Oh sh*t, what's happened to Martha? Well, this weird little chapter will partially answer that question! Last we saw, Weth had kicked the Doctor out of her office ("Still love you, but need to be alone.") and Martha had been consumed by something...
Just know that for the next several chapters, time is not going to behave in a consistent manner.
Enjoy!
EIGHT
She felt pressure. As though she were underwater, something bore down on every inch of her body, and seemingly tried to twist her up and stuff her into a thimble. No breath escaped her nor could work its way in. She felt hot, frantic, and dead all at once.
And then she seemed to fly apart. Pain, light, millions of stars…
And then…
A rotunda-like room.
She was lying on the floor, face down in carpet, feeling like someone had pulled her through a keyhole (and indeed, they very well might have).
"What the hell?" she moaned. She pushed herself up slightly, and looked around.
"Easy now," someone said from someplace she could not see. But before she knew it, there were at least two people helping her up, and three others in front of her, looking sympathetic. They got her to her feet, and she blinked, trying to focus on the group of five.
But she didn't have time to clock any particular details about them, before she spat out, "Oh, I'm going to be sick!"
And she turned around, cast about quickly for a bin. Luckily, she found one, fell back down to her knees, but when she braced herself for what was to come, nothing happened. She had, of course, experienced a dry heave before, so she sat back on her haunches as the wave of nausea abated. Within ten seconds it was back, her head spinning, her guts churning…
She leaned over again, and once again, nothing happened.
"Sweetheart, I doubt you'll be able to vomit here," said a voice, a female, with a thick Northern accent. She came and sat upon a little set of stairs nearby where Martha still remained on her knees. "No-one can eat here, nor do we need to, so I wouldn't think any other functions would be… functioning. It'd be nice if not eating meant dropping a stone or two, but that's neither here nor there."
Martha looked up at her. She was a heavy-set lady, curly red hair, a very kind, sprightly face, dressed in a busy turquoise top and black leggings.
"Who are you?" Martha asked.
"Me? My name's Holly," she said. "Holly Bettsing."
"Okay," Martha chuckled.
"I know that doesn't help much," said Holly. "But I'm really no-one. Well, that's not true. Who I am is the only nurse in the bunch, so somehow, I got put in charge of you. Though in this place, I've got no idea what the hell to do. You might as well be an alien and we might as well be on the moon."
Martha said, absently, "I've been to the moon, it's nothing like this."
"You have?" Holly laughed.
"Er," Martha said, realising it sounded daft. "Yeah."
Holly laughed some more. "You know, these days, I'll believe anything, me."
Martha tried to stand, and Holly helped her. As she got to her feet she looked around. The other four people were lined up right where they had been a few minutes ago when she had turned away. In addition to Holly, there were three women, and one man.
"Hi," she said to them. "I'm… er, Martha. Martha Jones."
One of the other women, a blonde between fifty and sixty years old, Martha guessed, said, "And I'm Danielle." She then gestured to the others, "This is Petra, Bella, and Walt."
"Nice to…" Martha began, but another wave of nausea overtook her, and she thought she might be sick again, but though she knelt over the bin, once more, nothing happened. Then a searing pain in her stomach took over, and she clutched her middle and groaned. She couldn't help but fall onto her side.
"Oh, dear," Holly said, coming to sit on the floor beside her. She stroked Martha's arm and said, "I wish there were something I could do to help. Ordinarily I would ask, do you still have your appendix? But even if you do..."
"I don't," Martha responded. Then managed to croak out one more question before another wave of pain took her breath away: "Where the hell am I?"
She tightened into a ball and then, without proper warning, Martha burst into tears.
This was what made everyone come to her side, except for Walt. The four women sat around her, looking concerned, Holly continuing to stroke her arm, the woman introduced to her as Bella with her hand on Martha's calf.
Then Walt appeared in the circle as well; he had gone to get a pillow, and was now nestling it under Martha's head.
Wherever she was, she seemed to be cared-for…
She continued to cry softly, and Holly said to her, "None of us is sure of where we are. All we know is that we all got here mysteriously, and we all suspect that doctor had something to do with it."
Martha stopped crying at once, opened her eyes, and said, "Which doctor?"
"Mia Hoffmann," said Holly. "She's a couple's therapist."
"I know her as Inge Kreuger," said Bella.
"I know her as Kristina Joellen," said Danielle.
"Liesl Schwartz," said Petra.
"Mariana Weimer," Walt said.
"But we've worked out that they're all the same person," Holly said.
"Hilde Weth," Martha said.
"Let us guess," said Bella. "She stole your husband, and now you're here."
Martha frowned. The pain had subsided, so she sat up and looked at the others, leaning back on her hands. "Well, yeah. Sort of. I mean, he wasn't my husband…"
"Technically, Ed wasn't my husband either – we'd been living in sin for over twelve years," said Holly. "It doesn't seem to matter."
A headache came over Martha slowly, pressure built steadily as it had on the street earlier. It squeezed her head in until it reached a point, she was sure she'd blacked out for a few seconds. She didn't make any noise…
And then it was over, and she blinked it away and looked up at the man named Walt. "So, you're… you must be Walt Ilsman."
"Yeah, how'd you know?" he asked. He smiled at her, and she was reminded of having seen his picture on the Doctor's console computer screen, and she remembered thinking he had a fatherly smile. He was white-haired, affable, and had a birthmark on his chin.
Come to think of it, she now recognised the women as well. She had seen all of their photos as folks whose disappearances had been noticed by the Shadow Proclamation, because they had created what the Doctor had called a disturbance in the Force. It was a sort of transdimensional ripple effect that humans usually can't pull off. The Doctor had talked over her head about a unified field theory eluding physicists in her time…
She looked at the woman who had been introduced as Bella. She was about five feet tall and of Asian descent, just as it had said on her missing-persons profile. She said to her, "You're Arabella Chan-Henning!"
"Yes," said Bella with an eyeroll. "Though after this ordeal, if we ever get out of here, I'm dropping the Henning."
"Seriously, how do you know this?" Petra asked. She was tall, thin, pale, with limp brown hair, and a defeated look in her eyes.
"I erm…" Martha said, as another headache came on, but not like the last one. She waited out the wave, then said, "Well, my friend and I were investigating her. Dr. Weth. Or… whatever her actual name is. Sounds like she's had a whole bunch of them, all German. We let her believe we were a married couple so that we could find out what she was doing."
"Oh, so you're a detective!" Danielle said.
"No, I'm…" Martha sighed. "Okay, yeah, sort of. But you might say, of the private variety, although there's more to it than that. But I'm not police."
"And you've been to the moon." Holly asked.
Martha sighed. "Yeah, but…"
"So your non-husband-partner-in-crime-fighting is still out there, shagging the German doctor?" asked Danielle.
"Well… I mean, I guess so," she admitted, though it was like a punch to the gut to think about. The Doctor must have worked out what would happen, where she would go, if he acquiesced to Weth's advances and let her split them up…
…he said that was the biggest thing he needed to know before he could advance the game. So, he knew where she was, and could get her out.
He would not have let this happen otherwise.
"So, do you know where we are?" Bella asked.
"Erm, well, it might sound daft, but I would guess we're in a different dimension," Martha said.
There was a collective grumble amongst the others just before lights flashed across her vision and the pain in her head became so unbearable, she began to wince, and make a groaning sound. She lay back down with her head on the pillow, this time.
"Okay, folks, let's stop firin' questions at her," Holly said. "We'll let you rest, love."
They all got up and retreated, and Martha exhaled, "Doctor, get me out of here."
Holly returned with a fluffy blanket, like a bedspread, and laid it over Martha. She said, "I'm sorry, Martha. I'm a nurse, and it hurts to see you like this, but there's nothing I can do. I've got no supplies, no drugs… I don't even have a cup of tea to offer. But I can tell you to sleep. At least that little creature comfort is still available to us here."
"Thanks," Martha groaned, feeling as though she might like to be sick, but knowing it was futile to try.
"We'll be right here. Just let us know if you need anything.
It was a minute or so before she drifted off to sleep. So she heard a bit of their conversation.
"So, looks like we were right. It's another dimension."
"It does sound daft, but…"
"When she wakes up, maybe we can ask her how she knows."
"Leave her be," from Holly. "She's been through enough."
"Yeah, speaking of which," Walt said. "What's going on with her?"
"I mean, my arrival was rougher than the rest of yours, but it was nothing like that!" said one of the women. Danielle, from the age of the voice.
And the rest was silence.
Walking out of Weth's office, having been asked to leave, the Doctor turned left. The TARDIS was parked in a green space between buildings, beside a small picnic area.
He was relieved to be out of there, to be on the move, looking for his two most trusted companions… the atmosphere in Weth's office was stifling, suffocating. He was good at improvising, multitasking, asking the right questions while keeping attention focused on not blowing his cover – these things were his whole life. But pretending to be in love with a Tertia Trochos, deliver enough "passion" to convince her, while not delivering so much that the worst could happen, while also interrogating her, keeping his eyes on the Talisman on her desk, not letting Martha fall into a funk… something had to give.
He could breathe again now, however temporarily, and he took full advantage.
He found the TARDIS and let himself inside. "Martha?" he called out, because she wasn't in the console room. He went down the hall and began to call out again. "Martha? Are you here?"
He checked her bedroom – no luck. He checked the kitchen, then the lounge, and the library – also no luck. Those were her usual spots…
She must not be back from the store yet.
He went to his own room, climbed out of his suit jacket (noting, as he did so, that it smelled like Weth's perfume) practically ripped off the tie that Weth had fondled, and undid the buttons of his shirt. He discarded it, and put on a dark red tee-shirt instead, and went back to the lounge to tidy up – they had made a mess of it lately.
He had a total of five dirty mugs in two hands, and was headed toward the kitchen when the communiqué came in.
Static… nothing but static.
He let loose a mild curse and momentarily couldn't decide whether to go to the kitchen first, or bring five dirty mugs to the console room.
He opted for the latter.
When Martha half-woke, she seemed to be in a bed. It certainly was no longer the floor where she had more or less collapsed before. She was groggy in the extreme, and could hear her new friends' voices. It sort of sounded like they were playing cards…
For a minute or so, their conversation seemed to revolve around the game, and then, Holly said, "Another five minutes, and I'll check on her again. And do what, I have no bloomin' idea."
"You should give yourself a break," said Danielle's voice. Her voice was distinctive not just because of its age, but because she definitely sounded as though she had been a habitual smoker in the past. Martha had previously also noticed that she had Botoxed lips, and thick eyeliner. "She just needs to rest – believe me, I know. My arrival wasn't as bonkers as hers, but I was all right after a day or two of down time."
"A day or two?" asked one of the other women. "How do you even know?"
Danielle said, "Well, you know… it took time, but I'm okay."
"I don't know if any of us is exactly okay," Walt said. "But point taken."
"Well, you didn't come in pieces," someone said. Martha thought it was probably Bella. "Head first, as it were, like she did."
"No, I did not," Danielle said, very quietly, as though it was something of which she did not like to be reminded.
And then, pain took Martha down again, nausea, and a headache so suddenly intense, she hoped she would black out for a while.
She couldn't help but cry out…
The last things she heard were footsteps stumbling toward her.
The Doctor fiddled with the machinery on the console. Static, static…
"Blimey, what now?" he whispered as he heard voices but nothing solid yet.
He searched for a reliable signal, and then, somehow, he recognised a voice…
"Architect?" he shouted. "Is that you?"
"Doctor!"
"Yeah! What's up? Where are you?"
"Still in the Asiulla Wildnerness," she replied.
"Reaching me again from another dimension? So, another metaphorical butt-dial."
"Pardon?"
"You contacted me by accident."
"No, this time, it was quite on purpose," she said. "Now that we've discovered the capabilities of the Sanchar-5 communications device, we have been able to refine the signal even more. The aluminium core and its close cubic packed structure is rife with possibilities with the flat surfaces provided by its molecular…"
"Yeah, yeah, what do you need?"
"There has been another abduction, Doctor," said the Architect.
The Doctor's hearts began to pound in his chest. "What do you mean, another abduction?"
"The Tertia Trochos has obviously consumed another human," she said. "Because the dimensional fields have been disturbed in the same way as when Walt Ilsman was abducted, as well as Arabella…"
"Oh no," he said burying both hands in his hair. "Are you sure?"
"Of course we're sure," she said. "Have you not been looking into the Tertia Trochos' goings-on? You said you were on it."
"We are! Were! Damn it!" he spat, before cutting off the comm and running back down the hall.
So, a new phase of our story begins! Let me know what you're thinkin'! Thanks so much for reading!
