"Excuse me?" Gianna questioned immediately, unsure of how else to respond.
The Doctor breathed, preparing the next part of his speech. "Have you ever noticed how everything goes your way? How you always know the answers to all of your test answers without studying, how you can just ask for something and it's yours, how everybody in the student body of your school adores you?"
"Yeah. That's just my life."
The Doctor shook his head. "That's not your life. The life you've been living has been a figment of your imagination, literally."
Gianna didn't understand, so the Doctor proceeded. "Things aren't supposed to always go your way. Bad things happen. When everything is absolutely perfect with absolutely nothing wrong with it, it makes some people question its authenticity, don't you think?"
Gianna frowned. "Are you trying to convince me that just because things go my way means that my life isn't real?"
"It's certainly a curious situation, wouldn't you say?" The Doctor looked at her. "What bad things have happened to you today?"
Gianna thought for a moment, while the Doctor rambled, "It could be something as simple as a mustard stain on your shirt or getting a question wrong on a quiz, or something as major as-"
Gianna shook her head. "I can't think of anything."
"In the last week?"
Gianna didn't say anything.
"The last month?"
Gianna started to feel nervous. She became scared that this man may be right. Was her life really too perfect?
Suddenly, life started to black out once again. She started to mumble the Doctor's name, but everything had already disappeared.
Gianna opened her eyes, to find everything was the same, except the Doctor had moved to her side. "What happened?" She asked, rubbing her forehead.
"You blacked out for a few seconds." He said. "When you feel a strong, unfamiliar emotion, you black out, back to the real world. They sedate you right before you properly wake up."
"So, when you startled me this afternoon at the assembly, it was because-"
"Because you aren't used to that emotion." The Doctor stood up. "It's mostly because you aren't expecting it, because you know everything else that's going to happen in your life."
"So you're basically intruding my life, just to tell me it isn't real?"
"But it's wrong, what they did to you." He stood up and gripped her shoulders, pulling her to her bedroom mirror. "This isn't even how you look in reality."
Gianna looked at her reflection. She looked absolutely gorgeous - long, straight blonde hair; sparkling blue eyes; a smooth, rounded face; perfectly sized body: she was the envy of every girl in her school. Is it all too good to be true?
The Doctor cleared his throat, alerting Gianna that he had more to say. She turned around to listen.
"When you were seven months old, your parents were killed in a plane crash. You were taken into care by your grandmother, who died three months later of a heart attack. You were adopted by a family closely tied to the government, and somehow at the age of five you ended up being tested on by their doctors. They saw that you were a healthy, smart child, that had capabilities for bigger, 'better' things.
"So, they took you. Your adoptive parents didn't seem to care, so they brought you here, and scientists put you under sedation while they spent the next twelve years enhancing your mind. They ran a sort of program on your mind that allowed you to live a normal life, which they could use to subliminally give you information you'd need to know when they finished enhancing your mind. Little did they know that the software was faulty, and that since your mind is so brilliant, you had the power to have everything go your way."
"But why do they want me?" Gianna asked. "What makes my mind special?"
"They needed a child with a brilliant mind at that young age so they could develop and enhance it more. They want to use you as some sort of weapon."
"Why?"
The Doctor shook his head. "I don't know. As I was reading your files, something tracked my presence and blocked it."
Gianna stared at the floor for a few minutes. She had difficulty comprehending all the things the Doctor was telling her.
She looked up at him. "So what are you going to do?"
"Well," the Doctor started, walking to the corner, "first I need to take care of something."
"What?" Gianna asked.
The Doctor smiled as he vanished from the room. Gianna ran to the corner where he had been standing, and started waving her hands in the air, as if she could stop his molecules from completely leaving her room. She was left there standing in the corner, unsure of what to do next.
She heard a knock on her bedroom door. "I'll be down for dinner in a minute, Mom." Gianna called.
The door opened, and the Doctor walked into her room. "You won't be needing dinner where we're going."
The Doctor grabbed her arm gently and pulled her into the center of the room. "Now, in order to get you back to the real world, I need to do something that you would never expect."
Gianna looked scared. "What are you planning?"
"Oh, nothing bad." The Doctor assured. "Just something, um, rather…"
The Doctor didn't finish. He instead lifted his arm up and swung his arm to slap her. She blacked out rather quickly.
"Calm down, Gianna. You'll be alright in a minute."
Gianna stopped flailing in her bed and opened her eyes; she immediately shut them to prevent the bright lights from burning her eyes. The Doctor helped sit her up in bed, and after she was leaning against some pillows, she dared open her eyes again.
"Why did you hit me?" She immediately questioned.
"Strong, unfamiliar emotion, remember?" The Doctor said. "I didn't even hit you! I just made it seem as though I would."
Gianna rubbed her cheek, forgetting that it had happened in her mind. She looked around the room she was in. She was sitting in an uncomfortable bed in the middle of a large room full of scientific supplies. The word scientific is used because Gianna couldn't tell if things were strictly medical or not. There were several lab tables set up, and a few desks with computers on them. There were no other people in the room other than her and the Doctor, who looked exactly as he did in her mind.
"We only have a few more minutes until the doctors get back." The Doctor said. "Come on; let's get you out of bed."
"You know, I never actually agreed to leaving." Gianna complained as she swung her legs over to step onto the floor. As her feet touched the cold floor, she collapsed.
The Doctor quickly rushed to the other end of the room, and wheeled over to her a wheelchair. "You haven't walked in this body in over ten years; it's going to take some getting used to."
The Doctor helped her into the wheelchair, and began wheeling her down the hall. As she was wheeled over the threshold, the Doctor grabbed a folder of papers next to the door and handed them to Gianna.
"There's your basic information. Your real name,"
"My real name?"
"Yes, your real name. Your name is not Gianna Braxton; that's the name you had in your mind." The Doctor informed her.
Gianna sighed while the Doctor continued. "In there's your real name, your parents' names, information about you when you came to the research center, et cetera. You're gonna have to wait until we get to the TARDIS to see how you look, however."
"TARDIS?"
"Oh, right. TARDIS: stands for Time and Relative Dimension In Space. Basically, it's my time machine; I'm a Time Lord that travels in time and space in my TARDIS."
Gianna's head was spinning so much from this information, that she hadn't even realized how mad all of this sounded.
An alarm began to sound overhead, and the Doctor pushed her faster. "I don't know why I parked the TARDIS near this entrance; there was probably an emergency exit closer to the room you were in."
"Intruder alert! Subject 847 abducted by a man in a bowtie!"
The Doctor rolled his eyes as he pushed the wheelchair into an elevator, and quickly pressed the button for the main floor.
"It's parked near the back entrance, which is pretty close to this elevator." The Doctor mumbled to Gianna.
"My real name is Clara?" Gianna exclaimed, appalled. "Clara Hopkins?"
"Oh, yes, I suppose so." The Doctor said, reading the information over her shoulder.
"But that's a horrible name, Clara!"
Before the Doctor could argue, the elevator stopped, and the lights flickered off. "Intruder located in Elevator 3C, Floor 8." The same monotonous voice droned over the intercom.
Without saying anything, the Doctor took something long and thin from his pocket; he pressed a button on it, causing it to glow green on its tip, and started running it across the panel beneath the elevator buttons. A moment later, the panel came off, and the Doctor began fiddling with some wires.
"What is that?" Gianna asked.
"A sonic screwdriver." The Doctor answered. "It does loads of things for you, and is quite helpful in situations like these."
The Doctor pressed something within the elevator panel, causing the lights to turn back on. The elevator started to move faster than it had before, causing Gianna to tightly grip the arm rests of her wheelchair.
"It's moving a bit fast, isn't it?" She questioned.
"Yes." The Doctor answered. "I programmed it that way."
Gianna shut her eyes as the heart-racing ride continued. A short moment later, it hit something beneath them, causing Gianna to lurch slightly in her wheelchair.
"Sorry about that." The Doctor said quickly as he pushed her wheelchair out of the elevator to a side door. Gianna noticed the surprised looks on the faces of those that were in the main lobby as she flew past them.
They quickly pushed out the door at top speed until the reached the end of the pavement. "Sorry, but this is where you'll have to walk." The Doctor informed her.
He helped her out of the wheelchair and supported her as she took her first steps in over ten years. They were small and slow, but the TARDIS was only parked a few feet into the grass. The Doctor pushed open the door just as a dozen men with guns burst from the facility doors.
"Stop or we'll shoot!" The one in front shouted.
"Oh, go ahead." The Doctor smiled. "It won't be bothering me."
In two short seconds, the Doctor had lifted Gianna up, thrown her as gently as he could onto the TARDIS floor, and slammed the doors shut. He could hear the men shooting at his TARDIS.
"Sorry, dear." The Doctor said affectionately, patting the wall. He turned to Gianna, who was still on the floor, with her knees against her chest.
"They can't get in. It's locked, and I've got the shields on."
Gianna gripped the railing and stood up. "I'd be more afraid of the man and his crazy box thing that just abducted me from a hospital." Gianna motioned to the TARDIS interior. "I don't even understand this thing! It was a blue box when we were outside."
"Many people use the phrase 'bigger on the inside'." The Doctor said, running to the center console. He began to pull several levers on the console.
"So we're leaving here?" Gianna asked, taking small steps to the console.
"Well, it isn't a very idea to go back out there while they're shooting at us." The Doctor turned something on the console. "We'll be back, though, eventually. I'm still not completely sure why they've been using you."
"So you took me from this place without even knowing why you should?"
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "I was tipped off by a friend. She wouldn't tell me why I had to take you, just that I should. She doesn't like giving out 'spoilers'."
"Is she your girlfriend or something?"
The Doctor spluttered for a moment, before hastily saying, "That isn't any of your business right now."
"Can't imagine somebody like you having a girlfriend, to be honest." Gianna muttered.
"Oi!" The Doctor exclaimed. "See, you've been in your own little world for far too long, Clara. You grew up believing everybody was beneath you, and that everything had to go your way." The Doctor paused for breath. "Well, I'm going to show you the error of your ways."
"You called me Clara. Never do that again, Doctor." Gianna said, ignoring everything else the Doctor had just told her.
"Clara, as long as you're with me, you're going to be referred to by your real, proper name. I'd get used to it, if I were you."
AN: I hope this chapter didn't disappoint. Please continue to leave reviews; I always appreciate them. Can't guarantee when the next chapter will be up; I have a lot of tennis practice in the next few weeks, and a trip this weekend, but I'll get it up as soon as I can.