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Wilfred Motts opened the door and smiled at Dr Rachel Anne.
"I'm glad to see you came," he said and Dr Anne nodded politely, clearly nervous. Wilf remembered the Doctor saying that he didn't do domestic very well and wondered again about this scientist. She seemed more and more like the Doctor, but since he had talked to Dr Martha Jones, he knew that the Doctor had not regenerated. It was still very strange. He ushered her into the entranceway.
"What's for dinner?" she asked, sniffing the air and cheering up.
"Shepherd's Pie," he replied. "With fresh Yorkshire puddings," he added and saw her smile widen.
"Ah, excellent," Dr Anne said and walked into the living room. She beamed at Donna and sat down across from her in a soft chair. "So," she said in a casual voice. "Your mother is in the kitchen, I take it?"
"Of course," Donna said and noticed her granddad standing behind the chair. "I think you took my granddad's chair," she added and the Rani jumped up before Wilf could demur. "Here, come sit down," Donna said and the Rani cocked her head to one side, analyzing the odd tone in her voice, before shrugging and sitting. Donna leaned on her and the Rani was somewhat puzzled.
"Have you been having problems in your experiments?" Wilf asked from where he sat. The Rani looked surprised.
"Not drastic problems," she said and hesitated. "You understand, I can't go into detail, but the only problems we are having are to do with converting the theory into reality, grunt work really." She shrugged. "Still, it should be done – barring unforeseen circumstances, at least – by Christmas Eve."
"We should be able to make it to Christmas dinner," Donna said and Wilf noticed Dr Anne blink at the word 'we'. She did not object to the choice of pronoun, clearly relaxing in the comfortable surroundings.
"If you've finished that, you could probably spend your holidays here," Wilf said to Dr Anne, wondering how she'd react. She seemed a bit surprised by the offer but nodded.
"A very kind offer," she said and smiled wryly. "If nothing interferes, I would be delighted." She looked at Donna and wondered again why Donna was being so cozy. Then she looked at her grandfather's face and closed her eyes in exasperation. To someone who could determine a molecular pattern from taste, the signs should have been far more obvious but she was not exactly good at understanding humans, even after being one. Donna should have told her that she was planning to decoy people like that, though.
"So you work for UNIT?" Wilfred asked and she nodded.
"I'm a independent contractor," she qualified. "I do some work for UNIT, some for civilian enterprises, and even a rare piece of work for Torchwood." She watched his eyes and could tell that he knew about Torchwood. That could be a bit tricky if she ran into Sarah Jane Smith, though she was fairly sure her disguise would work on her.
"Anything interesting?" he asked politely and Donna saw the Rani's eyes light up.
"Well, the quantum singularity device we've been working on is quite promising," she said and shrugged. "Needs a bit more work before it does more than flicker amusingly but the variations should be quite interesting when it does get up and running. Even so, the really interesting one is the scrubber and we should be more or less done with that one by Christmas, easy. It's mainly the recursive algorithms that need to be dealt with before it can be effectively implemented, but that shouldn't take too long to deal with." She took a breath and Donna realized that she was probably going to elaborate. Before she could begin, Sylvia Noble came out the kitchen where she had clearly been listening.
"Supper's ready," she said briskly and Donna jumped up, Dr Anne following. Wilfred took a moment to consider what the odd woman had said. If he remembered things correctly, the Doctor had called the ATMOS devices 'air scrubbers' and he wondered again about Dr Anne. When she had started talking, her expression had been very similar to the Doctor's, and he idly wondered if the Doctor had a sister. He would have to put it to Martha Jones when he talked to her next.
"Tell me," he said in a casual voice. "Have you ever heard of someone called the Doctor?" He was watching her in what seemed an idle way but he caught the reaction and the quick glance towards Donna. When she spoke, though, he could not detect any change in her voice.
"I believe I've heard some stuff from UNIT," she said and looked questioningly at him. "Why?"
"Just the mention of the scrubbers reminded me of something," he said evasively and let her see his glance towards Donna. Her eyes narrowed and she nodded thoughtfully.
"Well, let's not let the food get cold," Sylvia said and sat down next to Donna. Dr Anne drew out the seat across the table from Donna and looked at the plates in admiration. They were piled with the brown shapes of Yorkshire puddings, dripping in gravy and the Shepherd's Pie was steaming from the oven. She sniffed the aroma with relish and bowed her head for the blessing, then began digging into the food. Donna grinned at her obvious enjoyment and her mother looked flattered.
"There's plenty for seconds," she said with a smile at Dr Anne who was clearly in her good books. Dr Anne nodded in understanding and continued eating.
"I must say, it's been a while since I've had a real meal," she said after her plate was nearly empty. "I usually just head over to a diner for dinner." She swallowed the last of her pie and smiled gratefully at Sylvia Noble as she ladled more food onto the plate. Wilf had seen the Doctor smile like that only a few times but the resemblance was uncanny. He decided to let the topic slide for now, though, and began questioning her about her work. It was quite interesting, the little that he could understand of it at least, and he wondered how the Doctor would react to her. Then he looked at the way she was wolfing down her food as if she had not eaten in a while and had the distinct suspicion that they would start talking and probably forget to eat.
It was almost nine before the Rani took her leave. It had been a rare opportunity to socialize and while she was not exactly someone who enjoyed company, she found herself actually enjoying the distraction from her work. She wondered idly if this was why the Doctor had companions with him. Then she sniffed the air and smiled as she picked up the trace scent. It smelled of burnt grease and iron and she turned to eye the construct.
It looked Sontaran and she realized that the ATMOS system had doubtless had a tracker on it in case someone tried to back-hack the device. She grinned and scanned the area for inconvenient watchers. She could pick up the output of surveillance devices that were monitoring her opponent but none were terrestrial. She grinned and the construct came to a halt at the unexpected response.
"Typical Sontaran handiwork," she said with contempt. "You never seem to get the idea that brute force is not a substitute for skill." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a metal cylinder. As the construct leveled the lasers at her, she flicked the switch and a glowing light erupted from the hilt.
She held her blue lightsaber in a stance that told the construct that she was trained. "You should probably be running," she said with a smile that held very little humor. The construct answered with a barrage of lasers, but the Rani easily blocked. "I'm hardly Jedi material," she said casually. "But I've been there a few times and I had some spare time to fiddle around, so I thought, why not?" Then she strode forwards, smiling all the while.
The construct tried to back away and concentrate fire on her but it was too late. The Rani sliced down and across and the construct collapsed into three pieces. She grinned and deactivated it, replacing it carefully in her pocket. "Pity there weren't more of them," she said aloud, hoping whoever was watching would take her advice. When a few minutes passed by, she sighed in disappointment and walked away, deciding that the Sontarans had probably only a limited presence nearby Earth. It really was a pity.
There were no human-developed surveillance devices watching her but one of the non-human ones had been detailed to watch her by UNIT. The device had been used by the Sontarans, oddly enough, to monitor the human activity during the ATMOS incursion and had been recovered afterwards. Martha had been mostly reassured by the fact that Dr Anne did not appear to be dangerous and had let the soldiers return to their jobs.
The 'spy-cam', as it had been dubbed, could easily monitor several hundred locations with the greatest of ease and so it was generally reviewed on a daily basis but the backlog of difficulties from the Dalek invasion were deemed more important and so, the footage was not seen until five days later. By then, it was already overshadowed by the strange dreams that everyone on Earth was having and Dr Rachel Anne was not one of their main priorities any longer. Of course even Martha Jones, who had seen many strange things with the Doctor, would not have known what to make of the lightsaber but it might have helped later on.
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