A/N: I keep thinking of more things I need to have happen in this story. I think it's got between 2 and 5 chapters left. We'll see.

Like many other fans, I was saddened to hear about Cory Monteith's passing, and while I've never been the sort to feel a great sense of loss towards someone I only knew through their work on my television screen, I did appreciate his work and the character he portrayed, and my sympathy goes out to those who did know him personally, professionally, or just as a fan, and are feeling a sense of loss. It doesn't seem like enough - it never did when someone said it to me after someone I cared about passed away and I know it never can be. But as the Doctor would say, "I'm sorry. Really, I am so sorry."

"Something's wrong," the Doctor said. "Something's... different."

"Different than what?" Josh asked. "Have you been here before?"

"No." He didn't say anything for a moment as they walked down the corridor. Then, almost as if it were a new conversation, he said, "That's what's different about it."

"Did you hit your head when you smacked it on that little pond or something?"

"No, no, no," the Doctor said. "At least... I don't think so."

Howard rolled his eyes. "Where are we going?"

"Prison block," the Doctor replied. "Wherever that is."

"Well we better find it pretty quickly. How long can it possibly be until they notice they've got unwelcome guests?"

"Probably not long," the Doctor agreed. "Fortunately once you get inside, there tends to be a directory somewhere."

"So you think it's just going to be marked 'prison' in block letters?"

"Might be."

They were in a long, illuminated corridor. Light fixtures glowed white in the ceiling, casting stark areas of brightness and shadow all around them. The darkness clung to the walls as they moved from island of illumination to island of illumination. Somewhere down here, they'd find everything they were looking for... right? Howard couldn't help but think that something, somehow, wasn't going to work out the way he was hoping it would. He wasn't feeling particularly optimistic that somehow, after today, everything was going to be fantastic and wonderful. They'd been trying to get to this point for two years. Now a man had fallen out of the sky and made more progress towards their ultimate goal in a single night than the combined forces of all of them had been able to in all this time. It seemed like he was on their side, at least for now, but what if he wasn't? What if it was all a trick, somehow? This guy seemed to know all about the government of their sovereign nation, after all. How was he figuring all of this stuff out anyway? Unless he knew it all from before, from earlier in his life. It was at least a possibility.

Howard really, really hoped it wasn't, because if it was, then they were all in trouble. If this guy turned on them, based on the things he'd seen him do, that would be a very bad thing indeed. This guy was intelligent, and he was strong, and most importantly he was absolutely fearless. He'd stood right there on stage and looked out into the audience, and he'd threatened the King himself. The audience might not have got it, but he was sure that the King and his advisors had. How were they not all here, right now, taking them into custody. Maybe that was what the Doctor was on about, about something being different.

The corridor seemed to stretch on forever as they trudged their way down it, but abruptly the far wall appeared out of the darkness, with a single, completely insecure, non-technical door at the end of it. A crash bar was all that stood between them and what was beyond. The Doctor didn't seem inclined to wait or play it safe; as soon as the trio reached the door he reached out and pushed it open, stepping boldly into the next room.

Howard wasn't sure what he'd expect to find there. A cell block, maybe? Rows and rows of cells with scared looking faces staring out at him, silently hoping for their freedom? The huddled masses, some of them young, others old, all emaciated from hunger and pain and sorrow.

That was what he was expecting.

So it was quite a surprise to see the exact opposite. No cells, no beds, no prisoners at all. What kind of a prison was this, anyway? Because it wasn't like anything he'd been expecting, not even remotely.

"Okay," the Doctor said, leaning over the safety railing that looked out into the cavernous chamber. "That's more like it."

They were standing on a small outcropping that looked into a massive chamber. From their position at one end, Howard could barely see the other side, and it wasn't even dark in there. When he looked over the side, the giant cavern seemed to stretch down away from them forever. And in the center of this huge, hollowed out room, was a giant glass cylinder. It was massive, and at the very heart of it oranges and reds swirled about one another. The whole room seemed abuzz with a deep, steady hum, one that made his chest vibrate as it carried on.

"What... what is that?" Josh asked, and it was almost a relief to hear him in something resembling awe - or for that matter just without anything to say at all. No smarmy retort or any wisecrack... just pure, unadulterated shock and awe. Not that he'd grown weary of the young lighting director over the last several months but...

...no, actually, that was exactly what it was like.

"That," the Doctor said, "Is a power generator. And not just your garden variety, no. That's a huge power production facility. At the heart, right there," he said, pointing, "you see that glimmer? It's a Zero Point energy matrix, and it's still not enough. You don't have any idea what kind of power generation we're talking about here. The human mind can't encompass it. Well... the Time Lord mind can barely encompass it."

"I don't understand."

"Inside the chamber, the engineers who built this monstrosity have created their own artificial pocket universe. An entire reality, just to use as a giant battery. Granted, a tiny reality, one of the smaller ones, but still. The power you can milk out of one of those is enormous, and still it's not enough, so they've gone a step further. This thing goes all the way down to the bottom," he said, indicating the massive power core. "They've turned this whole planet into a battery."

"What for?" Howard asked.

"Beats me," the Doctor said. "What all do you want from a visual examination?"

"There's a console over here, Doctor," Josh said. "It might be documented."

"There we go! Nicely done, Joshy-boy." He sat down and balanced his spectacles on his nose as he started typing frantically at the keyboard. "No password lockout," he said. "Interesting."

"Does that matter?" Howard asked.

"Maybe. Tells us they never imagined in their wildest dreams that someone would get down here, for one thing," he said. "Arrogance, overconfidence... those sound like things we can work with." He tapped away at the computer for a few moments, tracking circuit diagrams, pulling up wiring schematics, checking contracts with builders and consultants and physicists... none of whom seemed to have been paid, as if they'd all met with... unfortunate accidents of some kind right after construction concluded. How interesting, the Doctor thought, wishing that he were surprised by something just this once. "Aha, here we go," he said.

"What is it?"

"Well," he said, "whatever it is that's sucking up all this power is down at the bottom of this shaft. All the way down, in fact."

"We don't have time for this," Howard reminded him. "We're supposed to be quick, remember? In and out, that's what you said."

"Yeah, I did, didn't I?" he said absent-mindedly. "But I mean, since we're here and all that..."

The two traveling companions sighed. "Is there any way we get out of this without you going down to take a look?" Josh asked point blank.

The Doctor made a show of tapping his finger to his lips a few times, brow furrowed as if in deep thought, then said, "No, I don't believe there is." He leapt up from the chair and bounded over to a tiny hatch in the floor which led down to a ladder. "Allons-y, gentlemen!"

The two climbed after him, although he had a considerable head start on them as they'd bickered for a few seconds about which of them would descend the ladder first. Ultimately Josh had won and was now sandwiched in between Howard above him and the Doctor far below. The Time Lord seemed to be taking the rungs two at a time, and he was making his way down to the bottom at a fairly good clip. Josh looked down at him. They were just a couple hundred feet away from the bottom now. When he looked up, leaning back so as to have a view of something other than Howard's feet, the ceiling was beginning to fade away, too far away for his eyes to even see it. Granted, it was dark in here, with the Zero Point Whatever the Doctor had pointed out casting an eerie glow and oddly shaped, random shadows in every direction. They descended the ladder in silence, the two humans looking down cautiously with each passing step The Doctor, on the other hand, stepped off the ladder with a spring in his step, looking around excitedly to see if there were any more panels, or dome documentation, or anything, really. He wanted nothing more than infomraton, and he craved it the way a man in the desert craved water. What could a small nation need so much power for, that they would build a pocket universe into their own planet in order to run it?

For that matter, where did they get technology like that? The people weren't completely technophobic, that much was guaranteed. This certainly wasn't a technologically challenged people. The Doctor had observed mobile communicators in the dressing rooms backstage, the lighting cues were all computer generated in the theater, it wasn't as if they were putting together a play in Shakespeare's England. They had to have gotten this from somewhere, though. A pocket universe? You didn't just come up with one of those in your sleep one day. This was the kind of raw brainpower that came from being involved in the galactic thinktanks. Hardly anyone came up with this just out of nowhere.

So. Three questions. Where did they get this kind of technology that they had hidden away underneath the planet? What was it for? And what did any of this have to do with keeping people caged within the boundaries of one country?

The answer to the second question was in a room just ahead of them. Unlike the console on the main level that had allowed him to find this place to begin with that also regulated the power levels inside the singularity, this door was locked up tight. Retinal scanners, DNA scanners, a keypad where he could enter a passphrase, and an ID badge reader were all present. Yet another piece of the psychological profile fell into place. What was so important that you'd let anyone play with the power for, but not the thing itself? What was worth guarding so carefully?

They may have had technology that seemed to be years beyond their evolutionary scale, but unfortunately for them nobody had been bothered to come up with the deadlock seal. The sonic screwdriver made quick work of each of the security measures in turn.

"Where can I get one of those?" Josh asked.

"You can't," the Doctor said levelly, not a threat or a reprimand this time... just a solid fact.

The door swung open - a huge blast door at least two feet thick. If the doorframe was anything to go by, the rest of this room was also just as thick, and properly reinforced. It was built deep into the crust of the planet, protected on all sides by tons and tons of earth, and even then someone ahd felt it necessary to make this room impervious to a missile attack. Why was all this necessary, the Doctor wondered as he pulled the door the rest of the way open and peered inside the chamber. "That's not supposed to be here," he said simply as he looked at the huge piece of equipment that was taking up a huge chunk of the gymnasium-sized room.

"What is it?" Howard asked.

"It doesn't make any sense," the Doctor replied. "It can't be." He had pulled the cover off the side of the device and was looking inside. "But look at that. It is. Look," he said again, pointing to components as if either of the men knew what they were. "Tremulator to refocus the energy into wave pulses, a field generator, but that focusing chamber is enormous!" he said, pulling at different components and looking at them.

"Doctor!" Joel said. "What is it?"

"A shield generator," he said. "It's generating an enormous shield, like a forcefield that covers the entire planet."

He looked to his two companions. He wasn't sure what he was expecting as far as a reaction - confusion, disbelief, annoyance. Instead, both men were staring at the device with an expression bordering on stunned reverence, their eyes wide and their mouths hanging open.

"You mean that... this is it?" Howard asked. "The generator?"

"You seem to know about this thing," the Doctor said. "What would you know about a planetary shield if you've never been outside the country?"

"What do you mean? This is why we can't leave."

"I've heard enough," Joel said, pulling his gun out and pointing it at the innards of the device the Doctor had uncovered. "What's the most important looking part, do you reckon he asked?"

"No, no, wait, don't," the Doctor said, stepping between the gun and the machine. "Let's just think about this."

"We have," Joel said. "This is the only thing we've been thinking about for the past couple of years."

"What are you talking about?"

"We've been trying to take this thing out of commission for years now, Doctor," Howard said. "All our reports indicated it was somewhere in the mountains, as high up as it could get, but here it is! And you've led us straight to it. If I'd had any idea this was your plan..."

"This wasn't my plan!" the Doctor said, getting exasperated. "I told you what my plan was. My plan was to come rescue the prisoners, to rob the powers that be of the leverage they have over you. I didn't come here to destroy anything!"

"But we should do it now," Josh said, still pointing the gun at the Doctor's chest and the sensitive equipment behind it. "Who knows when we'll get another chance like this again? We never will, that's when. Your ruse seems to have worked, Doctor. There's nobody here. This place is probably usually overrun."

"Is it, though?" the Doctor asked. "Because this isn't just a reduced shift or a skeleton crew. I haven't seen anyone down here. I haven't even seen any evidence that anyone has ever been here, have you?"

"Well, they'll all be guarding the power plant, won't they?" Howard said dismissively.

"No, I don't think so," the Doctor replied. "I don't think that's it at all. Look around you! There's no one here! No guards, no alarms, not even a flashing light anywhere. There aren't even any engineers regulating the core. If this is the very heart of the evil empire then where is everyone?"

"Okay, fine. Nobody's here," Josh said. "That doesn't change anything. Where the hell they got to is not my problem. Destroying that thing is."

"Nobody is destroying anything until I say so," he said, eyes blazing. "This is a powerful piece of equipment, after all. It's built to shield an entire supercruiser from asteroids, meteors, space junk, lasers, phasers, missiles, torpedoes, disruptors, ionizer beams, particle accelerator cannons, rail launchers, mag rifles, Meson bombs, sub-Meson bombs, nuclear destabilizers, ionic destabilizers, cannons, mines, solar flares, and ion bursts, but there's really only one function I'm interested in right now."

"What's that?"

The Doctor activated the sonic screwdriver he'd snuck into his hand and pointed at the machine, and a shimmering green field sprung up, clinging to the device like a skin.

"The secondary internal forcefields," the Doctor said.

Josh shoved him out of the way and fired three rounds into the center of the machine, but they burned up harmlessly upon hitting the shield.

"What've you done?!" he asked, pointing the gun back at the Doctor, now lying on the floor.

"Just given us a chance to think," the Doctor said. "I can turn it off again, and I might do that. But not until we have all the information."

"Or I could just shoot you and take your electric key thingamabobber, do it myself."

"Be my guest," the Doctor said. "It's got 10,000 settings, though. You'd be here awhile."

Josh took a few seething breaths, in and out through clenched teeth, before he finally jammed the gun into his holster and stepped back, folding his arms. "Fine. What do we do now, o illustrious Doctor?"

"What we came here to do," he said. "Get your families out. Or had you forgotten?" From the way the younger man refused to meet his gaze, the answer seemed clear. "Thought so," the Doctor said. "Come one. We can have a little chat on the way. Someone needs to fill me in on some details."

They made their way back to the reactor control room. On their way back up, the Doctor called Quinn on the communicator.

"What the hell have you been doing?" she asked in a hushed whisper as soon as the connection was established. "The government types seem to be getting restless about something. That Sanders guy is in with Robert and I don't know what they're yelling about, but it's getting pretty ugly in there."

"Good," the Doctor said. "Let me talk to them."

"They're not just letting anyone in," she said.

"I need you to make them," he said. "Use that Quinn Fabray charm."

She rolled her eyes. "Can do," she said, marching up to the door and pounding on it as loudly as possible, not stopping until, some thirty knocks later, the door was thrust open.

"What?!" Robert exclaimed, but she didn't give him the chance to lock her out again. She shoved her way through into the tiny room, threw the communicator down on the table, and said, "Call for you, from the Doctor."

"Doctor!" Sanders said with mock enthusiasm. Robert was clearly enraged, but Sanders at least still seemed to be keeping his cool. "You don't call, you don't write," he continued. "A guy could get offended."

The Doctor wasn't playing anymore. "You lied to me," he said. "Both of you. I think you'll find you come to regret that tonight."