Donna returned after finding out someone was already surveying that street. She had a few words to say to whoever had sent her on that particular errand.
She was already running up the stairs when the girl in the blue jacket came in from her disappointingly fruitless search. She took the lift up tothe the third floor, right above Donna.
Unbeknownst to her, only a few feet away, the Doctor was busy at his computer. Even with his newly sonicked up network access, it was taking him a little while to get the information he needed. He pointed the sonic screwdriver at the screen and delved deeper into the network.
He kept nosing around until he found it — the building plan. It was down into the basement, then. He stood up and strode over to the lift. His hand slipped inside his jacket and he pulled out the good old sonic.
"Who needs a key?" he asked himself quietly as he did a bit of jiggery-pokery on the keyhole. The doors slid shut and the lift began to descend.
The girl in the jacket was about to go downstairs when she saw the computer. She sat down and looked around on the network.
She poked around curiously, and then she found it. A single page which proved all her suspicions. She narrowed her eyes at the blue lines across the black background, at the little silver image turning slowly around in the corner of the screen.
"I knew it," she hissed, and jumped up so fast she knocked over the chair. She clicked away and looked at more of the site, and stumbled across the building plan.
"The basement?" she asked. "Funny place to have your office...unless you're hiding something..."
She didn't bother to right the chair as she whirled and sprinted away.
She'd just gone down below Donna's floor, her pen in hand, ready to unlock any doors in her way, when the redhead finished printing off copies of a packet. She picked them all up, checked the staples, and marched up the stairs.
On the way along the row of desks, she noticed a chair toppled over. She went to right it and as she straightened, pulling the chair up with her, she saw the information on the screen. She shouldn't be looking at it, really, but she couldn't resist. She scanned through all the pages open onscreen.
The internet page was some sort of digital wireframe model, and a lot of nonsense about Cybermen, and the floor plan was focused on the basement, which was labeled "Manager's Offices." Cybermen? What were Cybermen?
It seemed like the only way she was going to find out was by talking to the manager of the company, and that meant going down into the basement. Forgetting entirely about the papers she was supposed to be delivering to whoever had ordered them typed, she called the lift up.
She stepped inside and looked at the buttons. A key! She needed a key! Where the hell was she going to get a key?
Then she remembered the packets in her hand. She had once had to use a staple, the only thing she'd had on her, to pick the lock on her own car, after locking her keys inside. Surely the key for an elevator couldn't be that much harder? Feeling guilty, nervous, and daring all at once, she unbent a staple and inserted it into the lock.
A few moments of twisting and turning later, there was a ding, and the elevator began to descend.
Donna slipped her staple back into the papers it had held together and pinched the ends closed. No one would ever have to know.
She wathced the number above the lift doors change. 3... 2... G...
B.
B for basement.
The lift dinged again, and the doors slid open.
A/N: So, now they're all down in the basement, ready to go see the manager about Cybermen. What's down there? What happens next? Well, you'll just have to wait until tomorrow to find out!
~DH~