The Doctor began running the moment he saw Rose stumble, but he did not reach the shaft in time to keep her from falling. He dropped to his knees at the edge, calling her name into the darkness. His voice echoed back eerily, and again he felt that strange puff of air.

There was no answer to his calls. He tried not to think about how deep the shaft was or how hard the stone surface at the bottom would be. He tried not to visualize what happened to human bones when they struck such a surface, and he tried not to calculate the physics equations that told him precisely what force would result when a one-hundred-ten pound object fell a minimum of ten meters…

After a moment he reached for the chain and began to crank the pulley. The torch lay on the ground, somehow switched on when it fell from Rose's hand. The beam shone off the edge of the pit, providing a dull light that disappeared about a meter down.

"Rose!" the Doctor called again, directing the light downward. He saw nothing but the beam.

In the few seconds during which she fell, Rose thought about her mother and how she would feel when the Doctor returned to tell her of her daughter's death. She could almost hear the sound of the slap that Jackie would deliver to the Time Lord's face… And then she felt sorry: sorry for the pain that Jackie would experience, sorry for her own loss, for the places that she would never see, the new planets, the different times, all expostulated so enthusiastically by the Doctor. And she wondered for an instant what he would feel when he discovered that she was dead.

But then she stopped falling. Her feet did not hit the hard stone, as she'd anticipated. Instead, she felt herself caught in something dense and prickly. It smelled faintly herbal, and definitely leafy, and a bit fleshy.

Rose tried to move her arms and hands to touch whatever it was that had ensnared her, but her arms were pinned to her side. She was held tightly, something sturdy wrapping around her even as she tried to shift her body. The grip was tightening, and little sharp pricks accompanied this constriction, stabbing at her face and hands and ankles. Her tank top had ridden up, exposing her belly, and she winced as a particularly sharp jab poked at the tender skin there.

She began to wriggle in earnest, feeling herself gripped even tighter. It was becoming hard to breathe. Still she forced herself to inhale then yelled, "Doctor!" with her exhalation. Her voice echoed against the walls, confusing her senses as his name seemed to resound dully all around her. If he answered her, she could not hear it.

"Rose!" The Doctor had heard her cry, relief washing over him when he realized that she was still alive.

"Are you all right?" he called down, but she did not respond.

He remembered that her hearing was still slightly impaired, and he kicked himself mentally for exposing her to the noise that had altered her senses. Well, it couldn't be helped now; he would just have to try to communicate another way.

Quickly he wiped the oil from the chain and the hook then turned the crank to lower the hook into the shaft. Once it had begun its descent, he turned the handle more slowly, hoping that Rose would be able to grab it when it reached her. He could only assume that she had managed to catch something on the way down. If she had fallen all the way to the bottom it was doubtful that she'd be able to call his name.

He held the torch in his other hand, directing the beam downward in the faint hope that it might illuminate the darkness for Rose so that she could see the hook.

The edge of the light reached Rose. She squinted, trying to discern what held her. She thought she could see leaves. And soon she saw something dangling in front of her. She realized that it was the hook from the pulley. It was lowering slowly, passing her face then her shoulders. She needed to grab it, to let the Doctor know that she had it, but her arms were still firmly pinned.

"Stop!" she called, tilting her head up so that the sound would carry better.

The chain's movement ceased, and it lay suspended before her. She wiggled her arms, but whatever held her was unrelenting.

"A little lower!" she yelled, "just about half a meter!"

The hook moved, stopping near her right hand. She twisted her body, fingers reaching for the hook. They brushed against it, and she mustered enough strength to force her hand outward so that her fingers could wrap around the thick metal.

"Got it!" she cried.

Almost immediately she felt the hook move upward. She kept her grip, fingers aching with the effort as her body remained still. She hoped that the Doctor's strength would be sufficient to pull her from whatever it was that held her.

The hook was tugging against her grasp, and she groaned with the task of holding it. Her hand began to slip, but by sheer force of will she tightened her fingers again. For nearly a minute she felt as though she were the rope in a tug of war. Her hand and arm were pulled nearly from their sockets, and she couldn't help but cry out in pain and frustration.

"Pull harder!" she gasped out.

Whatever held her was making a supreme effort to pull her back down, lower into the shaft. It was wrapped around her so fiercely that she found it difficult to breathe. She was starting to feel dizzy… and panic was quickly rising as she understood how insistently her captor was working.

But the Time Lord was working equally hard, cranking at the handle with all his strength, determined to pull Rose up. After several minutes he felt a slight give in the chain.

Something scraped against Rose's face, hands, stomach, and ankles as she finally felt her body slide out of the iron grip. It was as though she'd been held in some sort of strange, prickly cocoon, and now she popped free of it.

She lifted her other hand to grab the hook, ignoring the numbness that had set in. The Doctor had dropped the torch some time ago in his efforts to turn the crank, so Rose was in complete darkness. She wasn't sure if her numb fingers had actually gripped the hook, but she hoped they had.

She felt her body rising quickly, and she when she looked up she saw light. She drew a breath, finally.

When the hook appeared, gripped by Rose's white-knuckled hands, the Doctor took a breath, too. She was alive and would be safe in a moment. Her hands were criss-crossed with scrapes that stood out lividly against the pale skin, and when he anchored the chain and reached for her arms to pull her up and out of the shaft he saw that her face was similarly marred. She was ashen, and her eyes were large, and he did not realize that he was hugging her too hard until she began gasping for breath.

He led her away from the shaft, keeping his arm around her because he could sense that her legs were wobbly and because he needed another moment to feel that she was safe beside him. She was breathing heavily, though, gulping in the air, and she was close to hyperventilating.

He stopped and gently lowered her to the ground, crouching before her with his hands on her shoulders.

"Rose," he said evenly, working to keep his voice calm, "just breathe shallowly—small breaths."

"But," she gasped out, "it held me—so tightly—that I—couldn't breathe."

"But you can now, and you don't need to work so hard at it. Little breath in—that's it, through the nose, not the mouth." He lifted his hand toward her lips, but she closed them. "Good. In again, now out."

In a minute she was breathing more normally, and the color was returning to her cheeks. Blood was seeping from the scrapes, and now that he could take a moment to look at her closely he could see that there were several punctures on her face, too.

He took her hand and helped her to stand. A misty drizzle had begun, and dark clouds overhead promised to bring heavier rain soon. He began walking, keeping a hand at her back.

"What happened down there?" he asked. "What did you manage to catch on to?"

"I didn't catch onto anything. Something caught on to me."

He looked at her with surprise. "Yeah? What was it?"

She shook her head. "Dunno. But it held me tighter an' tighter and didn't seem to want to let me go."

"Is that what scratched you?"

She lifted her hand to examine the marks. "Yeah."

They were back at the small compound, and he steered her toward the little infirmary, watching her all the while. His eyes flicked to the hood that hung over her back, and he reached inside to remove something.

"What's this?" He held a small grayish object in his hand.

Rose looked at it. "Looks sorta like a leaf."

"Yep." He tucked it into his pocket as he opened the door.

He sat Rose on one of the two cots then rummaged about in the cabinets. After a minute he returned to her, carrying a bottle of alcohol and some cotton swabs.

"Fraid this is the best I can do for now," he said rather apologetically. "I wanna get those scrapes cleaned out as soon as possible." He tried to keep the concern from his voice as his eyes swept the rapidly reddening edges of the little wounds.

He helped Rose to remove her hoodie, glad to see that the areas of her body that had been covered by clothing seemed to have been spared from the wicked scratches and punctures. He dabbed an alcohol-soaked swab at the deepest scratch on her cheek. She winced at the sting but remained quiet. For a few moments the rain pounding on the thin, metal roof was the only sound they heard.

When he felt satisfied that the scratch was clean, the Doctor took out the sonic screwdriver and switched it on.

"What're you doing with that?" Rose asked dubiously.

"You'll see," he replied rather obliquely. His grin told her that he had something in mind that pleased him.

"But I thought it was broken—"

"Well, sorta. The lower settings are still functioning, and that's all I need for this." He held the device over her cheek, and she felt a tiny tingling on the wound he had just cleaned.

He grabbed a hand mirror from the bedside table and held it up to her face. She was surprised to see that the area he had just worked on was smooth and unmarred.

"How'd you do that?" she asked.

"Dermal regenerator function." He held up the screwdriver proudly.

"So why use the alcohol if you can jus' do that?"

"Stings a bit, doesn't it? Sorry about that, but it's better if the wounds are clean before I close them. An' since we don't know exactly what did this, I wanna be sure that I remove anything nasty it might've left behind."

"Like what sorta nasty?"

He shrugged more casually than necessary. "Probably just a slight skin irritant. Nothin' to worry about."

He cleaned then closed all of the wounds on her face. The little punctures weren't deep, nor were the scratches, and after the screwdriver's treatment all of the redness disappeared. He moved on to her hands.

It took the Doctor a few minutes to be impressed by Rose's stoicism. She had flinched slightly when the alcohol touched the first couple of scratches, but now she remained still, watching his fingers as he carefully wiped the disinfectant over each mark on her left hand then repaired each with the sonic screwdriver. When he took her right hand in his, however, she did wince, and he turned it over to see the gash on her palm.

"This one's a lot deeper," he commented.

"It's from the hook," she explained briefly. "I tried to grab it when I fell."

He nodded. "Must've hurt." Before she could reply, he looked up at her and added, "Sorry you fell. It was my fault—I should've cleaned up the oil."

She smiled thinly. "It's not like you left it there on purpose."

He quirked an eyebrow at her. "I tried to warn you, but you didn't hear me. How're your ears now?

She thought for a moment. "Okay, I think."

"You sure?" he whispered.

Now it was her turn to lift an eyebrow. "Yeah."

He returned his attention to her hand, cleaning the gash thoroughly then healing it quickly with the screwdriver. In a few minutes he'd finished with the scratches and he moved on to her ankles.

"Not a mark left," he finally said with a rather pompous grin.

Rose shook her head. "It got my stomach, too." She lifted up the hem of her tank top to reveal several scratches and pricks.

"Those look painful." He moved around to view her lower back; there was only one long scratch there. He worked on it first then had her lie back so that her stomach was smooth and taut.

The alcohol felt especially cold against the delicate skin, and she flinched in spite of herself. He worked gently, aware of the tenderness, and soon he had cleaned and healed the scratches. The punctures, he found, were much deeper than those on her face and hands. He pressed his fingers lightly over one midway between her hipbone and naval

Unexpectedly she cried out and tried to push his hand away. He looked up; her face had paled.

"Sorry," she muttered, "didn't mean to do that." She pulled her hand back and clenched it at her side.

He twisted the end of the screwdriver; it began to emit a low whir. He held the instrument over the wound, watching as its tiny lights flickered blue and white. Rose lifted her head to watch, surprised that the wound was still visible and remained painful after he'd switched off the screwdriver.

"What were you doing?" she asked.

He was fiddling with the end of the device again, readjusting the setting. "Nothin' really."

His expression was too unconcerned, even for a Time Lord.

"Tell me," she said.

"Just assessing how deep it is."

"An' how deep is it?"

"Not too. But the regenerator at this strength can only penetrate a coupla centimeters, so I can't close it beneath the dermal layer. It's probably going to be a little sore below the surface."

She nodded and he swabbed the wound as gently as he could then aimed the screwdriver's beam at it. When he had finished he rested two fingers over the area with light pressure. "Does it still hurt?"

She shook her head. "Just a little."

"Only two more to go, an' I don't think they're quite as deep. Ready?"

"Yeah."

When he looked up at her a minute later, he saw that she was biting her lip. He gave her hand a quick squeeze. "All done."

She sat up, her hand moving automatically to her belly. He thought that the motion had caused her some pain, but she smiled at him as she ran her hand over the smooth flesh then pulled her shirt back down.

"Thanks. I didn't know you could do stuff like that."

He grinned unabashedly. "Me, I can fix almost anything."

The room was chilly; a damp draft swirled under the thin door. Rose pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around her legs. "So whad' d'we do now? You still need the pork stuff."

"Porquarnium." He emphasized the syllables, but he could tell from her expression that she'd already memorized the correct pronunciation. "After it stops raining, I'll go down into the shaft and see if I can find any remains. Just a bit of the dust would do."

"What about the thing that caught me?"

"If I see it I'll be sure to send your thanks."

She smiled briefly. "Yeah. Really, Doctor, if I'd stayed there any longer it would've squeezed me to death. I couldn't breathe—"

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the leaf he'd plucked from her clothes, studying it silently for a moment.

Rose leaned over to examine it. "So it was a plant. 'Spose that makes sense, really. It smelled sorta like one—kinda leafy, yeah?"

"Could be a distant relative of the Venus flytrap."

"Those close up around insects, don't they?"

"Yep. Then they suck out the juices—"

She shivered. "Is that what it was tryin' to do? I mean when it poked me?"

"I dunno. Probably not. The constrictive activity was probably just a natural defense mechanism, an' the thorns are a part of it."

Rose thought for a few seconds. "Weird, innit? That a plant could grow down there. Plants need light, don't they?"

The Doctor nodded. "Interesting observation. Yeah, they do—usually. There're some smaller shafts that probably ventilate the main one. Maybe the plant started growing by one of them." He looked up at the roof. "Rain's stopped. You feelin' up to another walk out there?"

She swung her legs over the edge of the cot. "Yeah."

But when she stood he could see her face twitch slightly. She seemed to hold her body more gingerly than usual. Still, he needed her help to get into and out of the shaft.

"We can go back to the TARDIS if you want," he said. "I can heal those punctures completely—"

"No, 'sokay, I'm fine."

He nodded in approval. "Good—thought that's what you'd say."

But as he opened the door, she reached for his arm. "Wait. Whatever's down there almost killed me. I don't think you should risk goin' into the shaft."

"I'll try a coupla of the smaller ones first."

"Yeah, good."

He took her hand as they walked out toward the mine again.

The Doctor retrieved the torch at the edge of the main shaft then led Rose to the ventilation shaft he'd found earlier. He crouched by the edge and shone the torch's beam into the darkness. Rose watched as he repositioned himself on his stomach, stretching his arm down into the hole and craning his neck to see what the light could reveal.

"Be careful!" she warned, afraid that he might slip and fall in. She knelt next to his legs and placed her hand on his ankle as a precaution.

After a moment he pulled his shoulders back and turned onto his side with a grin. "It's only about two meters deep here, an' there's a ladder goin' part way up the side. They probably used this shaft for access to the deeper tunnels. I'm goin' down."

He shifted around so that he legs dangled over the edge.

"Did you see the plant?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Nope. Didn't really think I would… it's half a kilometer from the main shaft to here. That'd be a really big plant."

"Well be careful anyway," she said.

"You know me—" he began, but she just rolled her eyes as he slipped down into the shaft. "I'll be back out in a coupla minutes," he called back up.

Rose looked up at the gray sky. The clouds foretold more rain, and the air was getting even chillier. She wished she'd brought a jacket from the TARDIS. But the Doctor would return in a few minutes, hopefully with the porquarnium, and they could go back to the TARDIS. She wondered if she could see it from here.

She stood with a small grimace of pain and turned to gaze out over the land. Beyond one of the many rock formations she could just glimpse a hint of blue amid the drab surroundings. As she turned back to the shaft, a movement near the compound caught her eye. She walked a few paces, watching the edge of the building nearest the main shaft; she was certain that was where she'd seen the movement. But now there was nothing. She wondered whether there were animals in the area. Perhaps that was what she had seen, or maybe it was just the wind blowing an empty bottle or paper along…

She turned back to the shaft and sat down to wait for the Doctor.


The shaft was dark, and the torch seemed to be dimming. The Doctor shook it several times, but the beam did not change. Well, he knew where the ladder was; as long as he could see the glow of light from the top of the shaft he could return easily.

He had walked perhaps twenty meters, searching the walls with the light, hoping to see a few traces of porquarnium. Thus far he'd found nothing. But he realized that the primary veins could lie closer to the main shaft, so he continued walking toward it. He could tell that the tunnel led back in that direction, and he felt sure that his guess about its use was correct.

As a bit of air moved through the tunnel, probably a consequence of the wind on the surface, he caught a whiff of the odor he'd sensed earlier. It smelled like soil and stone—he could detect flint and maybe a trace of halite. But there was another smell, one that he felt was distinctly organic.

He kept moving, and the smell grew slightly stronger. It was almost herbal, yet it seemed to have the muskiness of an animal. He stopped for a moment to take a deep breath, allowing his heightened senses to process the scents. His nose wrinkled involuntarily: He smelled decay.


Rose was hugging her knees to her chest in an effort to keep warm. The wind had intensified, and it was blowing all around her, whistling past her ears in cold gusts. She stared at the ventilation shaft, willing the Doctor to return so that they could go back to the TARDIS and get out of the wind. She felt a bit achy, too, and her stomach muscles were tight, as though she'd had a really intense workout with a bunch of ab crunches.

She began imagining a lovely hot, steamy bath. The water would envelop her, warming her and loosening the knots. And after she finished her long, luxurious bath, she'd have a nice cup of hot cocoa… maybe even some of those little marshmallows that got all melty around the edges from the heat—if she could find any in the TARDIS's kitchen.

When she heard the crunch of feet on loose gravel, she thought at first that the Doctor was just beneath her, shuffling up to the ladder. She leaned forward for an instant before she realized that the noise came from behind her.

Rose twisted her head around and gasped in surprise when she saw the four men moving toward her. They were coming from the cluster of buildings, and she realized immediately that she must have seen one of them a few minutes before. Their expressions were stony, and their movements struck her as harsh; they must be angry at finding a trespasser. All were dressed in the loosely fitting coveralls that she'd seen in the living quarters—standard attire for miners, she presumed.

"Hello," she called in as amiable a voice as she could muster. She stood quickly, ignoring the twinge in her belly.

The men did not respond to her greeting, but they continued walking toward her. Their expressions did not change, either.

"I was jus' waitin' for a friend," she tried to explain, looking back at the shaft. "He's gone in to get somethin'—"

Still her comments elicited no reply.

"Doctor!" she called, trying to direct her voice down into the shaft. "Doctor! We've got company!"