Disclaimer: I don't own the Doctor, the TARDIS, Rose or any of the characters, planets, technology etc that appear in Doctor Who. I wish I did but who doesn't?

Chapter Summany: Rose talks to a woman who works for Liana and discovers who sent the distress signal.

Chapter Eleven: Cat

Rose went back inside the shop. The girl she had been talking to was busying herself doing something with a few silver boxes on display. Rose had no idea what they were or what they did and the girl looked as if she was just making work for herself.

'Hi,' Rose said, going over and giving her a friendly smile. 'Mind if I talk to you?'

'Suppose not,' the girl said. She was giving Rose a wary look, as if thinking that maybe she had said too much before.

'Is there anything else you can tell me about the deaths?' Rose asked. 'And this scientist, can you tell me anything else about him?'

'No,' the girl said shortly.

Rose sighed. 'Look, I'm not going to try and get you into trouble,' she said persuasively. 'I want to help. That's what me and the Doctor do. We help people. I'm Rose, by the way.'

'Cat,' the girl said, after a moment's hesitation.

'Well? Can you tell me anything? I want to help, but I can't if I don't know what's happening.'

'I don't think I should be talking to you,' Cat said. 'We've lost people who knew too much.'

'It won't stop if you don't let someone help.'

'And that someone would be you, would it?' Cat asked nastily. 'Thanks but no thanks. I got enough problems without you adding to them.'

'Look, we came here specifically to help!' Rose protested. 'We followed a distress signal!'

Cat gave her an incredulous look. 'Oh, damn,' she said.

'What? Damn what?'

Cat leant against the wall. 'There's a team of people here who are fighting back against what's going on,' she said. 'Some of them decided to set a distress signal. From here. I was against it, but the vote was against me. So I set it and it turns out I was right. It wouldn't do any good at all.'

Rose was momentarily reduced to an insulted silence.

'I don't like Liana or any of her scientist friends and I don't want to talk to you anymore. Goodbye.'

'Wait, Cat!' Rose exclaimed, hurrying after her as the girl stalked away. Her way was blocked by Liana, who suddenly appeared beside her. 'Oh, you're back!' Rose exclaimed with a big smile. 'That was quick!'

Liana gave her a puzzled look and said, 'Where's the Doctor?'

'The Doctor?' Rose said, looking bemused.

'Yes. Where is he?'

'Um…' Rose racked her brains for an excuse, beginning to think that maybe her time would have been better spent trying to think up an excuse to explain the Doctor's absence rather than trying to get information out of Cat.

'Looking for me?' the Doctor said, strolling in. He was wearing a great big happy grin that Rose associated with trouble. His hands were in his pockets.

'Yes,' Liana said, turning to him and forgetting about Rose. 'Where were you?'

'Ohhh…I was wandering about outside,' he said. 'Needed some air, you know.'

'I didn't see you when I came in.'

'Nah, you just missed me. I came in when I saw you.'

'Oh.' Liana paused and then said, 'I came back for a couple of things. I have to go to a business meeting now.' She waved a hand. 'All about shares, stock and so on. Some very boring but very necessary thing, I suppose. I'll see you later.' She paused again and smiled sweetly. 'Maybe you'll join me for dinner?'

'But of course,' the Doctor said, returning the smile. Behind Liana, Rose rolled her eyes.

Liana gave him another smile and then walked out, back to her office. She reappeared, still smiling at him and finally left again.

'I think she fancies you,' Rose said to him.

He ignored the comment. 'You almost screwed up there, didn't you think about an excuse for why I was gone?'

'I was busy.'

'Really?'

'I found something out!' Rose said.

'So did I,' the Doctor said. 'You remember that guy we bumped into?'

'The freaky guy who practically ran up the wall?'

'Yeah, that one.'

'He was weird. Good-looking, but weird.'

'That's really not the point, Rose,' the Doctor said patiently. 'The point is that I spoke to him just now and he's going to get some information for us.'

'Yeah? Where is he?'

He sniffed. 'In the TARDIS.'

Rose stared at him. 'You put him in the TARDIS?'

'Something wrong with that?'

'No, it's just not like you to let just anyone in the TARDIS.'

'He needed somewhere safe to stay,' the Doctor said, as if that should have been obvious.

She considered this. 'Fair enough.' She stopped, looked aruond, and said, 'Where's Cat?'

He blinked. 'Who?'

'The girl I was talking to. She's gone.'

'Why is that important?'

'She knew something about all this stuff that's been going on,' Rose said patiently. 'I was going to try and persuade you to persuade her to tell us more and now she's gone!'

'You probably frightened her,' he said.

'No, you probably did that.'

'Thanks!' He looked around, hands in his pockets. 'Right. Liana's gone out, so let's go and find Xan and see if he's found anything out.'

'You haven't told Liana much, have you?' Rose said to him curiously.

'No. No, I haven't,' he said and didn't elaborate further.

Rose pushed the subject. 'Why not?'

'She hasn't been totally honest with us,' he said slowly. 'It's just – let's keep all of this between us at the moment, shall we?'

'Us? Does that include this Xan guy?'

He shrugged. 'If he knows something, he knows something. So let's go find out if he knows anymore than he did last time I spoke to him.'

Rose frowned. 'I think I understood all of that.'

He gave her a bright smile. 'Good!'

It had taken Cat a long time to find out where the location of the secret experiment base was. Now that no one would miss her, and she knew it, she was going to go and find as much proof of what was going on as she could find.

Inside the building was dark. She could barely make her way along silently, but manage it she did. Her night vision was good and she crept through the building like the animal that was her name sake.

She had found the base because she had been tracking and trailing one of the scientists who she knew was involved. Now, she had finally had the chance to follow him and find out exactly where the base was.

Finding her way in hadn't been too difficult. She was a good climber and her knowledge of electrical equipment had aided her in disarming the alarms and then getting inside had been extremly easy.

But Cat didn't get a chance to go and find the experiments, find the rooms where they had been going on because she was forced to hide.

There were footsteps coming along the corridor towards where she had hidden. She ducked quickly and quietly behind some pipes and hid in the darkness. With the footsteps came two voices. They were loud, arguing.

'Your experiments have escaped. A lot of them have escaped.'

'If you gave me more funds, I could afford to keep them under proper control.'

'What? You have more than enough to employ people to guard – '

'Hardly. You know we can't risk being found out, and people talk.'

'Pay them to keep their mouths shut.'

'There's no amount of money in the universe that will keep anyone's mouth shut.'

'We're still risking being found out, aren't we?' The voice was getting angry. 'In fact, we're all but found out!'

'People think it's a serial killer. My research should not take much longer, I am sure of that.'

'You've been sure of that for months.'

'You'd like to try genetic experimentation? You? A man who can't bake a cake?'

'What does cake have to do with anything?'

'It's called a metaphor,' this voice said wearily.

'I don't care what it's called. How close are we to ending this?'

'We're not.'

'Wonderful,' this voice said dryly. 'Then we'll just have to move bases – '

'We can't do that without attracting suspicion.'

'Then you need to keep better control of things.'

'Then you need to give me more money.'

Cat was getting painfully uncomfortable in her hiding position. Slowly, she tried to stretch her leg to relax it a little, to get the feeling back into it.

She knocked the pipe. It was hollow and the sound reverberated.

'What was that?'

'Someone's here. Someone's overheard.'

Cat had frozen in terror. She tried to clamber out of her hiding place and run, but her numb leg prevented her from moving properly.

'Get her!' one of the voice yelled furiously.

Cat ran, until a bullet took her in the back and brought her down.

Apologies for how bad this chapter is. I have been seriously busy and haven't had time to write it well. So sorry for the poor quality of this chapter and probably the next couple.