"Doctor, please wake up!" she said, taking his hand. And then, much to her relief, he opened his eyes.
"Doctor?" she cried. "Oh, I'm so glad. I've been so worried about you!"
"Have you?" A pause. "I am sorry," he replied, sitting up.
There was something about his voice that made her suddenly cautious. It wasn't the Doctor's easy way of talking. It was slow and deliberate. His eyes, too, seemed different. It was as though he was studying everything.
"What day is it?" he asked after a moment.
"September 30, 1913. You've been unconscious for three days. You need to eat something. Stay here, and I'll see if I can get you something."
"Thank you—" he paused, searching.
"Celia."
"Thank you, Celia. That is most kind."
Celia stepped into the living room almost crashing into Wingate in the doorway. "Oh! There you are. The Doctor's awake now. Do you have anything I can bring him to eat?"
"That's good news!" Wingate said with relief. "I'm sure we can find something." He led her into the kitchen. "How does he seem?" Wingate asked, trying to sound casual.
"It's hard for me to say, really. I barely know him, and yet—" Celia stopped, trying to identify what had made her uncertain.
"He's not himself, is he?" Wingate asked, not making eye contact as he busied himself with the sandwich preparations.
"No. At least, I don't think so," she shook her head.
"What are you going to do?" Wingate asked, looking at her with sympathy.
"Keep an eye on him for now. I have a feeling that somehow I knew this was going to happen. I can't explain it, Wingate, but it's as though I've been instructed to leave him be, but to keep him from finding the TARDIS."
"The what?" Wingate asked.
"It's the Doctor's—machine," she was reluctant to even tell Wingate about it. "It's how we got here."
"You think the thing that's got hold of him wants it?"
"I think if he found it, it could be very bad for everyone," Celia stated matter-of-factly. "But what am I supposed to do?" she asked in frustration. "It's like I keep thinking I'm remembering something, and then it's gone. Like a dream."
Celia brought the sandwich into the room where the Doctor was still lying on the bed. It did not appear that he had moved while she was gone, yet she had the feeling he may have been listening for her at the door. "How are you feeling?" she asked, eyeing him warily from the doorway.
"Sleepy," he replied groggily. "I think I will be fine in a few days," he said, his voice sounding more normal. "In fact, I'm sure of it."
There was something in his tone that send a shiver down her spine.
That night she had a dream. She was wandering through hallways lit with unseen light. The ceilings were high and the hallways enormously wide. She approached a window in the hallway and could see outside. It was raining. The landscape was green and lush and animals she had never seen before were flying through the air. Giant dirigibles floated past. In the distance, she could see mountains, and roads leading away from what must be a city. Giant hover cars raced along it. "This must be the city the professor described from his dreams," Celia thought in her dream. "But he didn't say anything about the mountains!" She puzzled over this for a bit, and found herself wandering along the hallway toward what appeared to be a library. She heard a voice behind her say, "Hello, Celia, I'm the Doctor."
Celia turned in her dream to face the voice, but was not prepared for what she saw. The being who had introduced himself as the Doctor was taller than human, more stalk-like than human, with more arms than human, and covered in distinctly nonhuman, scaly wrinkled skin. At the end his arms were long, black claw-like pincers. His eyes were on the end of stalks coming out from the top of his head. He reached toward her with one long black pincer, and she found herself reaching back. She looked down to see a long black pincer on a scaly arm coming from her own body.
She woke up shivering in fright with the image of the transformed Doctor and her own claw-like hand in her mind.
The dream left her shaken. It felt as though it weren't a dream and that bothered her. Was the Doctor trying to communicate with her from the past? She got out of bed and stumbled down the stairs in the dark. She wanted to see the TARDIS and make sure that the Doctor was still in his room. She peered in on him first. He seemed to be sleeping soundly. She turned to leave and spotted her journal on the nightstand. "How had it gotten there?" she wondered. She picked it up and took it with her, closing the door softly behind her.
The TARDIS was still parked on the lawn of the university. No one seemed to notice it. The moon was half full and the sky was cloudless. Stars and the moonlight glowed all around her. She stepped into the TARDIS and opened the journal, looking back at past entries, hoping for something helpful. And then she turned a page, and to her surprise, she found an entry that she had never seen before!
She turned the page and another. The entry went on for several pages. The handwriting was hers, but she didn't remember ever writing it or even seeing it before. How was that possible?
Just after the sketches she'd made on the sonic screwdriver, there were other drawings. A picture of the TARDIS and symbols in a strange form that she couldn't make sense of, filled several pages. She recognized some of the symbols from in the TARDIS, but she couldn't understand what they meant. She sank to the floor. Her head ached and she felt weak in the knees. She wished more than anything that the Doctor were there to explain it.