Of Towns and Toasters, Chapter Three
Rose groaned and rolled over as she came slowly back to consciousness. When had she fallen asleep? She hoped it hadn't been anywhere near the Doctor; she hated it when he saw her just after she woke up, all rumpled and bleary and hardly able to keep her eyes open, and then she would whack randomly in the general vicinity of her alarm clock and roll clumsily out of bed and go and eat toast. Hot buttered toast. She hadn't had it in a while, not since they'd gone off to explore the universe, really, because when you were busy saving the world from ghosty things and alien things and giant plastic blobby things there wasn't much time for buttered toast, which was a pity because she would have killed for some right now.
It occurred to her that her train of thought wasn't in a particularly logical order or, indeed, making any kind of sense at all. That was perfectly normal; she'd just woken up, after all, and it was probably too early to think sensibly.
The next thing that occurred to her was that she was neither in her own room nor in the TARDIS, and seemed instead to be on a hospital bed in a cramped, colourless room.
That was not perfectly normal, and the startling realisation woke her up completely.
Of course Rose had to go missing. Nothing could ever go smoothly, could it? He would have thought that being attacked by possibly-invisible wolves would be enough misfortune for the day, but apparently not.
Well, at least it was something for him to do. And perhaps he would find the dimension stabiliser on the way. Stranger things had happened, after all.
Not knowing what else to do, the Doctor began to retrace his steps. If he found Rose on the way that would be great, but if not he could return to the TARDIS and call her from there. He was halfway down Carroll Street when something made him pause, turn around. The door to a fairly large building was ajar, he saw, and without a second thought he slipped inside.
It was very dark inside (and smelt uncomfortably musty; whatever the building was, it had probably been out of use for decades), and so he pulled a lighter out of his pocket and flicked on the flame. In the welcome light he saw a door in front of him, with 'RECEPTION' written on it in peeling letters. He opened the door cautiously. A desk with a few scattered papers on it, some drawers, filing cabinets around the walls. No sign of Rose, he noted with disappointment, although he had hardly expected her to be in the first place he tried.
He opened a drawer and began to absently flick through the pieces of paper filed there - patient records, he realised. A hospital. He immediately turned his attention to the 'T' section, not really thinking about what he was looking for until he found it.
TYLER, R.
- admitted with severe mental trauma, believed to have been caused by multiple near-death experiences. She makes multiple references to a man with whom she was travelling, and our doctors believe that he may be responsible for putting her in severe danger several times. At present she is situated in room S3, recovering from these experiences.
There was a chart attached to one of the filing cabinets, telling him that room S3 was on the third floor of the hospital.
Thirty seconds later, the Doctor was up on the third floor, which appeared - slightly confusingly - to be the roof of the hospital. They obviously weren't in England, then. He aimed a kick at an innocent bit of fencing and went back down the stairs.
He quickly found room S3 on the second floor. The door was locked, and so he immediately took the sonic screwdriver from the pocket of his trousers - he was already missing his jacket, but if he knew that Rose had it then being without it wasn't too bad - and got to work on the lock. After a few seconds, he realised that the screwdriver didn't actually seem to be doing anything, and he examined it in some surprise. It wasn't short on batteries, it seemed to be in perfect working order... frowning slightly, he tried using it on the hinges, and swore under his breath when that didn't work either.
He knocked on the door. "Rose?" he called. "Rose, are you in there?"
There was a pause. "Doctor?"
The Doctor grinned. "Great to hear from you. Bit worried after you ran off like that. Rose, is there any way of unlocking the door from your side?"
"Um, I don't think so." She hesitated. "Do you know how I got in here?"
"Haven't a clue," he assured her cheerfully. "I'm going to get you out of there, though. Just hold on for a bit." He began to leave, but then turned back. "You all right in there? No mental trauma or anything?"
"No more than usual," she said, sounding slightly taken aback.
"Fantastic. Won't be a minute." With that, he moved to the next room.
He opened the door.
A wolf-thing flung itself at him.
He closed the door rather quickly and moved on to the next.
Rose lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. The situation was a disturbing one, but she was smiling nonetheless. The Doctor had found her.
When she thought about it, she realised that she had never really doubted that he would. No matter what happened, somehow he would always find her. He was the Doctor, after all.
Now there was just the question of getting out. She tried the handle, and poking various pieces of metal she found in the pockets of the Doctor's jacket into the keyhole, but without success. Eventually she collapsed back onto the bed.
Nothing for it but to wait for him to get her out, then. Which he would obviously manage. Because he was the Doctor.
The next few doors were boarded up. The Doctor felt that he would probably be able to get through with the use of the sonic screwdriver, but he wanted to see whether he could get Rose out without it. He didn't want to wear the batteries out too soon; he didn't know how long they were going to be stuck in this town.
The next door was neither boarded up nor locked, but it didn't seem to want to open until the Doctor had slammed into it shoulder-first several times. He stumbled into the room, scowling and rubbing his shoulder, and noticed that there was a dark shape on the bedside table. As he came closer, he saw in the flicker of the lighter that it was a wooden globe - or half a wooden globe, at least, although the jagged splinters along the edge indicated that it hadn't been designed to be taken apart. It rested on a broken stand, and when he raised the lighter in order to get a better look he realised that there was something in the hollow half-globe. After establishing by poking it experimentally with the sonic screwdriver that whatever-it-was was unlikely to bite his fingers off, he took it out.
It was a handgun.
It was ridiculously convenient. He smirked as he examined it. Now he had a weapon, he could defeat those wolf-things - or at least he would have if he didn't hate guns.
So he put it back.
If Rose had believed that he was being attacked, she would have thought him insane for leaving the gun, he thought, with a smile that quickly evaporated. Rose. He had to get her out - the first creature he had encountered hadn't seemed able to hurt her, and her room was evidently locked, but there was still no way of telling whether she would be safe.
Rose curled up on the cold bed - why couldn't she have magically turned up somewhere with a duvet? - and closed her eyes. Suddenly something nudged her face, and she started. It was just a cat, she realised after a second of irrational panic, and smiled. She stroked its back absently a couple of times, and then it jumped lightly off the bed, stalked over to the door, pawed at it until it opened, and slipped out. The door closed again behind it.
Bewildered, Rose got up and tried the handle.
The door was still locked.
He couldn't get into any of the other patient rooms, but as he walked back towards Rose's room something caught his eye, and he looked up sharply. There were some doors on the other side of the corridor; he hadn't seen them before. After trying them all with no luck, he noticed that the key was still in the door to the room opposite S1 - 'Examination Room 4', he read from the panel on the door - and he tried it on the lock for room S3 with a kind of ridiculous optimism before reluctantly using it to open the examination room.
When he pulled out the map which he had been drawing as he went along in order to add the room, he noticed that somebody other than himself had written 'BAD' over his 'WOLF' label in room S4. That was odd, but he didn't worry too much about it.
She caught a movement in the corner of her eye, and immediately moved to look out of the window. There was nothing there, but she could see that fog was gathering.
Suddenly a car came around the corner. She smiled, realising that they couldn't be the only people here - and then the car vanished into thin air, and she froze.
Movement. The car (all too familiar) came around the same corner again, drove for a short distance, and dissolved. Rose tried to look away, but she couldn't make herself.
The car rounded the corner and disappeared.
The car rounded the corner and disappeared.
The car rounded the corner and disappeared.
She wanted to cry from pain and guilt.
The room was pitch dark; there were no windows on this side. He waved the lighter around without much hope, and was about to leave when he noticed it. Something was glinting in the far corner, reflecting the light from the flame. He walked over to it, stepping over a pile of old blankets, and picked it up.
It was a key. Attached to it was a tag showing that it was for room S3.
Grinning like a maniac, the Doctor dropped it into his pocket and made for the door. Now he could free Rose, now they could get out of here -
and then something hit his foot, and he looked down.
The small pile of blankets was rolling around on the floor, making hissing noises and generally behaving in a thoroughly unblanketlike manner. The Doctor just stared, unsure of how to act, until the blankets quietened and lay still.
He knew it probably wasn't the most sensible thing to do, but that didn't stop him from crouching down, taking the topmost blanket between forefinger and thumb, and suddenly whipping it away.
The black-and-white cat which had been underneath it looked up at him, startled. He laughed and stroked it under its chin, and it soon relaxed against his hand, purring contentedly.
"You almost gave me a heart attack," he said, amused. He began to scratch it behind the ears, and it purred even louder, lying down and pawing at his leg. Suddenly it rolled over, stared wide-eyed at a corner of the room, and bolted out of the door.
The Doctor stood up slowly, keeping his eyes on the corner which had disturbed the cat. He took a cautious step forwards, holding the lighter out in front of him, and when the shape in the corner came into view he stopped dead.
It looked like a Dalek.
But that was ridiculous. Daleks didn't exist any more, he'd made sure of that -
and then it moved, came fully into view, and he forgot how to breathe for a second.
It was shaped like a Dalek, there was no doubt about that, and it moved like a Dalek, but it looked... organic, almost. As if it were made of bare, pulsating flesh, stripped of the skin and fashioned by some sick mind into the shape. The same skinless quality that the wolves had, but it seemed even more bizarre when it was something which was clearly supposed to be mechanical.
The only question that mattered, though, was whether it was as dangerous as a Dalek.
On a sudden impulse, the Doctor threw himself to the ground. There was a loud explosion somewhere behind him, and plaster dust began to rain from the ceiling as he stumbled to his feet again. The blanket which the cat had been under was suddenly ablaze. Praying inwardly that he would live long enough to let Rose out, he ran to the door.
The door was closed.
He didn't remember closing it.
He turned the handle.
The door didn't open.
He twisted the handle, he screwdrivered the handle, he called the handle various obscene names, and still the door stubbornly refused to open. A typewriter beside him exploded and burst into flames - some part of his mind commented that the organic Dalek didn't seem to have the best aim in the world, and the rest of his mind told it to shut up and figure out how to get out of here - as he threw himself desperately at the door. It didn't work.
The whatever-it-was came closer.
The Doctor heard a clicking sound, as of a key being turned in a lock. Instantly he tried the handle, hardly daring to hope - and this time it worked. He fled the room, slammed the door behind him and locked it immediately; he knew that it almost certainly wouldn't be stopped by a locked door, but hopefully he would survive long enough to unlock Rose.
And yet, he realised as he was turning the key to room S3, it wasn't coming after him. Either it wasn't interested - impossible if it were even remotely connected to actual Daleks - or the door prevented it somehow, in the same way it resisted the sonic screwdriver. In the same way - in the same way the metal door in van Statten's museum had stopped the real Dalek.
He wondered whether Rose had felt like that; the blind, helpless panic of being trapped with something that dangerous. It must have been terrible.
And he had been the one to shut her in with it.
Perhaps - perhaps he had deserved that.
He tried not to think about it, and opened the door.
The door creaked open quietly behind her, and there were approaching footsteps, sounding loud in the silence of the room, but Rose didn't turn around. She kept her eyes on the corner, watching as the car appeared again and again.
A hand on her shoulder. She blinked away tears, but she didn't look away from the window.
It took her a moment to realise that the car had stopped rounding the corner. As she watched, almost unable to believe it, the fog began to disperse.
She half-turned and flung her arms around the Doctor's waist, pressing her face into his leg. He seemed startled for a moment, but then grinned. "Good to see you too, Rose."
When she had left the room, the Doctor remained behind for a moment, looking out of the window that she had been at. The fog was so thick outside that he could barely make anything out, but he thought for a moment that he saw a dark shape, speeding along beneath it.
He rejoined Rose back in the corridor, and didn't ask questions.
"How could I have a patient record? There's nobody here."
The Doctor shrugged. "Beats me. It was in here, though." He pushed open the door to the reception room, holding the lighter aloft. Rose instantly descended upon an object on top of one of the filing cabinets.
"What's that, then?" he asked, looking for Rose's record. Some part of his mind noted that it should have been on the desk, as he had left it there, but he couldn't be bothered to worry about how it could have found its way back into the drawer.
"I think it's a torch," Rose said from the corner. She pushed a button, and the Doctor narrowed his eyes slightly against the sudden increase in light. She grinned happily. "This should make things easier, right?"
"Go and make my lighter redundant, why don't you?" the Doctor muttered in mock irritation, fishing out the patient record. "Here we go." There was something stapled to it, he noticed, and he detached it before passing the record to Rose.
She was silent for a few seconds. "This is... really, really weird."
He nodded absently, scanning the scrap of paper that he had just unstapled.
Miss R. Tyler was dispatched to the Woodside Apartments today, despite remaining concerns about her feelings of guilt regarding her father's death...
"Well," he said, looking up and grinning at her, "we know where we're heading next, then."