At first, the Doctor had thought that he and Sarah had been brought to Gallifrey together, or at least that the Sarah he'd heard screaming down the hillside had been the same Sarah he'd dropped off for lunch with a colleague not 30 minutes earlier.

But he'd realized as soon as he'd gotten close to her that she was a future Sarah Jane, and though he'd tried to stay upbeat, the fact that she was so far in the future that he'd already regenerated was a terrible omen. Any situation that so blatantly crossed timelines was twisting the universe in terrible ways. It wouldn't surprise him if some of his other selves were around somewhere.

But perhaps the most disturbing of all was that they didn't seem to be alone; somewhere, in the back of his mind, he thought he sensed another Time Lord's presence. It was faint, but he was fairly certain that it wasn't another one of his incarnations, and if the Time Lords knew that Sarah Jane was on Gallifrey …

Besides, they had even more pressing problems. He'd realized immediately that they were in Gallifrey's Death Zone, and an icy feeling in the pit of his stomach told him it wasn't a coincidence that he and Sarah Jane had arrived via the Time Scoop.

At least trying to explain it all to Sarah gave them something to talk about while trying to figure out why she was so angry at him.

"It would seem," he said, as they started down the road, "that you and I have been removed from our timestreams and brought here, to Gallifrey, to a place that's not-so-affectionately known as the Death Zone."

"The Death Zone, now that's a charming name for this place, isn't it?" It occurred to her that if she'd been taken out of time, John could be in big trouble. She needed to find a way to get back to him as soon as possible. She glanced around once more. "Then again, there doesn't seem to be anything alive here, does there?"

"No, there isn't, except for us." He slowed down to take a turn without falling off the road. 'Us and that Time Lord I'm sensing,' he thought. "Unfortunately, it's entirely appropriate. In the days before Rassillon, Gallifreyans had terrific powers, but unfortunately they didn't come with a requisite sense of ethics. They made a practice of kidnapping beings from other races and leaving them here to fight each other to the death."

"That's a far cry for the picture you painted for me of a race of peaceful, learned people who only observed other species and refused to get involved with them. Then again, I suppose they only watched while people killed each other on their own planets, so that makes it alright, doesn't it," she said sarcastically.

Sarah closed her eyes and shook her head as she realized that this wasn't the safest place for them to be right now. A dangerous adventure with the wrong Doctor was the last thing she wanted to deal with. She needed to find a way to locate the fourth Doctor if she could and get back home. She couldn't rest easy till she knew John was safe.

The Doctor didn't say anything for a moment. She was right; the Time Lords weren't really the benevolent bunch he'd always tried to paint them as when he talked to her, but that didn't mean that he wanted to admit it, even to himself.

But there was more to it than that. This wasn't his perky, sweet, Sarah Jane. There was a hard edge to her, and he was afraid to think about what might have caused it. He was going to have to get to the bottom of this.

"No, of course it doesn't make it all right," he finally said. "No more than it makes it all right for them to drag us here."

"What worries me, Doctor, is what do the games have to do with us being here?" Sarah thought again about John and what could be happening on Earth, and she knew that it couldn't be good.

John realized how out of shape he was from taking it easy when it took him four hours to hike back to Hillview Road. When he got there, he was ready to collapse.

He was so relieved to see the house that he refused to even think about the fact that it looked somehow … different. Almost as if the house itself could be sad.

He decided that he was just letting the day's events get to him. He'd go home, kiss his wife, maybe take a hot bath to soothe his aching muscles, and then sleep. A lot.

The door was locked, so he rang the bell. "Sarah Jane! It's me, open up!"

"Whoever you are, you've got the wrong house," Lavinia Smith called out to him from behind the door.

Finally, John thought, a familiar voice. "Lavinia, it's John, open up!"

An angry Lavinia Smith stepped outside and closed the door behind her. She glowered at him. "Look, I don't know what you're about, but I don't know you and I don't wish to be disturbed, so kindly leave or I shall call the police."

John stared at her for a moment. Whoever was behind this had obviously gotten to her as well, erasing her memory of him. "Lavinia, it's John. Your niece Sarah Jane's husband. Please, you have to remember."

"Look you, I don't have a niece named Sarah Jane. My dear brother and his wife died in a car crash in 1956 and they were childless. I suggest you go to the nearest mental institution if you really think that you're related to me. If this is some sort of joke or scam, go away this moment and don't come back."

John staggered back from her doorstep. He knew Lavinia well enough to know that she really believed what she was saying. And if someone was trying to erase any trace of Sarah Jane from history, that meant that she was in danger. "I'm sorry to bother you, Miss Smith," he said. The last thing he needed was for her to call the police before he figured out what was going on.

He hurried back out to the street. Sarah was in trouble, and he had to do something about it. UNIT was too far away, and he certainly wasn't up to hiking again. He looked at the sun.

'By now Harry should be home,' he thought, so he started hitching towards his house.