I do not own Doctor Who.
Rory wasn't entirely certain what the woman injected into him. He barely regained consciousness in time to find that they had stripped him of his shirt and now strange red tendrils crept around his side. The larger it grew, the more it looked like a bad burn.
Unfortunately, that's precisely what it felt like too.
His interest was piqued as a nurse, but he could find nothing in the dusty catalogues of his training that looked similar to this. He could feel sweat trickling down his neck as he tried to keep from crying out.
The most puzzling thing about the whole situation was that they had yet to ask him any questions. If they were after the Doctor, surely they would have wanted to know something by now. Or, perhaps they had set up some sort of psychic link with the Doctor through the metal contraption around his head and his pain was broadcasted to the alien.
That seemed logical - if you ignored the fact that they hadn't started hurting him until phase two. Whatever phase two was.
He started to feel dizzy from the blood loss. Even now, his shoulder still leaked sluggishly. And now the burn hurt enough to make him want to throw up - except he hadn't eaten anything.
How long had he been here? A day? Two days? A week?
An unpleasant realization crossed his mind. He had no doubt the Doctor would come to rescue him - Amy would give him no peace until he did. But the alien wasn't well-known for his ability to arrive on time.
He could be here in a month, two months, even - Rory shot down that train of thought before he could start panicking.
The panel slid open. Instead of Ava, Agent Cartwell stepped inside this time. "Mr. Williams, how are you?"
Rory grimaced. "Don't pretend like you care. Not when you're the ones who have put something in me that seems to be eating me from the inside out."
"Don't worry, your internal organs are fine." The man walked over to him. His fingers trailed over the burned area, igniting hot white pain through the nerve endings. "This is all on the surface of your skin."
"Fantastic," Rory groaned. "You have no...idea...how encouraging...that is."
Cartwell gave him a thin smile. "Tell me, Mr. Williams, have you ever been stabbed?"
The nurse couldn't help the way his heart rate surged at the words. His eyes darted over the humanoid's frame, searching for weapons that might soon find a home in his body. He saw nothing, but that did little to assure him. "Could you at least tell me why you are doing all of this? Do you want information? Are you trying to see how long a human can hold out under torture - because, I assure you, you picked a poor candidate. I'm just a nurse."
"Then as a nurse, you can appreciate how much blood you have lost...and how receiving a stab wound to your femoral artery would bring about your instant death." Agent Cartwell stopped behind his chair as he said this, his voice dropping lower.
Rory swallowed, the pain from his injuries nearly forgotten now.
The humanoid stepped briskly towards the door. "Good thing for you that we know how to stab without causing serious blood loss."
That was all the warning Rory got before something sharp stabbed up through his chair into his leg.
He cried out. His eyes squeezed shut, lashes heavy with tears. The pain drew his attention away from his other wounds and focused on a point a few inches above his knee.
He tilted his head forward and strived to see through blurred vision. A sharp, thin metal point stuck up through his leg. It began to retract slowly, leaving a small fountain of blood to spill over his jeans.
The restraints around his limbs, the metal trapping his face, were all too much. He jerked on his bonds. A despairing little sob broke from him when they hardly moved an inch. "What do you want from me? If you're after the Doctor, I'm not the best person to get. I don't know much and I don't understand why you are doing this."
The silence was expected.
He sagged in his chair, feeling drained and weak. "Come and find me, Doctor."
Amy jumped as the door to the morgue flew open. The Doctor emerged, triumphantly holding his screwdriver aloft. Martha was right on his heels, a less exuberant but still excited smile on her face.
Amy slowly stood from where she'd been sitting in the hall waiting for them. "I take it you found something."
"Oh boy did we find something! It's beautiful, that's what it is! All the shades of brilliant you could imagine." The Doctor began to walk in a large circle, staring at his screwdriver with a dazed smile, as if it held all of the secrets of the universe.
Amy glanced at Martha.
She shrugged. "I have no idea. He got so excited, he ran out of the room without telling me anything."
The redhead rolled her eyes and grabbed the Doctor's arm when his circling brought him close to her. "What is it, Doctor? What did you find? Do you know who took Rory?"
"Yes, Amelia Pond." He tapped her nose. "And you're going to love this."
"I rather doubt I could be fond of anything that took my husband from me."
He frowned. "Oh don't be such a spoilsport. You needn't worry about Roranicus - he's been taken by the Eronians."
Amy's eyes slid to Martha again. The woman was forced to acknowledge her ignorance with another shrug and shake of her head.
Amy grabbed the Doctor by his shoulders and forced him to look her in the eyes. "You're not making much sense...again. Who are the Eronians and why shouldn't I worry that they have Rory?"
"They're empaths! They like to break into people's minds!"
"And this is supposed to relieve me?"
"Of course! They won't hurt him - they won't need to. They can simply read whatever thoughts they want to know about and voila! They're done."
The thought that at least her husband was not experiencing torture did give her a small measure of relief, but it also raised a dozen other questions in her mind. "So what do they want him for? What information are they trying to get out of him?"
"Now you're asking the right questions." The Doctor shook free of her hands so that he could have the freedom to pace. "The boy they used, the Benjamin one, was right there when we came out of the TARDIS. That means that he'd been told to look for a blue police box. Who tells someone to look for a police box? Someone who is looking for me, that's who. So they're after me, but they settled for Rory. The question is - why?"
Amy frowned. "No, the question is why did Ben only ask for Rory? He didn't even give you a second glance. If they really wanted you, they could have lured us all to Ben's house."
"Nuance," the Doctor shrugged.
Martha stepped forward at that point. "No, she's got a point. It doesn't make sense to take him when you were there all along. Plus, they've made no attempt to contact you for a hostage exchange or anything like that."
"Exactly!" Amy was beginning to warm up to this woman.
The Doctor glanced between them, the cogs in his mind finally catching up to their claim that there was a discrepancy. "I suppose that doesn't make much sense. Eronians aren't like you lot. They're smart."
Both Amy and Martha gave him glare that had him throwing his hands in the air. "I didn't mean you two specifically, I just meant the human race as a whole and I'll just stop talking right now because I can tell by the looks on your faces that I'm only making this worse. Why do you think the Eronians want him, Martha Jones?"
"Me?" The woman pointed to herself.
"Yes, you, unless there happens to be another Martha Jones in this room - which has happened before - but I don't think that's the case now."
"I forgot how much you babble when you're excited." Martha turned to Amy as the Doctor sputtered protests. "Is there anything special about your husband? And I mean anything unusual, because I know every person is important in some way, but is anything especially significant about Rory?"
Amy thought of all of the things she could say about her brave, beautiful husband. But the thing that came out of her mouth was, "He has an uncanny ability to die and come back to life."
Martha's brow furrowed. "What?"
"It all started when he was a Roman."
"What?"
This was going to take a while.
Rory sat against the door this time, too exhausted and in too much pain to do anything else. The whispers were stronger this time, but still not clear enough for him to understand.
At least this time he wasn't being chased.
Instead, Jennifer, the girl from the flesh factory, sat next to him. They both stared out at the countryside in front of them, their backs pressed firmly against the door.
Another ripple of pain seared through him, enough to make him gasp. "Do you know what's behind this door?"
Jennifer did not look at him, but a small smile creased her lips. "I've heard it opens to a world without pain."
Rory snorted. "Right. What are the whispers for then?"
This time she did look at him. "Whispers? What whispers?"
"You can't hear them? Hmm...they keep talking to me. I can't understand them, but it's almost like they want me to open the door."
"Maybe you should listen to them."
Rory rocked his head from side to side. "I don't think that's a good idea."
"Why not?"
"I'm not sure. Call it a strange instinct of mine, but I've kind of got a sixth sense for noting when things aren't as they appear. And something is familiar about this door. Something tells me it's sealed for a reason and I don't particularly want to know what that reason is."
Another ripple of pain, stronger this time.
"But it's getting harder to resist," he murmured.
He didn't see Jennifer's smile widen.