It wasn't long that Donna had sent the Doctor off to stop sulking and have himself a cup of tea and a piece of cake that she realised that sounded better than to continue looking for a gift. She could just get her mother a gift card and let her pick herself. Of course that would probably be greeted with some kind of rebuke since it was the easiest option, but then for the last twenty years her gifts had been exchanged so it was just cutting out the middle man. That was it. Decision made. She would get her a gift card and she'd go up and celebrate that victory with the Doctor and a piece of cake. They did a peanut butter and chocolate cheesecake in there and a huge slab of that was in order.
Donna went up the three levels on the escalator and went into the café. She expected the Doctor to be sweet talking the assistant in there in or something or to be sitting tucking into cake and talking to another customer. He always seemed to have someone to talk to and when he struck up conversation with a stranger he was rarely met with a 'leave me alone' attitude. There was just something about the gregarious spirit of the Time Lord that drew people to him.
The Doctor wasn't in the café. If he had demolished his tea and cake that quickly and then ducked out to get back to the TARDIS then she was going to kill him. She went into the bathroom. There was a single unisex cubicle and it was open so he hadn't gone in there. She went to the counter. "Can I help you?" the young male assistant asked her.
"Have you seen a guy in here?" Donna asked him. "In the last ten minutes or so. Tall and wearing a brown suit? He'd have made sure he got the biggest bit of cake possible even if he's so skinny you'd want to force feed him the whole thing to make sure he didn't disappear into nothing?"
"No ma'am, no one fitting that description has been in."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, ma'am, we've only served him in the last hour. It's slow this morning," he added. Donna looked at the grey haired man with a large wheeled rollator full of shopping bags. He had a latte and what looked like the remains of half a teacake.
"Okay, thanks," Donna acknowledged and puzzled. "If he does come in? Can you tell him to wait here for me?"
"Certainly, Ma'am, what is his name?"
"He's called the Doctor," Donna told him. There was a look of puzzlement on the man's face. "Yeah, I know, listen, just tell him that Donna is looking for him and he is to stay here until I get back?"
"I will," he confirmed. Donna left the café. She went over to the railing and looked down. She could see right around the top level and there wasn't anything there that would have interested the Doctor. It was all baby stuff. There were some more age appropriate toys on the level below, and by age appropriate she meant they were from the ages of 6 to 12. She thought he might have been distracted there and she went back down a level. He wasn't in the toys. She went back to the railing and ran her hand through her red hair as she looked around.
"Can I help you with anything?" a shop assistant asked her. She could see that Donna was looking like either she was lost or she had lost something or someone. It wasn't unusual for people to lose their bearings in the shop. She still did on occasion after working there for over a year. Things would get moved round and new displays would go up and all the points of reference were changed. She was sure that the bosses did that so people would end up spending more time walking aimlessly through sections in the hopes that they bought something they did not want, but if that was a marketing ploy then it didn't work as people just ended up getting annoyed with it.
"I'm looking for my friend," Donna commented. "I sent him up to the café and he's not in there."
"Is he a tall good looking guy?" the shop assistance asked.
"He's tall," Donna offered and thought for a moment.
"Brown suit and big hair?"
"Yeah, that is him," Donna confirmed and then looked at the shop assistant. "You think he's good looking?" she checked with her.
"Yeah, don't you?"
"No!" Donna scoffed and laughed. "And he's in big trouble when I find him. He was supposed to be in the café and he's not."
"He did go up there," the shop assistant commented. "He almost fell off the first escalator because he wasn't looking where he was going. We talked for a moment and he seemed nice," she offered. "He went up the escalator to the top level where the café is, but then I saw him come back down onto this level in the lift a few minutes later. I thought he must have changed his mind as he headed out over the footbridge toward the car park."
"I wonder what has got into him?" Donna suggested. "Thanks." She went over to the footbridge leading into the multi-storey car park. She looked down on the traffic below. There was no sign of the Doctor on the footbridge. He'd not go into the car park as a way back to the TARDIS, he had parked that beyond the train station right at the other end of the town. It was going to be a fair walk to get there. She hoped that he was feeling okay, the only thing she could think of coming into the car park was fresh air. The shopping centre was quite warm and she knew he didn't enjoy shopping, she just didn't know why he'd have found it so necessary to escape.
She passed the statue of Mr. Frank Bentall who originally opened the department store in 1867 and was immortalised in bronze. She had thought that the Doctor may have been there having a read through the plaques she had almost memorised by all the times she'd paused to wait in that spot for her mother to catch her up on family shopping trips, but the Time Lord was not there. Beyond him there was the foyer where at the weekend there would be a queue several people deep waiting to pay for the car park and growing frustrated when the machine either accepted correct change only or spat out valid coins again because it didn't like them for some reason. The automation of systems not always making them quicker and easier to manage.
Donna continued through around the corner. She was surprised to see that the Doctor was there by the paying machines, but more surprised to see that he was surrounded by three massive guys, and they were massive. So massive that Donna's first thought was that they weren't human, and that was before she considered that their pale pink skin might have actually had a slight greenish tinge to it. Like a portrait where an artist had tried to put too many green shadows in and made the subject look ill rather than three dimensional. She would have through that the Doctor was just talking to them, but then why were they on all three sides of him. The Doctor appeared to be gesticulating as he spoke in a manner which Donna knew was putting him under stress even if he did still have a disarming smile on his face. He was addressing the largest of the three men.
Donna went to step forward and find out what was going on when the conversation took a heart stopping turn. The largest one nodded to the smallest one when he said something and a metal looking club was pulled from his belt hidden beneath the long tunic that he was carrying. He swiped at the Doctor with a significant force, but the Doctor ducked under it. He still received a blow that Donna knew had to have hurt him as it staggered him. Donna rushed forward as the Doctor spun round. She didn't know what she thought she could do when they were so big, but she knew the Doctor had seen her. It was too late though as he received a second blow and he collapsed to the floor immediately unconscious.
"The mission has been a success. We have him." Donna was close enough to hear the taller of the three men state that into his watch. It couldn't have been a watch.
"Leave him alone!" Donna yelled at the top of her voice and hurried toward them, but the three men held hands in a circle around the Doctor. A strange energy seemed to curtain down around them, sparking white, yellow, and red. It circled at ground level and then it drew back upward again. When the bright light that had made Donna squint away had gone she turned and they were gone. The Doctor was gone. They had taken him! They had hit him and hurt him and they had taken him.
Panic descended onto Donna for a moment. She didn't have a clue what she could do. She didn't know who they were. She didn't know what they wanted with the Doctor. She didn't know what kind of technology it was that had taken him. She had seen a teleport before. She had even used a teleport before, but the device the Sontarans used was totally different. She had never seen anything like that. She didn't know what it was. The only person that she could immediately think of to tell her was gone and now she was stranded in Kingston. The TARDIS was right the way over by the train station and what good was that going to do her? She couldn't fly it. She didn't even have her Oyster card to get home and what would she do there? She knew that he needed her help. She couldn't just abandon him. She needed her help and to give that she needed help.
Her hands were shaking when she got her phone out. She wanted to ring her grandfather, but that was not going to do any good. They would both be worrying and Gramps loved and trusted the Doctor but he wasn't going to be able to track a teleport, it if was a teleport, or know anyone who did. She went past his number in her phone menu toward her newest contact and a friend she had made for life. Someone who she could actually talk to about her adventures with the Doctor and who understood that there was a dark and dangerous side to it in a way that her grandfather could not be allowed to know. She dialled the number before she had worked out what to say and before she had calmed. She didn't know if she had time to calm down or not. What if they had taken him to kill him?
"Doctor Martha Jones?" Martha answered the phone. "Is that you, Donna?" she checked seeing the caller ID but knowing that the Doctor had used her phone as Donna carried hers and the Doctor left his sitting on the console apparently charging.
"Martha!" Donna exclaimed. "They've taken him!"
"The Doctor?" Martha asked though she didn't think it would be anyone different.
"There were three of them and he was supposed to be in the café having tea because he hates shopping but when I went to get him he wasn't there and then a girl told me where he was and I found him and there were three of them and they were big and they hit him and then they took him!"
"Where are you?" Martha asked praying that they weren't on another planet somewhere because then she really didn't know what she was going to be able to do to help.
"The Bentall Centre in Kingston," Donna told her.
"How did they take him?"
"I don't know, it was some kind of energy force field thing, like a teleport? It came down over them and then it was gone and so were they. They vanished."
"Okay, so they have advanced technologies then," Martha concluded. "Were they human?"
"I don't think so. They were big, too big to be humans I think. I am not sure. They looked a little bit bluish too. I don't know what to do. What should I do? They hit him Martha. On the shoulder I think but then on the head and he went down. He was out cold or he was… he was out cold," she repeated not willing to think about the alternative.
"Where are you?"
"I told you, in Kingston."
"No, where exactly are you?"
"In the car park ticket hall on the way from the Bentall Centre into the car park by the footbridge," Donna advised.
"Okay, I know it," Martha offered. "I am coming down with a team. Do not go anywhere. I will be ask quick as I possibly can be."
"What should I do?" Donna asked her.
"Just try to remember as many details as you can. About the energy field. About the people that took the Doctor. About anything that was said or done. We need as much information as we can get. I am going to get another agency involved as well. We will get him back," Martha told Donna.
"How long are you going to be?" Donna asked her.
"Not long. We will be coming in by air. Stay where you are and try not to panic."
"I should never have made him come shopping," Donna commented quietly.