Author's note: I'm very sorry for the time it has taken me to update. My writer's block it a big old meanie face. I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank all of the people who have reviewed this story thus far, particularly the guests without accounts (and/or people with the reply option disabled?) whom I haven't been able to respond to and thank personally. You've all been so kind and supportive. Thank you.
And now for the next chapter.

"Rose? Rose. Rose. Talk to me."

In an instant the Doctor had lurched to her side, kneeling on the cold cement floor with her face between his hands. The position stretched the scabbing wounds of his back painfully, but he ignored it. It didn't matter. There was something wrong with Rose.

He slapped her cheeks lightly in an attempt to revive her. Checked her pulse. Felt her forehead. Time seemed to be moving in a manner wholly unfamiliar to him: not the clever, steady tick tock but a wild and frenzied storm of a moment.

"Do something!" he screamed to Adam.

Something was wrong. Something was so very, very wrong. The food—it must have been.

"What did you do to her? What did you put in the food?"

"I didn't put anything in the food," Adam snapped, a convincing look of surprise on his face.

"Then what did your men put in it?" the Doctor demanded.

Adam raised his hands in a gesture of ignorance. "Nothing! I don't know! Nothing!"

The Doctor leapt to his feet and flung himself at the bars. His eyes were wild. "You save her and you save her now," he snarled. His lips were drawn back from his teeth, his manner frantic. "Do. Something."

"I—what—I can't, I'm not even here!" Adam passed his hand through the bars again as proof.

"Then get Adam or Paul down here, now!"

"They're not here!" Adam shouted back.

"Where the hell are they?!"

"They have their own lives! They don't sit here 24/7 waiting for your next session!"

"So get her mother!" the Doctor spat. "If she dies, I will find a way out of this cell and I will hurt you in ways you have never felt pain, do you understand?" Flecks of spit flew from his mouth in his rage.

Adam stared at him, shifting from foot to foot. Indecision showed plainly on his face. "Fine," he said at last. "Fine. Her mother. I'll get her." He bounded away and sped past the solid door, walking right through what to him was not real. And then the Doctor was left to wait for his return with Jackie.

He took Rose's head in his hands and, shifting to kneel once more on the floor, rested it in his lap. He gazed down on her still face. "Hey. You'll be fine, you hear me? We'll get you all fixed up, don't you worry. Just hold on now." He blinked anxiously into space.

Just to be sure, he checked her pulse again. It was strong and steady, yet she hadn't moved since collapsing. If the food had been drugged after all, he couldn't guess what it was. A powerful sedative? The symptoms didn't look like those of any poison from Earth. And whatever it was had either been overcome by his superior nervous system or had yet to take effect. Unless... He brushed aside his qualms. His state was fear, pure fear, nothing more, he told himself. Just unusual circumstances muddling his reactions. Clouding his reason.

His hearts pounded. He could hear the rush of blood in his ears and for a moment wished he could instill some of that liveliness into Rose. He thought he saw her eyes move under her eyelids, but apart from that she did not stir.

The door slammed open and in hurried Jackie followed by Adam.

"Let me see her! Let me in there with her!" Jackie ordered, out of breath.

"I haven't got the key," Adam said.

"Doctor, what's the matter with her, what's wrong with my little girl?" she said in a rush, pressing herself against the bars. In her haste to get to her daughter she hadn't heard Adam's reply. "The key!" she said, reaching out a hand.

"There is. No. Key," Adam repeated.

The Doctor felt his stomach clench, felt the blood in his arms and face turn to ice and then fire. Time couldn't be wasted, not now.

"Jackie. He doesn't have a key," he said curtly. "Whatever you can do, you have to do from there. Now help me."

He felt hot, far too hot, and it was so very difficult to keep track of his thoughts as they swirled and boiled and bolted in a muddled mess. It was as though someone had stuffed his head with cotton balls. He shook it off, pushed the feeling aside. It would not do to let fear take over.

"Wh—I don't know—what's wrong with her?" Jackie moaned.

"Poison. Maybe. Maybe drugs. There must've been something in the food. I can't wake her up."

Jackie uttered a pained cry. Her hands rose unwittingly to her mouth. "Oh—!" she whimpered.

"Jackie." The Doctor looked up at her, Rose's head still resting on his lap. His gaze was intense and serious and authoritative.

"I don't know what to do!" she squeaked, helplessly wringing her hands.

"I'm not sure if she's breathing. She still has a pulse. Tell me what to do."

"I—I've never had to deal with poison or—or sedatives, or—"

"You're a mother. You must know something," the Doctor said, growing frustrated in his desperation. "What do you do when a child swallows a substance they shouldn't?"

"You call 999!" she shouted angrily, her cheeks flushed pink. "I don't know!"

"Something more immediate, Jackie."

"I—"

"Induce vomiting?" the Doctor offered. He ran a hand across his forehead and wiped away the sweat breaking out there. He was panicking, he could feel it, like a painful spike of emotion pushing through the cloud in his brain.

"No— No, you aren't supposed to do that, not for poisoning."

"Then what?"

"CRP," Jackie blurted. "No—I mean CPR."

"Will it work?"

"I don't know, you said she might be breathing!"

"I'm not certain she is. If she's not, she won't have a pulse for much longer. Will it hurt her?"

Jackie bit her lip and shook her head. "I don't know. It might."

"But it could potentially save her life."

"Only to keep her alive until we can call 999 and get her to hospital."

"Uh, no," Adam said, stepping forward authoritatively. "No 999."

The Doctor ran a frantic hand through his hair and looked up at Jackie. "Will it be enough?"

"I don't know, you're the doctor!"

"I'm a doctor without my celery! I'm not even human! I can't think, Jackie, I can't think!"

"Help her!" Jackie interrupted, and the Doctor was certain that if there hadn't been bars to stop her she would have slapped him then and there.

He mentally shook himself. Jackie was right. He was sure it was wrong, somewhere past all that haze in his head, but if there was a chance of it helping then he wasn't going to waste time in arguing about effectiveness. He took Rose's head once more in his hands and gently shifted it from his lap onto the hard ground, brushing a few strands of blonde hair from her face. Situating himself at her side, he bent down over her and leaned his cheek an inch from her mouth, one final check for breathing. Nothing. There was no air from her parted lips. No movement of her chest. It had to be done.

With trepidation he locked his fingers together and brought his hands down on her chest. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen….

Breathing heavily, he pinched her nose shut and, without thinking, without wishing or fantasizing or dreaming, he covered her soft mouth with his and blew his own breath into her lungs.

"Again," he muttered to himself, lost in the rhythm. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven—

Rose's eyes snapped open. She took a deep, ragged breath of her own and turned her head to the side, blinking and gasping. She coughed and massaged her sternum, grimacing. The Doctor sat back heavily on his heels, closing his eyes in his relief. She was awake. Awake was good. He gave her a quick look over; at a glance she showed no further signs of illness.

"Mum," she said, sitting up.

"Rose, sweetheart, oh thank God." Jackie stumbled to her knees and reached her hands out to Rose, who crawled to the bars and offered her good hand for Jackie to clasp in both of hers. "Never, ever do that to me again," Jackie said, ignoring her own watery eyes. "It's bad enough, you runnin' off with 'im and getting into all sorts of trouble, but seein' you like that—"

"Mum, I'm okay," Rose reassured her. Whatever it had been, it didn't seem to be affecting her now, and Jackie and the Doctor were too relieved at her apparent recovery to question it.

"Poisoned, though! Or sedated! And you!" she said, all of a sudden turning on Adam. "What's your game, then? What are you doing to my daughter?"

"To her? To her, almost nothing," Adam responded, seemingly recovered from the shock of one of his captives collapsing unexpectedly. "To him, though…whatever I want."

"You are filth," Jackie spat.

"And you are at my whim, my mercy, my everything," he snarled back. "Anyway," he continued in a light tone, "I've already gotten the same vibe from them. Try to contribute something original. Now get up, it's time to go."

Jackie didn't move. "You're gettin' as bad as he is," she said, indicating the Doctor. "Fortunately for 'im, he's worth something. He's a hero. Not perfect, mind you, but if my Rose is right he's saved this planet more times than the number of marks you've put on his back. That includes your life. So what are you? You're a spiteful little boy."

The Doctor's felt a sharp pang of something, some deep and disused emotion, and he blinked rapidly. He hung his head to hide his surprise and confusion. Had she meant it? Perhaps it had been a ploy to anger Adam. Praise his enemies to make him flinch—why not? Hadn't he been doing the same thing? Trying to get a rise out of Adam? Trying to maintain the dignity of nine hundred years? The dignity of his friend? Jackie Tyler would never call him "hero." Not in this lifetime.

Rose clutched at her mother's sweater. "Mum. It's not worth it," she muttered.

"No, 'course it's not," Jackie said after a pause, her voice derisive. She glared at Adam from where she crouched, then turned back to her daughter. "You be careful," she whispered. "Be careful and take care of each other." She stood, Adam pointed to the door, and she obediently—if contemptuously—walked to the exit, where she waited for him.

The Doctor shuffled to the bars. "Tell me, Adam," he said in a low voice. "Does she know you're not really here? Does she know you can't hurt her?"

Adam smirked. "Maybe. Maybe not. Doesn't matter; I've got ways of controlling her that have nothing to do with my physical presence."

"Such as?" The Doctor raised his eyebrows.

"Such as an anklet designed to administer an electrical charge at a simple voice command." Adam was grinning fully now, clearly proud of his design. "Who knows how strong the charge is? It could kill her…it could cause brain damage…I just have no way of knowing."

"Voice commands. So that's how you opened her cell upstairs and how you got her in here. One big computer program that does your bidding. Ingenious."

"Isn't it?" Adam drawled. "You see, I thought of everything. Unlike you two, I didn't just blunder into this."

"Right, and unlike you I—" the Doctor began, but Adam cut him off.

"So sorry, must be off. I have to return Ms. Tyler to her room. Cheers!" He turned his back on them abruptly and bounded away to the door. "Aaaand, open," they heard him say cheerfully. The door swung open and they tramped through the doorway, Adam herding Jackie before him. "Genius!" he called behind him before the door slammed shut. "Remember that!"

The Doctor slumped. No plan, no hope—only the promise of more pain. And then something tapped against his leg.

He looked down.

No. It couldn't be. His eyes widened in amazement and he slowly met Rose's gaze. Her grin stretched from ear to ear, her eyes twinkling.

In her hand she held his sonic screwdriver, her fingers curled lightly around it, and he swore to himself that he had never seen a more wonderful sight. This would free them. This was all he needed to get them out. But—

"How?" For a moment words failed him. "How did you get it? Jackie?"

Rose nodded, still smiling widely. She laughed at his astonishment. His mouth gaped open as realization hit him. "This was all planned," he breathed.

"Ever since she came and bandaged us. When she did my wrist, I told her they'd taken it. I said she had to get it somehow and that I would think of a way to bring her down here."

"Then that—the, the fainting, the—you were—"

She cast her eyes at the ground and the smile faded somewhat. "I faked it. There was nothing in the food."

The Doctor's cheeks reddened. "Ah," he said.

"But I knew there was a good chance that it would be a way to get my mum to us, to get us the sonic. Cuz you may've known what to do but Adam's clueless, only knows computers and self-gain."

"How did you know that Alan and Paul weren't here?"

"I didn't," she admitted. "That was lucky. But I figured that if Adam brought them down here about poisoning the food, they wouldn't know what was going on and probably wouldn't know what to do. Not that I know what to do. But you could've tried anything and I would have pretended to regain consciousness. Make me throw up, pour water on my face…. As long as my mum was there, I'd already succeeded."

"You could have told me, you know," he said rather peevishly.

"Sorry." She bit her lip. "I needed it to look real."

"Did Jackie know?"

She shook her head. "She only knew that I was trying to find an excuse for her to come in here. I think she thought it was real."

"And if it hadn't worked?"

"I would've come up with somethin' else.

"Quite risky, isn't it?"

"To be honest, I thought I was gonna get caught and have my other wrist like this one." She picked at the bandage securing the broken bone.

"We got lucky."

"Unbelievably lucky."

They allowed the silence of the room to overtake them, the Doctor fiddling with the sonic screwdriver, Rose watching his fingers absentmindedly. He looked over at her. His eyes twinkled and there was a look of pride there in his half-smile. Pride in her. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into an embrace.

"You are brilliant," he muttered, his voice a low rumble in her ear. She smiled and nestled her head softly against his shoulder.

Planning their escape was rather more difficult than either of them would have liked. While it should have been simple, there was the matter of Paul and Alan to consider, as well as Jackie's anklet. They spent the next few hours alternating between discussing plans of escape and sitting in quiet thought. One wrong element in the plan and they could be recaptured, the sonic taken once more and possibly destroyed to prevent future escape attempts. Worse, Adam might activate the electrical impulse in the device locked on Jackie, leaving her in a state that neither Rose nor the Doctor wanted to consider.

If they took out Paul and Alan, there was the possibility of escape. But with no particular combat ability, no real weapons, and no backup, it seemed unlikely that they could take out the two thugs on their own, particularly in their weakened, injured condition. If there were some way of knowing when Paul and Alan wouldn't be in the building…. Except, of course, that there wasn't.

They kept their voices low as they worked through various plans, all of which were scrapped. They knew full well by now that Adam could use the camera to listen to their conversations. The sonic was kept hidden from the camera, having been tucked under the bed's thin mattress earlier. In spite of the tedious and unsuccessful process of suggesting and eliminating escape plans, their hopes were higher than they had been in what felt like a very, very long time. They were going to get out of here. They were going to be okay.

Except, of course, that Adam had his own plans for them.

The door opened and Alan and Paul entered, apparently back from wherever they had been. The bag of tools was still by the wall where they had left them and Paul did not hesitate in pulling out a very familiar instrument—one that made Rose's stomach clench and heart flutter.

Adam had promised another round of torture. He kept his word. The two men approached and Alan unlocked the door of the cell to allow Paul to grab a handful of the Doctor's shirt, hauling him out into the open.

Whereas in previous sessions the Doctor had been resigned to his fate, the hope instilled by the recovery of the sonic screwdriver had given him new vigor and with it protestation. The lifeless cooperation he had shown before was gone, replaced by his usual vocal self. They couldn't hurt him—not now. It would ruin everything. He twisted and fought as they pulled him across the room, Alan joining Paul in restraining him. His feet dragged along the ground and he tried to keep his purchase.

It was no use; they were far stronger than him. To his obvious alarm, the handcuffs were clamped to one wrist and once more threaded through the bars of the smaller cage before securing the other. Paul kicked his feet from under him and he fell to the ground with a thump, his breath driven from his lungs.

"What—what are you doing?" he gasped nervously, looking up to meet their eyes. His gaze darted from one to the other. His courage—had it been courage?—was gone. Rose felt a growing pain in her arm and realised that she had been clenching her fists, hard. Her breaths were shallow. It had been bad enough watching the Doctor tortured when he hardly reacted to their brutality, but this was far worse. This was a Doctor who knew that whatever was coming was going to be more terrible than before. He had mocked Adam. He had ordered him about, demanding that he fetch Jackie. He had threatened him. Now he clung to that scrap of hope that had filled him before, struggling to maintain it, and all the while he knew that their chances of escape were about to become very slim indeed.

Without warning, Alan grabbed his ankles and yanked them towards him, forcibly laying the Doctor out along the ground. The Doctor was trapped on his back, both hands chained, his legs restrained under Alan's strong grip. He was utterly helpless.

Paul looked down at him impassively. The crowbar rested in the palm of his hand. Without a word, he stepped to the Doctor's side and lowered himself into a crouch, eyeing the Doctor's legs as though studying them. He raised the crowbar slightly and gently, very gently, he tapped the Doctor's left shin with it. There. He would strike there.

Rose could hear the Doctor breathing heavily from across the room. She could hear his fear. She could see it.

Paul raised the crowbar to his shoulder, ready to strike. The Doctor tried to draw his knees to his chest, protect his limbs, but Alan pulled him back, stretching him out as though he were on the rack.

"No. No. Don't do that. Please. Don't do that, not my legs, I need my legs."

The crowbar was hefted higher. The Doctor watched in fear, his brown eyes wide. His chest rose and fell. Sweat stood out on his forehead. There was nothing he could do.

Paul's face contorted and with an animalistic cry he brought the crowbar smashing down on the Doctor's lower leg. The noise was horrible. Not a thud, not a snap or a crack, but a crunch. The pain of his shattering leg brought an agonized howl from the Doctor's throat, a sound which seemed to seep into the walls and quiver there. Rose clamped her eyes shut and tried to shut out the sight, the sound.

But it wasn't over.

Paul stepped lightly over the Doctor's trembling form, ignoring his faint whimpers. Again he went through his routine, and it seemed to Rose that he took a sadistic delight in drawing out the moment for as long as possible. With the crowbar he felt for the precise place where he was to strike; not because it mattered, for the bone would break regardless, but because he knew the effect this would have on his victim. Again the Doctor tried to pull away, and again he was restrained. Rose, who had opened her eyes against her better judgment, quickly squeezed them tightly shut again. She clapped her hands over her ears, desperate to block the sound of the bone being crushed. In this she succeeded, yet it was nowhere near enough to block the screams that followed. A tear seeped through one closed eyelid and she shuddered, rocking back and forth where she sat.

The handcuffs were abruptly removed from the Doctor's wrists. He barely noticed. His upper body was forcibly tugged upright, and then he was being dragged by the arms back to the cell. His legs, now useless, jostled along the floor and sent spiking waves of pain through him, almost more than he could bear. He couldn't help the choking cries that accompanied the pain. And then he was deposited, dropped like a sack of rubbish back into the cell where Rose sat waiting.

A/N: For the record, you do not administer CPR to someone who has a pulse and is breathing. That's a really bad plan, guys.