A/N: Well, here's probably the last chapter before school starts. I have some pre-reading to do and that's going to eat up the rest of my free time. I might be doing something like once a week or so. However, with the workload of a new term starting, it might take a long time between chapters. So I humbly ask your forgiveness and patience as I struggle to reallocate some free time between two Bachelor-level classes. I really hate having to stop writing for fun, but unfortunately, real life has intervened yet again.

I hope you all understand and I'll hopefully keep this going, albeit at a snail's pace now.

The Long Game

Part Three

"Rose, can I have a moment?" I found those words coming out of my mouth as we followed Suki through the cafeteria. A need burned inside and refused to let go. Well, the Doctor had said to follow my instincts ….

Rose glanced over at the retreating back of her tag-a-long. "Oh, I think Adam might've seen a bit too much …."

"It'll only take a minute, promise."

"All right, then." Rose stopped and faced me, though her eyes kept flicking over towards where Adam had disappeared to. "What's on your mind?"

Rubbing the back of my neck, I made a face. I had no right to stick my nose into what I thought of as her responsibility. In real time, I'd known her for three, maybe four days. Not enough time to start telling her what to do. Not without telling her about being an empath, anyway.

No way was I secure enough to tell her that.

I shrugged and tried to think of something that didn't sound lame, but actually helped. "Oh, just … don't give Adam the TARDIS key if he gets overwhelmed, okay?" Somehow I managed to fail at both; lame and not-helpful. Blushing furiously, I turned and started to trudge back to the Doctor's side.

"Hold on," Rose grabbed my arm, forcing me to turn around. "What are you on about? What do you mean, not give him the key?"

Swallowing my initial reaction, I tried to meet her eyes. And couldn't. "He collected alien technology for humans to use, Rose. Think of what he could do with future technology." I tugged my arm free and began weaving my way back to the Doctor.

On my own I was completely useless.

Spotting the Doctor's leather jacket through the crowd, I almost trotted to catch up. Then I saw Suki giving him a big hug … and the Doctor returning it. That made me freeze. How could he have hugged her, a total stranger? I could've sworn the last time I touched him that he didn't really like that much familiarity. What was so different between us? Why did he hug her?

A disgusting surge of what I would've called jealousy rolled up my throat even as Suki raced towards the elevator. How could I be jealous? The Doctor was a friend. I could share a friend, right?

"Good riddance," Cathica sighed.

"You're talking like you'll never see her again," the Doctor snorted. "She's only going upstairs."

Cathica shook her head, a dreadful certainty reaching me from even so far away. "We won't. Once you go to Floor Five-hundred, you never come back."

The Doctor followed Cathica back my way, managing to catch my eye. "Have you ever been up there?" As he passed by, he nudged my arm. A signal for me to follow, maybe, and one I couldn't refuse.

"I can't. You need a key for the lift, and you only get a key with promotion. No one gets to five hundred except for the chosen few."

Yep, Floor Five-hundred definitely sounded too good to be true.

Returning to the white room from earlier took some convincing. Even though the Doctor posed as Management, Cathica seemed extremely reluctant to even let us take a look around the place when it wasn't in use. Thankfully, the Doctor played the charmer—a part of him that I didn't even know he had—and Cathica couldn't truly say no. Not if she wanted that coveted promotion.

"Look, they only give us twenty minutes for maintenance," Cathica tried again to explain as we entered the quiet room. "Can't you give it a rest?"

As the Doctor took a deceptively casual look around the room, I tried to come up with a question that didn't sound as stupid as my earlier ones did. "But haven't you been to another floor? Either up or down?" Finally, I could say something of intelligence. "Like when you arrived here?"

"I went to floor sixteen when I first arrived. That's medical. That's when I got my head done, and then I came straight here. Satellite Five, you work, eat and sleep on the same floor." As she spoke, Cathica started frowning at the two of us. "That's it, that's all. You're not management, are you?"

Having sprung into Cathica's chair, the Doctor seemed to perk up a bit. "At last, she's clever. I told you she was clever, didn't I, Jessica?"

"No, you didn't."

"No?"

I smirked at his awkwardness. Who cared if he gave hugs to random strangers? "Not once, though I think you should have by now."

"Oi!"

"Yeah, well, whatever it is, don't involve me," Cathica muttered, bustling to the other side of the room. "I don't know anything."

Even I knew a textbook answer for someone who might have noticed something but didn't want to ask. Too much reading. And all of my empathic alarms going off at once.

"Don't you even ask?"

Cathica snorted. "Well why would I?"

"Um … because you're a journalist?" I crossed my arms as an irritation prickled under my skin. "I'm going to school to be a journalist and I know you shouldn't just take things at face value."

"Don't tell me how to do my job!"

"Why's the crew all human?" Inserted the Doctor with a little bit of a glance my way. I couldn't tell if it was approval or a warning to shut up as usual. With him, he could go from hot to cold in a matter of moments.

Cathica's discomfort rose by several degrees. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"There's no aliens on board. Why?"

The pause lasted for several seconds. At last he had her thinking. "I … don't know. No real reason. They're not banned or anything."

I sighed. So close. "So where are the aliens?" Great, I started to sound like the Doctor when annoyed.

"I … suppose immigration's tightened up," she offered, sounding less convincing by the second. "It's had to, what with all the threats."

The Doctor leaned forward, like he couldn't wait to hear what she came up with. "What threats?"

"I don't know all of them. Usual stuff. And the price of space warp doubled so that kept the visitors away. Oh, and the government on Chavic Five's collapsed, so that lot stopped coming, you see. Just lots of little reasons, that's all."

I couldn't help it. I groaned, giving into the urge to bang my head into something. Namely, the chair the Doctor sat on.

"Adding up to one great big fact that you didn't even notice."

Cathica frowned, shifting even more uncomfortably. "Doctor, if there was any kind of conspiracy Satellite Five would have seen it. We see everything."

The Doctor pivoted in the seat until he faced Cathica. Everything returned to grim from his you're-a-stupid-human attitude. "I can see better. The society's the wrong shape. Even the technology.

"It's cutting edge!"

"It's backwards! There's a great big door in your head. You should've chucked this out years ago."

I bit my lip then decided to risk it. Risk describing what exactly I'd been sensing ever since I stepped out of the TARDIS. "Everything about the people on this station is wrong. Like they're used to not asking questions like this." When they both just looked at me like I really was an idiot, I threw up my hands. I spun around, trying to get a thousand and one impressions into some verbal form of communication. "I don't know, it's … it's the impression I'm getting. Like you're all lacking in normal ambition. Except to get to that magical Floor Five-hundred."

When I dared to peek at the Doctor, a blank look dominated his face, but a smile began growing on it. One I felt pretty sure wasn't faked. "Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. I knew you'd figure it out eventually." Yep, there was no way that grin could be anything but real.

I shrugged, stuffing my hands in my pockets again with a self-conscious grin of my own. "So I'm right?" His praise felt like I'd had the sun bloom to life in front of me.

"Completely. Humanity's been stunted."

"Excuse me, but how would you know?" Cathica protested, her sharpness breaking in where it wasn't wanted. "What do you mean, stunted?"

Still smiling at me, it took the Doctor a few moments to realize that he'd been asked a question. He rolled his eyes. "Trust me, humanity's been set back about ninety years. When did Satellite Five start broadcasting?"

The sense of doom that crashed into me signaled that everything had started to click inside Cathica's head. "N-ninety-one years ago."