synthesize it at all. You have to get it—" She grunted and gasped in a breath. "—from a source. It's impossible to make."
"Is this true?"
She groaned. "Yeah."
"Where do we find a source?"
"Not out in space. Right here, on Earth, almost under your… noses." Her eyelids fluttered shut, and she lay limply, rivulets of sweat running down her cheeks.
"The pain has taken her again."
"Yes. We cannot wait any longer."
An odd vibration filled the air. Donna's fingers fluttered in the sand. She was lifted again and carried toward the dark dome that rose silently from the shallow water.
To be continued…