Appearing in a park with a red cobbled pathway with a large fountain in the middle, the TARDIS landed, and the door opened with Theodore poking his head out, surveying their new surroundings.
For once, they have an adventure that wasn't on alien planets with different ecosystems that tried killing him and Lila.
Blinking, Theodore's icy blue eyes surveyed the park before popping back inside the TARDIS and telling Lila that they've arrived at their destination.
Stepping out of the TARDIS, Theodore pulled on his long stitched heavy coat with dark fur lining on the inside as he stepped forward, giving Lila room to step outside.
Yanking on her thermal sleeves, Lila commented that she wished their adventures remained consistent on temperatures. One minute they're in an ice storm, next they're melting in their own skin, almost literary!
"I think this' the first adventure we answered the phone in this thing," Lila remarked as she realized it's the first time since the damned thing kidnapped them, they used the phone hidden behind the sign on the front.
Someone called Theodore, asking for help, believing there's some sort of systematic abuse.
Theodore tried to point them to proper authorities, but the gentleman who called him claimed it wasn't what Theodore suspected.
Something just as sinister, he claimed.
The gentleman believed his ex-girlfriend's a victim of said abuse. She wouldn't confide in him, despite his best intentions, and broke up with him rather than tell him the truth. Now, he believes her classmates suffered the same abuse, as they've become cagey, enough to distance themselves and their respected loved ones.
He wouldn't tell Theodore anything more until they met, so Theodore's come to do just that, hoping to find out more details about this phone call.
An interesting phone call indeed, one that Lila remained skeptical about, as they haven't seen proof of the gentleman's claims, much less if he's telling the truth or not.
Taking charge, Theodore stuck his hands into his deep lined pockets with Lila trailing behind as they're looking for the gentleman waiting for them in the park at this exact hour.
Right now, it's overcast, the wind's still, nobody in the park, and the trees slowly turning red.
It's fall here, Lila realized, but it felt colder to her, Theodore, too.
Searching the park, the two see a man sitting alone at a bench, his eyes fixated on his wristwatch.
Blonde hair, about as old as Theodore, neatly combed, short, long face, small nose, flushed skin, and blue eyes, wrapped up in a dark navy suit.
He turned his head when he heard footsteps and stood up.
"Doctor?" The man asked Theodore as he approached him, Theodore towering over him, easily.
Theodore replied that he is and the man introduce himself as Conan. Conan Ashfield.
"Hello, Mr. Ashfield, how do you do?" Theodore politely asked the man as he shifted in his spot.
His hands shoved into his jacket's pockets, Conan tells Theodore that he suspects his ex-girlfriend's professor of abusing her and her classmates.
"Do the authorities know?" Lila asked him as she stood beside Theodore.
Shaking his head, Conan replied that they didn't, there's not enough proof, and without the testimonials and witnesses, there's no chance it'll be heard in court.
Looking around, Theodore commented that for something serious, they shouldn't discuss it openly, and asked for Conan to bring them somewhere private.
Conan led them back to his Royce in the parking lot near the park, from there he took them back to his flat, where they're able to discuss the sensitive topic openly.
Over tea, of course, with Theodore sipping on the peppermint tea Conan kept in his cabinet while they sat across from each other with Lila on the side.
"Mr. Ashfield, how do you know this professor abused them?" Theodore inquired how Conan concluded.
Holding his cup tightly, Conan replied that he noticed changes in Eve, subtle ones. She grown distance from him, emotionally and physically, seemed petrified of him touching her. Even when he leaned in for a kiss, she recoiled in fear.
Thoughtfully, Conan looked like he wanted to say something, but conflicted, until Theodore told him that he understands Conan wanted to protect Eve's privacy, but unfortunately, he needed to know everything that's going on.
Nodding, Conan hesitatingly said that since Eve started taking the class, she became frightened of Conan touching her, even looking at her naked, so much that she's afraid of intimacy of any kind. Which is unlike her in every way, but Conan couldn't get her to talk to him about the bizarre changes. Eve kept deflecting all his questions, getting into arguments with him, and it culminated with her demanding the copy of her flat key from him and eventually one of the many things leading up to their breakup.
"I noticed it with her classmates, too," said Conan as he investigated the steaming peppermint tea in front of him. "It was subtle, but they started changing, cagey, breaking up with their significant others, and looked like they're about to jump out of their skin whenever I asked them about why."
He couldn't get them to talk to him, but he suspected something amiss when he noticed no other students except them attended the class having similar situations.
All Conan knows, they showed similar reactions as Eve, fear of intimacy, the caginess, fear, and they've all came up with a myriad of reasons of breaking up with their respected significant others, some hardly making sense.
Now, they refuse all contact with their exes and refuse to communicate even with each other.
"What class were they taking?" Lila asked about the class they attended with the professor. She learnt from Conan, as ironic as it sounded, psychology.
Eve wanted to get her Masters in history, she was taking this class as a filler, since she just need a few points and wanted something easy, so she picked psychology. Believing that it's an easy class to pass, she'll get a few bonus points for her trouble and she'll get her Masters.
"What is he doing to them, Mr. Ashfield?" Theodore asked Conan what the professor's doing to his students, causing Conan to frown as his eyes showed anger.
He replied to Theodore that he doesn't know for certain, he only knows it has something to do with a silver coin they all obtained from the professor.
Unable to describe it in detail since Eve wouldn't let Conan so much as touch it, holding it with a grip of iron in her hand, Conan went by memory as he sees her flipping it more than once.
It didn't look like it belonged to any currency he recognized, looked as big as the circle formed by the thumb and index, with one side heavily marred with gashes, looked rigid and rough, while the opposite side looked pristine.
Sounded heavy when Conan caught Eve thoughtfully flipping it with her fingers and it landing on her hand.
The pristine side's embedded with the face of a man, but Conan didn't get a good look at him to recognize him. The other side, despite it marred, looked like it featured a woman with the tipping scale in her hand.
"I couldn't look at it properly, she wouldn't let me, said I'd lose it," Conan told Theodore. "She's attached to that coin, so much she makes decisions with it. She gets agitated when she doesn't or can't."
Lila thoughtfully asked after hearing this, "Is her professor, Harvey Dent, by chance?"
In fairness to Lila, hearing how Eve's regressed to making decisions based on the flip of a coin with one side marred by gashes' enough for her to draw parallels.
Shaking his head, having not caught it, likely because that character didn't exist here, Conan said the professor's Professor Alan Stanford.
Strange man, Conan never met him, but he knows from asking around, he's an intense man, especially when he's angry.
"Have you talked to anyone else besides the students and their significant others?" Theodore inquired more about what Conan did before deciding to call him for help.
Conan told him he tried looking at every avenue possible, but he couldn't find anything about Professor Stanford. He went to the administration for information, but they're adamant that Professor Stanford did anything wrong. His record spotless and him having tenure for over twenty years, they wouldn't believe the allegations of abuse.
The only way he found out about the Doctor's through ingenuity and sleepless nights. Call it a hunch, but he searched through phone books, looking for someone to help him, and a strange number came up, enough that Conan stopped on the page. It didn't look like a traditional number, foreign, other, and Conan guessed in his sleepless desperation, he called the number, reaching Theodore.
"I'm sure they have to be aware of something going on, didn't they notice the changes in the students?" Lila asked Conan why nobody in the administration saw something amiss with the students in Professor Stanford's class.
Conan replied that he thought of that, but the university, like others, tried to keep their image from tarnishing, as he told them stories that seemed too coincidental for the university to ignore.
Recalling an incident that happened not too long ago, Conan told them about a student committing suicide because she thought she'd lost her coin, only for the news breaking later that her boyfriend put it in a piggy bank after finding it laying on the table, mistaking it as loose change.
Her boyfriend didn't see the importance of the coin, but his former girlfriend did, enough that she broke down into tears and agony at the thought of losing it. Inconsolable.
"A week after, there was an accident," Conan warns Theodore as he began telling him another incident that occurred not even a week after the suicide.
Another student lost his coin from the class in a jammed wood chipper while working at a job for parks and recreation.
Didn't notice it right away until he tried to use it for something, only to find it missing, and he found it wedged between the cut tree branches of the jammed wood chipper.
He became increasingly desperate to reclaim it, enough to ignore all safeties and common sense, and…
Theodore and Lila turned visibly pale as Conan described in grim detail what happened to the student trying to reclaim his coin.
The police couldn't believe the sight or believe that he'd die risking for a coin, so they marked it as a wood chipper accident and moved on.
Conan knew it was because of the coin, just by the look of the crime scene, and the detectives discovered the coin buried under the carnage.
They didn't think any of it, but Conan recognized the coin right away when one of them picked it up, but he couldn't tell them what he knew, afraid they wouldn't believe him, either.
Officially, it's ruled an accident, no foul play, nothing to say otherwise, and the coin stuck in a locker somewhere, forgotten.
When he bitterly finished, Conan looked up at them as he concluded Professor Stanford did something to them, making them dependent on the coins he dolled out to them. Made them so dependent on them, they'd sooner die than live without it. Something so heinous, they're afraid of telling anyone what he'd done to them.
Disturbingly, whatever Professor Stanford done to them, also had an effect of making them unable to express emotions at the respected funerals.
He recalled when Eve went to the first funeral with the woman who committed suicide, she and the others there weren't crying, their eyes hardly animating, almost like they couldn't. Expressionless, dead eye.
They didn't even acknowledge each other's presence, never spoken a word, their eyes fixated on the casket, and this continued until after the service concluded. Afterwards, they left silently, and haven't spoken about it since.
The second funeral, with the man who died in the wood chipper accident, the same thing, none of them reacted, their eyes looked empty. Again, not a word. Like before, they left right after the service, remaining silent afterwards.
Conan asked about it the second time, but Eve didn't have an explanation, and that was it. No matter how much he tried, she kept deflecting up until she told him to his face that she's breaking up with him and that she doesn't want him anywhere near her or her flat. Took back his copy of her flat key and slammed the door in his face.
"Their lives depend on those damn coins, if anything happens to them, they freak out, enough they'll kill themselves trying to get it back," Conan grimaced as held his cup tightly as he deduced that his ex-girlfriend and her classmates became obsessed with their coins to the point of dying just to retrieve them.
He didn't doubt if pushed, they'll kill anyone to reclaim their coins.
Unable to decide anything on their own anymore, their lives depend on a coin toss, and without it, they're husks of human beings.
Panic attacks, sleep deprivation, just two of the symptoms borne without coin tossing or losing said coin.
"Please Doctor, you have to help me, before more get hurt," Conan pleaded with Theodore to agree to help him prove Professor Stanford's wrongdoings.
Seeing anguish in his eyes, Theodore mulled it over with Lila silently, before agreeing to help Conan, and he thanked them profusely for their help, as he didn't know what to do short of going to Professor Stanford personally.
Theodore asked when this started and Conan said it started sometime after the semester began.
Since, it's what he described to Theodore.
Going through what he knows, Conan says that he knows that Professor Stanford wanted to show his class how "easy" it was to "treat" people.
Quotations because Conan rejected Professor Stanford's claims.
After hearing everything he's explaining, Lila and Theodore agreed with Conan's rejection.
When asked for an elaboration on the "treat" aspect, Conan grew silent and for a few minutes did nothing but stare into his cooled cup of peppermint tea, before Theodore snapped him out of it.
Raising his head, Conan explained that Eve had problems with maths. It's nothing embarrassing, lots of people have problems with it, but Eve felt differently. She hated that she always needed tutors and help sheets, since she's started taking Professor Stanford's class, she's started excelling at maths.
Suspiciously so.
At first, Conan thought she finally found something that worked and started doing better in her maths class, didn't think of it, until he noticed that she goes into a trance whenever she's solving problems, always flipping that coin when deciding answers.
Only when she finished the problems, Eve animates and she stops flipping the coin.
She gets bothered when Conan asked about the trance and swears, she's only concentrating, but he didn't believe her.
There's a difference between concentrating and looking like a zombie flipping the coin and moving the pencil.
Another classmate suffered similarly, Conan found by continuously digging for proof of wrongdoing done by Professor Stanford, Shemi.
A nice, but shy, woman who wanted to work with children needed Professor Stanford's class for her degree. Despite her troubles, she wanted to pivot ahead, resulting in a change in her.
"Shemi, she had a stutter. Always stutters after two long sentences. Since she took that class, it stopped, when I asked her about it, she got irate with me. Said she never had a stutter despite the contrary," Conan recalled one of Eve's classmates having a form of stutter, often embarrassed about it to the point she's functionally mute unless pushed to talk, and since she started taking Professor Stanford's class, it disappeared.
Only, it left with Shemi with a bizarre smile stuck on her face whenever she talks. A forced smile with cracks underlying it, if it makes any sense. She can't help it. No matter what, she'll talk with that smile and it doesn't go away until she stops talking, replaced with an empty expression.
Theodore asked where Eve goes to school and Conan replied that she goes to the Churchill University. He knows her schedule and today she's not going to classes, but tomorrow, she's going to Professor Stanford's class.
Getting up from the table, Conan goes and gets a copy of her schedule, handing it off to Lila, as he sat back down at the table.
Reading it over with Theodore, Lila hears from Conan that since they broke up, he hasn't seen Eve much. He can't even call her, or even catch her at her favourite restaurant, and though he tried to mend their strained friendship, it's like she's actively avoiding him.
Like she's afraid.
"Afraid of you finding out the truth?" Lila uttered an suggestion for why Eve's avoiding Conan after their breakup.
Theodore then added his own suggestion with, "Or she's afraid of what'll happen to you."