The guards of StormCage really where idiots, the Doctor decided as he watched them round the corner. What sort of prison locks people up without checking if they had anything they could use to escape on them? Not that it was something he could complain about, quite the contrary; he was quite relieved.

The Doctor pulled both his wrist in opposite directions the best he could in his position and the handcuffs broke in the middle. A quick flash of the Screwdriver that no-one had thought to take off him had the two halves open and on the floor. Another flash and the door clicked open. A few seconds to insure he was alone before he snuck through the door and turned back the way the guards had dragged him. Three blocks from River's cell.

It wouldn't take long - a couple of minuets at most. The guard hadn't given a time, which was annoying to say the least. But he did have to go back to the warden's office and come back and do what ever he had to do in the office as well. 106 cells where between River's cell and the office block, along with nine one-meter think walls and three high security, dead-locked doors. Three and a half minuets one way – seven minuets both ways – approximately five minuets for what ever paperwork StormCage actually did... Twelve minuets.

Well, Eleven now. The number was haunting him.

The darkness in the prison was eerie and the rain certainly made sure the place lived up to its name. StormCage.

But the place seemed almost familiar to Melody. The cold air seemed almost natural to her unnaturally hot body, the rain was so easy to tune out it was like she'd practiced it. It was just the handcuffs that seemed to be annoying her. She wiggled and pulled at them, kneeling up now rather than sitting on her heals. There wasn't even room to flex her arms, and the strength in her arms was beginning to -

Crack

Melody froze. She hadn't… Had she? Her arms fell to her sides, no longer clamped together so painfully – the broken remains of the cuffs hung limply from her thin wrists. The metal bar between the cuffs looked like they'd been hit with an axe, the brake was so clean.

She had.

She just ripped metal.

Sliding two fingers of her right hand between the remaining metal on her left wrist, Melody hocked the back around towards herself. The metal split in her hand easily. There wasn't much effort involved really. Like cutting through butter, the other link fell apart as easily as the first.

Rubbing her wrist she spotted the blue book that had nearly fallen on her head. She picked it up and sat on the small bed in the cell, as far away from the leg she had hit as possible. It was a small book, the size of a planner or Diary, made for easy carrying. The front and back where covered in eight square panels each, it looked almost like the box in the chair-room, the bigger on the inside one.

She eased the book open the first page. It was blank… No it was the back of the book. She flipped it over, to the front this time.

Crack

The book was on the floor over the other side of the cell, closed again, while Melody was back on the floor too. She raised her hand to her clavicle, pressing against her uneven heart beat, breaths coming irregularly.

"Bloody thunder." She whimpered to herself, reaching across the gap between her hand and the book.

"It used to scare me as a boy too."

She squeaked, pressing back against the bed again, hand pressed to her chest again.

"Don't threat," The bow-tie clad man behind the bars called out to her with a cheeky grin "I'm not the one they've sent to kill you. Although we do only have four minuets left, so you might want to hurry it up."

"Kill me?" Melody repeated as the Doctor pulled the glowing device (a sonic screwdriver, she remembered he'd called it) out of his pockets and pointed it at the bars. Seconds later the door had swung open.

"Don't worry about it," he called to her as he walked away "It won't take long to fix. Hurry up then. Three minuets!"

It should have sacred Melody, how quickly she jumped up to follow him, but there was something about him, something different – something alien.

Before running after him, she tucked the blue book into her pocket as an afterthought.

Well that took incredibaly long for such a short chapter... sorry x