Until We Burn | Dr Who

Chapter Thirty-Six: Jilted

The company car park is empty due to the season, sparing us quite as many odd looks. I stick to the back of the group to ensure that we all get into the building safely. "To you lot this might just be a locksmith's," the Doctor shouts over his shoulder, pelting across the grand reception, "but HC Clements was bought up twenty-three years ago by the Torchwood Institute."

Lance is quick to turn his suspicion onto me. "Hang on, isn't that what you said back at the hotel?"

"Yeah," Donna harshly agrees. "Come on, then. How come you're getting involved?"

Sighing, I join the Doctor by one of the desks and pinch a peppermint from a 'World's Best Mum' mug finger-painted with the clumsy talents of a small child. "Not with them anymore... well, not in this universe, anyway. Never heard of this branch before."

She scoffs, "Well, that's bloody helpful, isn't it? Who are they?"

"We're meant to protect this planet from alien threats. This lot went dodgy, though. Got too caught up in the 'empire' and all that nonsense. Behind all that mess around Canary Wharf."

The reference is lost on her. Quickly growing impatient, the Doctor peers over the box-like computer at her. "Cyberman invasion," he tries. Still nothing. "Skies over London full of Daleks?"

"I was in Spain."

"They had Cybermen in Spain."

"Scuba-diving."

His eyes narrow and he sways a little, barely seeming to notice when his shoulder knocks into mine. "That big picture, Donna, you keep on missing it." And in a second he is off again, sprinting around to the desk opposite, separated by a low glass panel adorned with tinsel and Blu-tacked Christmas cards. "I think someone else came in and took over the operation," he continues with a punctuated slap to the side of the monitor when it fails to keep up with his overactive mind.

She leans over his shoulder to keep at least a scrap of his attention and continues with desperate emphasis on each word, "But what do they want with me?"

The clacking of keys stops. He faces her with a tensing of his shoulders. "Somehow, you've been dosed with Huon energy... and that's a problem because Huon energy hasn't existed since the dark times. The only place you'd find a Huon particle now is a remnant in the heart of the Tardis."

Rolling my eyes, I take up the mug and help myself to another peppermint. "Now? Now you mention that?"

"Yup," he answers with an exaggerated pop of his lips. Without warning, the mug is snatched from my hands and the sweets are tipped out onto the desk. I gape at him, arms outstretched as if grasping for an apology. "Say that's the Tardis—" the Doctor reaches right past me for a lone pencil perched precariously atop a stack of paperwork that never made it past the holiday rush "—and that's you. The particles inside you activated, the two sets of particles magnetised and whap!" He drops the pencil inside. "You were pulled inside the Tardis."

Donna takes a moment to process the bizarreness of her predicament before she finally says, "I'm a pencil inside a mug."

"Yes, you are. 4H — sums you up." Now the analogy is complete, he discards the items and crunches on a sweet, tossing me one as if to make up for the blatant theft. "Lance, what was HC Clements working on? Anything top secret, special operations, do not enter?"

He shrugs awkwardly. "I don't know. I'm in charge of personnel, I wasn't project manager."

The Doctor has already turned away, though, taking a seat at yet another abandoned desk and using his sonic to access it. I lean without thinking and my hand finds his shoulder to prop myself up with as I look to the groom once more. "Trust me, there would have been something. Come on, I need you to think. Were there any weird conversations, phrases you didn't understand, important meetings you didn't get invited to?"