Chapter 2: An Old Friend
The Doctor traced the drug back to a shop on some planet with a name Rose couldn't pronounce. He landed the TARDIS in the alley next to the shop and got out. Rose followed him.
"You don't have to do this," she told him. "You got the drug out of me. I'm fine, see? We don't have to…"
"Yes, we do," the Doctor told her. "See, the person who drugged you might come after you again. And I won't let that happen. Plus, they've already hurt you. So I'm going to hurt them."
He entered the shop, with Rose right behind him. He walked right up to the alien behind the counter.
"Hello," he said pleasantly, but with a distinct undercurrent of menace. "I'm the Doctor. This is Rose. About a week ago you sold someone this drug."
He held up the vial with the drug sample in it.
"Now, the person you sold it to used it to cause Rose to live out her worst nightmares. So I need you to tell me who you sold it to, so I can go hurt them."
"Sorry, I can't tell you," the alien said. "Customer confidentiality."
The Doctor leaned over the counter so he was right in the alien's face.
"There's a saying," he told it, growling a bit in his throat. "If the customer isn't happy, nobody's happy. And I'm a customer. And I'm not happy right now, which means that you are about to be very unhappy, unless you tell me who you sold that drug to."
"A-all right, no need to get angry," the alien squeaked. "Just let me pull it up here…"
The Doctor leaned back, waiting. The alien typed something on its device, and suddenly the Doctor and Rose were encased in a plastic-looking box.
"Sorry," the alien said, not looking sorry at all. "I've been paid to deliver you to the master. He's a customer, too. And his happiness is more important than yours."
The alien pushed a button on its device. The box dematerialized with them inside it and rematerialized in a different room.
Everything was white. The floor, the walls, the furniture… everything.
"Whoever he is, this guy needs some color in his life," Rose said, looking around. The Doctor pulled out the sonic screwdriver and tried to open the box, but it didn't work. He sighed and leaned against the box's wall.
"I'm sorry, Rose," he told her. "This is my fault."
"No, it's not," she said, coming to stand beside him and taking his hand. "There was no way you could have known."
"I'll get us out of here," he told her, trying to think of a way. "I promise."
She looked up at him, and he could see in her eyes that she believed it. She absolutely believed that he would save them.
He knew he didn't deserve that kind of trust.
"The master will see you now," the alien from the shop told them, shuffling into the room and pressing a button on its device. A chair materialized, facing away from them.
"Big ego, likes dramatics," the Doctor whispered to Rose. "Probably a little bit crazy."
"Like you, you mean?" Rose whispered back, and he had to smile. "How do you know?"
"Well, he obviously has a big ego if he's making that alien call him "master." Most people like him are at least a little crazy. And I know he likes dramatics because that chair is facing away from us, and in a minute he's going to swivel it around so he's facing us, trying to make a dramatic entrance."
The chair started turning, and the man in the chair smiled at them. They gasped.
"You!" Rose exclaimed.
"I'll bet you never expected to see me again," said Henry Van Statten.