Sarah was fuming by the time she was finally dragged into an important-looking office four storeys off the ground. As it turned out, being dragged backwards up eight flights of stairs was quite painful. Of course, it also hadn't helped that the two buffoons dragging her then proceeded to argue over where Ireland was in relation to their "New America". Despite her protests that it was west, the two had decided that she had imparted too many gems of wisdom for the day and compromised between north and south and decided that Ireland floated over New America.
All in all, she wasn't in the best of moods when finally taken to the Administrator.
"Good afternoon, my dear," he greeted her. "Did Bob and Dylan ruffle your feathers a bit?"
"You could say that," Sarah told him sullenly.
"I must apologise," the Administrator smiled. "In such a small city, there aren't as many suitable candidates for a police force as I'd like."
"So you compensate by hiring unsuitable candidates," Sarah replied.
The Administrator controlled his temper with difficulty. "Now, my dear, I'm afraid you're in breach of a rather important law."
"Which law's that?" Sarah asked angrily.
"Conformity," the Administrator answered promptly. "Luckily for you, the death penalty was done away with in the 2030s."
"Lucky me."
"Instead, you have earned yourself a ten-minute re-education session."
"And after the ten minutes I'll be free to leave?"
"Of course. I'm not going to keep you here longer than necessary."
Sarah smiled. "All right. Before I go, then, I'd like to ask some questions."
The Administrator kept smiling, but asked, "why?"
Sarah blinked. "I'm a journalist," she answered. "I'm used to asking questions."
The Administrator nodded. "Very well. You may ask."
"Excellent. Now, how did this all start?"
"I'm afraid I don't understand the question."
"Well, why is the city abandoned?" she asked. "Why does everyone have to wear grey?"
The Administrator didn't like these questions very much. "Question time is over!" he yelled.
"But you didn't answer -"
"It is over!" the Administrator insisted. "Go now!"
A bewildered Sarah went and wondered if re-education would tell her what she wanted to know.
Atlanta watched dispassionately as the Doctor practised his pebble-skipping – and you wouldn't have thought there'd be many pebbles in a city, abandoned or not, to practise with. K-9 looked about as dispassionate as Atlanta, but considering he was a robot dog, it was much easier for him.
"Oh, K-9!" the Doctor complained as K-9's sudden whirring made the Doctor drop his pebble. "That was my last pebble!"
"Apologies, Master," K-9 stated, "but I detect the Mistress. She is moving towards us, Master."
Atlanta turned around curiously, where she noticed a woman running as fast as she could manage. Closer and hurried analysis on Atlanta's part didn't help at all, but she could guess the woman's identity anyway because K-9 had pretty much given it away.
"Sarah!" Atlanta yelled. "Over here!" Sarah clearly hesitated. Well, of course. Any sane person would. "I'm Atlanta!" Atlanta continued to yell. "The Doctor's over here too, down there!" Atlanta gestured towards the river.
Sarah continued to keep her distance. She'd let her stupid curiosity get ahead of common sense once again, and let herself be dragged to re-education – which hadn't told her anything except that asking questions was a serious crime, too. At any rate, she wasn't suddenly going to go and chat with a strange teenage girl.
"Doctor!" Sarah called out coarsely, and much quieter than she would have liked. Her voice betrayed a sense of panic that cancelled the Doctor's quest to find more pebbles and made him pay attention. "Are you really there?"
"Of course I am," the Doctor's voice came back. When Sarah saw the familiar man reappear, climbing the stairs towards higher ground, she felt a lot more relieved. She walked past Atlanta quickly, instead approaching the highly concerned Doctor.
"Are you all right?" he asked gently. Sarah's hesitant smile couldn't hide her fear. Sarah gave up trying to and gestured at her grey outfit.
"They re-educated me," Sarah whimpered. "Whoever thought of that name deserves a new dictionary. And a painful death." Sarah paused for a moment before continuing. "It was the longest ten minutes of my life. They're no more than savages with advanced weaponry."
Much to his own dismay, the Doctor began to wonder how Leela would feel about being compared to such monsters. He brushed the thought aside and asked Sarah gently, "did they hurt you?"
Sarah nodded tearfully. "I thought I wouldn't last the ten minutes," she confessed sadly.
The Doctor looked in concern at his one-time best friend. "Can I see?" he inquired as gently as he could manage. Sarah nodded and offered her right arm. Once the grey sleeve had been rolled up, it was plainly obvious that she had been burned.
"Good grief, Sarah," the Doctor sympathised. "What made them do all this?"
"Not conforming," Sarah wailed. "They're absolute monsters. Worse than the Sontarans."
"I hope you realise, Sarah, that not all the Americans could possibly act like this."
Sarah nodded angrily. "Of course! If they could..."
Atlanta, having been completely ignored by both the Doctor and Sarah, took them both by surprise when she spoke up in a slightly harder voice. Slightly.
"Don't you see what you have to do?" Atlanta asked the Doctor, she being as horrified by Sarah's burns as he was. "You have to defeat the Americans the second time round."
Infuriated as he was with the cruelty of these Americans, the Doctor wasn't quite prepared to be exiled to Earth again. "But that would break the most important rule on Gallifrey!" the Doctor insisted sadly. "I can't do that."
Now it was Atlanta's turn to be infuriated. "Do you know how many hundreds of millions of people have suffered Sarah's fate, Doctor?" Atlanta asked him. "Nearly a billion. One in six people felt the same pain. I don't know what kind of warped law they have on Gallifrey, but surely those poor souls are worth more than the benefits of obeying a trumped-up law!"
Inwardly, the Doctor agreed with absolutely everything Atlanta said, and since it seemed foolish to argue with her when he agreed, the Doctor gave in.
"For a human," the Doctor told her, "you have a very unbiased view of the world." Upon finishing that remark, he turned to K-9. "Come on, K-9."
"What about me?" Sarah asked, her voice still coarse.
"If I took you with me, you'd be resistant to every change I made." At Sarah's confused expression, he added, "you'd keep the burns. Don't worry, Sarah. Atlanta won't hurt you."
"But..." Sarah's voice trailed away slightly. "You won't forget me again, will you?"
"I give you my word," the Doctor promised. Since Sarah appeared adamant that that wasn't enough, he fumbled around in his pockets for a small white packet, and gave it to Sarah. "Now I have to come back," he told her, solemnly. "You have my jelly babies."
