Nothing in the Doctor Whoniverse belongs to me, except a couple pencils and a coffee mug that I left in the UNIT employee breakroom. It's mine, and I want it back, sir! You can keep the pencils.
"Okay, so that door leads to the east service stairwell," Andrew said, crouching down behind a hedge of boxwood and pointing through a gap between two branches. "The guards only walk it at the beginning and end of every shift, so we should have…" Andrew checked the time on his phone, "about fifteen minutes before the next crew takes over. That's if they haven't doubled the shift since your last visit."
"I don't see a door handle," Rose said. "How do we get inside?"
"You get someone to let you in." He grinned at her. "There is no handle. That's why security doesn't bother with it."
The hedge overlooked a slate-gray apron and cement loading bay behind the Gateway Complex. The huge truck doors were closed tight and locked up for the night, and the only movement was a plastic bag rolling like a tumbleweed across the asphalt. A smaller, narrow door stood at the nearest corner, dwarfed by the loading doors. The single light above it was burned out, but Rose could make out cigarette cartons and butts scattered like fallen leaves on the ground. The door was probably a high traffic area during regular business hours, but for now, it appeared to be deserted.
"What about the cameras?" the Doctor asked. At the top of a tall post behind them was a tower of black cameras, their glowing red lights like a dozen eyes watching every angle of the loading bay.
"There's no deliveries tonight," Andrew said. "Probably. So, no one'll be watching the cameras out here… hopefully. Look, you wanted a way in. This is the weakest point in Gateway's security, unless you want to spend a few weeks casing the joint, maybe hire a professional team to take out the cameras… and the alarms… and the auto-lockdown function on the doors and elevators. It's up to you." He looked the Doctor in the eye – not an easy thing to do with a nine-hundred year old Time Lord - and shrugged.
The Doctor looked away first. They didn't have time to think of a better plan.
Rose nodded to Andrew. "We'll do it. But hurry. You said we've only got fifteen minutes to shift change."
"Less now," Andrew said. He smiled and winked at her. "Back in a few." And then he was running along the hedge in an awkward, doubled-over crouch to avoid the eyes of the cameras until he reached the front again.
The Doctor waited until the man was out of sight before he muttered, "I saw that."
"Saw what?" Rose asked, innocently.
He scoffed. "He's cute, that one."
"I didn't notice." She smiled, pretending to adjust the laces on her shoe.
"I saw that, too!"
"Saw what?"
The Doctor fumed, Rose grinned, and the second ticked slowly by.
"Great innovators, the Chinese," the Doctor said absently after awhile. "The Great Firewall… that would have been in 2031." He laughed. "Did I ever tell you about the time the Tardis landed inside the royal bathhouse inside the Forbidden City? It was in 1502, if I remember right, and the emperor had just…"
"Doctor?" Rose interrupted. He looked at her, she covered his mouth with her hand. "Hush!" He smiled, and she smiled, and they both turned their eyes back to watch the loading bay. Half a minute later, the service door opened and Andrew beckoned them inside.
"There he is! Let's go."
They walked as casually as they could across the gravel lot, over the cigarette butts, and through the door. There was no outcry, no sudden sirens blaring. Rose considered it a rousing success.
"We've only got a few minutes," Andrew said once the door was closed behind them. "I saw a few of the guys in the reception area. They're all watching the game. The US team made it to the semifinals World Series in Egypt this year, which is lucky for us. Even on alert, the guards will be preoccupied with the game, and they won't patrol on the basement level. We have to hurry." He started down the stairs.
"Yes," the Doctor agreed. "Rose, you and Andrew will head downstairs. Keep an eye on Carmen. Keep an eye on that lab, and if Dr. Kuri is around, whatever you do, don't let that man touch a single button on that damned machine. Any fluctuation in the energy field could blow us all out of existence…"
"What are you talking about?" Andrew said, staring at him. "Dr. Kuri's equipment may not pass an official inspection, but it's not going to blow up."
"Oh, you've checked, have you?" the Doctor jeered. "Had a bit of a poke around all the nooks and crannies?"
"I have, actually," he said, crossing his arms. The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Two weeks ago, before Mia went missing, I had a look 'round the place. I was worried about her and we were running a load bank test on the primary support systems so the machines were all turned down for the night," he explained to Rose. "None of the scientists can run their equipment during a test, so the lab was deserted. Dr. Kuri's power converter is a bit more spit-and-chewing gum that I'd recommend in an industrial setting, but it's not dangerous."
"Ha!" the Doctor said, throwing up his hands. "What do you know?"
"You think I'd let my sister work on that thing if it was?"
Andrew's anger and grief added weight to his words. Rose winced, and even the Doctor had the decency to look embarrassed by what he'd said. "I'm sorry. I didn't think… but you're only an electrician. You can't possibly understand the advanced technology that went into-"
"Only the electrician?" Andrew said, shaking his head. "I'll admit I only had to dumb down my qualifications a bit for the HR rep, but you don't think that an electrician at Gateway Institute goes around resetting tripped circuit breakers and changing out light bulbs? I've got to troubleshoot just about every piece of equipment in this building. I've debugged mass spectrometers, DNA synthesizers, Nano wave frequency radiators… Mia wasn't the only prodigy in our family."
"Yes, alright," the Doctor said, "I get the picture. But you need to understand that, whatever it looks like, whatever that machine used to be, it is dangerous now. And Carmen is being held in the energy field, remember. The barrier that is keeping her alive is adding an extra strain on the system. Any change in the power levels could overload the generator and cremate the woman inside. So, you two get down there and keep an eye out. I've got one or two things to pick up."
"You're joking, right. The basement level will be deserted, but there are a dozen guards upstairs. If they see you…"
"I'll just have to make sure that they don't." The Doctor nodded to Rose and then started jogging up the stairs. At first, they could hear his footsteps echoing, and then a door opened far above their heads, opened and closed, and then they heard nothing.
Andrew looked at Rose. "If they catch him…"
"They won't," she said with more confidence than she felt, but it was enough to convince him. He sighed and started down the stairs ahead of her; Rose guessed that he was beginning to wonder what he had gotten himself into. She wondered whether he would ask or decide that he'd rather not know.
.
The Doctor ran up the stairs to the second floor, looked through the narrow window to make sure the coast was clear, and then dashed out into the dark hallway, running as fast as he could. He reached the far end, opened the broom closet door, and then... closed it again. He looked around the hall. "No tree," he muttered. "There's no tree here."
He sighed and spun around again, jogging back down the hall a few yards before he skidded to a halt. A yellow flashlight beam was playing over the walls at the far end. He heard footsteps and then voices approaching.
"C'mon, Frank, it's just storerooms down there. Nothing but test tubes and microscope slides."
"Boss-lady says to check everywhere, so we go everywhere."
The Doctor scowled. "Can't ignore the boss-lady just this bloody once," he muttered. He picked a door and aimed the sonic screwdriver at the lock. He ducked through it and out of sight just before the guards turned the corner. The room was full of metal shelves and filing cabinets. The Doctor leaned against the door, listening as two pairs of heavy boots marched closer and every doorknob was jiggled along the way.
"You really think some corporate spy made it past the security checks out front?" the first voice said.
Another door, another knob jiggling. The Doctor looked down at the handle of the door he hid behind and realized that it hadn't locked behind him. He fumbled through his pocket for the sonic screwdriver.
"Nah, it's just another drill. Who'd be stupid enough to break into this place?"
The Doctor heard the boots stop in front of his door. If he used the sonic now, they might hear it; if they found the door unlocked, they would certainly be suspicious and investigate. He waited, the seconds ticking by.
"You're right," the second voice said finally. "This is a waste of time. I hear the first floor, south corner coffee bar always has a few muffins left over at the end of the day."
"Blueberry?"
"There's only one way to find out."
"I've got a pocket viewer, we can catch the third inning before it's time to check the east end doors..."
The Doctor sighed as the voices retreated back down the hall. He waited an extra minute to make sure the men were gone before he slipped out the door. It didn't sound like the guards patrol had made it down the Tardis's hall. they would certainly have spotted the bloody great tree trunk sticking out of the wall if they had.
.
Rose opened the basement door slowly and looked out. Andrew had assured her that there would be no guards, but she wasn't so sure. Dr. McNeil had seemed very angry with them, and she knew that the lab was vulnerable now. Rose didn't think that the woman was the sort to make the same mistake twice.
"The coast is clear," she said, stepping out into the hall. If anything, this part of the basement was even dirtier than the dusty corridor leading to Dr. Kuri's lab. Her shoes left scuff marks half an inch deep in dust bunnies and there were no other footprints besides their own.
Andrew looked around then pointed left. "That way," he said, "I think." They started walking, slowly, and the thick dust muffled their footsteps as they went along. "So, your doctor used to work here or something?" he said after they had passed the first intersection without any trouble.
"Why would you think that?" Rose said, looking at him sideways.
"He said he's got some equipment upstairs. Gateway has an ownership agreement with all their employees. You build it at Gateway, it belongs to them. There's been lawsuits, of course, but no one's ever won. How else would he know what's up there? I doubt that even Dr. McNeil knows what all is stored up there."
Bet she knows there's trees in time-loop stasis, Rose thought bitterly, but she said, "He never worked here. We just arrived. Our ship is parked upstairs." They reached a corner, and Rose looked carefully around it. Still no guards.
"Ship? There's not even a lake for ten miles…"
"Um, yeah." Rose sighed. "It's a spaceship. This way?" She took a left down the hall. The Doctor was right, Andrew was cute, but she just wasn't in the mood to explain everything all over again. It was just too much work for too much risk, especially after the disaster that was Adam Mitchell.
.
The Doctor stood in the Tardis equipment store room surrounded by crates and boxes. He opened one, looked over the contents and then tossed it aside. He stared at the cluttered around him, wires and gadgets everywhere. He'd been meaning to clean up this room for a few decades now but had never found the time. Why hadn't he made time!?
He pulled out another, much larger crate and upended it onto the floor. A Movellan laser gun fell out, and a stray blaster charge burst past his ankle ricocheted off the wall and burnt a hole in the ceiling.
"I'll fix that," he muttered. "I swear, I'll fix that... someday." He reached for another crate and kept searching.
.
Rose and Andrew stood around the corner from Dr. Kuri's lab. The guard on the lab door, however, had not moved an inch since they had arrived and seen him standing there. There was no sign of activity inside the lab; the light from the energy field shone through the gap in the doors and now and then, Rose heard a noise, like a giant bug zapper burning its prey, but there were no voices and no sign of anyone going in or out.
"Maybe Dr. Kuri's gone home for the night," she said.
Andrew frowned. "Mia used to say that he practically sleeps in his office. If your doc's right, and he's using Carmen for a human guinea pig, he's not going far. He'll want to make the most of her while he's got her."
Rose nodded. "Even if he's not in the lab, we can't do anything while that guard's standing there. Could you set off an alarm or something, get him to leave?"
"Any noise is more likely to bring more guards down here than get that one upstairs. They're waiting for you, remember. But maybe you could, you know, distract him?"
"Doing what, exactly? No, don't answer that. Even if I did distract him, so what? You get to slip into the lab and I get arrested. That doesn't exactly help our plan, does it?"
"You could stun him," he suggested.
"With what? My stunning good looks?"
"You've got a spaceship," he said, with more accusation to his tone than belief, "and you're telling me you don't have some sort of laser gun or stun beam that could knock the guy out? What kind of aliens are you?"
"The Doctor's an alien. I'm not," Rose said. "Why does everyone always think I'm an alien! And no, I don't have a stun gun. I wish I did. I wish the Doctor were here. He'd know what to do. What's taking him so long?" She bit her lip anxiously and looked over Andrew's shoulder at the guard.
.
The Doctor carefully locked the closet door and then jogged back down the hall, the fist-sized field-interface stabilizer heavy in his hand. It wasn't the Tardis's own device, but a smaller version that he had been tinkering with over the years. The Tardis stabilizer was large enough to generate its own small gravity field; it had to be to transport something as large as the Tardis – or as large as the Tardis would be if it existed in real space.
He jogged past the elevator toward the service stairs. The two guards he had nearly met before were not the only ones, and it was just possible that some other patrol would decide that the second floor were more interesting than blueberry muffins and baseball. His hand was on the doorknob when he felt the tingle at the back of his neck and hesitated. The hall was silent, no sound of voices or footsteps. He hadn't heard the chime of the elevator or the whoosh of its doors opening, but when he turned around, he saw a woman walking away as if she had just stepped out of the lift. She didn't see him; she was too busy juggling an armload of files and rolled up paper. Her auburn hair and ghostly white blouse were familiar to the Doctor, but it wasn't until she turned down the hall that led to the Tardis's closet that he caught a glimpse of her face and recognized her as the woman in the energy field.
The Doctor knew better than to shout. He knew better than to believe that this was the real Carmen Ortiz, too. The shimmer around the edges of her clothes was a dead giveaway. He knew an echo in time when he saw one.
There were precious few minutes before the next security patrol, but the Doctor jogged back down the hall, following the ghost. He reached the corner in time to see it lift its hand and pass a translucent card over the lock of one of the many doors. The lock, of course, couldn't read a card that was not there, but Carmen's echo pulled the door handle anyway and stepped through the door.
The Doctor turned and ran for the stairwell. He didn't have to wait until the echo re-emerged from the locked room. He didn't need to see what happened next. The barrier between the time field and the real world was disintegrating faster than he had anticipated, space was disintegrating along the edges and allowing things to slip through. Time was literally running out.
.
Rose checked the time on her phone and shook her head. "It's been fifteen minutes already, what's keeping him!" She looked back around the corner at the guard. The man hadn't moved more than to scratch his nose. "I suppose it's too much to hope he'll have to pee soon," she muttered.
Andrew crouched down in front of her, also looking at the guard. "You could tie up your shirt, show a little skin, walk past him and then… bam! I hit him on the back of the head."
"With what?" Rose asked, tiredly. This was the fourth variation of the same plan that she'd heard from him.
Andrew looked around, but there were no convenient heavy pipes or forgotten maintenance tools at hand. He pulled off his shoe and held it up. Rose stared at him, and he sighed. "Yeah, probably not." He put his shoe back on. "Well, what're we gonna do? You're doctor's not here and we can't get into the lab."
"Would this help?"
Rose looked down at something boxy and white that looked more like a cardboard model of what someone thought looked like alien weaponry than an actual weapon. Andrew was standing in front of her, but the arm that offered her the gun came from behind and was wrapped in a very familiar leather sleeve.
"Doctor!" She turned and threw her arms around him.
"Hush! We've got company, I take it. How many."
"One guard on the door. No sign of Dr. Kuri or Dr. McNeil yet, and the lab has been quiet. Well, mostly quiet. What took you so long?"
The Doctor scoffed and laughed and looked away.
"You found it, didn't you? Don't tell me you couldn't find the stabilizer!"
"I found it," he said, pushing in front of Andrew to get a look around the corner. "…was in my spare coat pocket…" he muttered under his breath. Rose heard, and smiled with relief, but she said nothing.
"Is that a laser gun?" Andrew said, reaching for the weapon in the Doctor's hand.
"No, it is a stun gun," the Doctor said, slapping his hand away, "not for playing with." He cradled the weapon in one hand and ran his fingers over it. The look in his eyes was haunted and gleaming. "It has a kill setting, of course…"
Rose winced as she remembered how easily he had raised that massive arm cannon in van Staten's underground complex, how readily he aimed it at the Dalek. Sure, the creature had killed more than a dozen men and women and had very nearly killed Rose, too, but the Doctor was no killer. He had been anxious and upset; van Statten's people had tortured him and the Daleks had killed all his people. He'd had every reason to be angry. Hadn't he? And it wasn't as if he had actually killed the Dalek.
Still, she didn't like the way he was looking at that gun. She put out her hand slowly, reaching for the weapon, but he shot her a look that was cold and hard and gone in an instant. "Not a toy," he said, "not for playing with." He turned a dial on base of the handle and, before Rose could stop him, stepped around the corner and fired.
.
Marcel wasn't the brightest bulb in the pack, but even a place as prestigious as Gateway needed a few people who believed that the almighty paycheck came before the pursuit of knowledge. People like that only asked one question, and it wasn't as if Marcel believed the whispers that the old hospital was haunted. The basement job was double-pay, and all he had to do was not look behind him.
That was the easy part. He didn't want to look behind. The room sounded less like a laboratory, with its quiet hum of equipment and clicking of keyboards, and more like a distant forest fire, crackling and burning and creeping closer. As long as Marcel didn't look down, he couldn't see the red lights flickering through the gap under the door, and he had no reason to imagine that they were tongues of fire licking at the heels of his boots…
He stood, staring straight ahead, focused on the long, empty corridor, and on either side, more long, empty corridors. It was a simple job, and after a couple more hours he could take his padded paycheck home where he had a videoscreen set to records the night's game and a fancy frozen pizza, one of the good ones that cost twice as much as delivery. As long as none of the guys spoiled the game ending for him. He'd have to leave by the back door to avoid the watercooler chatter…
"Oi, you there!"
Marcel stood up straight and almost saluted; it was the kind of voice that did that to you, a voice that could raise an army. Marcel caught himself quick enough and turned toward the man striding toward him down the hall. He wore leather and denim – not an employee, then – and he was holding a strange, boxy device like a supermarket barcode reader. Marcel raised his standard issue neural-taser, but he wasn't fast enough.
.
Before Rose could make a sound, the Doctor stepped around the corner, aimed his weapon and fired. There was a soft thud as the guard hit the floor. The Doctor shuddered, and Rose snatched the stun gun from his hand. She gave him a look that said they would talk about this later and ran to the guard's prone body. She checked his neck for a pulse and his head for injuries; yes to the first, no to the second. Actually, the man seemed to be snoring peacefully. A little drop of spittle was gathering at the corner of his mouth. Rose looked up at the Doctor, about to be angry, when a much louder snort escaped the guard's lips.
"He's asleep?" she said, accusingly.
"I might have made a few adjustments to the stun mechanism," the Doctor said. "At least he won't have a splitting headache when he wakes up in a few hours." He held open the lab doors. "Bring sleeping beauty."
Rose frowned at him. Van Statten's people had tortured and experimented on the Doctor; it was only natural for him to feel a bit touchy when it came to underground bunkers and lab rats. She took the guard by the arms and Andrew carried the man's legs. The Doctor held the door for them while they dragged him inside and set him up in the corner out of the away.
Andrew stood up, wiping the dust off his hands, and then he turned around and caught sight of the pulsing energy field and the woman suspended inside. "Good god…" he whispered. "It wasn't like this when I…" He shook his head. "Mia really went into that thing?"
Rose stood up, trying not to look at poor Carmen. She had seen enough the last time she was here. She touched Andrew's hand. "I'm sorry," she said. What else could she say?
The Doctor glanced at them both then headed up the low stairs to the computer controls. He had the stabilizer in one hand and took the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket with the other. He lay on his back under the main interface and opened up the access panel. Rose left Andrew's side and went to stand at the bottom of the stairs where she could look up and watch the Doctor work.
"Can you do it?" she asked.
"If I had an hour and a sack of equipment that won't be invented for another hundred and fifty years," he said, touching a wire and pulling his hand back as sparks few. "I should have brought the welding spanner. Your boy there is right, and this thing was put together with duct tape and a prayer. Keep an eye on Carmen, will you. What color's the time field? Is it blue? Blue would be bad right now. Very bad."
Reluctantly, Rose looked up at the energy field. It wasn't blue. It was still the same yellow, red and orange fire that it had been before. Carmen was still hanging, frozen in the center, falling backwards… but no. Rose stared at her and tried to remember. Carmen wasn't the same. Her back was still arched as if she were falling, but her arms were no longer thrown out in front of her. Now, her right arm seemed to reach sideways, stretching out toward the edge of the energy field. Even her face, now that Rose knew to look more carefully, seemed to have turned half an inch to the right. And yet, Rose could not shake the feeling that the woman's eyes were on her.
"Doctor, she's moved."
"Not possible," he said, his voice muffled by the electrical wiring. "It's just a trick of the light."
"Um, no… No it isn't, Doctor. She's definitely moved. Look!"
He swore under his breath and raised his head above the computer banks. He looked at Carmen, and then looked again. His eyes narrowed as he saw the thick leather watchband around her outstretched wrist. It all made perfect sense, if you believed in one hell of a coincidence. Or if you could believe that Carmen was more than just some intern at a research facility, that she might actually be a–
"Look, she's trying to get out," Andrew said, interrupting the Doctor's thoughts. "Can she get out? I mean, can she get herself out?"
"Yes, maybe." The Doctor shook his head. He didn't have time to explain. He ducked down into the computer again and began pulling out wires with a fervor. "If we had a year or two, if she could hold out long enough, she might be able to claw her way out of there, but these circuits won't hold for more than an hour at the rate they're burning power."
"An hour?" Rose said. "That's enough time, isn't it?"
"Yes," the Doctor said. "Maybe." He didn't add that once he plugged the field-interface stabilizer into Gateway's power grid, the circuits would burn out in minutes. He would only get one chance at this.
