A/N I know I said this trip would only take one chapter but I added a few bits, so it'll spill into the next chapter as well.
The TARDIS squeezed itself into existence in a small corner of the room, fading slowly out of the darkness, rustling the leaves of a few nearby trees. The doors opened a few seconds later, and the Doctor emerged, looking around frantically already, getting a sense of his bearings. The other two TARDIS occupants hobbled out more slowly, looking at the Police Box with a dazed expression. They were scarcely able to believe what had happened to them in the past fifteen minutes; the bigger-on-the-insideness of the box was, in many ways, playing second fiddle to its go-anywhereness. Here was a thing that, quite literally, was a dream come true for them. They were trying to broaden their horizons, but none had dared dream they could possibly be this broad.
This was more than about getting away from here. This represented possibilities and hopes nobody had dared ever even think about, the kinds of things that they could do and be... the scope expanded exponentially from here when you had that kind of technology available to you.
The Travelers, right now, didn't have anything like it. They barely had the means to get out of the immediate area when - no longer if, but when... they were starting to believe this man really was who he said he was, really could do what he said he had set out to do. When the time came, they had the means to get a short distance away, but that was it. This, on the other hand, was the possibility of exploration and adventure on the grand scale, the sort of thing they only dreamed of.
The Doctor was oblivious to the sense of wonder that had come over the two men. He had a plan, and now it had been rolled out, he was all business, all frantic energy looking for an outlet.
"We're indoors," he said in a flat tone, surprised.
"Of course we are," Howard said back. "It's a greenhouse. It's got to be climate controlled, doesn't it?"
"Yeah..." the Doctor said. But something felt off... wrong, and it had the very second he stepped out of the TARDIS. He'd have to keep an eye out for it; whatever it was, if it was really as important as he thought it might be, it'd pop up sooner or later, make itself known.
His train of thought was interrupted by an unmistakable sound - the hammer of a gun was clicked behind him somewhere. He turned, looking for the source, instantly thinking he'd made a mistake giving Quinn the psychic paper, but it was just Josh. He was brandishing a small gun that he'd pulled from somewhere - shoulder holster, maybe. Not pointing it at Howard or the Doctor, thankfully, just holding it.
"What're you doing with that?" the Doctor asked angrily.
"I thought there might be some... company here to greet us," the man replied. "Besides, we're here on a prison break. I didn't want to come to the party unprepared." He waved the gun slightly on the word 'party' and smiled.
"Leave it," the Doctor commanded.
"You want to walk into a heavily guarded Anchor facility totally unarmed? Yeah, right, pal. Your funeral. I'm not going in without some... insurance, shall we say?"
"That's your insurance?" he asked, incredulously. "Six tiny slugs against the whole guard force? No. Now, I am helping you free your loved ones, but this is not how we do it," the Doctor said, eyeing the gun. Josh still didn't make any move to disarm himself, so the Doctor added, "Trust me. Please."
Josh eyed him up and down warily, then sighed, clicked the safety onto the gun, and placed it in the shoulder holster. "I'm not going in unarmed," he said. "A gun can come in useful in more ways than one if we get captured, Doctor," and the Time Lord sighed at the things the younger man was implying. "But I suppose it wouldn't hurt to see what you can do before I start shooting."
"That's all I'm asking," the Doctor replied, which wasn't strictly true; he'd stop anyone getting killed on this excursion, no matter what. "Now, let's see if we can't find anything out of the ordinary, shall we?"
They started walking in a random direction from the TARDIS, through the arboretum. It was more than that, though, the Doctor realized. In this case it was more like a botanical garden, which also happened to be an arboretum. Small artificial ponds and a few amphibious life forms rounded out the display of trees, flowers, and ferns alike. They were quite beautiful, really, especially a flower like a hydrangea with gold flecks around the tips of each petal, so much so that they seemed to have been dipped in real liquid gold. Maybe when all this was done he'd take Quinn for a walk here; it was certainly nice enough. Still, there was something wrong with the way the place looked. He still couldn't put his finger on it but something odd was prodding at him, seemingly from all around as they walked cobblestone paths surrounded by plants of every kind.
"All the same," Howard said after a few moments of silence had passed between the three men, "why aren't there any soldiers here to greet us?"
"You can thank Quinn for that," the Doctor said. "She's doing a little misdirection for us back at the theater."
"How so?"
"When we took off, I had her tell the soldiers we were going to blow up the city power plant so we could plunge the city into darkness. Of course, at the time I didn't realize what a good tactic that would turn out to be, but we should be mostly free to do as we please tonight. Assuming they passed the word on to those they're loyal to up the chain of command - and it looks as if they did - most of the security forces should be there waiting for us to threaten the place instead of here."
"So what are we looking for?"
"Something wrong, something out of the ordinary," the Doctor replied. "Which is turning out to be harder than I imagined initially, but the soundness of the plan still stands."
"And how do we know when we've found it?" Josh asked.
"Because it leads us to the next piece of the puzzle," the Doctor said. "Honestly, for people who claim to want nothing more than to explore the whole of creation, you don't really have an adventuring spirit."
"We'll save that for a time when nobody's about to get hurt," Howard said. "I still don't know what I'm looking for, specifically."
The Doctor sighed. "It's like spoon-feeding an infant," he sighed under his breath, and turned around, walking backwards down the path so he could face them while he talked. "Alright. We're guessing the prison is centrally located to the city, because nobody reports seeing any transports leaving the borders to either deliver prisoners or supplies, hence being here at the most central point of the capital. Assuming that's true, we're also guessing it's underground, based on the fact that nobody sees it or knows where it is, and the only known person to get back out after the fact reported being at least in some ways aware of life going on as usual very nearby."
"Doctor-" Howard said, holding up a hand as if to silence the Time Lord.
"Quiet a minute, I'm mulling something over. Now, the entrance would have to be somewhere big enough to get prisoners and supplies in and out. And if nobody's seen it, that means it's hidden somewhere."
Josh was also trying to get the Doctor's attention, waving his hands over his head now.
"Doctor, I really think you should look-"
"So where would you hide the entrance to a facility like that? If you had to keep it hidden, but not really hide it?" He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth a few times, and then exclaimed, "Poe!", just as he caught the back of his foot on a raised stone delineating the edge of the path and tumbled backwards into one of the standing ponds.
Josh and Howard raced forward to help. The Doctor didn't immediately come back up. The pond was shallow but he might have hit his head on the way down. They each grabbed one of his arms and pulled him into a sitting position.
The Doctor wasn't unconscious at all, though, or even injured. His eyes were wide open and he was staring straight ahead, smiling. A flowering plant that had been on the surface of the water with a tangle of roots had tangled itself into his hair, and he didn't even bother to pull it off. "Poe!" he said again, looking from Josh to Howard and back again, seeing nothing but confusion in their eyes.
"Edgar Allen Poe?" He asked, hoping for a glimmer of recognition. "He was this brilliant writer with a bent for the macabre, and... nevermind. Not important right now." He stood up and was off at a run down another path, just barely giving Howard a chance to throw the flower back into the pond. "Come on, come on, where is it?" he said, searching frantically for a signpost. Finally he found another one - there were several pointing the way to different exhibits scattered throughout the garden. He glanced at the sign and flew off down another fork in the path.
"Doctor, where are we going?"
"You're theater folks; you like a good story," the Doctor said. "And there's this story, this old Earth story, about a purloined letter. It's got information in it, enough to cause someone's political downfall," he said. "Some theif's stolen it, but the police can't find it. They've searched the thief's house high and low - checked for false bottoms in the drawers, peeled back the wallpaper, checked inside the couch cushions. They can't find the envelope anywhere. Then another detective goes for a search of the place himself, and finds it. It's been disguised a bit, but it's right there in plain sight, where everyone can see it. That's it. That's what they did. Hidden it in plain sight."
"So what is it?" Josh asked. "If it's in plain sight, that's fine, but what actually is it?"
"There's a tree at the center of the pavilion," the Doctor said. "I saw it on a bulletin board out there somewhere."
"The tree?" Howard asked. "That's the secret? The tree?"
"Not just any tree," the Doctor said. "According to the photo I saw on one of the signs, a huge tree. They took a picture - probably a class photo. Thirty children making a circle by holding hands are pressed up against its trunk, and they can just barely encompass the whole thing. It's called..." he glanced at one of the exhibit signs again as they passed it, "...the Anchor tree. Too perfect."
"What?" Josh said. "No, the Anchors - the political group - took their name from the tree, not the other way round. The Anchor tree's been named that since... well, as far back as anyone can remember. Ages back, we're talking centuries, it was the way of life around here. Shelter, fruit, comfort and shade... it was so ancient it seemed like it'd been here since the beginning of time. Since way before we were here and for millennia after we were no more."
"Sounds poetic," the Doctor said.
"There's a lot of classic poetry and song about the Anchor tree," Howard said. "So when some of us got the notion that it was time to move on, it was only natural that those who opposed it would take its name. But I don't see what the ancient tree has to do with the relatively new political group," he said.
They followed one last twist in the path and came to a large clearing underneath the very center of the dome, the highest point, where an enormous tree reached up towards the sky, tempered by the invisible glass barrier above it - somehow apt, the Doctor thought, as if it embodied both group simultaneously. In an instant, he had the sonic screwdriver out, and was scanning the whole tree, circling it, with a wild gleam in his eye. "Come on, it has to be here."
"Doctor, the two things are not related," Howard said, but he was cut off by a hydraulic hissing sound. And in a moment, the Anchor tree revealed its secret to them. The whole trunk of the tree spread wide open, and revealed an elevator nestled inside the trunk. A huge, cargo style lift, just sitting in the middle of the trunk of this tree. Even as large as it was, it only accounted for a small portion of the massive tree trunk.
"Gentlemen," the Doctor said, "Allow me to present Anchor HQ."
"I don't believe it," Howard said. "I don't believe they would desecrate something so important to so many this way!"
"How long have there been Travelers?" the Doctor asked.
"What do you mean?"
"How long since you 'got a notion to leave'?"
"A few years," Josh replied. "Two or three since it really started taking off."
"It's not long enough," the Doctor said. "Not to build something like this. Not in secret, without anyone knowing."
"So what do we do now?"
"Same thing anyone does when presented with a lift," the Doctor replied, stepping in. "Press for the lobby."