I'm sorry for the delay. Really, truly sorry.

I've been very, very busy, and slightly lacking in muse. Some of these early chapters are quite hard to write. It's difficult to find muse for them. Compared to what's to come, they're quite uneventful. I'm really not happy with this one...I had to drag myself through it.

I just have to remind myself that the quicker I write, the sooner I get to my favourite parts.

Oh, by the way….

Every time I get a review, Felix smiles.

This is special, 'cause Felix doesn't smile often, thanks to Bobby and the coffee shop and the disappointment of life in general.

So please review.

"That can't be right. No. No, that's wrong. Impossible…"

The harsh light pressed into Felix's eyes like hard palms, and the Doctor's mumbled monologue hummed in his ears, dragging him excruciatingly from his doze.

"Oh, come on. That's ridiculous…behave."

There was a loud, sudden clatter. Felix opened his eyes unhappily. The Doctor was manhandling a delicate-looking piece of apparatus, his frustration evident and infected the air around him. Checking his watch, Felix registered that he had been dead to the world for three hours. The Doctor, it seemed evident, had remained as animated as ever during this period of time, and showed no signs of stopping soon.

Felix rose gingerly, stiffness dulling his movement. The Doctor glanced to him once, acknowledging his presence, and then continued to mutter with agitated mania.

After a couple of moments of awkward lingering, Felix slunk towards the door and back out into the buzzing corridor. At the very end of it, directly above the door leading to the prison hall, one lighting panel flickered distractedly. Felix stood still, watching it. He kept his eyes fixed on it until his brain began to ache. He was trying to wake himself, sorely registering the lack of caffeine in his system.

He thought that the ship's hum had changed in frequency; to him, it now seemed higher-pitched, whining. Frantic.

Once again, he found himself wandering towards that door, tempted by the memory of the glass cages and their otherworldly inhabitants. He remembered the Doctor's warning not to stray, and pondered this for a very short moment. He decided quickly that should the Time Lord remember his existence and wish to locate him, his whereabouts would be obvious. It wasn't as though he was wandering aimlessly around the ship; he was but a corridor away from the safety of the Doctor's presence.

His entrance into the hall was this time, if possible, even more tentative than before. He flattened his hand against the cool, white metal of the door and pushed, gently, unable to prevent the slight quickening of pulse he experienced.

They were more animated this time; twitching, pulsating. Something made a quiet little keening noise, and Felix was drawn further in by irrepressible intrigue.

They were waking up, it seemed, as the Doctor had foretold. As Felix moved into the prison, he was watched. Uncomfortably, he realised that he didn't know anything about these creatures. He didn't know how conscious they were of him. He had no way of telling how intelligent they were – more so than he, perhaps? That was a possibility. The Doctor certainly was.

He immediately became self-conscious. These were not necessarily primal creatures that just so happened to be from another world; they could easily be civilized members of a far-off society, and here he was staring at them. Felix didn't want to be rude, even if they were criminals.

'Being arrested,' he reminded himself, 'does not always make someone a bad person.'

They weren't there to be stared at, he decided resolutely, and turned to leave.

As he did so, something quite startling caught his eye.

He whipped around again, reflexively, and stared.

A shard of glass glinted menacingly back at his. He froze on the spot, shocked at the realisation of his earlier lack of observance; it was one of many which littered an area of floor space, beneath a gaping, jagged emptiness in the cell which had created the mess .

The Doctor's voice sounded loudly in his mind. Violent urgency was provoked in his chest.

"Empty cages? Smashed cages?"

The door slammed sonorously shut behind him as he shot back down the corridor, swerving and banging through the doors into the lab. He opened his mouth to speak urgently, but the Doctor's expression was enough to cut him short.

"Time Lord…" he murmered.

Felix stared, uncomprehending, then reminded himself vigorously of his purpose.

"Doctor, there's—"

"It's Time Lord. Gallifreyan. The technology that created this."

Felix couldn't quite understand the Doctor's expression as he held up the test tube; it was wild, afraid, bright and shadowed. His eyes shone and his skin warmed passionately.

"I…good? That's…good?" Felix's words came out rushed, rolling into one another like frantic waves. "Doctor, you need to see—"

"You don't understand, this can't—"

"Doctor! The cells! One of the cells! It's smashed, something got free, it's—"

CRASH.

Felix jumped. The Doctor's eyes widened.

"Something's loose…" he breathed, seemingly in realisation. "Of course, that's why they left…standard protocol; abandon ship, contain the damage and come back with reinforcement.."

CRASH.

The Doctor sprang out of his momentary detachment and seemed to rev manically into action.

"RUUUUUUUUUUUN!"

Felix felt a theatrical rush of air whoosh past him and hastened to obey the command, adrenaline rushing immediately into his veins.

He careered around several corners behind the Doctor, aware that they were being chased by something dangerous for the second time in twenty-four hours and despite fear positively relishing the strangeness of this.

He was also aware that their pursuer was both larger and quicker-moving than they; the crashes were growing louder and nearer and ever more alarming as they sprinted. The Doctor seemed to realise this, as he grabbed ahold of Felix's sleeve just before changing direction and pulling him quite violently into a small room. He slammed the door shut, seemingly with force from every inch of his being, and pivoted energetically to face Felix.

"Prizes if you can tell me what to do, 'cause I haven't the faintest."

"Um." Felix stared, painfully aware of the nearing crashes. He scanned the room, panic creeping up the walls of his insides. "Um. Hide?"

"Yup, let's go with that." The Doctor's eyes flicked briskly around the room. The Time Lord dashed over to a wardrobe-like cupboard situated in a discreet corner of the room. He sonic-ed at it, and then yanked it open. "C'mon."

It was a relatively tight squeeze. His face about three inches from the Doctor's, Felix wished he could quiet his breathing. He knew his panic must be evident in his breaths, and even in the midst of the danger he was facing he still retained enough self-consciousness to pray for the Doctor not to be aware of his fear.

The Doctor didn't seem at all afraid. He grinned. "Having fun yet?"

Felix smiled weakly back through the dimness. "What is that thing?"

"Dunno. I'd hazard a guess that it's the reason the Judoon left."

The crashing ceased. Felix relaxed slightly, but his relief was coloured by tense confusion. The Doctor put an ear to the door, frowning. He touched gazes with Felix and put one finger to his lips.

Slowly, he allowed the door to sail slowly open. He didn't seem in any hurry to remove himself from the close proximity to Felix with the cupboard inflicted, and Felix was resolutely remaining still; he would do nothing the Doctor didn't, for fear of being crushed/vaporised/disembodied.

The Time Lord surveyed the room with an impressively calm, if curious gaze. He glanced back to Felix and shrugged his shoulders slightly.

The two stepped out. Felix followed the Doctor back across to the door, where they lingered.

"Feeling brave, Felix?"

It seemed that his bracing inhalation of sterilized, bleachy air was taken to mean 'yes', as his companion opened the door and stepped back into the corridor without re-consulting.

CRASH.

The Doctor did not shout this time; he simply took off, and Felix followed.

This was frightening. He could not deny feeling a degree of terror as he sprinted round various bends, an inch or so behind the Doctor. Exhilaration, however, seemed to outweigh his fear. He positively relished holding the knowledge that he was worlds away from Bobby, from the highlands, from that damned little coffee shop just outside of Leith.

The crashing was growing louder.

"Doctor!" Felix motioned towards a door. The Doctor nodded, running too hard to speak, and swerved. Felix banged the door shut behind them. A painfully bright automatic light flickered on overhead. The two squinted, adjusted quickly, and scanned the room.

"Bad choice, Felix. No cupboards. If it gets in here, we're in trouble."

At this moment, several humanoid, leather-clad rhinos appeared in the room, accompanied by flashes of light and some very sci-fi-sounding 'whoosh' noises.

"Identification: human." Said the nearest.

Felix stared, his mind grinding quite suddenly to a stunned halt.

Rhinos, it informed him, helpfully. Those are rhinos.

"Identification: non-human. Species: unrecognised. What are you. What are you."

Felix sucked in a lungful of air and forced his brain to kick-start. Judoon, he remembered, as one of the creatures leaned menacingly close to the Doctor.

"Ah. Well. See…"

"Classification: threat. The unknown being will be detained."

"Oh…wait, no, you don't really want to do that—"

The Judoon began to stomp towards the Doctor.

CRASH.

Felix tensed, as did the Judoon. One or two of them grunted in a very rhino-like manner, before all of them marched out of the room.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "That was rude."

"What do we do now?" Felix impressed himself with the lack of distress in his voice.

"Get back to the TARDIS."

"But…can we?"

"Oh, c'mon. 'Course we can. I'm clever, and they're distracted. They've got their priorities, they won't worry about us 'till they've caught their prisoner."

Felix paused. "Um. How long do we have, then?"

"I'd say five minutes. C'mon."

Felix had no recollection of the route they had taken through the ship, but the Doctor seemed to recall it perfectly. Either that or they were become more and more lost by the moment. Felix prayed for the former.

His prayers were answered; a swoosh of double doors and they were back in the lab. The Doctor immediately headed for his TARDIS, but Felix heard commotion behind the doors and couldn't resist turning to peer through the reinforced windows.

Judoon swarmed around something massive, grey and multi-limbed. It writhed spectacularly, furiously, its giant form pulsating with rage as the Judoon proceeded to attempt to somehow tether it.

"Felix!"

Felix tore away his wondrous eyes. "Coming…" he breathed.


"I was wrong. I must have been…"

Felix stood awkwardly beside the TARDIS console as the Doctor stared insistently at the test tube as though he could force it to agree with him. The confusion on the Time Lord's face was frightening, but more so the barely detectable hint of fear. Felix watched.

"I don't understand…" he mumbled, slightly loathe to admit this fact.

The Doctor's face was touched by a hint of brooding which made no sense to Felix. "It's just impossible." He shook his head. "But I saw it."

The Time Lord shook himself, and turned to his companion, his expression changing quickly to one of positivity. "We can find out, though! If I just-" he broke off. "What's wrong?" He frowned.

Felix shook his head, trying to disguise the fact that he could barely see. He supposed that it had been a little ridiculous to expect the twenty-four hours of madness not to catch up with him eventually.

"M'fine." He mumbled, swaying slightly. The Doctor stared, somewhere between scepticism and concern. "Exhausted." He admitted, almost too tired for embarrassment.

The Doctor surprised him with a sheepish grin. "That's my fault. Go that way." He pointed. "Second door on the right."

Felix followed his gesture with tired eyes and saw a corridor which he had not previously noticed. "There's…more?"

"Oh yes."

"What's the second door on the right?"

"Sleep. We can head off when you're ready, no rush."

"I'll be wasting time…"

"Felix." The Doctor grinned. "Time machine, remember?"

Felix closed his eyes for a moment. Time machine, of course. Time Machine.