Donna groaned softly as she drifted towards consciousness, her mind struggled to rise above the fog that was determined to keep her under its comforting blanket.
She was weeping as she continued to push against the barrier of silence that was growing to consume her entire being, her mental fingers were battering against the wall trying to find any weakness so that she could feel the Doctor's mind once more.
She didn't even care what they were going to do to her now if she was going to be trapped in this emptiness for much longer and it was that very apathy that forced her to open her eyes so that she could see her surroundings once more.
There were several more scientists in the lab now and they were all huddled around the large computer console that she had first noticed when she awakened, their gestures and tones belying a fear that she hadn't noticed the last time she'd regained consciousness.
They were barely even aware of her return to consciousness, and she noticed that only one of the scientists gestured briefly in her direction before his attention was once more engaged by the woman who seemed to be in charge of the entire operation.
Donna was confused by their sudden disinterest, but she wasn't going to let this opportunity pass without trying once more to break through whatever they had done to rip both the Doctor and the Tardis from her mind.
She closed her eyes, her mind once more clawing desperately against the wall that imprisoned her in its cocoon. There were no ridges or seams in the barrier and it seemed to be all of a piece and no matter how hard Donna tried to force her way through it, she felt her attempts repulsed with an almost painful intensity.
It was hard to stop the panic that was bubbling deep within her that kept insisting that the Doctor was dead and that she had nothing left to live for now that she was alone. She was made of sterner stuff then that and even if he was dead, she was damned if she was just going to give up and die on some hell forsaken world while at the hands of mad scientists.
Donna took several calming breaths while trying to bring some focus to her wildly skittering thoughts. There was something going on that had all the attention of the scientists and she knew that she didn't have a lot of time to find a weakness in their barrier before they began whatever work they had been doing before she'd lost consciousness.
With each breath, she felt her mind settle and though the fringes of panic still buffeted the edges of her mind, a steel core of resolve was born in its place. She remembered the early days of her psychic training with the Doctor, when he'd attacked her mind repeatedly in different manners to test the strength of her barriers and how each attack had shown her what would work to protect herself and what wouldn't work.
Donna narrowed her focus into a single point of energy and slammed it against the barrier. She wasn't surprised when there wasn't any effect on its mirror smooth surface, but she felt a little like she'd been rattled around inside her skull and her head began to spin from the force of the mental impact.
She tried not to think of herself as a moth inside a jar, fluttering futilely against the edges of the container in a desperate attempt to free itself. There had to be a weakness to this blankness, and she was determined to find it.
She blocked out the voices of the scientists as they were rising in a kind of panic, and pulled her focus inward once more to attack the same point on her mind again. It was the only thing she could think of doing and she felt that repeated attacks might just work at weakening whatever was blocking her mind from the Doctor.
She hurled herself against that point in her mind again and again, barely pausing to let the ringing in her head subside before launching herself again. It soon became an act of desperation and Donna knew that she would be hard pressed to stop herself from the repeated beating against the mental barrier.
Donna was screaming out the Doctor's name in her mind, her hands were clenched tightly and the pounding of her mind against the inside of her skull was fast causing Donna to feel herself begin to teeter on the edge of consciousness once more. Her mind was no longer clearing after every impact and Donna wondered if she was actually going to cause herself physical injury by the repeated battering of her mind when she felt the table begin to shake beneath her.
Donna's eyes flew open when she heard the frightened cries of the scientists, they scattered from the console that they'd all been studying just as a muffled boom echoed through the air around them and the lights in the lab went dim.
Donna gasped and closed her eyes tight, focusing all her being into a single razor sharp point of thought and thrust it hard against the barrier. She felt it begin to flex beneath the pressure of her mind and with a final scream of effort, Donna forced a single thread of thought through the crack that had suddenly appeared in the wall.
DOCTOR! Donna cried out before she felt the walls close once more and the frantic motions of one of the scientists at her side reminded her that she wasn't alone. Her eyes cracked open and she caught the frightened gaze of one of the younger technicians who was desperately working to increase the intensity of the neural suppressor. "He's coming…" She laughed softly even as she felt the pain rise up to overwhelm her once again and silence descended over her mind.
She let herself fall into the dark oblivion once more, but this time was different because she'd brushed against his warm presence for just a brief moment before her mind was yanked cruelly back into its prison. The Doctor was alive and the Doctor was enraged. She wouldn't be a prisoner much longer.
"Jenny, look out!"
The Doctor grabbed Jenny just as she was about to run across an alleyway where there was still intense fighting between pro-government troops and rebels. She hadn't seen the sniper on the roof taking careful aim at them as she'd leaned out to make sure the path was clear.
There was a shower of gravel and a pebble nicked the corner of her eye from where the sniper's bolt had just missed her. The Doctor hissed when he felt the shrapnel score his quickly raised hand, the sharp edges cutting his skin but otherwise he was unharmed.
He grunted when he saw the small cut at the corner of her eye, his hand reaching up to wipe the smear clean before he motioned for them to return the way they had come.
"We can't continue that way with snipers on the roofs, I don't even know whose side they're on but it doesn't matter as they don't seem to wait to find out who we are before taking their shot. There's got to be another way out of town."
Jenny was pressed back against the wall, her eyes closed as she panted for breath and struggled to remember all the different paths she'd taken in and out of town over the weeks that she'd been there.
Her father was holding up his sonic and was scanning the rooftops above then, his eyes looking down the path they'd come and shaking his head before he looked back to her. "We're about to be pinned down here if we stay for much longer. The city is still a battlezone and even though your friends have managed to gain a foothold by the prison, it looks like the government was better prepared for their uprising then they had hoped. We need to backtrack and try one of the other alleys that we passed in order to get out of town."
The Doctor suited words to action as he took her hand and cautiously began to make his way back towards the last crossroads that they'd gone through before he then took the left hand turning and began to trot down the narrow alley towards the far end.
"I'm totally lost, Dad! I never really used the alleys to move around in the city and now with all the fighting and damage, I don't know where we are."
The Doctor turned to look back at her, the harsh lines on his face softening when he saw the very real fear in her eyes. Her mind was still reeling from the days of their captivity, and she wasn't able to rise above the panic that had taken hold.
She looked up at him with a confused gaze, her eyes rolling towards the sound of another boom that echoed somewhere in the distance and caused the walls around them to shake in sympathetic response. "I can't believe that all this has happened so fast, Dad. They seemed to be peaceful people, just scared of what they didn't understand but I didn't think that they would be capable of this!"
The Doctor sighed and pulled her into his arms for a quick embrace, his mind brushing against hers gently before he pulled back and tipped her chin so that she could meet his gaze once more. "All people are capable of great good or great violence, Jenny. We're in no position to judge the means that these people are using to free themselves from what seems to be a tyrannical regime, especially when we're only just becoming aware of their plight." He pulled her back into a narrow doorway when weapons fire sounded in the distance, his arm held back against her chest to push her back against the locked door before he peered out into the alley once more.
The song of the Tardis was growing louder and more insistent in his mind, her presence was a burning beacon of hope just hovering over the edge of his shoulder and of course it was in the direction of the most intense fighting.
The sonic had scanned only two rows of buildings between them and the outskirts of town, but every time they'd tried to cross the main street, they were fired on by snipers that had taken position on the rooftops above.
He knew it was only a matter of time before they became pinned down in the alleys as the area they were in fell under either the rebel's or government control and they couldn't stay still for much longer.
"We'll have time to worry about the people of this planet later, Jenny. First we have to get to the Tardis and we have to rescue Donna. I'm worried about what is happening on this planet too, but I can't do anything about it without the Tardis."
Jenny listened to the soft cadence of his words, her mind brushing against his gently so that she could feel the fear and rage that was simmering in a dangerous mix within him. She'd never thought to see him like this. He'd been so adamant on Messaline about there always being another way beyond violence and his actions had shown her that she could also choose a different way then what she was programmed to accept. Now though, he seemed to be adrift and he was struggling against the very same base, violent tendencies with which she'd been born.
As he pulled her out into the alleyway, she wondered how much of the personality of the machine had really governed her actions and how much had come from her father. She'd felt the depths of anguish and despair within him, though she knew she was barely even scratching the surface of his suffering.
Jenny felt her hand squeezed tightly in the Doctor's in a signal to slow down as they reached the end of the alleyway, his eyes were lifted to the rooftops as he scanned them with his sonic. He held the device up and grinned before turning back to her.
"It looks like we've managed to get ahead of the snipers, and the path is clear. I want you to run across the main road and keep running until you're out of town. I'll be right behind you, all right?"
Jenny took a deep breath, her hearts leaping in anticipation before she nodded, "Okay, Dad, let's get out of here!"
The Doctor smiled at her and squeezed her hand tight once more, before his hand reached up and he pressed on her shoulder to go.
Jenny sprinted out of the alleyway and didn't look back even when she heard the shouts from soldiers somewhere in the distance. Her body was flooded with adrenaline as she seemed to remain in the open space for an eternity before she gained the safety of the alleyway on the other side and she kept on running towards the large open space at the end.
A quick glance over her shoulder showed her father running right behind her, his hand raised and his sonic device pointed down the main street towards something off in the distance. He then gained the safety of the alleyway and ran down the narrow path right on her heels.
There was muffled shouting and a loud boom in the distance that quickly faded behind them as they ran out from between the last two buildings and into the desert beyond the edge of town.
The wind was swirling madly in every direction and the Doctor and Jenny quickly ducked down behind one of the low dunes that dotted this side of the town. They waited for several tense moments to see if anyone had followed them into the alley, before they felt it was safe to begin to make their way across the open desert to the Tardis.
The Doctor took Jenny's hand and turned them towards the north, carefully skirting the edges of the animal pens by the marketplace before they were well and truly away from the town.
He could feel the excitement that Jenny was having a difficult time containing, her gaze kept darting over their shoulder to make sure that no one followed them but the Doctor knew that the people in town were too concerned with their own revolution to do more than give token chase before returning to try to secure their hold on the town.
He was saddened by the columns of smoke that rose into the air before being shredded by the ever-present wind. The people were destroying their own homes to try to take back control of their lives from what they thought was a repressive government, and from what the Doctor had seen, he believed that they were justified in their actions. He was just so tired of people always thinking that violence could solve any and all of their problems.
The Doctor hoped that he wasn't too late in saving these people and that they didn't kill each other in a mad bid for control that would ultimately be the reason for their final descent into extinction.
Not daring to trust the road, the Doctor and Jenny scrambled through knee deep sand as they slipped and slid on their way to the Tardis. He continued to scan around them for any signs of pursuit, but it was obvious that they'd left the last of their tormentors far behind them.
Finally believing that they had managed to escape the madness that had erupted in town, the Doctor tried to quicken his pace as much as the shifting sand would allow as the Tardis' presence was getting louder in his mind. She was just over the next rise and she was anxious for the both of them to make it safely back to her so that she could help him save his Donna.
The Doctor's breath hitched when he felt the Tardis' thoughts, his mind fracturing beneath a tidal wave of grief as the absence of her presence nearly drove him under. While he'd been so focused on getting the both of them safely out of town, he'd managed to force the silence in his mind to a dark corner where he specifically didn't let it debilitate him. He'd known that if he'd let himself, he would have fallen into a dark pit of despair and nothing would have been able to haul him out of it.
He'd clung tenaciously to the promise from the officer that they'd wanted all three of them alive and that Donna was still alive wherever she was being held even if she couldn't connect with him right now. It hadn't helped the sheer terror that still threatened to pounce nor the fury that was building the longer their minds were separated.
The Tardis was ready and had finally figured out the secret to overcoming her temporal lock. Wilf and Alec were already on board and she just needed her thief and his daughter's return to bring the timelines into sync.
He looked up with tears in his eyes when he saw the faint blue outline of the Tardis through the swirling haze around them, his mind opening fully to his ship when he felt a sharp stab of pain spear through his mind.
His hand flew to his temple and his mind was suddenly filled with Donna's anguished cry, Doctor! The Doctor turned back towards the south, Donna's presence for a brief tantalizing second filled him to the brim with her agony before she was once more ripped from his mind.
"Donna!"
Jenny looked up when she felt the agony flash through her father's mind before she very distinctly heard Donna's voice calling out his name. "She's alive!"
He looked down at his daughter, the brief touch of Donna's thoughts had renewed him and filled him with a dark sense of purpose. The Doctor felt the Tardis exult in the brief reconnection with Donna, her sensors immediately locked onto her coordinates and she let the Doctor know that she was ready to take him to her. His answering smile was cold and somehow terrifying as he responded, "Yes and the Tardis now knows exactly where she is."
He stood for a moment on the sand dune looking towards the south and the spot on the distance horizon where, for a brief moment, Donna's presence had blazed like the sun. "I'm coming for you, Donna!" He sent the thought screaming across the distance between them, not caring that the energy of the planet tried to shred his mind to pieces. He was resolute in his focus and now that he had a path, nothing would stop him from finding her.
Jenny shivered when she heard the deadly promise in his words, before he took her hand and led her down the slope of the sand dune and into the open doors of the Tardis.