The Doctor smiled quietly, not replying so as to let him sleep. He stepped aside moving to the console, where Canton sat, impassive.
"So. What are we going to do for now?" Canton asked.
"I'm going to get her to delay our landing a bit. It must have taken a lot out of him, the psychic interface and whatnot." With this, he threw a few switches on the console, setting the Tardis adrift in the vortex for a while so that Sam could recover.
The next thing Sam was aware of was the awful pain in his head. It throbbed like a bad hangover and a concussion put together. He sat up a bit, opening his eyes slowly.
"Where the heck am I?" He asked himself as he came to.
"Hello! Good to see, you're waking up." An overly excited man appeared in his vision.
Oh, yeah, him. He'd fallen asleep….in the Tardis, he guessed.
"So….what happened?" Sam questioned the Doctor.
"You don't remember?" He whipped out his sonic, the pulsing sound it made as he ran a scan grated at Sam's nerves like salt into a wound.
"Augh, my head! Stop making that noise," he muttered, cringing.
"Sorry. But it appears there's something going on with your head," The Doctor replied.
"What do you mean?" Sam sat up now, trying to stand.
"Wait a moment," The Doctor cautioned, but Sam ignored him, standing anyway. He faltered a bit, stumbling. "I was going to say, the psychic link appears to have taken a toll on your nervous system."
"What?" Sam snapped, steadying himself against the edge of the console.
"You really don't remember?" The Doctor now began to sound concerned.
"No. I don't. I mean, I remember you were going to….oh. Oh. The woman, called herself the, uh, the Bad Wolf. So what, that was all in my head?" He asked, realization showing in his face.
"Yes, I suppose you experienced the exchange as a sort of daydream. Anyway, the good news is, since you seem capable of remembering it, and your balance is improving, it appears it was just a momentary sapping of your neural capabilities, a sort of system overload which you had to sleep off. Do you feel alright, though? A moment ago you mentioned your head."
"Yeah…actually, I feel a lot better now, but that was really, really weird. I'm not doing that again, for sure," he said, shaking his head as his mind began to clear.
"Well, the good news is you don't need to. The Tardis was able to hone in on your brother's location based on your memory of him. And, if you're ready, we can land." The Doctor explained.
"Let's do it," Sam assented.
"Brilliant," the Doctor replied, moving back to the controls, where he initiated the landing sequence.
The familiar screeching met Sam's ears as the Tardis shook briefly, then fell still.
"We're here?" Sam asked.
"Yes. This is where she tracked your brother to. Although I haven't done this with a human before now, it has worked when I did it myself. I can only assume it's correct. She hasn't failed me yet, you know." The Doctor smiled as he spoke, stroking the console as if it were a cat.
"Yeah, I get that, but where are we, exactly?" Sam prodded, irritation seeping into his voice.
"Oh, yes. Time and place…let me see," The Doctor replied, typing rapidly on a keyboard before pausing to read off the monitor.
"It appears we're in Boise, Idaho. But is that what you wanted to know?" The Doctor said, looking at him.
"Date might be good too," he returned.
"It's the same day as it was before…whatever date that is in your universe. I'm afraid she's only calibrated for my universe. Still calculating the date for this one." He made an awkward face saying this, as if to briefly embody his embarrassment at perhaps his ship's only shortcoming.
"Mm, good to know," Sam said, nodding as he headed toward the doors.
"Alright, then," The Doctor said, prompting him to pause a moment. "I don't suppose you'd mind us coming with you?" He motioned toward Canton.
"I need to do this myself. There's no telling what could happen," Sam explained, shaking his head.
"Alright, but be careful," The Doctor warned, waving to him.
Sam nodded grimly, grabbing his bag and his gun from where he'd left them by the door.
He pushed the door open, stepping out into the cold night air.
They had landed in an alley, between to old brick buildings in what appeared to be the red light district of town. A sign in a bar up a ways blinked in the window, the neon buzzing tiredly, perhaps the only thing living besides Sam himself.
He started, whirling about, whipping out his gun when the silence was shattered by the unmistakable sound of glass breaking.