Author's Note: Hi there! Thank you very much to the following people for reviewing the last chapter - Aietradaea, Romana-II, Jiwa, Bad Dog No Biscuit, 3LW00D, Catelly, SawManiac211, CJaMes12, xxTeam-Masterxx and mericat.

This chapter is dedicated to xxTeam-Masterxx for two reasons: - firstly, for being my 50th reviewer (thankyou) and secondly just for being awesome! XXXX

CHAPTER SEVEN

Everything was still and silent. Too still. Too silent.

WPC Phyllis Dobbs shifted uneasily in her chair and looked up from the torrid romance novel she was reading. She never liked working nights. During the day, the front desk area was always a hive of activity, with people coming and going, prisoners shouting the odds, officers swearing, cell doors slamming, paperwork everywhere. But at night, after everyone had gone home, the place took on a different aspect, gloomy and depressing, almost eerie. They didn't call it the "graveyard shift" for nothing.

Phyllis was well known for her brisk, no-nonsense attitude. Despite the fact that the force was still a bit of a boy's club, she had earned the grudging respect of her male colleagues by refusing to take any rubbish or disrespect from anyone, no matter what their rank.

And she didn't scare easily.

Which was fortunate, she reflected now. Because that had been one hell of a storm out there earlier and it had made the night-shrouded station seem even creepier than ever. Soon she would start thinking she saw the shadows moving.

There weren't even any prisoners to keep her busy. Only one cell was occupied - number two, with that red-headed girl CID had brought in. She had banged on her cell door and shouted and screamed a bit at first, some load of old flannel about an evil angel coming to kill them all. Phyllis had resolutely ignored her, until finally she had shut up. The girl wasn't the first religious nutter to be confined in these cells and she was unlikely to be the last. But at least when she had been yelling it hadn't been so damn quiet!

Phyllis allowed her mind to drift, wondering idly what her waste-of-space husband was doing right now. Probably out on the razzle, wasting her hard-earned dosh again. Or fast asleep in front of the telly. She gave a disparaging sniff, her eyes wandering wistfully back to the front of her novel, admiring the well-developed pectoral muscles on the handsome, half-naked man on the cover. Huh, she should be so lucky!

Just then, she heard a clatter on the stairs and the door was wrenched roughly open. To her surprise, Sam Tyler erupted into the room, breathing heavily as though he had been running.

"Everything all right, Boss?" she asked curiously. "You look all hot and bothered."

"I need to see Amy Pond, right now," he replied in a curt voice.

Phyllis stared at him. She had worked with Sam Tyler for well over a year now, but she still didn't really understand him. Oh, he was a good copper, with an impressive track record of arrests behind him. And he was definitely easy on the eye, there was no doubt about that. But he was strange, nothing like the other blokes in the department. His manners, the way he dealt with people, the procedures he followed...and some of the peculiar things he said, sometimes she just couldn't make head nor tail of him. He was normally so cool and collected - she couldn't remember ever seeing him in such an agitated state before.

"You know the rules better than that, Boss," she said. "Ever since Billy Kemble died in his cell, no-one's allowed to see prisoners on their own. And I'm not allowed to leave the desk."

Tyler ran his hands through his hair, frustration written across his face. "Phyllis, this is an emergency!" he snapped. "It could be a matter of life or death!"

"That's what they all say," she told him, pointedly returning to her book. "I'm surprised at you, Sir, and you usually such a stickler for the rules."

"Phyllis, please!"

Hearing the distinct note of desperation in his voice, her eyes flicked back up to him in concern. Whatever was on his mind, it had to be big, to get him this upset. She hesitated for a moment. Usually she adhered to the custody regulations with a will of iron, otherwise cowboys like Gene Hunt and Ray Carling would walk all over her, causing chaos wherever they went. But Sam had never once asked her to bend the rules for him before. She sighed deeply. She was probably going to regret this, she could feel it in her waters.

"Go on then," she said disapprovingly, determined not to let him think she had developed a soft spot for him. "But you take this radio with you, just to be safe." With that she handed over the keys, together with a hand-held radio. "If anything goes wrong, you call me, all right?"

"Fine," Sam answered. "No problem. Thanks, Phyllis, you're a pearl."

"Pearl or not, you owe me a drink next time we're down the pub," she retorted.

But he had already unlocked the big, reinforced door leading to the cells and had disappeared down the corridor. Phyllis shook her head in exasperation and went back to her book.

Sam shoved the radio handset into the pocket of his leather jacket and promptly forgot about both it and Phyllis as he hastened towards Amy's cell. An inexplicable sense of urgency seemed to weigh on him, a strange feeling that time was running out.

All the doors in the cells area were open except one. Acting out of habit, he flipped open the inspection hatch in the closed door. Inside, he could see the slender, red-headed girl curled on the bed, huddled into a corner as if she was trying to make herself as small as possible. Without pausing further, he unlocked the door and hurried inside.

Amy's head shot up, fear in her eyes. But then she recognised him. "DI Tyler!"

"Sam," he answered. "Call me Sam."

She watched him warily as he moved into the room. "All right then...Sam...what are you doing here?"

For a moment, Sam didn't know what to say. He had spent so long guarding every word that came out of his mouth, obsessively making sure he didn't slip up, forever careful to ensure that nobody thought he had lost his marbles. Until now, only Annie had known his secret, the only one he had ever trusted enough. And now he was about to blurt it all out to a complete stranger. But if Amy Pond was to open up to him, he knew he had no choice.

"You're not from this time, are you, Amy?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady. "You're from the future."

At first, she didn't reply. For a few horrible seconds, Sam wondered if somehow he had got it all wrong, if she was going to laugh in his face just as Ray and Chris and Gene had laughed in hers. But then she said simply, "How did you know?"

He sat down heavily on the bed beside her, his legs feeling like they were about to give out from under him in relief. "Your shoes. Converse All-Stars. Not something you can easily get hold of in 1974."

Amy's eyes widened. "But the only way you could know that is..."

"If I came from the future too?" he finished. "I do. 2006, actually."

"But how...?" she gasped. "Were you touched by an Angel? Is that how you got back here?"

"Not unless one was driving the car that hit me," he said wryly. "I was in a hit-and-run car accident in 2006 and I woke up here. I had no idea whether I was mad, or in a coma or if I'd actually travelled in time."

"I knew you were different to the others," she exclaimed in a triumphant tone. "I could see it in your eyes. The Doctor always says time travel changes people, makes them different in ways they don't even understand."

Sam's senses went on red alert as he recognised the familiar name from Billy Shipton's statement. "The Doctor?"

"My friend," she said, her face falling again. "He's the one I was waiting for in the wasteland. He's not from Earth. I travel with him, through time and space, in a blue police box. It's called a TARDIS and it's bigger on the inside than on the outside."

Sam's first logical instinct was to reject this statement out of hand as pure madness. But everything they were discussing was completely impossible. If he believed one thing, then surely he had to believe the rest. If he could get struck by a car and sent back to 1973, then why couldn't Amy Pond travel around the Universe with an alien in a blue police box? And hadn't there also been a mention in Shipton's statement of a blue police box in the "Wester Drumlins Collection"? The coincidence was far too great for Sam's detective brain to ignore.

"Have you ever heard of a man named Billy Shipton?" he asked intently.

Amy shook her head. "No. Should I? Who is he?"

"Someone my colleagues interviewed a couple of years ago. He said he was a detective stationed in London in 2007, when he was touched by a stone angel and sent back in time to 1969. He also said he met up with a man named the Doctor and his companion, Martha Jones, who told him the angels were creatures of the abstract, feeding on the lost potential of their victims."

"I've never heard of any Billy Shipton. But Martha Jones travelled with the Doctor before I did – it must have happened during her time with him," Amy said excitedly. "So, do you believe me now, Sam? About the Weeping Angel?"

"I'm working on it," he admitted reluctantly. "But why didn't it kill Shipton, like it killed Tom Reynolds? Why just send him back in time?"

"They don't need to kill to feed," Amy explained. "They can consume a person's lost potential in the future by sending them back in time, effectively allowing them to live to death, rather than killing them outright, if you know what I mean. But some of the Angels have found that they enjoy killing. It gives them pleasure."

"And you're telling me we've got one of the psychopathic variety on our patch, right?"

As he spoke, the lights crackled loudly and blinked lazily off and then on again. Amy gave a small cry of horror and stiffened, freezing like a deer in head-lights.

"It's OK," Sam told her soothingly. "It's just a power cut, associated with the energy crisis they've got going on right now. We had them a lot last year. Saved my life once, actually."

"You don't understand, it's not just a power cut!" Amy shot back, her voice high-pitched with incipient panic. "It's the Angel, it's coming for us! It's draining all the electricity to shut down the lights!"

Sam found himself wearing the same blank look of incomprehension that he saw so often on Annie's face when she looked at him. "What?"

"I told you, you're safe as long as you can see them. As long as someone is looking at them, they remain quantum-locked, like an ordinary stone statue, and they can't move. But if you look away, even if you blink while they're hunting you...oh God, Sam, they're so quick! Once it has us in darkness, we won't stand a chance!"

This time, Sam didn't even stop to think. He realised his heart was pounding uncomfortably in his chest, like a big bass drum. Somehow, against all the odds, Amy had managed to convince him. As crazy as it seemed, somewhere in the last half an hour, without even being sure how it had happened, he had come to believe that there was an alien killer, shaped like a stone angel, loose in the station.

"Come on, we have to get out of here," he said tersely, yanking her to her feet and pulling her towards the door of the cell.

But Amy's hand had already flown to her eye, rubbing at it in a broken, jerky motion, as though she couldn't help herself. Trembling, she extended her fingers towards Sam and he saw they were covered in fine, grey dust.

"It's too late," she choked out. "It's already here."

Overhead, the lights hummed and flashed off again, leaving them in inky darkness for one, long, endless moment, before slowly flickering back to life.

An awful, long, drawn out scream of pain and terror echoed along the corridor, something Sam knew he would never forget, as long as he lived.

"Phyllis!" he yelled. Scrabbling in his pocket, he pulled out the radio she had given him such a short time ago. "Phyllis!" he called again, speaking frantically into the handset. "Phyllis, come in! Answer me, damn it!"

A wave of static answered him, roaring emptily in his ear. But then another voice spoke, resounding clearly through the radio. It was young, male and faultlessly polite.

"Hello, Detective Inspector Tyler. I'm very sorry, Sir, but WPC Dobbs can't speak to you right now."

"Why not?" Sam demanded.

"I'm afraid she's dead, Sir," the voice responded expressionlessly.

A chill crawled up Sam's spine, disbelief roiling like sickness in his stomach as he managed to whisper into the hand-set, "Who the hell are you?"

"My name's Bob, Sir," came the flat answer, amid another storm of static. "Angel Bob."