The next morning, Ryan woke up alone in an unfamiliar bed. He sat upright, rubbing his eyes. Memories of last night slowly trickled back to him. Finding the Doctor crying out, haunted by nightmares. Tea in the galley. A compromise that didn't feel like a compromise.

Now he was sat in his pyjamas in the Doctor's bedroom, the man himself having buggered off to who knows where. Although, the galley and console room were both safe bets.

Hurriedly, Ryan scrambled out of the bed, neatly folding back the covers (he doubted the Doctor even did that himself, but he didn't want to be a rude guest), and retrieved his dressing gown from where it hung next to the Doctor's. He slipped it on, and slipped back to his own room.

After a quick shower and a change of clothes, Ryan wandered down to the galley. Greeted by the smell of bacon, he peered around the doorway to see the Doctor at the hob, absorbed in his cooking.

"Morning, Doctor."

The Doctor abruptly span around, grinning widely. "Ryan! Good morning! Sleep well?"

Ryan nodded. "Yeah. You alright after… last night?"

The Doctor's grin grew wider. "Me? Fresh as a daisy, fit as a fiddle, ripe as a banana! Not too ripe though, 'cos otherwise they start to get a bit mushy. Ooh, I've fixed you a cuppa," he said happily, pointing a pair of tongs at the solitary mug on the table. "And breakfast will be ready in a couple of tics."

"Thanks." Ryan pulled out his usual chair and took his place at the table. He'd gotten pretty good at working out whether the Doctor's joviality was fake or not, and it was nice to see that the Doctor was genuinely happy.

"I was thinking…" the Doctor began, as he was serving up their breakfast.

"As you do."

The Doctor shot him a glare, one he was unable to hold for more than a few seconds as he cracked into a smile again. "I was thinking that maybe you'd like to have a go at piloting the TARDIS?"

Ryan blinked. "You serious?"

"Yeah, 'course I am," the Doctor replied, placing two plates on the table. They were loaded with fried eggs, thick rashers of bacon, and a stack of even thicker pancakes.

Ryan thanked him with enthusiasm. "But me?" he asked, still not believing him.

The Doctor made a show of looking around the galley. "I don't see anyone else in here," he said through a mouthful of egg.

"Yeah, but what if I, I dunno, crash into something?"

"You'll be fine! I'll be there to help and show you what to do – better than any manual out there!"

"Is there a manual?" Ryan asked, his curiosity piqued.

The Doctor tugged on his ear. "Ah... there was."

Ryan raised an eyebrow. "Was?"

"I didn't agree with some of it, so I threw it into a supernova."

Ryan broke out into a laugh. "Of course, you did!"

They quietened down as they tucked into their breakfasts. A few minutes later, they heard a tentative knock on the open door.

"Hi Martha!" Ryan exclaimed.

The Doctor jumped out of his seat, grinning broadly. "Good morning, Martha Jones! Can I interest you in any breakfast? I've made bacon, eggs and pancakes if you like, though you're more than welcome to have something else if you don't want them. Also, tea? Coffee? Milk? Sugar? No sugar?" he quickly rattled off, barely pausing to take a breath, leaving Martha looking slightly overwhelmed.

"Um, that'll be great, thanks. And black coffee - if that's not a bother."

The Doctor smiled. "It's certainly not." He moved to busy himself with sorting Martha's breakfast, as she sat down in the seat next to his now empty one.

"You sleep alright?" Ryan asked.

"I think that might've been the best night's sleep I've ever had!" Martha replied. "Definitely the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in – where does he get the beds?"

Ryan shrugged. "Dunno – probably Dreams in the forty-fifth century or something," he chuckled.

"Think I slept a bit too well, I'm not normally a late riser,"

Ryan shook his head. "Don't worry about it – we've had a few busy days in a row, and you're very much allowed he be knackered."

"Just don't start trying to compete with Mr Lazybones over here," the Doctor added, as he set down Martha's breakfast-loaded plate and coffee on the table in front of here.

"I ain't that bad!" Ryan rebutted.

The Doctor rolled his eyes good naturedly, as Martha tucked in.

"Mmm, that's good!" Martha exclaimed. "Very American… are we going to America?"

Ryan hadn't noticed that about their breakfast. "Are we?" he asked the Doctor.

"Yep," the Doctor nodded. "Well, in theory."

"What do you mean, 'in theory?'" Martha questioned.

"He means that I'll be flying the TARDIS, so he's expecting at least a small fuck up."

"No, not at all!" the Doctor said. "You'll do brilliantly, Ryan. But I'll be inputting the coordinates, and erm," he quietened, "the last time we tried to go to the United States, we ended up in London. But not to worry, I'll triple check them."

He smiled at Ryan softly, and Ryan smiled back. It was practically a reflex, at this point. The Doctor was happy, so Ryan was too. He just really hoped that even if they encountered some trouble (also practically inevitable, at this point), it wouldn't ruin the mood.


"And the handbrake!" the Doctor called out.

Ryan threw the lever down and the TARDIS shuddered to a stop with a much less violent landing than they were used to, he smugly noted.

"Well then," the Doctor said, gesturing dramatically at the doors. "Let's see if Ryan got us where we wanted."

"It is safe out there, right?" Ryan asked.

"Yeah, 'course. I set the coordinates, and you followed my instructions to the letter. For once."

"Oi!" Ryan swatted him. "When don't I follow instructions?"

"Rule number one," the Doctor countered.

"Yeah, but me 'wandering off' actually helps us, most of the time."

"Most of the time?"

Martha cleared her throat. "You two done flirting?"

"Yes. Sorry," the Doctor squeaked. He nodded at the door. "It's safe."

Martha half-jogged down the ramp, while Ryan took hold of the Doctor's hand, giving him a gentle tug.

"What's wrong?" Ryan asked, when he realised the Doctor wasn't moving.

"Nothing," the Doctor grinned, giving Ryan's hand a firm tug, pulling him back into hug. "You were absolutely magnificent," he whispered into Ryan's ear.

"Thanks," Ryan mumbled into his chest. He always found it incredibly humbling, receiving praise from a man as extraordinary as the Doctor.

They shifted out of their embrace, and the Doctor took his hand again. "C'mon, Martha'll be waiting."

They exited the TARDIS hand in hand, to be hit by a cold, salty ocean breeze.

"Is this the real New York?" Martha excitedly asked when she spotted them.

"New York?" Ryan questioned.

"Yep," the Doctor replied, popping the P. "Ryan, have you met my friend?"

Ryan twisted around, craning his neck up in the same direction as the Doctor was looking. "The Statue of Liberty!"

"Gateway to the New World. 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.'"

"That's so brilliant!" Martha exclaimed. "I've always wanted to go to New York – I mean, the real New York, not the New New New New New one."

"Well, there's the genuine article," the Doctor said, turning back towards the city across the bay. "So good they named it twice. Mind you, it was New Amsterdam, originally. Harder to say twice – no wonder it didn't catch on… New Amsterdam, New Amsterdam…"

"Yeah, somehow I don't think 'Fairytale of New Amsterdam' would've done quite as well, either," Ryan commented. "What year is it?"

"2030," the Doctor said with certainty.

Ryan took another look at the bay, and the sailboats in it. "You sure about that? 'Cos those boats look pretty old-school to me."

"And look, the Empire State Building, it's not even finished yet," Martha added. Sure enough, the iconic landmark was incomplete, with scaffolding encasing its peak.

"Ah. Work in progress…" the Doctor said quietly, sounding disappointed. He cleared his throat. "Still. They've got a couple of floors to go, and if I know my history, that makes the date somewhere around…"

Ryan heard the distinctive rustle of a newspaper, followed by Martha confidently saying, "November 1st 1930."

"You're getting good at the this," the Doctor said.

"Yeah," Ryan agreed. "You caught onto the checking the newspaper thing much quicker than I did."

Martha smiled. "Thanks." She glanced back down to the newspaper. "It's nearly eighty years ago." The Doctor slowly took the newspaper from her as she continued. "It's funny, 'cos you see those old newsreels, all in black and white, like it's so far away. But here we are. It's real; it's now!" she laughed.

The Doctor's face had shifted into a frown, his eyes focused on the newspaper. Ryan followed his line of sight, spotting the headline.

"C'mon then, you two! Where're we going first?" Martha asked.

"Think we've found something to solve," Ryan replied, nudging to Doctor to show Martha the headline again.

"'Hooverville Mystery Deepens'" Martha read out loud. "What's Hooverville?"

"I'll tell you in a bit," the Doctor replied. "But first, we've gotta get to Manhattan.

He gave Ryan's hand a quick squeeze, before dropping it and stuffing his own hands in his pockets. Now Ryan understood why the Doctor had wanted to land a hundred years later.


After a quick ferry ride from Liberty Island to Manhattan, and a longer walk through Manhattan, they found themselves in Central Park.

"So, what's the deal with Hooverville?" Ryan asked as they strolled down a quiet, winding path.

"Herbert Hoover," the Doctor overenunciated, "thirty-first president of the USA, came to power a year ago. Up till then, New York was a boomtown, the Roaring Twenties. And then…?"

"The Wall Street Crash, yeah?" Martha said. "When was that, 1929?"

"Yep. The whole economy wiped out overnight, thousands of people unemployed. All of a sudden, the huddled masses doubled in number, with nowhere to go. So, they ended up here, in Central Park."

"What, they actually live in the park? In the middle of the city?"

Ryan shrugged. "They do in London."

They entered Hooverville – a pseudo-campsite constructed from whatever spare materials people had. Washing hung on lines strung between trees and signposts. People huddled around fires burning in old oil drums. A desperate community, doing whatever they could to survive.

"Ordinary people," the Doctor explained, his tone sympathetic. "Lost their jobs, couldn't pay the rent – they lost everything."

People watched them as they walked through the densely packed camp. They stuck out like a sore thumb – far too well-dressed to be there – and the Doctor's Estuary accent would have caught the ear of anyone listening.

Ryan spotted a group of children huddled together in a circle. When he'd been growing up, there had been a couple of times when they nearly couldn't make the rent payment and he'd been terrified of the threat of being kicked out. Even with that, he couldn't imagine how scared and hopeless those kids were feeling. Patting his pockets, he found a half-melted chocolate bar. He knew that giving some kids some chocolate wouldn't fix any real problems (although giving them a chocolate bar which hadn't been invented yet might), he could at least try to make them better, even if only for a little while.

He approached them, bar outheld. The children's eyes were wide, scared by this oddly dressed stranger.

"Here," he said. "'S chocolate."

They considered him for a moment, until the oldest-looking child took it from him.

"Thank you, sir."

Ryan smiled at the group. "Take care of yourselves, yeah?" The children nodded shyly. He gave them another quick smile and rejoined the Doctor and Martha.

"Are we allowed to do stuff like that?" Martha asked. "Help them, I mean."

"Yeah, doesn't make too much of an impact…" the Doctor started, and only then did Ryan realise that the Doctor had been staring at him. He tore his gaze away and cleared his throat and nodded for them to continue walking. "As I was saying, there are places all over America, and no one's helping them. At least, not the government, nor any entity large enough to lift everyone out of poverty. You only come to Hooverville when there's nowhere else to go."

They heard shouting up ahead, the kind that escalates into a fight. Three men stood in the middle of the path, tense. The Doctor, Ryan and Martha stopped to observe the encounter.

"That's enough!" commanded an older black man, dressed in trench coat and a Stetson. He pushed the two quarrelling, younger men apart. "Now, think real careful before you lie to me," he warned.

"I'm starving, Solomon," pleaded one of the other men.

The older man, Solomon, didn't say anything, instead holding his hand out, expecting.

The younger man pulled a loaf of bread from his jacket, and Solomon snatched it away from him.

"We all starving," said Solomon. "We all got family somewhere." He ripped the bread in two, offering a half to each man. "No stealing and no fighting. You know the rules." He raised his voice. "Thirteen years ago, I fought in the Great War. A lot of us did. And the only reason we got through was because we stuck together. No matter how bad things get, we still act like human beings. It's all we've got."

The two younger men eyed each other, not arguing further, before going their separate ways. It seemed that Solomon was well respected.

"Come on," the Doctor said, nodding towards Solomon. "I suppose that makes you the boss around here," the Doctor said to Solomon, once they were close enough.

Solomon eyed them warily. "And, er, who might you be?"

"He's the Doctor, that's Ryan," Ryan smiled and gave a half wave, "and I'm Martha," she said.

"A doctor?" Solomon questioned. The Doctor nodded and smiled. "Well, we got, er, stockbrokers, we got a lawyer, but you're the first doctor. Neighbourhood gets classier by the day," Solomon continued, as he warmed his palms over an open fire.

"How many people live here – in Hooverville?" Ryan asked.

Solomon shrugged. "At any one… hundreds. No place else to go. But I will say this about Hooverville – we're a truly equal society. Black, white, all the same, all starving." He chuckled. "So you're welcome, all of you." He paused. "But tell me, Doctor, you're a man of learning, right? Explain this to me." He gestured behind him, and they followed Solomon.

He stopped and pointed at the Empire State. "That there is going to be the tallest building in the world. How come they can do that, and we've got people starving in the heart of Manhattan?"

The Doctor remained silent, simply nodding slowly.


They found Solomon again, pouring the remnants from his flagon onto a fire.

"Is it true, about the men going missing?" Ryan asked him, as the Doctor pulled the newspaper out of his coat, showing Solomon the front page.

Solomon took the paper from the Doctor. "It's true all right." He disappeared into his tent.

"But what does 'missing' mean?" the Doctor asked, poking his head into the tent. "People must come and go here all the time. It's not like anyone keeps a register."

Solomon sighed. "Come on in." They entered, the Doctor sitting next to Solomon, while Ryan and Martha took their seats on a couple of crates opposite. "This is different," Solomon stated.

"In what way?" Martha asked.

Solomon hesitated. "Someone takes them. At night." The Doctor's eyes narrowed. "We hear something, someone calls out for help. By the time we get there, they're gone. Like they've vanished into thin air."

"And you're sure someone's taking them?" the Doctor questioned.

"Doctor, when you've got next to nothing, you hold onto the little you got. A knife, a blanket. You take it with you. You don't leave bread uneaten, a fire still burning."

Ryan nodded in understanding.

"Have you been to the police?" Martha interjected.

"Police probably wouldn't care," Ryan guessed. He knew how much effort his mother must have put in to keep the police investigating, when he had accidentally gone missing for a year.

Solomon laughed bitterly. "You're right. Another deadbeat goes missing, big deal."

"So the question is… who's taking them, and what for?" the Doctor pondered.

Before anyone could propose any hypothesises, they were interrupted by a voice from outside, calling Solomon's name.

"Solomon!" The tent flapped open, and a young man leant in. "Mr Diagoras is here." Solomon left them urgently without a word.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows, and Ryan and Martha followed him out.

A small crowd had formed outside, around three well-dressed men in suits and fedoras.

"I need men. Volunteers," announced the man in the middle, who Ryan assumed was Mr Diagoras, leaving the other two men to be his henchmen, or cronies. Either way, they looked like they could be characters off The Sopranos or something.

"I've got a little work for you. And you sure look like you could use the money."

"Yeah, what is the money?" the young man asked.

"A dollar a day," Diagoras replied. The crowd laughed at the mockingly low wage.

"What's the work?" Solomon questioned.

"A little trip down the sewers. Got a tunnel collapsed, needs clearing and fixing. Any takers?"

"A dollar a day, that's a slave wage," Solomon said, and the men around them sounded their agreement. "And men don't always come back up, do they?"

"Accidents happen," Diagoras said, dismissively.

"What do you mean, what sort of accidents?" the Doctor asked.

"You don't need the work, that's fine," Diagoras told him. "Anybody else?"

The Doctor raised his hand. Ryan half-heartedly sighed. He could see where this was going.

"Enough with the questions!" snapped Diagoras, upon seeing the Doctor's raised hand.

"Ah, no, no, no. I'm volunteering. I'll go."

Martha and Ryan both lifted their hands as well.

"I'll kill you for this," Martha muttered.

"Yeah, and then I'll kill you again," Ryan added. The Doctor smiled good naturedly, making a happy noise in his throat.

"Anybody else?" Diagoras asked.

Solomon lifted his hand, as did the young man.

"Always taking us to the loveliest places, eh Doctor?" Ryan teased.

"Well…" the Doctor said, tugging on his ear. "We've been in worse. Probably. Still. It can't be that bad…"


A/N: Thank you for reading!