Thank you Anonymous Person for the review! Anyway, here goes chapter four.
Edit 9/7/11: I've rewritten this again but I'm still not happy with it. As much as I want to write this story I'm finding it really difficult.
Chapter Four – Second Encounter
The Doctor gave a groan as he rolled over and blinked his eyes open, realising he was lying on the floor. The side of his head was throbbing painfully and he screwed his eyes shut again, putting a hand up to his temple. So she'd knocked him out. Sneaky. It seemed she was good at misleading him; he'd have to remember that in future.
As he opened his eyes again he registered that the sky was a blank expanse of navy blue clouded with dark grey smoke that shielded the stars, and with a stab of disappointment he realised that he must have missed the fireworks. He also realised that there was something cold and wet soaking into his clothes, and as he picked himself up he saw he'd been lying in the snow. He brushed some of the tiny flakes of ice off his coat and shivered. It was a good job that his Time Lord physiology meant he could withstand the cold: any human might well have frozen to death by now. Had she known that when she left him there, he wondered? She'd certainly shown she was capable of killing, although she had seemed fairly reluctant to do it to him. If she'd genuinely intended to finish him off she probably would have just shot him, but even so he knew she was up to something untrustworthy. He was going to have to find out what, even though he wasn't too sure where to start.
He began to walk back into the market place, the throbbing pain in his head dying down a little. Perhaps the best place to go might be back towards the cake stand, since that was where he'd first met her, but even as he approached it he realised something was wrong. A few yards down from the cake stall a congregation of people had gathered in the aisle between the stands, blocking his view of what was going on. He couldn't see what they were looking at, but he could hear the hum of a hover vehicle's engine and saw the periodic blue flashing of a police light. Pushing his way forward into the crowd and flashing his psychic paper at a few people he managed to reach the barrier of police tape that closed off the crime scene.
Looking out in front of him he saw the body of a man lying in the snow with his limbs splayed out at odd angles and green foam oozing from his mouth. A forensic team was taking photographs and police were milling around, interviewing the witnesses nearby. The Doctor felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as he realised he recognised the man. Now he knew what had happened.
He was just considering going and talking to one of the police officers when he heard a voice hiss from behind him.
"You chuffing idiot. What did you go and give him the cake for?"
He turned to see Dominie Nova standing just a few inches off to his left, speaking quietly as if she didn't want to be heard, but still sounding frustrated.
"I didn't give it him," he whispered back, "Well, I suppose I did sort of give it him, but I didn't say he could eat it. I just asked him to hold it for me for a few minutes."
She gave him a disbelieving look. "What the bloody hell for?"
"Well, I thought you might start throwing up or something. I didn't exactly want to be standing round holding a cake throughout that, although quite clearly I was worrying about completely the wrong thing."
"I told you not to eat if for a reason," she said, sounding quite smug.
He gave her an angry look. "I see that now, although you haven't exactly been straight with me. The fact that somebody might attempt to poison you was something you failed to mention."
"Why would I have mentioned it?" she snapped, sounding rather irritated.
"Most people would go to the police if they knew somebody was going to try and kill them," he replied, "You however just tried to kill them right back, which probably wasn't the best way of dealing with it. Although I've got to say I'm intrigued as to why he wanted to kill you in the first place."
She looked more irritated than ever. "What's that got to do with you?"
"Well, I suppose it doesn't really," he said in response, "But since two people are dead, and you quite obviously aren't as much of the friendly cake-buying type as you made out to be, you can't really blame me for being interested."
She rolled her eyes. "Be interested all you like, I'm not telling you anything."
"Alright," he replied, "But if you don't tell me anything I might just go and tell those police officers over there something. And I'm quite happy to talk about what it is I've just seen you do."
He could almost hear the smirk in her voice when she said the next sentence. "Feel free, if you want to get yourself arrested as well. You're the one who gave that guy the poisoned cake."
He glared at her. "The difference is I didn't kill him on purpose."
"Did you really think you could give some random guy a cake to hold and expect him to not have eaten it by the time you got back?" she said with a sneer.
"Well, he looked trustworthy," he retaliated, "Although I suppose in hindsight you looked pretty trustworthy too when I first met you. Seems I was wrong about that."
She responded with an indignant look. "I stopped you eating that cake so that you wouldn't be the one who got poisoned, but yet you're saying I'm untrustworthy?"
He was beginning to formulate a response to that when he glanced behind her to see what was going on. He stopped talking as he saw that a police officer was talking to the green skinned serving girl from the stand, both of them gesturing towards Dominie and the Doctor and casting glances in their direction.
"Doctor, it's not like I've done anything to…" Dominie was continuing.
He held up a hand to silence her. "We can discuss your trustworthiness later, but right now I think we may both be in trouble."
Realising he was staring at a point somewhere over her shoulder, she stopped talking and turned to see where he was looking. The girl and the cop were both staring directly at them, and then the cop began to walk forward while taking out his handcuffs. Dominie glanced back at the Doctor, who looked from her to the policeman and back again. In a split second a moment of understanding passed between them, and they both turned and started to run.
They barged their way through the crowd of people and heard a few shouts from the policemen behind them as they turned left into one of the gaps between stalls and began running down another row of stands. A police siren began to sound as a couple of cops jumped on their hoverbikes, while several others started chasing them on foot, brandishing their stun phasers.
"What exactly did we do?" Dominie shouted as they dodged a couple of stun phaser blasts.
"We bought the cake that killed him," the Doctor shouted back in answer, "Guess that makes us prime suspects."
There was the buzzing sound of an engine across to their right and they both looked round to see a hover bike swerve between stalls and try and cut in front of them to block their escape. Dominie slowed down, but the Doctor simply pulled out his sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the bike, causing the vehicle to spiral off in a completely different direction much to the pilot's surprise.
Dominie gave him a slightly surprised look but didn't say anything, just continued running.
Several shoppers and stall owners were looking at them in shock as they ran past, and glancing behind them they could see the cops pursuing them on foot. Dominie suddenly heard the Doctor shout "This way!" and he turned to run towards a stall that was selling chemistry equipment. "Excuse me!" he shouted to the store owner, "Do you have some potassium I could borrow?"
The store owner glanced at him and then up at the police that were pursuing them. "Er, I…"
"Actually, no," said the Doctor. "Don't want to overdo it. Have you got any sodium?"
The store owner just continued to stare at him nervously. "Yes, but…"
"Those are sodium chips right there," the Doctor said, pointing to a tray on a shelf behind the owner. "For the demagnetography sets. Do you mind just passing me that?"
The cops were getting closer and the man was looking uncertain. "What…"
He began, but Dominie suddenly yelled at him, pulling out her gun. "Just give him the goddamn tray!"
He looked at her in fear while the Doctor turned to her and glared, but her outburst had the desired effect and the man quickly thrust the tray at the Doctor. The cops had almost caught up with them now and were yelling for people to get out of the way, but the Doctor quickly threw the contents of the tray on the floor just in front of them. As the sodium reacted with the snow bursts of yellow flame suddenly shot up from the floor and the police suddenly backed off as the chemical fizzed and smoked in front of them.
A few people screamed, but there were a couple of teenage onlookers who cheered at the entertainment. Dominie grinned at them, but the Doctor just continued to glare at her as they set off again. "I don't think you pulling out that gun really helped anything."
She rolled her eyes. "Well, I'm not the one who just threw a load of the world's most reactive element at a bunch of cops."
"Second most reactive element."
"Oh, who the hell cares? That was smart, though. I wouldn't have thought of it."
He couldn't help but smile at the compliment. "Well, I suppose it was quite clever, wasn't it?"
The sodium reaction only bought them a few seconds, the police quickly diverting their course around it even as it died down, but it had given the Doctor and Dominie chance to gain a reasonable head start. Even so, they still weren't quite out of range of the phasers. There were several zapping sounds as more phaser blasts headed in their direction, and they rounded a corner to find themselves running through the space round the backs of the stalls. No one else was around, and they quickly ran to the back door of one of the huts to go inside. "In here!" the Doctor said, as they both rushed inside the hut, the door swinging shut just as the cops rounded the corner behind them. They both stood in the cramped, dimly lit room in complete silence for a few moments, listening to the police run past. When it had gone quiet again they both let out the breaths they'd been holding, and began to pant slightly as they recovered from the run.
After a few moments the Doctor suddenly grinned cheerily. "Well, that was fun."
Dominie looked at him in bewilderment. "Fun's not the word I'd use."
"Informative, too."
"Informative's a word I'd use even less."
"Well, that told me a lot about you," he offered as an explanation.
She raised an eyebrow at him. "Oh yeah? Like what?"
"Like that you obviously aren't really a federal officer, for one thing."
"And you deduced that how?"
"If you were, you wouldn't have run," he explained. "You would have just shown them your card, they would have accepted your authority and let you go, no trouble. However, you know as well as I do that card isn't actually valid. You can't risk showing it to anyone with actual authority because if they thought to check up on it they'd realise you've been officially dead for seven years. I'm sure that would cause a few problems for you."
She glared at him, impressed that he'd been able to work it out but wishing more and more that she'd never met him. "Why did you run, then? If you knew all that you could have just explained everything to the police and they would have come after me instead."
"Well," he said with a shrug, "I just like running."
She scowled at him. "Now that's just stupid."
He looked a little offended by that, but then seemed to brush it off. "Where are you from, anyway? Acaritos?"
She shook her head. "No, I got the startram here for the festival. I live on Alcyone Three Beta."
"Really? The plantation planet?"
"Yeah, that one."
"Whereabouts on that one?"
She gave him another glare. "Why are you asking?"
He gave a casual shrug, as if it was of little importance. "Well, I was just wondering if you wanted a lift home, that's all."
"If you're offering," she said cautiously, thinking it was a bit suspicious for him to offer to do something like that after their run-in ealier.
He grinned at her, "Of course," but then his expression became serious again. "On one condition."
She looked at him, thinking she didn't much like the sound of that. "What?"
"I take you home, and you tell me who you really are, what just happened and why you killed that man."
She continued to glare at him in silence for a few moments, deliberating. It probably was a fair deal, but she really didn't want to tell him the whole truth. It would only make things worse. Still, she supposed she could always make the deal then break it. "Fine," she agreed, "It's an island next to the Nova sugarleaf plantation, on the Tropic of Sycaro sixty kliks west of the date line."
He gave another one of those impossibly bright grins. "Sounds good to me. Alright, let's go!"
He pushed the door open and they both rushed outside. Turning left, they began to start running again, but stopped suddenly as they realised that the group of police was several yards in front of them. They watched as one of the police officers in the rear of the unit turned round, and spotting them gave a yell so that the entire group turned and began to chase them again.
"Actually, it's this way anyway," the Doctor said, as they about turned and began to run in the opposite direction.
As they approached the end of the row of stalls a few stun laser blasts shot overhead and they were forced to duck. They rounded a corner and the Doctor pointed out in front of him. "There she is!"
Dominie looked at the blue box in front of her and stopped running to look at him in disbelief. "Are you kidding me? It says 'Police Box' on the top!"
"Nope, not kidding," he said, grabbing her arm and pulling her forward just as more laser blasts shot past them. "Now come on!"
They reached the door of the box and he pushed it open to pull her inside after him, before closing it firmly behind them. Dominie looked around her, more than a little bewildered. "Well, that's…"
"I know," said the Doctor, walking up towards the console. "It's…"
"Not as modern as I was expecting," Dominie finished.
He stopped walking and turned back to look at her, looking both incredulous and slightly offended. "I just show you a blue box that's a hundred times bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, and all you can say is 'it's not as modern as I was expecting'?"
She stared right back at him with a hard look, "Well, it being bigger on the inside's not all that special, is it? I'm pretty sure this isn't the only ship in the universe with Casimir warp cells; it's not that weird."
He just looked at her in silence for a few moments, completely taken aback, and then went back to fiddling with the controls on the console, looking thoughtful. "No, it's not all that weird," he said after a few seconds, "That is, if you're from the two hundred and twelfth century and are familiar with Casimir warping."
She looked at him in confusion. "What? No, of course I'm not from…Well, I just knew it was theoretically possible, that's all." She realised she didn't actually know how she knew about it. Damn. She'd already revealed too much. Perhaps it would be best if she tried not talking to him at all in future unless it was strictly necessary.
The Doctor pulled down a lever on the console and the entire room juddered and the engines seemed to make a whining noise in protest. The Doctor looked at Dominie in disapproval, "See, I think you've offended her with that comment. She doesn't want to go now."
Dominie wasn't really paying attention, still confused about why she'd just said what she said. Had she remembered something she shouldn't? She slipped a hand into her pocket to close round the pill bottle again, wondering if she ought to take another one, but then she realised the Doctor was watching her.
"Anyway, I think you can explain all that to me later," he said as there was the sound of more phaser blasts hitting the door. "Right now we should probably get moving," he flicked another switch on the console and pulled on one of the levers. "Come on, old girl, I'm sure she didn't mean it," he said, talking to the ship, and there was a whooshing noise as something in the central column started moving. The Doctor grinned. "Now that's more like it. Allons-y!"