Something had changed and I could feel the TARDIS's sense of expectation in the air, as if she were waiting for something.

I could feel her 'touches' more accurately after our visiting home and our trip to the Næfre System. She'd brush up against me with her warmth as soon as I entered the main console room and I could feel her almost nudging me closer to the Doctor. Sometimes I'd catch this look in his eyes, his brows furrowed, his gaze piercing as if he were trying to see into my very heart.

Things changed even further when we were led back to Earth following a signal the Doctor had intercepted.

"So, do you know what the signal is from?"

The doors opened and we looked out into what seemed to be some sort of exhibit. The Doctor peered around curiously, only silence meeting my first question.

"Well if we don't know what, then what about when?"

"Earth, Utah, somewhere underground. 2012." He peered into one of the cases, "An alien museum it would seem. Someone must have paid a fortune for this."

I looked around a shiver running down my spine as I saw so many decapitated alien heads or other limbs on display in glass cases.

"It's kind of creepy. Like some warped taxidermy museum."

I watched as the Doctor reached out to touch an exhibit with a silver robot head, "Don't touch...it." I metered off as I was too late, alarms sounded.

Dark clothed soldiers with guns pointing at us felt like deja vu all over again.

We were brought into a lift going up and then into lit tunnels.

When we reached our destination I couldn't help my disgusted scoff.

A rich narcissistic man's office, complete with glass desk and a huge portrait of himself behind where he sat.

The Doctor and him went back and forth for a while as I took in our surroundings including the wall of monitors on the other side of the office.

"The question is how did you get in 53 floors down, with your little cat burglar accomplice."

A door cracked open in my mind, giving wisps of a memory from another life, and I grinned, "Oh, how did you know?"

The Doctor looked at me curiously as the narcissist smiled, his too white teeth shining.

"Oh and she's English, too. Little Lord Faunteloroy, I got you a girlfriend."

I looked at the young woman barely no longer a teen,

"Sorry, but you're not my type."

The grinning man smiled wider, "Yes it seems you like them older, don't you?" He looked between the Doctor and I suggestively.

I didn't bother correcting him. After all, it was true. I was always more partial to Colonel Brandon or King Arthur, over the Lancelots of the world.

The teen stepped forward gesturing towards his boss, "This is Henry Van Statten. He owns the internet."

I shook my head, I wasn't even going to bother giving that a response.

The Doctor spoke up, "So you are just about an expert on everything except the things in your museum, things you don't understand you lock up."

"You speak as if you are so smart and yet I captured you. Right by the Cage. What were you doing there?"

"You tell me."

"The Cage contains my one living specimen."

The two men had a stare down before Van Statten spoke up,

"Little English take care of the girl, maybe she'll warm up to you while we are gone. And you Doctor with no name come and see my pet."

I had a bad feeling about his place. I felt a wave of assurance, when I sent a mental thank you I watched as the Doctor's eyes widened in surprise.

Something indeed had changed.

After they'd gone, the 'kid' looked at me.

"What's your name?"

I smiled, "Marion. Yours?"

"Adam."

I nodded, "So what do you do around here?"

Adam showed me his workspace down the hall from the billionaire's office. It was a large closet with many metal shelving units filled with artefacts of all shapes and sizes. Missing pieces to bigger puzzles surrounded me, wisps of songs long gone caused me to pause in the doorway.

"Van Statten lets me do whatever I want as long as I bring the goods." He picked something from a box in his work area, "What do you think this is?"

I turned it around in my hands carefully, noting how it was missing parts here and there. "It's metal, most likely just one piece to something bigger."

"I honestly believe its part of an alien spacecraft."

I turned the piece in my hand one more time before setting it carefully in the box on the worktable.

"You never know."

"So you and the Doctor..."

I sighed, I was getting a little tired of everyone's assumptions.

"We are friends."

"Oh good..." He couldn't hold back a boyish blush upon his cheeks.

I immediately sought to change the subject.

"Cataloguing strange items can be interesting but it must be exciting to have a live creature down there. Have you ever been down there?"

"Don't have the clearance." My shoulders sagged and Adam was quick to state, "But I'm not a genius for nothing, I can hotwire a visual link to the Cage."

I watched as he worked and soon the screen he set up cleared to show the metal caged alien at the centre.

"Doesn't do much. It just sits there like a big pepper pot."

I watched, growing sick to my stomach as a hazmat suited 'scientist' tortured the creature, its screams grating against my senses.

A door that remained closed whispered, 'Dalek'.

Whatever the creature was, it was dangerous. My mind was flashing almost what looked like a red alert in my mind.

"Where's the Doctor?"

The bad feeling had intensified.

Adam changed the view of the camera to outside the Cage but the Doctor still wasn't there.

"He shouldn't be far."

"We need to go find him, now!"

We walked down the hall to the lift.

As soon as I stepped into it the TARDIS's song swelled up in my mind, louder than before. I fell to the ground, my hands over my temples, such pain. I felt echoes of it through my limbs, but I knew it wasn't mine.

"Marion! Marion!" Adam called out to me, "Are you alright?"

He helped me into the office adjoining the Cage and I nodded as I took a breath and looked at the screen with the 'Dalek' on it.

"Want to meet it?"

It would seem he had quickly changed his tune.

"I don't think that's a good idea."

Adam pulled my arm with an impish grin and determined gaze, flashing his badge at the guard. I heard the garbled sound of the guard checking with his superior and the guard nodded.

There I stood in front of the pepperpot, my mind away thinking about the Doctor when I noticed the creature was watching me through its eye stalk.

I walked closer. I went to its side, eyeing its weaponry cautiously.

I looked back at the guard, "Do you know where they took the Doctor?"

A hazmat wearing scientist came in and my eyes narrowed.

"You were hurting it. Why?"

I could just make out the grin through the clear plastic, "Van Statten's orders."

"Oh and I suppose you do everything that Van Statten orders."

"I'll take great pleasure in complying with this next one."

He leaned forward gesturing towards me to another hazmat suited scientist. My body tensed and I readied myself for a fight.

I looked for Adam to find him being detained by a guard.

The scientists came on either side of me and as they did I lashed out aiming, elbowing the one on my right in the face and was ready to launch at the other one when the one behind grabbed from behind and I fell forward dangerously close to the pepperpot's outer shell.

"Be careful. He wants her alive."

I let out a growl as I threw my head back and nearly flailed free, but my hand grazed the side of the pepperpot.

I let out a hiss as I felt it burn my fingertips.

The Dalek shook in its restraints, my fingerprints faded.

As I was dragged to the lift kicking and screaming, I could hear the Daleks' voice.

"MATERIAL EXTRAPOLATED, INITIATE CELLUAR RECONSTRUCTION."

A curse flew from my mouth just as we reached the lift.

I felt a prick in the back of my neck like something had stung me only for the world to go black.

"Not again."

[Excerpt from the Doctor]

The torturous examination stopped for a bit, when a guard came up to report to Van Statten's assistant Goddard.

The Dalek had just killed a technician and was now draining the Cage's power from its computer systems.

VanStatten who had stopped his mocking of the Doctor only to bring up the screen of the Dalek unlocking the Cage's doors.

"Impossible."

The Doctor shouted, "Release me if you want to survive!"

The Doctor was released in time to see the boy and the guards, "Where's Rose?"

A guard looked smug, "It can't get out of containment."

"It can and it will. Where's Rose?"

The boy came onto the screen, "One of the researchers took her." He looked nervously at his boss and the Doctor looked at the man too.

Van Statten merely smiled, none of the current situation seeming to affect him, instead his eyes glinted brightly with greed.

"If you are an alien then what is she?"

"She's human!"

"Is she?"

The Doctor winced as he felt the psychic link form again, pain far too similar to his previous predicament came through.

"Let her go."

Van Statten looked down at his tablet. He ignored the fact that the monitors showing the Cage had gone black.

The information he got from a scan alone was fascinating, her body shimmered beneath the red scan like a star in the night sky. He could only imagine what they could find once they extracted samples.

"I'm sorry Doctor but she might just be the missing piece to human advancement."

The Doctor something darken inside him, he'd only felt this recently when faced with the enemy of his people. The darkness raged in him and he barely held back from strangling Van Statten when he grabbed hold of his collar.

"Let her go. Now!"

Guards' voices filtered through walkie talkies explaining the Dalek had drained the energy of the level and had escaped.

"Don't kill it. I want it alive."

Shots rang out.

"I said don't shoot."

More shots rang out then silence.

The Doctor could not waste time he spoke to Goddard, "Do you have a map?"

"I have better." She pulled up her tablet then pointed to a virtual map. "That's us, that's the Dalek..." and she pointed to a couple levels below them "and that's the exam room."

They all watched the Dalek's dot move down level after level, the dots of light representing personnel going out one by one.

Van Statten peered over their shoulders, "Why is it heading there?"

The Doctor's eyes widened as he realised he must have missed something.

Even after directing the army that had gathered on that level, he couldn't save them.

Then one of the monitors turned on, showing the Dalek and the dead militia surrounding him.

"I WILL ONLY SPEAK TO THE DOCTOR."

When the Doctor stood before the screen, the Dalek continued.

"I FED OFF THE DNA OF ROSE TYLER." It paused. "THEY ARE ALL GONE. I AM ALONE, ALL GONE."

"You are just a soldier with no orders."

"NO ORDERS. ALL GONE. GONE, GONE, GONE."

The Doctor was angry but even in the anger he noticed something was wrong with the Dalek. Before he had already gone mad, but now it was spiraling.

"Why don't you just die?"

The eye stalk moved up and down, the Dalek spinning before moving away from the camera waiting til only its eye stalk and top of the dome was showing.

"YOU WOULD MAKE A GOOD DALEK."

The screen went black.

The Doctor looked behind him, "Seal the vaults."

"Doctor," Goddard said, "She's still down there."

"And the Dalek?"

"Still heading her way."