The jump from Leadworth to Seattle was nothing like that of the jump from Earth to Proxima Centauri; it was even smaller than his skip to the moon that should have taken five minutes when Amy Pond was 20 years old, and the Doctor didn't even have time to sit down before he was landing the TARDIS in a vacant parking space in a metered lot. He was sure to turn on the perception filters before locking her up.
The Doctor didn't quite know what to do with himself once he arrived in the massive city, but he had not worried about those sorts of things for ages and merely entertained himself with walking through the public market, watching the tourists click away with their cameras while he simply absorbed everything around him. He never collected artifacts from his travels, choosing instead to hold all souvenirs he needed in memory.
The afternoon passed uneventfully, but not dully. The Doctor's body was old, and a nice walk (opposed to the constant running he still did quite often) was very enjoyable in a drizzly city like this.
However, as it always seems to, trouble called out to him.
The girl was crying, that was the first thing that he noticed. It was always the first thing he noticed in new places, crying children. Or, in this particular case, a crying teenager. She was older than Amelia, judging by her facial features, but small and dirty and thin and, of course, crying, hands tangled in her untidy brown hair.
"Now then, what's this?" he said absently, moving closer to kneel before the girl huddled against the brick wall. "What's wrong?"
The girl looked warily up at the Doctor through red-rimmed eyes, pressing herself more firmly into the brick wall behind her. Though she visibly responded to his presence by looking over his professorly attire, her mouth did not move.
"Come along, then, I'm the Doctor, I'm here to help," he urged her with encouraging nods of his head. "Has something frightened you? Hurt you? Upset you in any way?"
She seemed confused by his barrage of questions, and just when the Doctor was beginning to think that she didn't speak English and that the TARDIS' communicator had suddenly sparked out, she finally spoke.
"They are coming for me," she whispered, lunging forward and grasping his arm in her bony hand, lips cracked and bleeding. "They're coming!"
She looked frantically around them with her free hand clapped suddenly over her mouth as if she had uttered a horrible curse word, whimpering in fear and clinging to the Doctor's jacket.
The Doctor looked down the alley in the same direction the girl was looking. "What? What's coming? Who is coming?"
It was only until after he spoke that he realized the noisy mess of the market had vanished as quickly as it took a cold wind to blow across a field of wheat. He looked down the other way and saw a man in a black suit standing at the alley's opening. Watching us...
"What's your name?" asked the Doctor quietly, not looking away from the man who had no visible face.
The girl looked at him as though he were crazy. He didn't have to see her to know that, everyone thought he was crazy when he chose to introduce himself at times like this. "Klara," she said. "Klara Frost."
"Alright, Klara Frost," said the Doctor distractedly, pulling the sonic screwdriver from his pocket. "For the next hour or so, I'm going to need you to do everything I say, whether that be to hide, jump into the gutter, surrender, leave me to die, or run. Understand?"
Klara looked as though he had grown a second head, but nodded. "Yes."
"Good, good," replied the Doctor, faster than before now that the faceless man was moving toward them and growing taller at an alarming rate. "Now is one of those times. Run!"
He snatched the girl's hand up in his and practically yanked her to her feet, launching them both down the opposite end of the alley, as far from the growing faceless man as possible.