BEING HELD

"What's that pounding?" Colin asked.

"That's someone on the other side of the TARDIS door," Donna said, an edge in her voice.

The two of them were sitting on the end of the bed in their suite in Portugal, listening on speakerphone to the Doctor and Martha on some distant planet, now, it would seem, in some sort of peril.

"Doctor! Martha! Are you all right?" he shouted.

With that, they heard a click, and were momentarily afraid that the call had been cut off, but they did not stop hearing pounding. After a moment, they heard Martha ask, "Doctor, are you going to be okay? Looks like we've got to get our heads in the game now."

"Thank goodness, she just took us off speakerphone," Donna said.

"I'm fine," the Doctor rasped, as the pounding continued.

A voice from faraway said, "You are trespassing illegally on Sercaton! Open your vessel at once!"

"Oh, shit," Colin breathed.

"It's okay," Donna said. "They can handle it, they can handle it. We've all been through this, and everyone is still alive."

"Sercaton?" they heard the Doctor practically choke out. "Sercaton?"

"What does that mean?" Martha asked.

The pounding obscured his answer.

The faraway voice then said, "You have ten seconds to open this door before we blast it open. If you know what's good for you, you will calmly submit to your fate."

"Calmly submit to your fate?" Colin asked. "What kind of advice is that?"

"Shh," Donna scolded.

From there, they heard the voice counting backward from ten, and Martha begging the Doctor at least to move out of the way, out of the path of whatever "blast" was coming."

"Three, two, one," said the voice.

Then, there was a large crash, clearly an explosion, that nearly broke Donna's phone's speakers, and the sound of Martha screaming.

"Oh my God, they're inside the TARDIS," Donna whispered.

Colin got up, and began to pace. "What do we do?" he asked, panicking.

"Nothing yet," Donna said. "We need more information. Martha's left the line open on purpose. Just listen."

They heard the great boom of words, "Put down your weapon, miss! This will do you no good!"

"I can't," she said.

"Then we will force you to."

A rustle – footsteps, clothing, metal clanking a bit…

Then a minute's silence passed.

The same voice, that now seemed to be closer to Martha's phone asked, "Are you all right, miss?"

"I'm… I'm…" Martha said.

"No, it's best if you stay seated for now," the voice said. Then he seemed to speak to someone else. "How is he?"

A second voice, from probably across the room, said, "He's arresting."

"Doctor…" Martha said, her tone high and concerned.

"No," said the first, closer voice. "Stay where you are. I will let you know when to move."

The farther voice said, "Sir, you are not in any immediate danger. Now, I know this situation seems dire, but I need you to calm down, for your own sake. If you don't, this cardiac arrest will continue, and your life will be in jeopardy."

"What? Are these arseholes trying to help them?" Colin asked.

Donna shrugged.

A couple of minutes passed with no sound, then, the faraway voice said, "There now, up you come. On your feet, sir. How do you feel?"

"Like my home has been broken into by a hostile race with a Huilion Blast," the Doctor said. "But hey, at least I'm not in cardiac arrest anymore. Again. Still?"

The closer voice said, "You, on your feet as well."

Colin and Donna heard rustling, and assumed that Martha was standing up.

"Now," said the faraway voice, seemingly changing positions in the console room. "The two of you will be coming with us. Please approach the door, and allow yourselves to be handcuffed."

"I don't think we'll be doing that," the Doctor protested. "I was recently captured and held prisoner in the Kyriarch system – didn't care for it much."

"You have broken our laws – you can't stop it, sir," said the voice. "And if you try, well… you know what will happen. So, I recommend that you follow our instructions to the letter, and stay very, very calm."

"Get out," the Doctor growled. Demanded.

The unmistakable sound of a weapon being readied could be heard over the line. "Stand down, sir. You are on our territory, and you're a criminal."

"Do you know who I am?" the Doctor asked.

"It is not important right now."

"Oh, yes it is," he replied, with his low, angry tone, reserved for reminding his foe that he's the scourge of the universe's greatest scum, he's the Oncoming Storm, he's forced entire armies into retreat. "Because all you need to do is look me up. Just ask the Cybermen. Just ask the last…"

And then he seemed cut off again, with a choked cough.

"Do you see sir? It behooves one to comply," said the voice.

"Oh, no," Donna breathed.

"Doctor," they heard Martha say. "Don't trouble yourself. Let's just… go with them."

They heard the Doctor cough a few more times.

Then, Martha said, "Stop struggling, Doctor. I'm going with them without a fight. Don't make me go alone."

"Wise decision," said one of the voices. "Prepare to be cuffed."

That was when Martha finally was obliged to shut her phone, and cut off the call.

"Oh my God," Colin shouted.

"Shh," Donna reminded him. "There are… neighbours."

"I don't give a damn about the bloody neighbours! My cousin and her… whatever he is have just been taken prisoner!"

"Yeah. It happened last month, too, don't you remember? And they got out of it."

"So we do nothing?"

"No, not nothing… I just don't know what to do yet. It's still possible the Doctor will be able to contact us, with more information, and instructions," she said. "He's done it before. And if not, we'll work it out. We're not stupid."

Colin sighed, and stopped pacing. "You know what was creepy? Apart from, you know, the whole thing?"

"What?"

"How unflappable they were - the kidnappers, I mean. And all the you'd do well to keep calm stuff."

"Yeah, I agree, but it makes sense… if they know why the Doctor and Martha are having heart attacks all over the place, then, to avoid it, they would definitely want to keep everyone calm. At least for now."

Colin stood for a few moments, staring at nothing. Then he said, "Donna, can you ring the TARDIS again?"

"Yes, why?"

"I just want to hear it," he said.

"Okay," she said, confused, but dialling the odd combination of numbers, symbols and tones that would allow access to the TARDIS communication system, on a normal day. What they heard through the speakerphone was again, a low, ghostly groan.

"It's a sickly version of the sound the TARDIS usually makes, isn't it?"

"I suppose it is, yeah."

"And there's that pulse…" They listened for another few moments, and Colin reached for his own Smartphone, and said, "Don't cut it off."

He set the timer on his phone, and listened closely to the pulse for one minute. "What are you doing?" she asked.

He paused for sixty seconds, then pressed a button on his phone, ending the timer, and said, "One hundred beats per minute."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know," he said. "But it seems important somehow, like it's connected to something. Like it's something we need to know. Does that sound daft?"

"In the world of the Doctor? Not at all."

He sighed in exasperation, frustration at having some sort of knowledge just barely out-of-reach. "The TARDIS is felled for now – completely non-responsive, yeah? Its heart is beating at a particular rate, and the Doctor and Martha seem to get smacked down by some sort of… I dunno… cardiac mechanism, each time they get worked up. Their heart-rate rises and something bad happens."

"Cardiac mechanism?" she asked, standing up, excitedly. "That's a brilliant way of thinking of it! The same mechanism probably brought down the TARDIS! And one hundred beats per minute is probably the maximum heartrate they can reach, before they go into cardiac arrest."

He looked at her with wide eyes, and nodded. "D'you think we're onto something?"

"Maybe. Probably. Damn it, I wish we could ask the Doctor," she spat, sitting back down.

"Me, too, weirdly."

The Doctor and Martha were transported across an unforgiving terrain in some sort of bulky truck, with weapons held to their heads, and near-constant reminders to remain calm, or else. They were kept from talking to, looking at, or touching each other. And when they were allowed to exit the vehicle, it was into a large, black, looming building, devoid of character or warmth.

Their captors were all tall, some as tall, but most taller than the Doctor, and thinner (which was saying something). Over their very narrow heads, they wore what seemed to be a kind of rubber helmet, complete with large, dead-looking, dark glass eye-holes, and a sharp-looking grate over the mouth. The effect was eerie, and absolutely alien.

The Doctor was the first to be taken behind a key-padded door, with four members of the squad that had kidnapped them. Martha was told to wait.

So she waited.

And waited. And waited.

It felt like hours.

She waited in a black room, lit with one cold, fluorescent-like light above. She could hear nothing, see nothing except her immediate surroundings, and had no idea what was happening to the Doctor, nor what would happen to her. She assumed it would begin with some sort of interrogation… what that meant, though, remained to be seen.

After she'd been sitting for a bit, she got up and paced. But this agitated her, and ultimately, hurt her heart. So, she sat back down, and attempted to recite some sort of made-up mantra, that would keep her heartrate down.

When an eternity had passed, she heard a loud noise, and the door in front of her swung open harshly, and the four men who had gone through with the Doctor, now came back out. She noted that one of them was now carrying a weapon he hadn't had before. It looked like a spear, but could clearly see the tip was alive with blue sparks. Something like that would surely stimulate the heartbeat of the being on the receiving end… like a defibrillator.

"State your name," one of them said, loudly.

"Why?" she asked, defiantly.

"Do it," he demanded, as the man with the spear stepped toward her.

"Dr. Martha Jones," she said.

"Why won't your friend tell us who you are?"

"I don't know," she said. Though, she reckoned it was to protect her.

"Is it because you are like him?"

"Like him how?"

"What is your species?"

"I'm human," she said, almost with a shrug.

"Tell the truth!" he shouted, loud enough to startle her, and hurt her ears.

She felt her heartrate increase, and her chest tighten slightly.

"I'm telling the truth!" she shouted. "I'm human!"

"She's lying! Force her to reveal!"

Another man grabbed her harshly and shoved her against the wall by her throat. Terror overtook her, and she was seized with another cardiac event. She struggled to breathe, and to calm herself, as two of the men held her steady against a wall, and another took what looked like a pistol from a holster at his hip. He aimed it at her head, and a red light shone like a laser out the front.

She quickly realised she was being "scanned," in some manner, much as she was scanned on the moon by the Judoon. But for a moment, she panicked, and the more she did so, the tighter she was held… and the more severe the cardiac event

The man with the scanner said, "The thing is glitching. It won't read her species."

"Of course it will," barked the first man. "Do it again."

Martha was scanned again, though the man with the apparatus repeated, "It won't read."

"Idiot. Stand aside," the first man ordered, approaching Martha with an even bigger instrument, which, frankly, looked like an even bigger gun.

Her heart was seizing…

He fired the apparatus at her, and it emitted a green ring that enveloped her and then disappeared. He then seemed to look at the readings, and he said, "She's not one of them. She's not even from the same sector of the universe as he is."

At this point, all four men just stared at her confusedly as she bent at the waist, coughing, fighting against an assault on her cardiovascular system…

"Are you really human?" one of them asked her.

"Yes," she told them, her voice breaking with the strain of what was happening to her body.

"Fine. Well, what do we do with her?" another of them asked.

"Throw her in with him. I don't know where else to put her," said the first man.

"Forgive me, I meant, will we execute her along with him, or… something else?"

Her chest constricted to a nearly unbearable level…

"Well, the question will be moot, if we don't help her now. Shall we just let her die here?

Night had fallen. The Doctor and Martha had been rather brutally "processed" as prisoners of the Congress of Sercaton. They were, though, thankful for being held together, rather than apart, like the last time they were arrested/kidnapped.

However, they were still unable to become excited, upset, agitated, or generally emotive in any way.

Which was extremely daunting, because the whole situation was incredibly disturbing, in more ways than one.

The stone that constituted the walls of their cell was black and rough. It was like uncut cinderblocks had been heaved, one on top of the other, unevenly, until a kind of vaulted cave had been achieved. The walls weren't just rough, but also cold and damp, as was the floor. The only illumination offered was that of the moon, which happened to be waxing at half that night, through a singular window to the outside world. It was about three feet by four feet, and high enough up that the Doctor couldn't touch it, even with a running start and a big jump.

"Would you stop that?" Martha scolded. "You're going to kill yourself!"

He had tried twice to grab onto the window sill, to no avail.

"It's… completely… open…" he breathed, his chest constricting. "No… glass… no… screen…"

"But there are iron bars, Doctor," she reminded him. "And stop talking, you're exacerbating your heart attack."

"I've got one more go in me."

"No, you haven't! Now stop!"

The Doctor swore, realising she was right, and he acquiesced, in favour of regulating his heartrate.

And so, the window did not offer any hope of escape, but it did let in the cold during the night, most especially the wind.

The cell's door had a tiny window as well, that opened and closed only from the outside, and against one wall, there were what looked like two shelves, each meant for one humanoid. They were wooden, hard, damp like the rest of the place, and wholly uninviting.

They sat, side-by-side, their backs against the wall opposite the door, contemplating the situation they were in, and trying not to think about the fear.

"So, Sercaton," Martha said. "That's the name of this planet?"

"Yes," he said.

"You've been here before?"

"No," he said. "But I know about it because they ran afoul of the Gallifreyan High Council, years back, for their treatment of the masses."

"Is that why they hate you so much?"

"Yeah," he groaned. "Once again, the Time Lords are posthumously screwing me over. Once again, the non-meddlers meddled just enough to get themselves into trouble, and I'm the one who's got to pay for it."

"What treatment of the masses would that be?"

"Well, it might surprise you to know that a couple thousand years ago, a despotic ruler on this planet ensured that if anyone within the atmosphere of Sercaton were to allow their heartbeat to exceed a certain number of beats per minute, the heart begins to arrest, seize, eventually it explodes. There's a painful, ugly death that follows."

"That's what this is all about?"

"Yep," he confirmed. "It was put in place by Lubon the Terrible, to control the population, to keep it from becoming upset, revolting… getting all overthrow-y. And, as it happens, it keeps the population from doing any unauthorized reproduction."

"Imagine that," she said, flatly. "Do the people know what he did?"

"It's unclear," the Doctor said. "All that is known is that the populace is exceedingly docile, they reproduce only in laboratories, and only certain individuals are allowed to do so. For a long while, the heartbeat thing was believed to be in the DNA of the species, and then it was thought to be a quirk in the quantum physics of the planet itself."

"But the Time Lords worked it out?"

"They did," he sighed. "They detected the technology while a crew was on an exploration expedition. They touched down, probably had issues with their hearts like you and I have been having, then investigated a bit. When they realised what was happening, they alerted the Shadow Proclamation, which resulted in a big, ugly battle, causing the death of Sabron the Insane, whom the Sercatonians believed was a prophet."

"So, for this, they want to kill you?"

"Rubbish to be me, at times."

A contemplative pause, then, "Were you even alive when that battle took place?"

"Yes, but I was nowhere near it," he said. "By then, I'd already stolen my TARDIS and begun rebelling on the other side of the universe."

"Okay… Doctor, when we crashed, how did you not know where we were? It doesn't seem like there would be a lot of planets out there where heartrate is regulated this way."

"I was thinking about it all wrong," he said. "I was thinking it was something in the atmosphere, or a contagion that affected the TARDIS, then me, then you. I was thinking of a hierarchal virus or something or a really aggressive allergen. Not to mention, I'd heard five centuries, or so, ago that Sercaton had closed its atmosphere and airspace to all incoming craft and debris. I'd written it off as an inaccessible non-entity long-since. Also, my first priority was fixing the TARDIS – ninety per cent of my problem-solving powers were directed there."

A long silence passed, and then Martha wanted to know, "How did they find us? We had a perception filter working, didn't we? With the keys?"

"The keys are a weak filter, each meant for one humanoid," he said. "Not for an entire TARDIS. They gave us a boost, at best. And, Sercaton have a pretty sophisticated radar system these days, which is probably why they were able to open their atmosphere again. We were probably on it, the minute we entered their airspace – they came looking for us. The keys make us slightly harder to find, but not invisible."

"Damn it," she breathed. Another contemplative silence came over her, then, again, she began to ask questions. "But how do you do something like that? How can you give an entire population the same affliction without… wait, you said it's not a contagion of some sort?"

"It's the result of advanced, conscious biotechnology," he said. "I mean, no one knows for sure, but if I had to guess, I'd say, heavy saturation in the course of several years, coupled with airborne censors. They'll have these tiny things that can fly about and detect beats per minute, and they'd be able to use a certain quantum communicator to flood the planet's atmosphere over time. This would create a very strong 'norm,' and a very strong reaction to deviation from that norm."

"Wow," she mused. "That actually made sense to me."

He turned and looked at her for the first time since they'd sat down there on the floor, against the dank, moist wall. "That's because you're bloody brilliant."

"Right back at you, Doctor."

"And I shouldn't say this, but… you're bloody gorgeous, too."

She smiled. "Careful."

He sighed, and reached out for her hand. "Blimey, I wish we could comfort each other. I mean… better than this."

"I wish we could do a lot of things," she whispered.

"Well, hey, as long as we're wishing for things, I wish we hadn't come in such close proximity to the planet," he said. "And that it hadn't ensnared the TARDIS' heart function and caused her to crash-land. If I'd been paying more attention, we could have avoided all this rubbish, and could have been shagging on the bank of that Canadian lagoon for the past twenty-four hours…"

He inhaled, and caught his breath, now used to the sensation of his hearts warning him not to think of anything too titillating.

"Shh," she lulled, as he regulated his breathing.

After a few minutes, the Doctor picked up speaking again. "You know, the fact that we can't be properly together… I would have thought it would be awful, but it's worse than that. It's maddening. It's this righteous indignation that I feel… it's a violation…"

"Doctor, stop," she warned. "You're getting worked up again."

"But I wish that not being able to shag our brains out were the biggest of our worries," he said. "Because this lot, the Sercatonians, they don't just want to kill me. They'll want to make a big blooming spectacle out of ridding the universe of the stain of the Time Lords."

"Blimey. And they've got the last of the Time Lords right where they want him."

"Yep. Imprisoned, frightened, and unable to survive any sort of escape attempt."

Yeah, but well, we all know this is when the Doctor does his best work. Doesn't he? Well...?

Hope you're enjoying yourself with this story. Let me know in a review! :-)