All throughout her teenage years and well into adulthood her mother often said she would not be surprised in the least if Donna ended up in prison one day. It probably didn't do much to increase Sylvia's expectations of her daughter when Donna called the house to get bailed out after she and the girls got a little bit crazy at Opira's hens night.
But Donna would happily take the Chiswick drunk tank any day over the Praxia Maximum Security Re-education Institution.
She was walked down the corridor, a thin blanket in her arms. Donna had been stripped of her Earth clothes and given a pale blue jumpsuit. The officer that had taken her clothing had also taken the vortex manipulator. He had glanced at it, briefly, disinterestedly, before bundling all her stuff into a metal box.
If I find those cops, I'm going to kill them.
The warden stopped before a thick cell door. He placed his hand on the scanner and the door swooshed open.
Donna was pushed inside.
The cell was small and square, a toilet-looking device at the back wall. Against both side walls were flat, shapeless cots.
She took a further step into the room and stopped. In a corner of the cell, arms folded, and a foot resting back against the wall, was Donna's cellmate.
The woman (Donna guessed she was a woman, but you could never be too sure these days) was tall, with a heart-shaped face and long golden hair. She had alarmingly blue irises, but the whites of her eyes were a solid grey. Donna stared at the woman's face for a moment before her gaze slipped down to her arms. She looked like she could bench-press a car.
Me? Self-conscious? Never.
She looked away before dumping her blanket on the unmade cot and sat down.
Mum, if you could see me now.
After several interminable moments, Donna heard her cellmate move. She watched with cautious eyes as the other woman crossed the cell with all the lethal grace of a jungle cat.
"So you're the new girl."
Ah, crap.
Donna looked up. The voice was deep and husky and seriously sexy.
Don't let them see fear.
"S'pose so."
The woman raised an eyebrow. "Earth?"
"Yes."
Her cellmate nodded like she knew it all along, leaning back against the wall. She sure seemed to do a lot of leaning. Finally Donna's curiosity got the better of her.
"How do you know?"
The woman smiled mockingly. "Because I can't think of anyone else from that sector foolish enough to tour Praxia without an armed escort. Everyone knows that their law enforcement are in business for themselves."
Her eyes narrowed. "Call me a masochist."
The woman's smile widened at Donna's tone.
"What are you in for?"
After a moment she answered. "I was helping some kid being banged around by the police."
The woman shook her head. "I have to say, you were certainly asking for something."
Okay, that stung. Donna bristled. "What are you in for?" She shot back.
The woman's expression didn't change. "I killed a senator."
Donna gave her a long, wary look, keeping her back straight against the wall. After several long, uncomfortable minutes, the woman smiled.
"You Earthers really are too easy." She chuckled.
"We tend to call ourselves Earthlings, FYI."
"Tomato, Tomahto." She shrugged.
Donna's eyebrows instantly rose. "You know what tomatoes are?"
"Who do you think brought them to your planet in the first place?"
For the life of her, Donna couldn't tell whether she was kidding or not.
The woman had introduced herself as Lilith, which Donna had to admit suited her down to the ground with that husky voice and the ridiculously defined musculature that made Donna more than a little conscious of the extra layer of padding on her own butt. In a case of playground revenge, Donna couldn't help but start calling the uber-Amazon Lily.
Still, as the days passed, it was good to have someone to trot along behind as the old hand prisoners stared at the fresh meat. Urgh.
The days passed, and there was no sign of the Doctor.
Or the white-haired kid that had got her into this mess in the first place. She had tried finding him among all the people jammed together like sardines, but those she asked assured her that she was the prison's newest intake.
Where did the boy go?
"This is insane." Donna whispered. "What sort of place is this? There are kids in here!"
Lily shrugged a shoulder.
"It's the way Praxias has always run their government. For centuries they have locked up troublemakers and dissidents and any other threats to their power, while masquerading as a democratically elected parliament. As long as we aren't out there, no one cares what happens in here."
Donna watched a child cross the mess floor, in the prison's blue jumpsuit. He was small and pale, with smoothed-back dark hair and sharp golden eyes.
"That's deplorable."
Lily looked up. Donna was beginning to wonder whether her eyebrow was permanently cocked. "And your planet has centuries of supposed civilisation doing the exact same thing."
"Hey, I never said we weren't hypocrites." Donna pulled apart the chunk of bread-like substance she had been given. "Is this edible?" For all she knew, she was supposed to use it to floss between her toes.
"What gives you the idea that we have the same digestive organs?"
Donna threw it back on the plate. "You know, you can just say 'no'."
"And miss that adorable look of confusion you get on your face?" Lily smirked and got up from the table as Donna flicked spoonfuls of watery soup at her.
"Where are you going?"
"You're not my mother."
Donna leaned back in her chair, staring at nothing. She would find that damn teenager, get back the vortex manipulator, and find a way to fix her head. Maybe not necessarily in that order.
She looked up. Lily was clear across the room now, and as Donna stared, she looked up at the second-level catwalk, at a man that stood there, in a grey warden's uniform. The man's eyes flickered to the boy Donna had spotted earlier, and he purposely folded his arms. Three fingers were held casually against his forearm.
Donna had run in enough alien armies by now to recognise it.
A signal.
She rose, thinking furiously. Was it possible that she had arrived in the middle of a prison break? Slowly she backed toward the wall. Donna had been in enough food fights to be able to recognise the calm before the storm, the last chance to back out.
Okay. This is weird.
The man in the warden's outfit turned on his heel and strode from the hall. The next moment Lily also strode away, in the opposite direction.
But the dark-haired boy was still standing in the centre of the mess hall, quietly observing.
If Donna hadn't have been watching, she would have missed what happened next. The next moment the kid stepped into the path of a massive tattooed prisoner, dropping to all fours and sending the massive man hurtling over his back, food tray and all. The boy sprang to his feet and darted out of reach as the flying food tray smashed back into the head of another prisoner.
No one even noticed that the boy had been there.
Very smooth, kid.
Everyone was quiet for a moment before the massive alien prisoner rose from his chair. He had a massive flat face and tiny little eyes, but when he opened his mouth, the toothy grin bisected his face.
"What do you think you're doing?"
The first alien steeled himself, looking up and audibly gulping. It would have been prime comic gold if not for the fact that Donna was stuck in the middle of it. "What's the matter? You look better covered in vomit!"
There was a massive whump as two giant bodies collided, sending food, tables and chairs scattering in all directions.
As the wardens moved in, the boy bolted, small enough that no one watched him go.
Except Donna.
"No you bloody don't." She growled, sprinting up the stairs to the uppermost platform, bursting out onto the level. The boy was nowhere to be seen. "Damn it!" Donna picked a direction and jogged down the catwalk.
The next moment she was swept clear off her feet and slammed into the wall, a muscled forearm against her throat, like steel. Donna gasped in surprise and pain and found herself staring into the green, green eyes of the warden Lily had been looking at earlier. The one whose signal had started it all.
The boy was peeking around his leg at the spectacle disinterestedly.
"Who the hell are you?" He snarled. "What do you think you're doing?"
"I don't know who you think you are, but no one gets to talk to me like that." Donna ground out.
And using all the whiles of her middle class upbringing, she kneed him in the junk as hard as she could.