The Doctor was puzzled when Craig hadn't appeared in the kitchen by the time he had finished cooking breakfast – Monday was a work day nowadays, wasn't it? There was no sign of the Master either, although the Doctor could still sense his presence within the house – out in the hallway, by the feel of it. But there had been not a sound from Craig's room. Concern brushed at him for a moment, but he pushed it aside – perhaps it was normal for a lodger to take his landlord breakfast on Mondays. He gathered the plates, a mug of tea and a glass of juice onto a tray and made his way down the corridor towards Craig's room.

"Craig?" he called through the door, knocking with his foot. "Breakfast. It's normal… Craig?" Nothing – no response, not even a stirring of bedsheets. The concern returned in full force, and he shouldered the door open and stepped through into a darkened bedroom. His hearts grew cold at what he saw – Craig lay unmoving and deathly pale in the bed, lips slightly parted and eyelids slipped half-shut. "Craig…" Abandoning all care with the food, the Doctor shoved the tray at the foot of the bed and grabbed for Craig's limp wrist. Sure enough, tracing a pattern of olive green up the veins of his arm, was the telltale sign of a poison working its way through the human's body. "Craig, why? Why did you have to go and touch it? An obviously poisonous unknown substance, and you just had to go and stick your hand in it." He pushed Craig onto his back and raised both hands above his head, fists pressed together. "Come on, Craig – breathe!" With a strength born of desperation, he brought his fists down and slammed them onto Craig's chest; the man's eyes shot open and a choking gasp forced itself from his throat. "Come on, Craig, breathe!" he urged him. "Them's a healthy footballer's lungs…" A clink of the mug against the plates at the foot of the bed sparked a sudden brainwave, and the Doctor leaped to his feet and hurtled back down the corridor to the kitchen. "Right…reverse the enzyme decay," he muttered, snatching up the teapot from the table and emptying the entire box of teabags from the cupboard into it. "Excite the tannin molecules…" The rubbish bin caught his eye; he scooped out a handful of cold tea leaves from the top and began frantically grinding the whole mixture into a pulp with the end of a wooden spoon, adding boiling water from the kettle with the other hand.

The concentrate was ready not a moment too soon, and before long, Craig's laboured breathing was steadying and he was blinking blearily at the Doctor, who poured the tea bit by bit into his mouth from the spout of the teapot.

"I've got to go to work," Craig croaked feebly.

"On no account. You need rest," said the Doctor gently but firmly, lifting the teapot once again to Craig's lips. "One more…"

"This…this planning meeting…it's important," he tried to protest.

"You're important," the Doctor insisted, reaching out and smoothing Craig's hair back from his feverish brow. "Shh… You're going to be fine, Craig…" Almost before the door had closed behind the Doctor, Craig's eyes had slipped shut and the warm, healing blanket of sleep spread over him.

Back in the kitchen, the Doctor replaced the teapot on the side and shook his head. That had been a close call – too close. The sooner they sorted out whatever was in the upstairs flat, the better. He tried the door to his bedroom, but to his surprise, found it locked.

"Are you in there?" He knocked softly and heard a crinkle of paper from inside.

"No, I'm enjoying the sun in the Northern Fungal Swamps of Clom," the Master's voice retorted sarcastically. "Go away, Doctor."

"What are you doing?"

"Believe it or not, I don't need you to get us out of this mess," the Master replied coldly. There was a pause; the Doctor thought he heard faint whispering, and then the Master continued. "I'm refining this scanner properly, without your interference and carelessness. Go and play with your monkeys – or talk them into playing with more monkeys." The Doctor raised his eyebrows and leaned against the wall beside the door, his gaze sweeping the room and alighting on Craig's briefcase on the table.

A planning meeting, eh? He had rarely been much of a planner, but curiosity was nudging at him; and why not leave the Master to do the work if that was what he wanted? It might keep them both out of trouble for a while.

"All right, then," he said cheerily. "Have a nice day." And, straightening his bow tie with one hand, he picked up the briefcase and departed – making sure to lock Craig's door and slide the key underneath.

...

The bright sunlight filtering through the slits in the blinds woke Craig slowly and painfully. His head was pounding, his arm burned and his whole body felt like lead. His dreams had been strange and disturbed, filled with images of orang-utans kicking a football around a field – a football that turned into a purring cat, which was picked up and handed to him by a white-haired figure with the yellow, slitted eyes and pointed teeth of a cat – but when he tried to take the cat, its fur grew dark and mouldered away into dust, the flesh decaying from its body and seeping into his hands… His eyes flew open and, suddenly nauseous at the memory of the dream, he gagged and had to take several deep, slow breaths before he could roll his head to one side and check his alarm clock. Gradually, the glowing numbers on the display resolved themselves: 14 45.

The planning meeting! The dream all but forgotten, he sat bolt upright with a gasp.

"What?" Barely even giving himself time to button his shirt, he threw his clothes on and raced for the door. In the hallway, he nearly stopped short at the sight of Kaiser sat halfway up the stairs, his back to Craig. He appeared to be bending over something, speaking softly, almost tenderly, and as Craig hurried past and a snatch of words reached his ears, he saw that it was a long-haired cat.

"…and did you count how many? Hmm, yes…yes, I felt that…but would it be able to…"

Craig only realized that he had been holding his breath when the front door slammed behind him and he exhaled slowly. He glanced at his watch – 2:55pm – and his racing heart accelerated yet again as he dashed down the path.

"…no no no no no…" he was still moaning to himself ten minutes later as he hurtled down the wide corridor of the call centre towards his office. Bursting open the swinging door, he was greeted by the nerve-racking sight of his boss rising from a desk and waving.

"Ah! Afternoon, Craig."

"I'm…so…sorry," Craig puffed. "I've got no excuse…" However, before his boss could reply, Craig's heart sank like a stone at a familiar voice from behind a desk.

"…I'm afraid that's not what my screen is telling me, Mr. Lang." Raising his head, the Doctor beamed amicably at Craig and his boss.

"What's he doing here?" For a moment, Craig was too dumbfounded to do little more than gape – but his bewilderment was quickly replaced by irritation and he advanced on the Doctor. "What are you doing here?"

"If that's your attitude, Mr. Lang, I suggest you take your custom elsewhere," said the Doctor into the headset, and to Craig's shock, poked out his tongue and blew a raspberry into the microphone.

"No no no – that's one of my best clients!" This could not be happening – it had to be another bizarre dream – that, or he hadn't yet woken up in the first place. "You can't-"

"Leave off the Doctor – I love the Doctor," his boss interrupted, with a thumbs-up and a wink to the Doctor. "He was brilliant in the planning meeting."

"You…you went to the planning meeting?" Craig stuttered.

"Yes – I was your representative," the Doctor replied matter-of-factly. "Who'd have thought – me, planning something. Wouldn't the Ma- …wouldn't Kaiser be proud of me!"

"K-Kaiser…" Craig's stomach lurched, and a fraction of a second later, it dawned on him why, as a flash of recollection struck him and his voice rose with a note of panic. "Doctor, your boyfriend tried to kill me!"

"He what?" In an instant, the twinkle in the Doctor's eyes had died.

"He…he told me to touch that…that rot stuff," Craig explained breathlessly. "He's at home now – Doctor, he's some sort of psycho, he's talking to a cat." The entire office was staring now, but Craig couldn't have cared less – he had never felt so scared in all his life. For a few moments, the Doctor was silent, his eyes shifting from side to side as though calculating something, and then his expression became grim.

"So sorry, Mr. Jorgensen, could you hold? The fate of the universe might be at stake," he said gravely into the headset, and leaped to his feet, tossing the delicate equipment onto the desk. Hurdling a wastepaper basket and knocking over the wall of somebody's cubicle, he made a dive for the door, and Craig, in his haste to follow, bumped into someone carrying a plate and mug from the kitchen corner.

"Craig," the person called after him. "Craig – I applied for a- …where are you going?" But the two men were already gone, leaving a bewildered Sophie holding a mug of coffee dripping onto the carpet.

...

"You…you knew he was a nutcase," Craig was panting as he followed the Doctor through the front door. "That's why you locked my door, isn't it?" The Doctor didn't appear to be listening; he darted through the kitchen door and across the living room to his own bedroom, but was brought up short at the door – it was locked, and he rattled the handle with both hands, letting out a frustrated growl.

"No! The sonic's in there…"

"Doctor, leave him – I'll call the police – they-" The Doctor cut him off.

"Do you have a spare key to this door? Quickly, Craig."

"Y-yeah…yeah, there's one in here somewhere…" Craig's hands were trembling almost too much to open the top drawer of the living room cabinet, but he managed to unearth a keychain buried beneath yellowing bills and envelopes, and produced a key that he handed to the Doctor. "Look, I know you want to talk to him, but don't you think…what?" His mouth fell open and he felt his knees buckle at the sight that met him when the Doctor pushed open the bedroom door. Of Kaiser, there was no sign, but Craig felt no better for that – since his attention was now seized by the structure almost filling the room. It was roughly pyramidal in shape, with an intricate lattice of bent coat hangers at the point forming a twisting, spiralling mesh of antennae that reached almost to the ceiling. The whole thing was whirling dizzyingly, spinning too fast for Craig's eyes to follow long enough to make out what it had been built out of, but he could have sworn that the base was grounded on the frame of a shopping trolley, and that was a bedside lamp that had just skimmed past the Doctor's knees.

"What's he done to you…?" the Doctor murmured, stepping carefully into the room, and Craig shook his head, aghast.

"Wait…you knew he was making this…thing?"

"What, this? This is just a bog-standard makeshift temporal-gravitational equilibration scanner," said the Doctor, kneeling down and ducking to avoid the lamp as it careened past his head. "No – the question is…what is this?" Lying almost flat on the floor, he was reaching under the structure and hooking something towards himself.

"You're both insane," Craig breathed, backing steadily into the doorframe and gripping it for support. "Right, that's it – I want you out."

"What?" The Doctor had managed to retrieve the object, and as he pulled it slowly out into the light, Craig saw that it was an old-fashioned shower radio – or had been. Now, a tangle of wires protruded from the back and the volume, tuning and treble/bass adjustment dials were sliding up and down apparently of their own accord.

"You…you heard me," Craig choked. "Get out. Both of you. You've only been here two days, and it's been the weirdest two days of my life – and I thought right, fine, they're a bit weird – but it's not just weird – it's…"

"Craig, I know I owe you an explanation," the Doctor answered, extending the aerial on the radio, his gaze trained on the moving dials, following their movement almost as though he were reading a book. "But I really don't have time…"

"No, I don't need an explanation." Craig began to back out into the living room, his hand on the door. "I'm calling the police, right now."

"No – wait, just-" The Doctor clambered to his feet and made a move towards Craig – and Craig, with a yelp of fright, swung the bedroom door hard.

...

A heavy knot of foreboding was twisting in Sophie's chest as she unlocked the front door to Craig's flat and stepped into the hall. She hadn't caught what he had said to the Doctor back in the office, but the way it had wiped the smile from his face in an instant would have been enough alone to fill her with apprehension. After they had fled the office, she had set down the plate and mug, collected her handbag and excused herself; the boss seemed to share her concern, and jotted down a few brief details of what she could tell him of Craig's new flatmates before giving her the afternoon off.

Pushing the door quietly shut at her back, she opened her mouth to call out, but another voice spoke first.

"Sophie?" Startled, her keys fell from her hand and she spun around towards the stairs, where the voice had come from. Craig must have fixed the faulty lightbulb, she observed, as it lit the top of the stairs and she could see the speaker clearly: Craig's more reserved flatmate, Kaiser. He stood leaning with his back against the wall outside the door to the upstairs flat, slightly hunched over with one hand to his head.

"Are…are you all right?" she asked hesitantly, moving towards the bottom of the stairs.

"I…I don't feel well…" He drew a slow, shaky breath and his shoulders slumped forward. "No – d-don't get the Doctor. Could you…could you come here?"

"Oh…oh, yes, I'll look after you." A rush of sympathy swept over her and she climbed the stairs quickly. How could the Doctor leave him like this? He had obviously been under the weather, and being nearly knocked out at the football game yesterday couldn't have helped. She put an arm around his trembling shoulders. "Here, it's O.K., it's O.K., I've got you – just sit down…" Just then, the sound of raised voices rang out through the silent flat, and she raised her head, turning away from Kaiser to listen. Before she could call out, a cool hand wrapped itself around her mouth and a strong grip on her arms tugged her backwards through the door into the upstairs flat.