The Doctor skulks. There's nothing terribly exciting here, just building intel and planting seeds for things to come…
Hope you enjoy! (I'll try to update again very soon!)
FIVE
Buford S. Greene and his "colleagues" walked, chatting, into an alley behind Park House, the high-rise of student housing on the corner of Earl's Court and Bolton Gardens. The Doctor followed behind them, of course, careful not to be seen, and was not surprised that the trio climbed into a vintage automobile. The car was big and heavy, blue, with literally tonnes of personality. The Doctor recognised as a 1938 Ford.
The car began to drive off, and the Doctor realised he hadn't completely thought this through.
Several ideas passed through his mighty brain in a few split seconds.
Can I hide on the bumper below the back window without getting killed? Maybe, maybe not. Ridiculous risk. Daft idea. Been watching too many Hollywood films with Companions. Possibly also too many cartoons.
It is rather a distinctive car – I could go back and get Martha's car, and try to find them, and follow them.
If all else fails, I could use the council's vehicle registration database to find out who owns the car, and just, you know... turn up.
Come to that, I could just run the licence plate numbers through the system and find them out. Blimey, Doctor, sometimes I wonder if you don't just try to make things complicated on purpose sometimes. What, for fun?
Anyhow, it's amply clear that Mr. Greene does not belong in this time and place, and I would find it very surprising if he actually worked at Burch and Bradley, even if Burch and Bradley actually existed…
Doctor! Do something!
So, he did what he always does in case of emergency: he aimed his sonic screwdriver at the big blue car.
And he was glad to have done so, because as the car passed, he discovered from the sonic's readings that the vintage Ford possessed a SatNav system. He aimed again, and this time, uploaded the car's particular SatNav signal into the screwdriver.
"Ah," he said aloud to himself, with delight. "Classic elegance, modern convenience. Very nice, Mr. Greene. I travel much in the same way."
He pulled Martha's old mobile phone from his pocket, and now aimed the screwdriver at it, synchronising the two devices, and allowing him to follow the car's Sat Nav signal via the phone. He then stepped out onto Bolton Gardens, and hailed a taxi, though it took a couple of minutes to find an empty one.
No matter – the Doctor had all the info he needed, as far as where the blue car was going, and how to follow it. He directed the driver as they went, and eventually they arrived at a short, squat, fairly unremarkable office building, incongruously placed in the suburbs. Luckily, the blue car was big and slow, and he was able to watch them park on the street, all disembark, then enter the building through a side door.
He paid the driver, and jogged in behind the mysterious party of three (sonicking himself through the door, of course).
He saw Greene and the two others down the hall, walking away from him. Almost immediately when he entered the building, he heard Greene's voice say, "Hang on, lads." With that, he gestured for his colleagues to move aside, and he peered down the hall. The Doctor had just enough time to duck behind a water cooler.
"What's the matter?" asked the man in the tan suit.
"I'm not sure," said Greene, searching the space with his eyes. "There's something… hm. Never mind."
The trio turned a corner and proceeded down a hallway. The Doctor followed, and looked side to side, and made note of what he saw. On the right, a conference room, on the left, the gents. Further down, on the right, a couple of offices in which people sat at desks talking on the phone. On the left, the ladies'. They then found a stair case at the end of the corridor, and went up one flight, from the ground floor to the first floor.
The entire first floor was walled with glass – another conference room, about ten offices, and a couple of shared work-areas – and the Doctor groaned inwardly. He stayed down on the landing, realising it would be exceedingly difficult to hide in this place – today, or any day. He stood on the railing and chanced to peek over the rim of the first floor, and saw the three men head into a modern-looking conference room, where a woman in a suit sat waiting for them. They shut the door, and the Doctor was totally unable to hear their conversation. He tried using his stethoscope against the floorboards, but it didn't work – and he was risking being seen.
Mr. Greene went and stood on the same side of the table as the woman, and the two modern gents stood on the other side. From the looks of things, the woman was the boss (though the Doctor wondered just how their overtly-British CEO, Cyril H. Tippington, fit into all this, assuming that such a flesh-and-blood entity even existed). She listened to the two men talk, with her arms folded across her chest, and an annoyed, sceptical look on her face. The Doctor was not particularly adept at merely incidental lip-reading, and he couldn't really see the two men's faces anyhow – he reckoned he'd learned everything he was going to learn from this interaction. Unless he could find another way upstairs… a passage that leads behind the conference room, or something…
He had just decided to go back and explore the ground floor a bit more, see if there was a secondary stairwell, when Mr. Greene leaned a bit to his left, and seemed to look beyond the conference room wall/window, directly in the Doctor's direction. His movement was sudden, as though he'd seen something move where it shouldn't. The man had a quizzical, confused look on his face, like he wasn't sure what he was looking for, or feeling.
The Doctor reckoned that he indeed wasn't sure.
That's when the Doctor retreated. Clearly, Mr. Greene could "sense" him; it had happened on the corner in Martha's neighbourhood, and it was happening again. He still reckoned it was probably borrowed technology, and not an innate skill. Nevertheless, if the Doctor was going to work out what these guys were up to, he was going to need more stealth.
He walked back down the hall on the ground floor, past the restrooms, and turned right, to visit a part of the building he hadn't seen yet. Just as he rounded the corner, he heard the voices of the two men who had been working with Buford S. Greene. The Doctor froze where he was, and hid, listening to them chatter. Suddenly, heard a door open, and the chatter faded out, as the men went through. Their voices echoed as they did so, and the Doctor guessed they'd gone to the gents'.
He tried again, extracting his stethoscope, pressing the auscultator against the door. This time, he could hear everything loud and clear, including the charming sound of urine hitting porcelain.
"I dunno," one man said. "I have no bloody idea what she's thinking."
"Me neither," said the other. "How the fuck did you and I get pulled into this thing?"
"Dunno that either. I mean, what the hell is that nutter on about? What'd he say yesterday? A different plane? Out of sync? Reality oscillates? What's that noise?"
"No bloomin' idea. Sounds like a bunch of Star Trek nerdbabble."
There was a pause, then the first guy spoke again. "So the meeting's been moved to Monday."
"Yeah, and don't that just beat all," said the second. "I was supposed to go to my kid's school, for this special performance thing. He's supposed to be dressed up like a squirrel - my wife made the costume and everything. Now I gotta be up there in the fishbowl, listening to His Nibs talk rubbish."
"Why is your kid's school having a performance at nine a.m.?"
"Don't ask me, I didn't decide that."
They then flushed their urinals. The Doctor stepped back from the door in response to the onslaught of deafening white noise coming through the stethoscope. And as he did, he considered the hallway again. Gents' and ladies' side-by-side, and a conference room upstairs. He couldn't be seen or felt here again – he was sure that next time, Greene would catch him - and he only had a few seconds to get out of sight. But the Doctor was quick, and a plan was hatching.
Donna Noble spent the morning, after the Doctor left, tidying the parlour of Martha's flat, where she had slept, compiling a grocery list, and prowling around the organic market nearby. She would have liked to visit her grandfather, but she knew that her mum was off from work today, and that was one shrill bollocking she just didn't need.
Briefly, she stared out the back window at the TARDIS, and allowed herself to feel wistful, and to long for an escape, to blast out of here and into the open arms of Time and Space with her partners in adventure, but…
She shook it off. She didn't want to feel cooped-up here. She wanted to feel genuinely grateful to Martha for the respite from living in a sardine tin with her mother. And, she didn't want to get too attached to the idea of travelling in the TARDIS again, as she still wasn't entirely certain that she would be totally welcome in it now. The Doctor and Martha had each other – in every sense of the word now – and they would, of course, say that she was their trusted friend and Companion, and that they couldn't do without her.
But what could they say? Donna, we really want the freedom to explore our Essential Couplehood as nature intended: in the midst of outer space, naked in the common spaces of our living quarters. Also, we were hoping to panel all of the walls and ceiling of your bedroom with mirrors and install a sex swing in the middle. Sorry. You'll have to go back to your dead-end job temping… we hope you find a bloke who isn't a total wanker real soon, so you don't have to continue taking verbal abuse from your mother, with whom you live, even though you're nearly forty…
By early afternoon, Donna reckoned it had become unhealthy for her to left to her own thoughts.
Fortunately, she had plans. It was one o'clock in the afternoon when she strode into the A&E Department of Royal Hope hospital with a large tote bag in her hand.
"May I help you?" asked the security guard, stationed at the desk out front.
"I'm wondering if I might speak to one of your doctors," she said. "Martha Jones?"
"What's this about?"
"It's a personal matter," Donna said. After the guard's eyebrow went up, she said, "I just want to invite a friend to lunch! Is that all right with you?"
"I'll see if she's available," the man replied. "Have a seat."
Donna sat, while the guard muttered something into the phone.
About two minutes later, Martha walked through a set of double-doors. She still had a surgical mask on her face, and her feet were covered with what looked like little blue shower caps.
"Hey, Donna," she said, pulling her mask down. "What brings you here?"
"Oh, my God, I didn't get you out of surgery, did I?" Donna asked, flogging herself, just a bit.
"No, no, I finished up about ten minutes ago, and I was only assisting anyhow."
"Thank goodness. I came to see if you'd like to have lunch together."
Martha smiled. "Are you asking me on a date?"
"It's the twenty-first century. Why not?" Donna chuckled. Then she said, "But, listen, I understand, if you're busy. I tried calling your mobile, but you didn't answer – go figure – so I decided to take a guess at when your lunch break might be. How did I do?"
"Really well," Martha told her. "Lunch was my next order of business. Where would you like to go? There's a couple of good places to get a curry nearby."
Donna held up her tote. "I went to the market earlier, and made us some sandwiches."
"You didn't also replace my yoghurt, did you?"
"I sort of did, yes. And the fruit. And the popcorn and the tea."
"Donna! Stop acting like a lodger. You don't have to do that!"
"Anyway!" Donna cut across. "Is there a terrace or something where we could…"
"Yeah, there is," Martha said. "On the third floor. Just go up in the lift, turn to your left and go through the doors there, and there's a public lounge. Part of it is outside. I'll meet you there, yeah? I'm going to go put on some clothes that are not blue pyjamas."
"Great."
"Donna? Is everything all right?"
"Everything's fine," Donna assured her. "It's just… the Doctor's gone skulking, and I thought there were some things we should talk about. You know, woman to woman."
"Good," Martha said. "I think so too."
Some girl talk on the horizon?
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