Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who or Torchwood...AND Torchwood blew up my super-secret underground lair of doom. I don't even own that anymore.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: SAVING THE DAY

Sound rushed back into the world, and the Doctor found himself in an awkward position. He was back inside the pod, but he wasn't alone. Taking a deep breath, the Time Lord slowly opened his eyes. All he could see was an ear, so he pulled his head back as far as he could without hurting himself. There was another man in the pod with him, and it was a perfect match with the man that had been in the snowglobe he had taken from Trevor's shop, right down to the black gumboots.

The Doctor smiled. "Umm, hello?"

The other man shifted to try and look at him, but only managed to get his foot jammed behind the Doctor's knee, so he gave up on that idea. "Hi."

"I'm the Doctor by the way. What's your name?"

"Chris."

"Nice to meet you Chris. Now, this may seem a bit strange, but could you just shift your bum to the side a little bit?"

Chris complied, and the Doctor felt the circulation return to his fingers. "Oh, that's so much better. Thanks."

Brittany appeared in front of the pod. "Doctor, are you okay?"

"Feeling just dandy right now. You?"

Brittany smiled. "Actually, I'm rather hungry."

The Doctor smiled back. "I promise I'll buy you a giant hamburger if you let us out of here."

"Sounds like a deal to me. How do I do that?"

The Doctor thought for a moment. "Find a purple button. It should say 'open' on it."

Brittany frowned, and turned to the console nearest to her. Right in the centre was a large purple button with the word 'open' in yellow block letters. With a small shrug, she pushed it.

The glass door to the pod slid upwards into the ceiling, releasing its two rather cramped occupants. Chris' cheeks were red, and he looked very embarrassed, but the Doctor didn't seem worried at all.

"Right. I suppose I better get you that hamburger," he said, drawing a greasy paper package out of his suit pocket. "There you go."

Brittany took it, and gave it a worried sniff. Whatever it was, it smelt wonderfully greasy. She smiled, and put it in her pocket for later.

The Doctor looked a bit crestfallen. "Don't you want it?"

"There's a time and a place Doctor. Right now, I think we probably have bigger problems than hunger." Brittany raised a finger and pointed at the ceiling.

The Doctor looked up. A small black camera swivelled around to look directly at him. "Ah."

Andrew had returned to sitting in the foyer of the police station after Brittany had left. He had a report in one hand, which he was having a casual read through, and in his other hand, he was fiddling with a snowglobe that one of his friends had bought him. Only the lamp on the desk next to him was on, and even that was dim, so it took him completely by surprise when bright, white light filled the room. It lasted for several seconds, and once it died away and his vision cleared, Andrew found that his snowglobe was empty, and that a pretty young lady was sitting on his lap.

"Where am I?" she asked, disorientated.

Andrew ignored her question. "I'm Andrew. What's your name?"

"Melissa," she replied, glancing around the room. "What happened?"

Andrew smiled at her. Maybe today was his lucky day.

Trevor had just been preparing to go home for the day, when he heard the sound of glass shattering from the main room of the shop. He dropped the boxes he was carrying, and ran through the door connecting the storage room to the main shop. Just as he reached the front of his shop, the white light that was bathing the whole room died away, revealing four people sitting among the broken shards of the snowglobe display.

"Excuse me," one of them said. "Could you tell us what happened?"

Trevor just stared at them slack-jawed. "What the hell?"

Chris stood with his shoulder against the door, while the Doctor worked on the snowglobe machine with his sonic screwdriver.

"Can never resist pressing a big red button," he was saying as he ran his screwdriver along the length of a metal pipe. "I have absolutely no idea what it did, but I don't think it destroyed the universe. That's one good thing that has happened today. That, and the chips we had for lunch. They were good chips."

Brittany watched the Time Lord as he unplugged wires and threw them all over the floor. "What exactly are you doing?"

"If we want to get out of here without any of the Thoraln thinking we would look better with a spear through our stomach, we need something to bargain with. So, I'm going to tell them I'll blow up the ship unless they let us go."

"And you can do that from here?"

"Oh yes," the Doctor said with a grin. "It takes a hell of a lot of power to run this machine, and if I just invert the current by ionising the microparticle cables, the power should feed back into the power core."

"Which means…"

"A big explosion. And when I say big, I don't mean big. I mean absolutely massive. Could take out a whole city block. The Thoraln wouldn't want me to ruin the nice little scheme they've got going here. Too much is at stake."

Brittany looked doubtful. "You think that will work?"

Before the Doctor could answer, Chris was thrown across the room as Thoraln surged in through the door. Brittany helped Chris to his feet while the Doctor placed one of his hands on a large, dangerous looking switch.

One of the Thoraln stepped forward, some kind of alien gun held in its hands. "Give up now Doctor. You have now way of escaping us."

The Doctor laughed. "You think I would give up that easily? Well you're wrong, my friend. See this button here?" He nodded towards his hand. "I push this, and this spaceship gets blown sky high."

"You're bluffing," the lead Thoraln said.

"Are you willing to risk it?" the Doctor asked, getting ready to push the switch. "Because don't think that I wouldn't do it."

"Do it then."

The Doctor locked the lead Thoraln with a fierce gaze. "You'll get roasted."

"Do it."

The Doctor bit his lip. "I must have the worst poker face in the galaxy," he muttered, stepping away from the console. With a sigh, he tucked his hands into his pockets. "Still, it was worth a try."

"You mean that switch won't blow this place up?"

The Doctor looked at Brittany in surprise. "Are you really that thick? Of course it won't. There are all kinds of safeties and things that I would have to bypass. What do you take me for, some kind of computer geek? Blimey."

"What does it do then?" Brittany asked, watching as the Thoraln fanned out and began to advance towards them.

The Doctor waited for a few seconds before answering her with three words. "Cover your ears."

It was her turn to look at the Time Lord in surprise, but she jammed her fingers into her ears anyway. She motioned for Chris to do the same. The Doctor smiled at her, before flicking the switch. A piecing wail broke out across the room, driving all of the aliens to their knees. The noise was almost unbearable to the two humans, even though the fingers in their ears were blocking a lot of the sound.

The Doctor grabbed both Brittany and Chris by the hand, and shouted a word at them. Even though she couldn't hear what he was saying, Brittany knew what that word was.

"Run!"