"The Mistaken M. Jones"
10. A Distress Call
A few moments earlier - Earth, in the year 15603
They had not come to this museum by choice. Only the Doctor had brought Martha here so she might witness something he'd been meaning to show to one of his companions for a good half dozen regenerations, and then… then, the shimmer had happened. For a moment he was certain he'd seen her, the one who'd been eluding him for all this time, and some part of his brain had decided the best thing to do would be to chase after her. He'd gotten hold of Martha's hand, making sure she would both keep up with him and not get lost, and she did her best not to trip along the way. It was one thing to follow him when she had a general idea of where he was headed; it was another thing entirely when she had absolutely no idea.
They'd barged right into the museum, through a door, up three flights of stairs, through another door, under a curtain, down an aisle, and then… shimmer. She was gone. The Doctor stopped, letting go of Martha's hand as they both took a moment to catch their breaths.
"Have you gone… completely… mental?" Martha asked, panting.
"Me? Mental? Martha, I don't know what could have possibly… given you…" he had been staring at her, frowning, when his focus shifted from her to the display behind her. "Oh, what's this?" he asked no one in particular, moving around the frowning girl and pulling his glasses on.
"No, yeah, I'm fine, it's alright, thank you, Doctor," she intoned, annoyed.
"Don't mention it," he nodded to himself. "Here, have a look," he motioned behind himself. Martha sighed, turning to see what he was looking at.
"… mandatory five-year term of service, to begin in each boy and girl's sixteenth year and end on his or her twenty-first," she read off a panel.
"Used to be they'd be older, but they decided it'd be easier this way, get it done while they're young and strong, and when they get back they have their whole life ahead of them.
"This one doesn't look happy," Martha pointed to what she believed to have been a photograph. But then her gesture had acted to activate the recorded footage instead.
"Please! There was a mistake! It's not me! I don't belong here!"
The girl on the screen couldn't have been more than sixteen or seventeen years old, and the man pulling her by the arm didn't seem too concerned as to whether or not she wanted to join the others.
"Martha…" the Doctor took a step forward. "Do you see it, too?"
"See what?" she asked, looking closer, just as he did. He stared at her with a frown, as though he expected her to have seen it, too. For sure, the more she looked at the girl on the screen, the more it felt like there was a glaring problem with what she… "It's her clothes…" she finally gasped. She didn't know that they would be contemporaries, but she did not look at all like she would have gotten her clothes anywhere near where everyone else in the recording had gotten them. "She's not from there… from then," she stated.
"No, she most certainly is not," the Doctor concurred, and Martha thought he might have sniffed the screen. "Two-thousand and twelve, maybe?"
"Now you're just showing off," she shook her head, trying not to chuckle.
"Oh, Martha, if only it were that simple," he started back the way they'd come, the shimmer girl completely forgotten. She followed after him, knowing he would not stop to make sure she was.
"So what do you think happened to her?" she still asked.
"I don't know," he answered, and said no more.
"Is that all you have to say? 'I don't know,'" she imitated him, which got her a curious frown. They were all the way out of the museum before it dawned on her they were headed back for the TARDIS, and she hoped neither she nor the Doctor would bring it up.
Even as they made their way to the ship, they heard something off in the distance, and by the sound the Doctor made, Martha guessed whatever it was he'd originally brought her to see happen had just happened and they'd missed it.
"The display said the year was 4509," Martha recalled as they walked through the double doors and into the bigger-on-the-inside ship.
"It did," the Doctor nodded, moving about the controls. "But we're not going there."
"We're not?"
"No, she's already gone by now," the Doctor went on.
"How do you figure…"
"Didn't you read what it said? She disappeared."
"Right, because you got her out," Martha guessed.
"Martha, when I say 'disappeared,' in this case, I do mean she literally disappeared, vanished, out of thin air. It was witnessed." She stopped for a moment, to think back about what they'd seen. It wasn't usually the case that it took her so long to catch on, and she could blame it all she wanted on how fast it had all happened, but she knew there was something else, something she'd seen. When her hand absently went to her wrist, she caught the Doctor smiling, and so she looked down, focusing on the recording, on the girl's arms…
"She had something, like a bracelet or a watch, or…" This was not some old time camera thing, the details had been clear. She had seen the numbers, on the inside of the cuff. "What is that thing?"
"I don't know, let's find out," he flipped a lever, and they came to an abrupt stop, sending them both to the ground. "Right," he breathed. "Five years later, ought to do it," he turned from being on his back, so he could go and pull a panel off the ground. He rummaged along until he found what he'd needed. He scrambled out of the TARDIS, Martha trailing behind. His machine went ding. "This way…"
TO BE CONTINUED (TOMORROW)