"Easy!" the Doctor shouted, wincing at the grip on his arm as the guards led them away. "You'll bruise the leather!"
"Doctor…!" Rose hissed. He looked down at her and she nodded toward his jacket pocket.
"What?"
"Your credentials."
"It won't work. That photo looks nothing like me. It looked a bit like you, no offence, but an awful lot more like that gentleman over there, and... ah, right."
The Doctor was looking at an overweight, balding scientist who had just poked his head out of his office to see what the commotion was all about. It was the same door from which Rose had taken the Doctor's borrowed lab coat. The man heard what was said, looked around and put a hand to his shirt pocket where, noticeably, no ID badge hung.
"No! I mean the… the psychic paper," Rose whispered, furtively eyeing the guards walking alongside them.
The Doctor stared at her blankly for a moment before realization dawned. "Oh, right!" He stood up straight and pulled at the arm of the guard who held him. "Yes, credentials. I've got identification, very important identification. You'll want to see this!" he shouted back over his shoulder.
The two guards hesitated. The woman-in-charge was halfway down the hall, but she heard him. She stopped and sighed and turned back to them, gesturing for the guards to release the Doctor.
"If you had proper permission to be here, then you would not have had to break into my building," she said, "but any identification will be useful tomorrow, when we hand you over to the local police as a thief and a spy." She held out her hand, and he gave her the thin wallet, flipped open to a blank square of paper.
The woman glanced briefly at the card, read it, frowned, and then read it again. Her expression twisted from one of mild annoyance to one of extreme disgust as she read aloud, "Compliance Evaluation and Investigative Services Department, Office of Occupational Safety and Health Administration," she read aloud. "I was not aware that OSHA would be conducting a review."
"Well, you know how things are," the Doctor said, quickly plucking the psychic paper back again before she could look too carefully at it. "Can't give you too much time to hide the incriminating documents, can we? As I said before, I'm the Doctor, investigator, and this is Rose Tyler, my assistant." Rose cleared her throat. "Ah, I mean, my very personal assistant," he corrected, smiling at her as if he had made some sort of improvement.
"And if I might ask, who you are? You're not wearing a badge." He turned his attention back to the woman-in-charge.
"I do not wear identification because I do not need to identify myself," she said, angrily. "I am Chelsey McNeil. Doctor Chelsey McNeil, Head of Projects for all of Gateway." After a moment, she nodded to the security guards who took their hands off of Rose as well. "It strikes me as being very late for an OSHA review."
"You all are still up." The Doctor smiled. Dr. McNeil did not.
"Still, it is a very inconvenient time for us," she said quickly. "Deadlines coming due, people out sick, but if you would be so good as to contact my assistant in the morning, I'm sure I'll be able to work you in. We simply don't have the staff available to show you around tonight."
"Oh, no need to bother about us," the Doctor said, matching McNeil's exaggerated politeness. "We can find our own way around."
The Daleks could have learned a thing or two from the woman's cold stare. "You'll want to see the Personnel files first," she said, with the icy air of a glacier. "This way." She turned and began walking without waiting for them to follow.
"Whatever you're looking or, you will not find it here," McNeil told them as they made their way through the wide halls of Gateway. "Nothing goes on in this building that I do not know about, and I assure you that our workers are in absolutely no danger whatsoever!"
"If that is true, then you have no reason to object to our investigation," the Doctor said, but he felt a strange sizzle in the air and looked searchingly at the walls. If there was no danger, then why was the hair on the back of his neck standing on end?
.
Dr. McNeil led the Doctor and Rose to a large, glass-walled conference room overlooking what had once been the old hospital's commissary. The kitchen had been closed off, replaced with a bank of automated food service equipment. The eating space was filled with whiteboards, long tables and a long wall of computer banks humming away in sleep mode. During the day, the room would be filled with the various project managers leading team meetings and moral building exercises. In the middle of the night, the place was as empty and silent as a tomb. Four students sat silently around a table, resting their eyes and drinking their coffee, looking as grey and sickly as the walking dead.
Several unrolled diagrams had been left on a table and, as they passed by, the Doctor stopped to look over the work.
"Dr. Davis's plans for a..."
"Hydraulic crane," the Doctor said. "The design is remarkably compact."
"Indeed." Dr. McNeil gave him a hard look. "We anticipate that the energy output will be..."
"Not nearly as much as you hope." He shook his head and pointed to three of the joints. "The steel isn't nearly strong enough to hold up under the pressures you're expecting here and here. Somebody fudged their math a bit. How long has this project been going on?"
"Nearly eight months," Dr. McNeil said, angrily. "We've spent nearly four million dollars in grant money developing that design."
The Doctor shook his head. "You'll want to get your money back on that one," he said. "Still, a good try."
McNeil was staring hard at the design. Rose elbowed the Doctor in the side. "Ah, right. Personnel was this way?"
They walked on, up an open flight of stairs and to a door. Dr. McNeil showed them into the conference room. "You'll be able to access Gateway's employment records from here," she said, gesturing to a large table and several chairs that surrounded it.
Rose guessed that this was as good a time as any to slip away. "Dr. McNeil, I wonder if I might just use the 'little girls' room' while you're having the files brought in. No sense waiting until we're knee deep in paperwork, eh?"
The woman looked at her with amusement. "Paperwork? How quaint." She pressed her hand to the table and a large screen lit up, hovering just above the faux wood surface. It glowed pale green and displayed a rotating diamond-shaped logo in blue and yellow above the words "Gateway Institute - Your Gateway to Worlds Beyond".
"Personnel department," Dr. McNeil said to the computer in a loud, clear voice, "employee profiles, Delta level entry."
The electronic imitation of the book pages being flipped passed swiftly from one end of the table to the other. The default screen disappeared, and a cascade of several dozen electronic profiles fluttered across the display.
"This is all of your employees?" the Doctor asked, swiping his finger over the screen, sifting through the files.
"As many as your clearance will allow you to review," McNeil said. "Most of our work is classified. We supply several government and military contracts…"
"You would be very surprised at what I have clearance for," the Doctor said.
He aimed his sonic screwdriver at the display and a dozen more profiles flipped onto the virtual pile. Including Dr. McNeil's own. She glared at him but said nothing. Rose hoped that she had finally decided that the Doctor was a problem too far above her pay grade. She hoped, but she didn't really believe it. Chelsey McNeil did not seem the sort of woman to let a problem go unattended.
"I think I'll have a look for that rest room now," Rose said quietly, inching toward the door. She did not like the way Dr. McNeil looked at her, as if the Head of Projects were conducting an employee review that Rose was destined to fail.
Dr. McNeil pinched one of several buttons on the lapel of her suitcoat. "Jonathon, bring two visitors' badges to the Apollo conference room. We have guests." She turned back to Rose. "Once you have your badge, you may move about the building freely. Or, as freely as your clearance will allow," she added with a meaningful glance at the Doctor. "I think that you will find it not nearly as extensive as you imagine."
With that, the Head of Gateway Institute turned on her sensible heels and left them. "You don't suppose she's lying?" she asked the Doctor once the door had closed and they were alone again.
"Of course she's lying," he said, still searching the computer files. "She's an executive. Tell the truth and get your funding cut. You can bet Dr. Davis will be out on the curb first thing in the morning. I imagine he's known for a long time now that his project was doomed, been squirreling away cash and updating his CV, just waiting for the axe to drop."
"I meant, do you think that she's lying about letting us wander around, asking questions?"
"Why don't you find out?"
Rose shook her head and leaned over the table. The profiles were basic, names and education, project title and a summary that was as good as Greek to her. She sighed and was glad when the conference room door finally opened and a young man in a suit and tie entered. His almond skin and smooth brown hair were nearly the same color, and Rose smiled at him, but his eyes darted into every corner of the room; it was not until he has assured himself that Dr. McNeil was not present that he seemed to relax, slightly, and to begin breathing again.
"You're Jonathan, right?" she asked, encouragingly.
"Dr. McNeil's personal secretary, ma'am" he said, handing her a white, plastic ID badge emblazoned with the Gateway logo. "Your badge, please, ma'am. You'll have to wear it visible at all times. And your badge, sir," he said, holding out a second ID card to the Doctor. "You'll have to wear it visible at all times, sir…"
"Yes, yes. I heard. Put it there," the Doctor said, engrossed in the files.
"Right, sir. Good evening, sir."
Jonathan turned to go, but the Doctor stood up suddenly and stopped him. "Wait, you there. Jonny-boy."
"Jonathan, sir. Yes, sir?" The man was shaking so badly that Rose felt sorry for him. Dr. McNeil was some sort of boss to have that effect on a person, but the Doctor didn't seem to notice.
"This place, Gateway Institute, what is it?" he asked.
"Sir?"
"What do you all do here?"
"It's a research lab, sir. Surely you've heard of us. Everyone on Earth has heard of Gateway. People wait for years just to interview at this place. Sir."
"Yes, research, but what kind of research? You must have a specialty."
"We do, sir."
"And?" the Doctor prodded impatiently.
Jonathan smiled. "Everything," he said, and then left them.
The Doctor stared at the door. "Everything!?" he muttered. "Give me your phone." Rose did, and he plugged the device into the tabletop display. "I'm downloading the employee records. You'll need them."
"Great. For what?"
He tossed her back the phone. "You're going to interview the staff. There's three hundred and twenty women and men working at the institute. Most of them will have gone home for the night, but there's no point in wasting time. Still… You should be careful. And you'll need this." He tossed her the wallet containing the psychic paper.
"Aren't you coming?"
He shook his head. "I've got better things to do than questioning a bunch of foolish, over-evolved apes."
"Thank you!"
The Doctor looked up at her. "I'm sorry, Rose. Really, I am, but there's something going on here. Something much bigger than safety violations or grant forgery. That stasis sphere may not have been very advanced, but a time loop that grows a tree back into a seed should not exist on this world. And the air," he stood up and waved his arms around. "The air is all wrong, don't you feel it!?"
Rose shook her head. She didn't feel anything but the cold breeze of the air conditioner. "I'll ask around," she told him. "If there's something strange going on, someone must have seen something."
"I think that someone already did, or will do," he said, looking back at the table display. "We still don't know why our mystery woman was screaming."
"You don't think they would..."
"I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong and there is no mystery woman. Maybe the sound we heard was feedback from the Tardis engines reflecting off an anomaly in the Time Vortex."
"But that's not what you think," Rose said.
"No, that's not what I think, but it is what I hope. Be careful, Rose." He sat down again at the table and began flipping through the employee profiles once again. Rose turned to go, but hesitated at the door. "You'll be careful, too, Doctor, won't you?" she asked, but he didn't hear her. He was paging through the electronic files, reading at lightning speed.
.
Rose walked the halls of Gateway, listening to the sound of her own boots clicking against the tile floor. She had yet to exceed the bounds of whatever Chelsey McNeil thought her clearance level should be, but that wasn't for lack of trying. Every door but the exits had a card reader, and no locked door had responded to her guest's badge. It was the middle of the night and most of the halls were empty; she had only passed one employee in her search, and he had ignored her fake credentials and ducked behind a locked door. It was just as well, the psychic paper insisted on calling her the doctor's Very Personal Assistant.
"You're supposed to show people what I want them to see," she muttered, slapping the wallet against her hip. She had been determined to prove herself after she left the conference room. This place was no space station. There were no killer mannequins or gas-lamp ghosts. This should have been the easiest mystery they had investigated and yet, she was going to be beaten by a screwdriver and a stack of electronic filing.
She watched the janitor pass by, slowly pushing his broom down the hall, and then stepped up to another closed door. She swiped her badge over the sensor. Buzz. Error. No luck. She read the nameplate over the door: Fred Dvoratrelunda, Theoretical Linguistics, Alzarian Id Project.
The Doctor would know what that meant.
Rose was about to turn away when she heard a man shouting across the hall. She had all but given up finding anyone working so late but turned around to see the opposite door thrown open and a young woman stumble out into the hall, dropping file folders as she went. Red-headed and Hispanic, the woman clutched an armload of clipboards to her chest and had a role of schematic paper tucked under each elbow.
The man shouted after her, "Did I ask for the blue file!? No! Are you deaf, woman?! The red file! The red file! What am I supposed to do with this rubbish!?" A flurry of pale blue papers flew out of the room. "I put in for a new assistant, not the damn maid! Now, GO! Pick up that mess and GET ME MY FILES!"
The young woman winced as the door was slammed shut in her face. "Pendejo," she muttered. She was about to kneel down to pick up the thrown papers when she saw Rose standing nearby, listening. The woman ducked her head, embarrassed, and quickly began gathering up the files.
Rose knelt down to help. "Don't let him get to you," she said in what she hoped was a reassuring voice. "I had a boss like that once. A real git. His life was miserable, and he was always taking it out on other people." She handed the woman a stack of disheveled papers. "You alright, then?"
The woman nodded. "I'm Rose." Rose held out her hand. "Rose Tyler."
She hesitated a moment before she took it. "Carmen," she said. "Carmen Santiago Ortiz. You don't have to be nice to me. I'm an intern."
"You're still a human being. He shouldn't treat you like that." Rose frowned. "Did you say, San Diego? As in..."
Carmen scowled. "Santiago," she said briskly, "and yes, I have heard all the jokes. But Dr. Kuri is brilliant. He oversees some of the most important projects at Gateway. He's just… it's his way, you know. Brilliant men are always pushing other people around, Micky said. But I'm just an intern. I go where they tell me. Anyway, I'm only working with him until they can fine a replacement for Micky… I mean Mia... Dr. Chen. She worked with him for almost eight months and he hardly ever shouted at her." She tried to laugh.
"Is she on vacation, then?" Rose asked with a smile. "Gone someplace warm?"
"No. I don't know. She's just... gone." Carmen looked away. "They say she resigned."
"But you don't think she did?"
"She wouldn't leave without..." Her eyes narrowed and she looked at Rose with suspicion. "Who are you, anyway? You're not a student. Why are you asking so many questions?"
"This is a research facility, aren't people supposed to ask questions?" The woman stood up and turned to go, but Rose pulled out the psychic paper and showed her what she hoped were official credentials. "No, sorry! Look, I'm here with the Doctor. We're here to help."
"OSHA?" Carmen frowned as she read the card. "Don't you guys investigate ergonomic chairs and whether the eyewash stations are working?"
"The Doctor tends to dig a bit deeper than that." Rose hesitated, because having a jerk for a boss wasn't the sort of thing the Doctor would take an interest in, but a missing woman was. "You don't think that Mia resigned, do you? You think something happened to her."
"She wouldn't leave without telling me. I'm sorry, I have to go. Dr. Kuri will start yelling again if I don't get his files." It wasn't just Dr. Kuri that Carment was afraid of. Rose could see she was looking anxiously around her just as Jonathon had done. She thought that they were being watched.
"Whatever is going on, you can tell me," Rose said, lowering her voice. "Please, let us help you."
"I don't need your help. I need to do my job," Carmen said. "An internship at Gateway will get me accepted to any college. I'll have twenty job offers within a week of getting out of this place! Mia Chen resigned. She left Gateway and went back to Iowa to look after her kid brother. Now, I've got to get back to work." She left Rose and hurried away down the hall, balancing the mess of papers in her arms.
Rose watched her go, unhappy and twice as suspicious as she had been before. They were looking for a woman in trouble, after all, and if Mia Chen had not resigned, if she really were missing and in danger, then maybe, just maybe, Rose had discovered their mystery screamer after all. She stepped up to the door that Carmen had rushed out of and read the nameplate.
"Dr. Markus Kuri-Hunt, Paleomagnetism… No project title?" Rose frowned, thinking of the missing Mia Chen, Dr. Kuri's former assistant. "What are you working on, Dr. Kuri?"
She stepped back again, unwilling to risk catching the wrathful Dr. Kuri's attention. She might still thank him, though, for something else that he had said. Gateway may be a prestigious institute, so important that even a beaten down intern like Carmen would fight to protect its reputation, but there was always one person in any company too low on the totem pole to care about keeping up appearances.
Not far away, she found the old janitor still pushing his broom, and she didn't need psychic paper to get him talking. A pretty girl willing to listen was all the encouragement he needed to fill her in on all that he had seen in the halls of Gateway.
