SEVEN
Martha opened her eyes and looked around. She moaned, lifting a hand and rubbing at her eyes, then her head.
She found herself looking up at the ceiling of the TARDIS. She sat up quickly and instantly regretted it. Her head pounded and she clutched at it, hoping it wouldn't explode.
After some minutes she felt she could open her eyes without damaging her brain. She looked around slowly, finding her adopted bedroom and blinking at it, confused.
She pushed herself off the bed, stumbling on something and looking down, blinking at her shoes in a pile.
I don't remember taking those off. Actually, I don't remember coming back here… What was I doing?
She walked to the antique dresser and sat heavily, looking at herself in the mirror for a long few minutes.
"What do you look like?" she asked herself, sitting forward and peering at her face. "And what were you doing before… before you woke up here?" she asked herself.
She turned in her chair, looking round the room slowly. She was still dressed, only her shoes off and dumped at the side of her bed. She turned back and looked at herself in the mirror.
"Well I'm still dressed, so…" She sighed, pulling the band and clips from her hair slowly, dropping them to the dresser surface and sitting back. She frowned, scrubbing at her face with both hands and feeling her head pound like never before.
She let her hands drop and looked over her array of bottles and personal effects. She spotted her bottle of make-up remover with cleanser (from Arraldee Six, if she remembered rightly) and froze. She looked at the bright orange Post-It note stuck to it. She peeled it off and read it.
'Martha Jones, you are so predictable. Do us a favour, make us a cup of tea, there's a good girl.'
She read it again, then just set it down on the dresser's glass top. She looked up into the mirror, then smiled slightly. She looked back down at the note, and the decidedly prescription-esque handwriting, and shook her head, grinning.
"If you think I'm doing anything before I've had a shower, mister, you are seriously mistaken," she said archly, getting up and crossing to the door.
She stopped as she found another Post-It note on the inside of the door, this time fluorescent green.
'Tea first! Showers can wait. You'll find painkillers by the teapot. Don't make me disconnect your phone for being a troublesome frequent flyer.' Next to the last words he had scrawled an almost-round smiley face, winking.
She grinned, peeling it off and stuffing it in her pocket.
"Fair enough then," she said to herself, "tea first. I should have known, he just looks out for everyone, doesn't he?"
-------------------------------------------------
He found it surprisingly easy to let himself in. A quick screwdrivering of the door lock on the back of the building had confirmed that everything was set to the same frequency as the cells.
He hurried down the clean, brightly-lit corridor, stopping and turning to his left as something caught his eye.
It was a large flat space in the wall. Nothing to attract attention. Nothing to make you even look at it.
"Ah, now see, your first mistake was pretending you didn't want people to look at you," he said craftily, walking up to the wall and doing just that, very carefully. "Your second was in being particularly unremarkable. If it were me, I'd have put something here. A crack, or a blister, or just… something," he breathed thoughtfully. "But you're just too flat, too smooth… too unremarkable to go unnoticed."
He put his hand to it slowly, smoothing his fingertips over it. "Ah." He nodded briskly and stepped back, raising the screwdriver and moving it slowly down the wall.
A faint blue trace of a large rectangle, taller than himself, lit up. He tutted, shaking his head and acknowledging his disappointment.
A few moments of expert screwdrivership and imaginative tinkering revealed the door. It did not, however, reveal the opening mechanism.
"Eridanians," he muttered rather unkindly, flicking off the screwdriver and putting his fingers to the wall. He smoothed them around slowly, thinking. "Now, if you've not been off the planet in a thousand years, and you've binned or banned everything pertaining to aliens such as myself ever helping you or even existing, then how did you manage to build this door?" he asked himself mildly.
"I'd love to tell you, but then I'd have to kill you," said a voice from behind him. He let his hands drop from the wall and into his pockets, turning slowly.
"Commissioner Barrak'jin," he said cheerfully, eyeing the taller alien. "What a nice surprise. Be a good sport, get this open."
Barrak'jin gave him a long, withering look.
"It's curious," he said quietly, looking up and down the corridor. He lifted a small, black handgun from behind his back. "When those two started on that ship and the entire planet seemed to think it could only be a good thing, I realised two things. One, that someone had to have given that older brother some help – and they would have had to have been aliens from outside the Sol System, and two, the potential of that ship is enormous," he said in measured tones, aiming the handgun at him.
"And by 'enormous' you mean 'to be exploited by yourself'," the Doctor nodded thoughtfully.
"There have to be perks in a job such as mine," the commissioner conceded.
"Ah. So you're not interested in the original use for the ship, are you?" he asked, sniffing to himself. "That's a shame."
"Why do you say that?" he asked mildly, but the Doctor saw through him.
"Because they're about to set off in that ship and find big things," he said quietly. "You're not after big things though, are you?" he asked quietly, eyeing the police chief. "What are you after? Why do you want the ship built?"
"I don't see any point in telling you."
"Ah," he said knowingly. He walked to his left slowly, looking up and down the corridor rather deliberately. "No-one else here, then? You going to shoot me and carry on as normal?"
"That's the plan," Barrak'jin said. "Where's the girl?"
"Girl?" he prompted, confused.
"The dark Sol Three you came with. She gave us so much sport under the brain scanner. Where is she?"
The amusement drained from his face in an instant. "Oh her," he snapped angrily. "Had to get rid of her."
"Really," he stated flatly. "Why?"
"She pointed a gun at me," he said forcefully.
"You're a funny man," Barrak'jin accused, somewhat unamused.
"You're in trouble," the Doctor countered heavily.
"Is that so?"
"Very so."
"You're going to over-power me and then somehow open the door?"
"Not at all," he said stiffly. "I wouldn't put myself out over you."
"Should I be insulted?"
"Oh most definitely," he confirmed with a nod, wandering back round and leaning against the wall, pinning him with a gaze that could have cut new sheen on a diamond. "And you should be thinking about what happens after you shoot me. Malaradarr'jin and his friends will no doubt carry on with their little ship experiments, and then –"
"He's dead," he said succinctly. The Doctor paused.
"Dead."
"Yes. Perhaps we used a little too much energy to read his memories and intentions. He didn't react too well to the power level," he grinned. "Worked out rather well – couldn't have that loon running around spreading panic."
The Doctor's face hardly changed. But suddenly it was an observatory forecast of all kinds of excretory nastiness moving swiftly towards a rather over-sized moving fan.
It was quiet for a long, painful moment. Then Barrak'jin lifted the gun slightly, taking aim at the Gallifreyan's chest.
"You know, I should warn you…" the Doctor began quickly. But he hesitated, and Barrak'jin laughed.
"Warn me? Is this where you try to dissuade me from shooting you?" he scoffed.
The Doctor opened his mouth, then sighed and shook his head forlornly. He looked at Barrak'jin with a decidedly piercing, damning look. "Nah, you won't trust anything I say anyway. Forget it."
"Thank you, I shall," he said, greatly amused. "Now then –"
"So where is the ship?" the Doctor asked quickly. "You were planning to steal Malaradarr'jin's out from under him, right?"
"Perceptive, aren't you?" he said, his face dropping in alarm.
"Time Lord," he sighed.
"Not any more," he snapped, and fired.