Chapter 3

The Doctor and Rose patrolled the halls, searching for another blip on the scanner. They were pretty well convinced that their quarry was no longer on the first floor, so they progressed to the second and began their search all over again.
"There must be a way to widen the scanner field," Rose complained. "This is going to take forever."

The Doctor sighed. She was right, again. He knew that he could probably make the scanner a bit more powerful, but that just took all the adventure out of it. But since he had promised her a day off, he figured that it would be good to hurry up and close this case so they could return to London for while.

He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and began tinkering with his scanner. "You mean to say you could of made it more powerful the whole time?" Rose asked shocked.

"Well, that wouldn't be as much fun now would it?" he said with a smile.

Rose rolled her eyes and waited impatiently for The Doctor to finish his tinkering.

"Just a little bit here and… there. That should do it," he proclaimed as he pocketed his screwdriver once again and brought the scanner up to use.

He swept the scanner in a wide circle before he proclaimed, nope, not on this floor.

"That's it then? We spent the last two hours covering the first floor when all you had to do was tinker for a few minutes to get it to scan all at once?"

"Told you. Takes all the fun out of it," He smiled wickedly.

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House had finally escaped the clinic after only two hours of work. Well, actually it had been closer to a half hour of work, another hour and a half of hiding out in the exam rooms playing his gameboy. He had just stepped off the elevator to return to his office when he noticed those two weirdos from earlier walking in that direction from the stair way.

"I'm going to think that I have a couple of stalkers here," House said as he approached his office. They seemed rather startled by his appearance and it looked as though the man was trying to hide something that he had been looking at before House said something. They were standing right outside of Wilson's office and they looked as if they had were a couple of kids with their hand caught in the cookie jar. What were they all about?

"Oh, it'd be you again," the man said as he saw who it was that had said something.

"I could say the same thing. What are you two doing here? As much as it pains me to say it, I doubt that you're just a couple of big fans of the famous Dr. Greg House. Though I wouldn't blame you if you were."

Just then Cuddy appeared out of nowhere. "House!" she bellowed from down the hall.

"Oh look, here comes one of those fans right now," House said as he turned to watch the approaching Dean.

"Just what are you doing up here again? I thought I told you to go to the clinic?"

"I did. Put in my time for the day and now I'm off to enjoy some well-earned slacking. At least I was until I ran into these two stalker friends of mine," he said indicating Rose and The Doctor.

"We're not stalking him," Rose said,

"Hello, I'm Th… I'm Doctor Smith. This is my intern, Rose Tyler. We're here conducting an inspection of your fine hospital," he said in as smooth a voice as he could while pulling out his psychic paper and flashing it for both House and Cuddy to see.

House glanced at it and seemed about to make some snide comment when he was stunned by what Cuddy said. "Oh, the CDC! I had no idea that you were coming," she said rather alarmed.

House stared at her for a moment, completely shocked. Apparently he didn't think that her reaction was entirely proper.

He stood there as Cuddy properly shook hands with the strange man and apologized for Dr. House's behavior. He heard her saying something about how he really was a brilliant doctor, just not much of a person.

The man and woman seemed in a hurry to get rid of them and Cuddy could tell. She told them that anything they need while they were there, just let her know and she'd take care of them and then left them to their own devises. House was not so easily gotten rid of though.

He watched as Cuddy left and then turned a penetrating glare on the man in front of him. He got dangerously close to The Doctor's face and looked him square in the eye as he said in as menacing a voice as he could, "I don't know who you are or where you came from, but I am giving you five seconds to explain why the hospital dean just left here believing that that blank piece of paper you just showed her said you were from the CDC."

Rose gave a small gasp from where she stood behind The Doctor who was measuring up House in front of him. He was as stunned as Rose was to hear that his psychic paper hadn't worked on the man, but he wasn't going to let on.

"What do you mean?" he asked innocently.

"You know exactly what I mean," House breathed. "One… Two…"

"And what are you going to do to me?"

"Start by severing your little toe from your foot," House said as he placed the tip of his cane on The Doctor's shoe precisely above his small toe and began to apply pressure. "Three…" a little more, this time rather painful pressure.

The Doctor didn't wince, but he wanted to. He had no doubt that this man wasn't joking anymore.

"Alright, but can we talk somewhere more private?" The Doctor conceded. It wasn't that he was really afraid of this man, it was more that things could probably go a bit more smoothly if they had him working on their side. That, and he wanted to know how it was that this human was unaffected by his technology.

House nodded once as he lifted his cane and walked the few feet to his office. He opened the door, and signaled for the two to enter before him. The Doctor and Rose exchanged a look before they followed after House and entered into the conference room attached to his personal office.

This was not going to be easy…