Author Notes: Thanks for the support! A special guest star in this chapter :P

Chapter 3

However much she tried to hold up appearances, however much she tried to pretend, Owen could see right through her. He could never be blind to her; he had learnt that the hard, painful way, all that time ago, when they had been alive. While Tosh was still so good at hiding from Owen, keeping strong for his sake, just as she had done when they were dying in tandem, Suzie was not. Perhaps it was his utter, soul-deep loathing of her, or maybe it was just because they were so alike, but he knew she was hiding behind a mask of strength and command, just as he was hiding behind a mask of brokenness and defeat. He could keep going that little while longer. He had made a promise, he had to.

So when that crack in her façade had shone through, he had taken his chance, dragging Toshiko with him.

"Don't you ever think that maybe you're just asking for it when you do this?" Donna stood, hands on hips as she regained her footing in a once more stable Tardis.

"What?" The Doctor looked at her in blank confusion.

"Making the Tardis do this random google search on time and space. It might just be me, but every time you've done that, we've always ended up in life or death situations!" she let the rant echo around the Tardis. She didn't mean to be harsh, but hey, it was the truth – just look at the Ood fiasco.

"Oh." He looked suitably contrite, "So...do you want to go somewhere else?"

Donna rolled her eyes, whacking him lightly on the arm as she made her way towards the door, "Don't be so sensitive. Will I be needing a coat this time?" She opened the doors, only to be greeted by a blast of heat as the scorching air rushed past her. She quirked an eyebrow, "Apparently not."

The Doctor followed her out, shrugging his coat onto his shoulders, apparently oblivious to the temperature, "Nice place." He scanned over the strange facility they had ended up in, closing the door.

"Oh, I hope that was a little Timelord humour shining through there. What is it with you and dumps like this?" Nevertheless, Donna began to make her way down a passage chosen at random, the initial fear she had held in situations like this when she had first started travelling only a small niggling in the back of her mind.

The Doctor shivered involuntarily, running to catch up, unexplained urgency lacing his tone, "Donna! Wait!"

"What? See anyone? Anything?"

The Doctor grasped her by the arm, "I think you're right, maybe we should go somewhere else."

"What are you on about? Know something I don't?" This wasn't like him, and they both knew it.

"No...yes...I don't know." He raked a hand through his hair, as was his habit when nervous.

"Well make up your mind!" A clunk echoed through the halls, from apparently every, yet no direction at the same time. "What was that?"

"Donna, we should get back to the Tardis." The Doctor's voice had dropped to a whisper, a note of an emotion rarely heard skimming underneath the words, "There's something...wrong about this place. Something that should not be. And in all the times I've encountered situations like this, they never end well. I don't want you mixed up in that. Come on."

Donna analysed his face, looking into his eyes for the truth in the words, and slowly nodded. She loved travelling with him, and she trusted him with her life, but sometimes the situations they landed themselves in got out of control, and if the Timelord was feeling out of his depth barely ten minutes out of the Tardis, then who was she to argue?

But before they had moved a step, the air was suddenly alive, the walls wailing in an electric anger, and they heard footsteps, running, pounding towards them. The Tardis was too far behind them, and whatever the feelings were that had spooked the Doctor in the first place only seemed to have heightened. Before Donna knew it, he had grabbed her around the middle and forcibly pulled her to the floor into a small shadowy alcove, hidden from view, created by the millennia of decay and destruction that seemed to seep from the floor.

Owen ran and ran and ran, his fingers never releasing their tenuous grip on Toshiko's too-thin wrist, guiding her through the maze, at every turn expecting to see one of them. The whole facility seemed to have come alive as soon as he had tackled Suzie to the ground and scrambled away from the cell down the corridor not inhabited by her escorting creature. He had timed it well; the new situation after an eternity of monotonous pain amongst the Torchwood men and women had spurred them into a mad frenzy. He knew it would not last long, that they would immobilise them, but he had learnt things in his stay here, as had Tosh. Ever the observant one, she had noted that Suzie's puppet-master powers were only at their strongest in those white rooms.

He had no idea where he was going, but he knew how this was going to end if he could not find them the way out. In his mind he had formed two options, and he had a feeling Toshiko had come to the same conclusion. Either they found the room where they were 'made', and somehow managed to locate the connection to the Rift that linked Cardiff's Torchwood to this place, or they died. He knew this would be the only chance they would get, and he was not going to watch Toshiko break apart like those skeletal humans in their cell.

A weak cry from behind, and then he stumbled as the wrist in his hand pulled him back. "Tosh?" His voice was a hoarse whisper, raw from the abuse over the months. He licked his cracked lips as a trickle of blood welled in the valleys of dry skin, falling to his knees beside her unmoving body. She had fallen from exhaustion, her smaller form unable to cope with the sudden exertion after so much time of wasting away. "Toshiko, Tosh, please! You have to get up! I can't carry you." A dry sob caught in his throat, sending him into a coughing fit, "Please!"

"Donna!" A frantic hiss, and Owen whirled around, futilely attempting to shield Toshiko's still body from view. His eyes widened in shock as two humans, two clean, healthy, unmarked humans stepped towards them, the man trying to hold the woman back, while she approached slowly, her hands held in a placating gesture. "Donna, don't." There was finality in his tone, but she ignored him, sinking to her knees a foot or so away from him, clearly aware of his skittish state, but equally aware that whoever they were, they were in trouble, and needed help.

"It's okay, my name's Donna. We're not really from around here. You don't have to worry – we're not going to hurt you."

The cynical side of Owen, the Torchwood side, marvelled at the naivety of the woman; he could be an escaped convict for all she knew. But the scared, overriding element in him could only nod, "You're human?" He didn't recognise them, and they didn't look like Suzie; no aura to taint their shadows.

The woman, Donna, nodded, "Yeah, more or less. I'm from Earth, he's-"

Owen never bothered to find out where her friend was from, "Earth? You're from Earth?" The wailing ceased, and he visibly cringed. He had made a promise. To ask for both of them would be too much, but to ask for one... "Please, you have to take her! You have to take her home! She doesn't belong here!" Before Donna knew what was happening, the desperate human before her was taking her hand, and placing it on the shoulder of the small woman he was trying to protect.

The Doctor bent down to try and stop the exchange, his senses thrumming with an oncoming darkness. He knew it did not come from these two, but it was coming, and he had to get Donna out. And then he saw the woman's face. It took him a moment, as it was different, older, out of place, but he remembered it, from London, a lifetime ago. The woman was from Earth, not this unnatural planet. She was as much his responsibility as Donna. The impossibility of the situation was interrupted by a voice from behind them, a cajoling, falsely sweet call, "Owen! Toshiko! Come on, don't be so shy!"

The one called Owen shuddered, and made to rise, but Donna grabbed his thin arm, "What about you?"

He didn't seem to be listening, "Please, take her home, please, you have to take her home!" It seemed to be a mantra for him, and relief shone in his eyes as the mysterious quiet man in the coat gently lifted Toshiko's inhumanly light body into his arms. And then Owen collapsed back to the floor, fingers scrapping almost involuntarily at the floor, tearing his fingernails into bloody shreds as he looked imploringly up at them, gasping out a word, "Hide!"

Donna did not want to leave him, but the Doctor gave her no choice as he stole around the corner, gently placing the woman on the floor, peeking back. Donna flattened herself against the wall behind him, listening intently.

The Doctor frowned, his instincts suddenly screaming at him, berating him, asking him why he had left the second human, "I'm so sorry." The whisper of a breath escaped his lips as a shadow floated down the corridor towards Owen. A woman, human by appearance, but something more. A second shadow flitted at the corner of his vision, but it was too far away, drawing away from the interaction, observing. "Honestly, Owen, didn't Jack teach you anything about manners? There was no need to get physical." The woman smiled suggestively down at the shivering form, brushing at a barely forming bruise on her cheek.

Owen snorted, "He encouraged the shooting of bastard freaks like you. When you become worth saving, Suzie, I'll be sure to write you an apology."

She rolled her eyes. The Doctor tensed at the exchange, silently praying the name had been a coincidence, "Torchwood to the core, his little prodigies of his new age. I remember when I used to be one of them. Now where is the other?" She sighed in annoyance, "What have you done with Toshiko, Owen? The longer she is missing, the worse the retribution they will inflict."

"Go fuck yourself and your freaks." Owen spat at her, refusing to back down even when he could barely feel his limbs.

She smiled again, and the Doctor's spine crawled. She bent down, grasping Owen's shoulder hard enough to make him cry out, "Thank you for the charming advice, sweetheart, but I'd much rather fuck you."

The Doctor closed his eyes as he pressed his back to the wall, unable to watch as the woman dragged Owen away, guilt seeping into his core. One more life.

When the footsteps had faded, he turned to Donna, who was silently stroking Toshiko's hair, tears gathering in her eyes, but never falling; the Doctor remembered a time when they had. Plans forming already in his overactive mind, the Timelord scooped the woman up, and led the way back to the Tardis, placed her gently down on one of the long seats as soon as they were inside. "We have to go back." Donna's voice came from behind him.

"No." His voice was flat, but thrummed with anger as he shrugged off his coat, and began adjusting the controls.

"What?" Donna spat, her protest echoing in the silence, "We just left him there! If you're not going to try and fix things like you normally do, you could at least do this! You heard that...that woman!"

He regarded her coolly, and she shut her mouth, "I am going to fix this, but to do that, I need to know what's going on."

"Then what..?"

"This Toshiko, and Owen, they work for a man I know. They should not be here, and yet they are. I need to know why. And Jack needs to know, because there's no way he would have knowingly abandoned them here." He looked down on the unconscious form of the woman, so small against the setting of the Tardis, and yet already glowing with the new light of the vortex, "We're going to Cardiff."

To Be Continued...

Author Notes: What did you think? I know Donna's not that popular, but I needed her for it to fit in with the timeline.