Lost Companions Chapter 2

Martha was scared.
She didn't like admitting it to herself when she was, because she knew the Doctor liked strong, brave people and ever since the time she'd spent with him, she'd wanted to stay strong and brave, in his memory. But now, standing in front of the slick glass doors to Torchwood, Martha was scared. She didn't know what to expect. It wasn't often the Doctor didn't know what was coming, and now, being presented with one of those moments, she was really upset that she was the guinea pig.
Still, she knew she was their only option. They had to find out what was going on.
Martha glanced behind her, wishing she could see the TARDIS for support, but the Doctor had told her he would place it one second out of sync with the rest of time, so they could watch her without being seen. She rubbed her neck nervously before looking back at the glass doors. "Just go to the last place you remember being," the Doctor had said.
Making coffee, she thought. It was about an hour ago, and I was in the meeting room making coffee.
She walked forward.


The atmosphere in the TARDIS was tense and anxious, and everyone was crowded around the main control board where the camera screen was. The Doctor, with some difficulty, was having it track Martha's progress through Torchwood. Every time she moved into a different room he had to reset the controls to lock onto the next room, and by the time he had done that she was usually further along in the building. After some irritation, turmoil, and managing to lose track of Martha completely, they finally locked onto her in the meeting room, standing in front of the coffee machine and looking lost.
The moment they found her, the TARDIS went haywire.
The entire machine rocked suddenly and whined in protest to the sudden movement. The floor below them vibrated and shook like an earthquake, and the entire ship actually rotated on its axis, sending everyone rolling across the floor.
"Oi!" Donna howled. "Get your bloody machine under control!"
"Not my fault!" The Doctor screeched as the TARDIS flipped in the other direction and he struggled to stay upright.
The inside of the machine suddenly seemed to spin, and all of them were sent careening into the console. Amy and Donna were unfortunately the first to hit the console – head-first – and passed out on contact.
The Doctor yelled a noise somewhere between a tsk and a scream. "Don't let them knock into anything else! Could damage them severely!"
Rory had been the closest and managed to get his arms around Amy before the TARDIS spun in a new direction. Rose, however, had been on the other side of the console and couldn't reach Donna as easily. The machine spun around, wild and out of control, and Rose was hopeless in her quest. All of a sudden, the machine flipped almost vertically, and everyone fell back against the wall, which was now operating as the ground.
Luckily for Rose, Donna was positioned to fall almost directly into her arms, and she had her held safe. Less luckily, however, was that Rose was now flying towards the wall with no chance of escape. She smacked against it and blacked out.
The Doctor made a brave attempt to stand amid the chaos, only to be knocked to the floor as Rory's recently emancipated body tripped him. His head whacked the ground and he too passed out.



Donna was the first to come to. Upon seeing Rose's limp arms wrapped around her, she screeched, "Oi!", right into Rose's ear, waking her as well.
"What happened?" Rose said with a start, looking around.
The TARDIS was in disarray. Nearly every loose object had moved to a different part of the area, and the mustard dispenser had exploded across half the console. Papers and alien objects, long forgotten amongst everything else, had surfaced on the ground, fallen from shelves or cabinets. A hissing trail of steam was rising from the machinery beneath the console, and Rose thought she could hear a suspicious squelching noise coming from upstairs.
Also, Martha was lying on the floor.
"Martha!" Donna yelped. "How did you get here?"
Martha groaned and raised her head, shaking it slowly as she looked around. "How did I get here?"
"That's what I asked!" Donna said in indignation.
Rory shot up from where he'd landed on the lower staircase, facing the wall. "Everyone out! The TARDIS is-"
He turned around.
"Oh."
"Yeah, you dolt, it's over. You passed out." Donna grumbled.
"No need to get angry," Rose said as she stood shakily. She picked her way across the room carefully, to Amy's inanimate form slumped against the railing. "Amy, wake up."
Amy raised her head and looked around until she locked on Rory. "Thanks for the protection, smart one."
"What-" he stammered. "But I did, I-"
The Doctor stood, swaying, from where he'd fallen beside the console. "Well that was exciting."
Rose risked a laugh. "That's one way to describe it."
"But the TARDIS is a mess," Martha pointed out.
The Doctor noted that Martha was there with a raise of his eyebrow, then muttered, "She can fix it herself. We'll have to leave for a while and she'll put everything back together. Come on, everyone out!"
Once outside, the Doctor locked the TARDIS doors and pulled out the sonic screwdriver. He scanned everyone's eyes in turn, including his own. "No concussions, that's good." He reached Martha.
"But I wasn't in there for all that mess, I didn't hit my head." She protested.
"Better safe than- Oh, that's interesting."
"What?" Martha asked, startled.
He looked up from his screwdriver and into her eyes. "I thought I saw... Nothing." Before she could reply, he added, "Martha, what's the last thing you remember?"
She blinked. "Sitting in the meeting room, waiting for something to happen."
The Doctor shook his head. "Fascinating. I really want to know how someone's pulling this off."
Donna rubbed her arms. It was slightly nippy out. "How long is the TARDIS going to take?"
He glanced at Donna, and without taking his eyes off her, sonicked the doors. "A good half hour left."
"Can we go inside somewhere then?"
He looked around. They were exactly where they'd been before, about fifty feet from Torchwood Institute. He sonicked the TARDIS again and it disappeared, one second out of sync with the rest of time. "Very well. I think there's a nice diner down the road."