It was an hour after sunset when Agnes and Martha emerged from the cave in the woods, and started along a rough track through the trees.

Martha was feeling an odd mixture of excitement and disgust. On the one hand, she hadn't changed her clothes in two days, she was covered in dirt and dust from the cave, and blood from the patients, and she was surrounded by hopeless, desperate, dying people who looked to her and Agnes for help as though they were gods of some sort. And yet, this was exactly why she had always wanted to be a doctor; not to sit around in an office filling out prescriptions for acne cream, but to go out into the world and make a difference to people's lives. This was where a doctor belonged, not in a First World hospital being lectured on super-bugs, or setting her pager to play the latest hit single whenever she was needed to persuade senile old men to take their tablets.

In the last couple of days, she felt like she had learned more about her profession from Agnes than any of her superiors or lecturers back in London. The young doctor was both wise and compassionate, but when necessary she could be ruthless. The previous morning had been a very good example; their supply of penicillin was running lethally low, with two patients desperate for another dose. One, an old man with a mysterious infection, would be dead within the week whether he got his medicine or not, while a young woman, with a far better chance of survival in the long run, was marginally less desperate.

Until now, Martha would have given the final dose to the old man every single time. But not Agnes.

"Our job as doctors is not to prolong the inevitable," she explained, through the tears, as they laid the man's body out on a white sheet. "Our job is to give life the best possible chance. Whatever it takes, however much it hurts us."

There was something about Agnes that reminded Martha of the Doctor, and it occurred to her as she followed through the brambles and clinging ferns that she had scarcely given a thought to the Doctor, or to Jack, since teaming up with the outcase doctors.

And then something else occurred to her.

Agnes barely spoke as they started uphill, towards the city. She looked thinner than ever, with horrible dark marks under her eyes. Her hair was dark with grease, her clothes even more stained and torn than Martha's. The lab coat she wore with the same pride as Jack wore his captain's greatcoat was more brown and black than while, but she didn't remove it, even when thorns scratched at it, and she had to hitch it up to climb safely over an ancient stile. Her quiet determination in the face of such horrors made Martha think of her as a Florence Nightingale figure. The lady with the lamp.

Except they were running low on power cells for their portable surgical lights, as well as old-fashioned candles. But the comparison was hardly an exaggeration.

Soon they reached a narrow strip of tarmac which had once been a road. Now, the houses on either side were abandoned, and some of the brickwork was blackened by fire. Agnes stopped and looked around.

"The old Shadowland," she explained. "We used to have a much larger area of the city to hide in, but the Unity's first attempt to rein us in resulted in…" she gestured around. "This."

The street wasn't completely deserted. A couple of beggars huddled in a doorway, the house behind them gutted and windowless, the paint on the door blistered and flaking. They didn't even look up when Martha fished a chocolate bar out of her pocket and handed it to the younger one.

"Why don't you go inside?" she said. "Looks like it's going to rain tonight."

They didn't respond, but the older one took the food and broke it in half. Agnes tugged at her sleeve, and they moved on.

"Why don't they go inside?"

"Ever smelled a body that's been dead for almost a year?"

Martha looked up at the houses as they passed by. "The dead are still in there?"

"Would you want to get them all out?"

"But… you could have done something…"

Agnes just shrugged. "Too busy taking care of the living. The Unity wants this land, and they can have it, corpses and all."

Martha shuddered but said nothing. Before long they stopped outside a house like all the others, but which looked utterly out of place. The door had a fresh coating of blue paint, and so did the walls at the corners – where flames might once have left sooty black marks. Someone had even put up a set of net curtains in the ground floor windows. Martha heard herself laugh out loud.

"It's that or cry," said Agnes dryly. She knocked on the window pane.

"Who lives here?" said Martha.

"I do."

They spun round, startled, and Martha realised a thin young man was standing behind them.

"Hello!" he said, cheerfully. "What can I do for you? Oh…" he squinted at Agnes. "I know you. You're one of the doctors renting the first floor?"

Agnes smiled. "That's right, Mr Simms. Usually my friend comes to collect the stuff, but it's my turn today. I'm Agnes, and this is Martha."

Martha couldn't help but stare as she shook the man's hand. He wore dull black clothes, and a white collar loose around his neck, because the collar of his shirt had been torn off long ago.

"You're a vicar?"

"I was. A long time ago now. Please, come in."

As she followed Agnes up the stairs to the first floor, Martha whispered, "he makes you pay to rent one floor of a manky old house in a ghost town?"

"Yes," said Agnes. "It is his house, after all. It's all he's got left, and it's more than most of us have."

The hallway and staircase could have belonged to any terraced house Martha had ever seen in her life, but here and there were harsh reminders that this was a desolate, god-forsaken part of town. A photo in a frame showed a happy, smiling man with a happy, smiling girl, but if you looked closely you could see it was only half of a larger picture; the left-hand side was brown and crinkled, with melted plastic bubbles just visible before the frame. The carpet was extremely worn, and hadn't been hovered in a long time. Black flecks and grey dust were heaped at the sides of the stairs. The small table in the hall was well polished, and everything on it neatly arranged, but it was missing the bottom of one leg, supported by an elderly copy of the Yellow Pages.

Mr Simms said "I'll just put the kettle on!" and ambled off into the kitchen. Agnes had produced a key, and opened the door at the top of the stairs.

Inside was what had once been a master bedroom; indeed, a mouldering double bed was still visible beneath the boxes and crates that were piled on every surface.

"Medical supplies," Agnes explained, heading straight for the nearest box. "Plundered from the Unity and stored here. We ration it, so we've usually got plenty, but we're starting to run low."

"Doesn't look it."

"One room full of drugs," said Agnes simply. "Dozens of chronically ill people, and hundreds, if not thousands, who rely on us for medical care. It's nothing like enough."

Agnes hefted one box in her arms, and gestured with her foot to another. "These will do for now. Should see us through until we find a new shelter."

"About that," said Martha. "I think I might be able to help."


Sam Fletcher shook his head in disbelief. In front of him was the squad of Enforcers that was to accompany him into the Shadowland, and that was fine. They had an average height of six feet, were suitably well-muscled so that if a fight broke out, Sam could safely cower somewhere while they dealt with it, and they were clad in thin, but extremely tough body armour. They weren't soldiers, they were knights in bright white armour. They even carried ceremonial swords on their left hips, while extremely un-ceremonial guns were holstered discretely on their rights.

After all these years, Sam was still mildly intimidated by the Enforcers. He outranked them considerably, but he was acutely aware that outranking someone else was a very tenuous thing at best. It was all in the mindset, and if that person decided you did not, in fact, outrank them in some aspect, the whole system blew apart like so much dust in the wind. As long as they all stuck to the conventions of their society, he could order them to hack their own balls off with their ridiculous swords, and they would be duty-bound to obey. But as soon as one of them realised how frail and, frankly, stupid the system was, he lost any semblance of power he'd ever had.

He was tempted to give that order at times, purely to see how many of them obeyed, and whether any of them had the guts to refuse, knowing the punishment for disobeying orders. It was quite definitely worse than self-castration. Sam shuddered at the thought.

But no. The Illuminates weren't that stupid, not by a long shot, and they would never have handed a weapon to anyone they thought could turn traitor in any eventuality. That basically meant the only people who qualified as Enforcers were one hundred percent devout, one hundred percent muscle, and one hundred percent void of imagination. That meant you sometimes had to watch what you said around them; asking them to comb the surrounding area was likely to end up with them raiding the nearest barber shop for the appropriate equipment. But in general it meant that, so long as you used plain speech, they would do exactly what you wanted.

Surreal though the enforcers were, they weren't what was worrying Sam the most. The really worrying thing was barely five feet tall, and standing meekly in front of him with an expression of purest innocence and naivety; a seer.

Sam had never encountered a seer before, and never thought he'd have a reason to. He knew enough about them, though. Blessed with sight beyond the limited capabilities of the physical human form, they had started appearing soon after the Unity was formed. They were sometimes used to cut short difficult interrogations, by connecting with the suspect and – The Light only knew how – instantly determining their guilt or innocence. The most shocking thing about them was that they did indeed sometimes find people innocent; the less gifted interrogators often had a blind spot for innocence. Sam knew true seers were rare, but this one had come complete with a signed document from the Arch Lector, which meant she was genuine beyond a doubt.

He didn't have a chance in hell if she Looked at him.

He coughed and tried to concentrate on not giving her a reason to connect her thoughts with his, while trying not to wonder whether he'd even notice if she did. He read the letter through again.

"You do realise where we're going is very dangerous?" he mumbled.

"Yes, sir."

"And you're what? Fourteen? Fifteen?"

"Thirteen, sir."

"Bloody hell… look, I'm scared enough for my own skin. I'm not keen on taking a child into a zone known to be over-run with violent criminals."

The seer inclined her head. "The Light will shield us," she said, believing every single word. Sam shut his eyes. No, he thought. A dozen burly men will protect us. I'm certain the Light will take the credit, though.

He immediately cringed, but she didn't seem to be on his wavelength. Thank the Light for that, at least.

"We have our orders, then," he said, scanning the document one last time, in case there was an escape clause somehow encoded into the text.

"Yes, sir. I follow where you lead."

"I'm sure you do." Sam waved vaguely at the Enforcers, who snapped even more to attention than they already were. He tried to think of the appropriate order to set a body of armed men in motion, failed, and shrugged.

"Off we go, then."


The Doctor gripped Jack's hand without thinking as they set off again, this time in possession of a map and a purpose. He pretended not to notice that Jack pretended not to notice. And in return, Jack pretended not to notice that.

From studying the map, the Doctor guessed that the area of the town not currently controlled by the Unity had been counsel estates and slums before they were taken over completely by the outcasts. It was a cramped area south of a thick, sluggish river, with the richer section of town accessible via three main bridges. The map was fairly old, but the Doctor could make an educated guess as to where the Unity had set up their HQ. They had to head for the east bridge, and once across, continue north-east to the site of what, on the map, was marked as a cathedral. None of the scientists knew the exact location of the Unity temple, but they all agreed that was the best place to start looking.

First of all, though, the Doctor insisted on heading back to the TARDIS. Blondy – who turned out to actually be called Ian – tried to convince him otherwise, but as usual the Doctor's mind couldn't be unmade. Now Ian sulked a couple of paces behind them, and didn't speak again until the Doctor took Jack's hand in his own.

"They'll get you for that," he snapped. "You really don't know anything, do you?"

"I know a lot, actually," said the Doctor, sounding hurt. "More than you, sonny boy, that's for certain."

"I mean it. You're going to want to tone that down. If the damn Unity catch you, you're finished. Not to mention there are people round here that'd turn you in, all in exchange for a personal pardon."

The Doctor didn't fail to catch the weight in his tone, and snatched his hand away as though Jack had stung him. Jack put a mental black mark against Ian's name – he didn't take kindly to personal threats, and he definitely didn't take kindly to people persuading the Doctor to stop touching him.

It was a surprisingly long trek back to the TARDIS, and all the way Jack felt a deep sense of foreboding building up in his gut. It increased with every step, and tripled when the Doctor let go of his hand. He had meant to ask Ian about the shadow creature, but decided that he'd rather eat his own head than admit to that creep that he didn't know something. He tried to expel its influence with simple, positive thoughts, which in essence led to an intricate fantasy involving the Doctor, the TARDIS console, and the defabricator he'd encountered on the Gamestation.

"Hullo, anybody in?"

Jack felt his face flush red hot as he realised the Doctor was trying to get his attention. "Huh?"

"Penny for your thoughts?"

"I'll tell you for free once we get out of here. On second thoughts, I'd rather stage a practical demonstration."

To Jack's immense satisfaction, the Doctor actually smirked. Part of the thrill of pursuing the Doctor was how wonderfully surreal it was to see him send and respond to sexual signals. Usually effortless in his image of far-above-you-stupid-apes, it seemed the Doctor had his own animal side that just needed the right sort of persuasion to come out and play. It had taken years, but Jack was just starting to figure out what was required of him. It was a lot to get his head round, because the Doctor did not share, did not give any ground, and refused to base a relationship on anything less than complete trust; Jack was not used to any of these things accompanying sex, but out of all the trillions of beings in the universe, he was willing to learn for this one man.

This man who was grabbing him violently by the arm and pushing him to the ground.

Jack didn't have time to protest before the shadow creature was upon him again, and he distantly heard himself yell out in fear. Utterly defenceless without the sonic screwdriver, the Doctor attempted to shield Jack with his own body, but it seemed the shadow was completely disinterested in the Time Lord. It wanted Jack, and was prepared to fight for him.

Jack felt the darkness descend upon his mind. Once more he was stripped of his confidence and his arrogance, his iron-hard resolve, and his up-yours attitude in the face of adversary. He was no longer sure of himself, no longer the Captain who had earned his uniform. He was nothing more than a hairless, clawless ape, a very long way from the trees.

Just as he was about to drown in the sea of uncertainty and dread, he was yanked back to the surface and to consciousness. A bright light seared his retinas, and, just like it had reacted to the Doctor's sonic screwdriver, the creature fled, taking with it just a little piece more of Jack's concrete self-assurance.

The Doctor was straddling him, his expression fraught with horror, and he breathed out sharply when Jack opened his eyes.

"You're okay."

It wasn't a question, or even a reassurance; it was an instruction. Jack was okay. And if he wasn't, he bloody well better start working on it.

"What happened?"

"Dunno. Flare? A long way away, whatever it was."

Ian grabbed the Doctor by the shoulder and hauled him upright, away from Jack.

"That was a warning, you idiots! They always give a warning. Think they're being generous, the fucking hypocrites."

"Who?" the Doctor asked, making a point of smoothing down his coat.

"Who? The Unity of course, who else? It's a raid. Intelligence gathering."

Jack somehow managed to drag himself to his feet. "If they're after intelligence, why the fuss? What's there to be scared about? Just make sure what they learn isn't the exact truth, or feed them info you can change. No problem."

"You really are unbelievable!"

The Doctor gave Jack a grim look. "Where's intelligence kept?" he said. Then he tapped the side of his head. "In here. In the minds of everyone who lives out here. Intelligence gathering is just a code-name for kidnapping."

"Now you're getting it," said Ian, with a grin Jack definitely did not like the look of. "The good news is, if we can make it to the Upper City without them seeing us, we should actually be safer there."

"Safer in the TARDIS," said the Doctor. "I've got spare parts for my screwdriver there too."

"I am not getting in a little box with the two of you."

"Stay outside then," said the Doctor curtly, and set off once again.

To be continued...