Chapter 3

"So...we're trying to bring down a guy who cuts jigsaw pieces from his victims after they've played games involving a lot of pain, physically and mentally." Amy turned to Rory, who was sulking in silence in the seat next to hers. "Sounds a little like my P.E classes, only without pieces being taken out of you."

Erickson groaned, and Strahm face palmed himself. Hoffman – who had decided after all to join them in Erickson's Volvo – grinned at her. She smiled back.

"Pond," Said the Doctor solemnly. "This is a serious situation: for once, there's no time for jokes."

Amy stared. "You're joking. He's joking, right?"

"Oh, of course I am!" He cracked up. "There's always, always time for a wisecrack or two!" He leaned in conspiratorially to Hoffman. "I can't believe I kept up the acting for so long!"

"I really wouldn't say things like that in front of Mark, Doctor," Strahm said, spitting Hoffman's name out like it was poison. "He might get ideas."

Hoffman sarcastically made the Justin Bieber love heart at him. "Love ya too, Peter."

Strahm turned back to the Doctor. "You see?"

"See? I don't know what I'm meant to see," He leaned over and pointed out the window. "But what I'm seeing right now is a great big crime scene with 'Police: Do Not Cross' tape."

And, of course, they were. As Amy stepped out into the chaos, she suddenly felt very very small indeed. Amy Pond, she thought. What the hell are you doing?

"Relax," Hoffman patted her on the shoulder. "You get used to it after a while."

"But...this is madness!"

"Then I'll correct myself: you go mad after a while."

"Yeah," Rory said from where he had materialised at Amy's side. "It shows."

Hoffman's eyes flashed, but he nodded stiffly and merged with the group of agents walking inside the building. Rory made to follow, but Amy caught his arm.

"What," She hissed. "Was the point of that?"

"Amy, you don't understand what I'm seeing," Rory shook her when she snorted. "First you two are fighting, then you're flirting with him and giving him ideas."

"I am doing nothing of the sort!" Amy protested.

"Well, it's not what it looks like to me."

"Oh, you are so paranoid..."

"Amy, please...just stay away from him, yeah? For me."

Amy rolled her eyes. "You are blowing this out of proportion, you know that? Ok, fine, but if he talks to me, I am going to say something back. Same if he insults me in any way."

Rory nodded, then held out his hand. "Ok. Deal?"

Amy smiled and hugged him. "Deal. You've got to stop doubting the fact that I love you."

"I know. It's just a little hard to believe at times, that's all."

Amy pecked him on the lips. "Well, start believing."

And they followed the others inside.

xXx

"Her name is Lily Jones," Strahm filled the Doctor in as he crouched by the corpse. "33, Caucasian. She was killed by –"

"I think we can all tell what she was killed by, thanks." Amy gagged. Three bullet holes joined each other, cracking part of the head wide open. A gun was set in a maze of an intricate device, attached to a timer displaying the time 00:00.

Hoffman gave her a sympathetic look. "You wanna go outside for a minute?"

"No, I'm fine." Amy joined the Doctor, trying to breathe through her mouth. "So, why are you getting that thing out?"

"Hmm?" The Doctor didn't look up from whatever he was doing with the sonic screwdriver. "What?"

"Surely this is an open-and-shut case?" Amy tried to read the Doctor's body language. "I mean, the woman failed her twisted 'game', gun went off, bang bang bang, and here we are. So why are we here?"

"I can answer that," Perez pointed to the gun. "The device still has a full cartridge."

"I'm sorry, what?" Amy was confused. "But –"

"I know," Perez nodded. "It shouldn't be possible, but it is. The gun never fired; the electronics show that the timer stopped five seconds before the gun should have gone off – and then was reset to zero time a few minutes later."

"So..." Amy turned to Hoffman. "The woman was shot by Jigsaw soon after she'd completed the trap, who then reset the time to make it look like she failed?"

"You'd think that," He nodded. "However, that goes against his MO – if she survived her 'test' she should've gone free. Besides that, there's no jigsaw piece cut out from her."

"Well, that's all true enough," The Doctor suddenly straightened up and put the sonic screwdriver away, his face deadly serious. "But I'm afraid this doesn't fit in with any human MO either."

"Oh, great," Rory muttered. "More aliens – just what we need."

Amy shushed him. "What did the sonic pick up?"

"Radiation particles from a teleportation device – poor old Lily Jones was killed miles from here." He crouched down by the body again. "And..."

"And what?"

The Doctor looked sheepishly at Erickson. "Look, I know you're not supposed to handle evidence at a crime scene, but to make my point I need some of your least squeamish agents to...pick up the body for a few seconds."

"You what?" Erickson was apoplectic. "Doctor, I forbid you to –"

"Fine, where do you want me?" Hoffman walked casually over to the Doctor, who beamed.

"Brilliant, first volunteer, good man! Anyone else?" Silence. "Oh come on, otherwise I'll have to pick people!"

Strahm sullenly slunk forward, followed by Rigg and another male agent Amy didn't recognise.

"Excellent!" The Doctor patted Strahm on the back, shook Rigg's hand and looked curiously at the third man. "And you are...?"

"Eric," He answered. "Eric Matthews."

"Well then, Eric, if you could take the head...Hoffman and Strahm, for once please work together and lift the upper and lower torso...stop glaring and start working, chop chop..."

With the Doctor giving instructions, the four men lifted the corpse that had been Lily Jones. If it weren't for the grisly situation Amy would've been admiring the amount of muscle on show - especially as Hoffman had taken his police issue jacket off – but at last the body was off the floor.

"So," The Doctor looked at Amy. "Do you see what I mean?"

"Umm..." Amy scanned the scene, but she couldn't see anything wrong until –

"Oh my God..." Amy followed Rory's line of sight, and froze.

"Well, that makes it a definite alien MO."

"Exactly," The Doctor nodded at the floor. "As they say, the lights are on but no-one's home – at least, that's what they would say if someone had no shadow."

xXx

"So, what exactly does a missing shadow mean?" Amy asked. They were sitting in a corner of the room away from the bustling activity of the FBI. Hoffman was pretty much at the heart of this, but he kept looking over at her like he wanted to join her.

The Doctor craned his neck round to see whether anyone was listening, and then whispered, "It means that whatever they're planning is almost done."

Amy leaned closer to him. "How can you tell?"

"Amy, this has been going on longer than the FBI knows – they wouldn't give themselves away this easily unless..."

"...Unless they don't need to worry about being found out anymore." Amy realised.

"Exactly," The Doctor's face was partially covered in shadows. "And that's particularly worrying because –"

"What the hell?" The two of them whirled round. A slim blond woman with her hair in a ponytail was standing in the doorway.

Erickson took a step towards her. "Ahh, Miss Jill Tuck. How exactly did you get past Security?"

"They're watching TV," Jill snapped, her brown eyes eagle sharp as she took in the scene. "And don't try to skip past the subject: what the hell happened here?"

"Another Jigsaw murder," Strahm looked at her hard. "Bit ironic that your ex-husband killed someone in your own drug clinic – a place where you 'help' people..."

Jill's eyes narrowed. "What exactly do you mean by that?"

Erickson took a firm grasp of her upper arm. "Miss Tuck, I strongly advise you to leave the premises before –"

"Before what?" Jill glared at him. "Get your hands off me: I work here, I have the right to be here as much as you do!"

"She's right, you know!" Amy called as she and the Doctor joined Jill and Erickson.

Jill frowned. "Hang on, who –"

"Oh, I'm the Doctor, this is Amy Pond, my assistant." The Doctor said cheerfully, shaking Jill's hand.

"And I'm Rory," Rory chipped in. "I'm her husband."

"Yeah, I guessed by the rings." Jill ignored Amy and Rory and focused on the Doctor. "How long will it be until I can work again?"

"Oh, not too long," The Doctor reassured her. "At least until we find out which aliens are trying to destroy the human race this time..."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Don't worry, nothing serious, don't panic."

"Great: a guy in a bow tie raving about the end of the world is telling me not to panic. Helpful."

"Ooo, that hurt..."

"Anyway," Erickson turned back to the agents, who had stopped what they were doing to see what was going on. "No-one told you to stop, so keep going! And you –" His phone vibrated as he glared at Jill. "I want you off this site by the time I come back from taking this, or I'll have you arrested for trespassing unauthorised on this site."

"Funny," Said Jill, smirking. "I thought this guy 'trespassed' all the time."

Erickson wheeled round to stare at her. "Wha – how?

"You left your folders lying around." Jill shrugged. "I thought it was mine. Shame I forgot I don't do things like that..."

Erickson's face turned red. "Just...get out." He said harshly before stalking from the room.

"Temper, temper." Jill chuckled, before moving further into the room.

"I like this woman." Amy grinned at Rory.

"I'm not so sure..." Rory frowned.

Amy sighed. "Look, Rory, stop being so paranoid: I don't even like wom –"

"No," Rory jerked his head towards Jill. "I mean, look."

Amy looked. It seemed Hoffman had been trying to catch Jill's eye throughout her whole tirade, and now Erickson had gone he had finally succeeded. Jill had just walked over to him, and he was murmuring something quietly into her ear. Amy was sure for a second that Jill had looked round briefly at her, but then she said something to Hoffman and walked away from him down a corridor to the right of them. After looking round to check whether they had been noticed, he followed her.

Rory whistled. "Wow, someone's busy!"

"Shut up," Amy elbowed him in the ribs. "Didn't you see Jill? She looked right at me, like he was saying something about me..."

"God, you flatter yourself." Rory rolled his eyes. "Look, Mark Hoffman is a dirty great womanizer: get over it."

"No chance: something is going on and I'm going to find out what it is."

"I little bit of rumpy pumpy, maybe?"

"God, Rory, you know what I mean!" She walked away from him.

"Oi, where are you going?" He called after her.

"To see what Mr 'Dirty Great Womanizer' is up to," Amy replied, disappearing down the corridor. "And I hope it isn't 'rumpy pumpy', otherwise in for a nasty surprise..."

xXx

"Erickson, I hope you don't take offence – well, actually I don't really care – but wasn't that a little bit harsh?" The Doctor had followed Erickson outside with Perez and Strahm, and was leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his chest.

"She's a nuisance," Erickson said coldly, slipping his phone back into his jacket. "I've got a really big hunch that she knows where John Kramer is, but she isn't telling..."

"Well, you wouldn't would you?" The Doctor took a few steps towards Erickson. "You let anything slip, then it could cost you as much as the other person. And that's exactly what you've been doing to me."

Erickson's face was unreadable. "I don't know what you're talking about."

The Doctor purposefully invaded Erickson's personal bubble. "Erickson, I wasn't lying in your office: I didn't have a clue about the tracking signal, how it found me et cetra. But you've forgotten something about me: I'm a Time Lord, and – I'm not being proud – I'm a hell of a lot smarter than you. And I know that you've brought me here because someone or something wanted you to. Hence the phone call."

Erickson stiffened. "You're making assumptions."

"Oh am I?" The Doctor pointed to where three pitch black vans were parking next to them, with men with guns and black army fatigues jumping out and storming towards them. "And who are they? The Telletubbies?" He switched on his most cheesy grin and held both arms over his head as the soldiers stopped in a semicircle around them. "Alright, see, know weapons. So what is it you wa –"

For once in his nine-hundred-and-eight years of life, the Doctor was silenced. A blond girl with her hair in a ponytail in the same fatigues as the grim-faced men around her had stepped into view, her brown eyes sparkling with all-too-familiar mischief and delight, her lips drawn back in a grin reminiscent of a regeneration long ago.

"I thought that would be your reaction!" The girl laughed. "Oh, this is brilliant!"

The Doctor found his voice. "Hello Jenny."

Jenny winked. "Hello Dad."

xXx

Amy inched her way down the deserted corridor. She'd left behind the hustle and bustle of the investigation long ago – how frigging big was this building? – and it felt way too quiet somehow. A light flickered on and off over her head: there were no windows to let in light. The wallpaper was peeling, a broken pipe dripped overhead. You wouldn't think this was a drug clinic.

"Crap." Amy flattened herself against the wall as a bang resounded down the corridor. She laughed shakily and kept going. A door was set in the wall next to her and she heard the murmur of voices inside. She pressed her ear to the crack...

"For God's sake, Jill!" Hoffman's voice. He was clearly the one who had slammed his hand down on the table; his voice was angry and frustrated.

"You know the rules, Hoffman." Jill's voice was calm, icy even. "We can't afford to let anyone find out."

He still sounded frustrated, but he sounded tired as well. Amy could just imagine him pacing inside, his hands running through his hair. "There's got to be another solution to this..."

"You know there isn't; there's only his way."

"I DON'T WANT TO KILL HER!" Amy flinched – every muscle in her body was telling her to run, but first she wanted to know what she had let herself in for. She heard him sigh, heard a creak as a flopped into a chair.

"It's not killing, Mark; it's a test. If she fails, yes, she dies, but that's her choice.

"It's not her choice: its fucking murder."

"You're one to talk, Mark. How many people have died, how many have you let die when he 'murders' them? You killed Seth Baxter –"

"He killed my sister, don't drag that into this!"

"But you still killed him, so how different does that make you from the rest of us?" Silence. "Besides, if you hate what we're doing so much, why don't you leave?"

"You know too damn well that I can't."

"So you might as well get it over with; Amanda's waiting outside."

Another sigh. Then: "Please." His tone sounds so pleading that Amy almost forgives him for deceiving her. "Don't make me..."

Amy hears Jill laugh and doesn't like it. "Oh, come off it Hoffman. Only one more person in a list of many...don't look at me like that, you and I both know there's no going back now, not ever, so will you just –"

It happens in slow motion. Amy took a step forward to press her ear closer to the crack – and trod on the end of the laces on her blue Converses. She fell into the room, the door banging against the wall as she hit the ground. She just caught a glimpse of Hoffman raising his face from his hands and looking at her in shock before the world speeded up again.

"SHIT!" Jill dived at her, but Amy rolled away back out into the corridor. Once outside she scrambled to her feet and ran – right into the arms of Hoffman.

"AAA –" Her scream was cut off by his hand. "Get off me, you bastard!" Her yell was muffled, but she kept struggling. She had to get away, had to tell the Doctor...

"I'm sorry," She glared defiantly up at him as he picked out a syringe. "I'm so sorry."

She felt a sharp pain in her neck as it entered her, and tried to fight against the drug. But it was too late, and Hoffman's arms suddenly felt so warm and safe even though she knew they weren't, he wasn't...

"You're not..." She whispered as his face faded to black, and she could feel nothing except his arms passing her like a doll to Jill's.

And then there was nothing at all.

xXx

"Wait..." Erickson frowned. "You have a daughter?"

"Well, not exactly." The Doctor admitted. The soldiers had put their guns down and they looked unsure of themselves, not knowing what to do. "A machine took my DNA and...well, grew her, to be blunt. A DIY soldier, grown with all the skills needed for warfare. Last time I saw her," He glared at her. "She was dead."

Jenny looked apologetic. "I'm sorry, but by the time I'd regenerated you'd gone."

"So you did regenerate!" The Doctor hugged her. "Two hearts, regeneration capacity, the whole shebang!"

"I've been trying to find you for so long..."

"I'm glad you did," The Doctor smiled, arms still wrapped round her waist. "I need to show you Barcelona, great place, great footballers too..."

Jenny wriggled out of his grasp. "No," She said seriously. "I needed to find you to tell you that –" She turned to the soldiers. "You can go." They saluted and walked back to the van.

"Hang on a minute," Strahm looked shocked. "They're our –"

"Yes, they're your agents, blah de blah blah..." Jenny rolled her eyes and grinned at the Doctor. "Blimey, ain't it funny when they look so shocked about the smallest things?"

"Yes," The Doctor smiled wanly. "Anyway, what did you need to tell me?"

But before Jenny could say anything, Rory ran up. "Sorry," He panted. "But have you seen Amy?"

"No," Frowned the Doctor. "Why?"

"Well, she went off after Hoffman and Jill, and she hasn't come back!"

The Doctor looked at Jenny. "You up for some running?"

Jenny winked. "You betcha."

All three of them ran inside, into the corridor – and practically trampled Hoffman and Jill underfoot.

"First: Ow." Hoffman winced. "Second: Why –"

Rory pinned him against the wall. "Where's Amy, you son of a bitch?"

Hoffman looked confused. "Amy? No, why?"

"She went off looking for you."

Jill frowned. "Now you come to mention it, I think she went down there," She pointed down the corridor. "But I'm not sure."

"Thank you." The Doctor nodded as they set off again.

As they turned a corner, Hoffman caught Jill's eye. "I hate you."

"The feeling is very, very mutual, Detective." He watched her go.

Meanwhile, Rory reached an empty back-street car-park first, crashing through a side door. A van was waiting outside, the engine on. A hooded figure was just closing the doors, but when it wheeled round to face them, Rory only just saw the pig-mask covering its face before in whizzed round to the driver's door and jumped in, slamming it and revving the engine.

"NO!" Rory screamed as he made a lunge at the rear doors, but the van started moving and he could only watch helplessly as it screeched out the car-park and out of sight.

"Amy..." He whispered as the Doctor and Jenny joined him.

"She'll be fine." The Doctor reassured him.

But deep inside, he wasn't so sure...

Dadundaaaannnn! Chapter 4 coming up as soon as possible...