~Continued from the previous site~

They had been walking for what was probably an hour. Cassie had regained some of her strength sleeping in the Silurian base but by now her feet were hurting and she was trying to ignore the emptiness in her stomach. She was starving, she wanted to take a minute to rest without Adrian having some sort of fit that had been them all on edge, she wanted to not be tired anymore. But Cassie kept her mouth shut and just kept moving along with Adrian and Akana. They hadn't shown any sign of weariness or hunger in the last hour and she didn't want to show how human she was compared to them. She didn't want to them to think of her as the trio's weakest link. Even though it had probably crossed their minds. Cassie mentally shook those thoughts out of her head and continued to walk, ignoring the protesting pain in her legs.

After what seemed like a life time she was finally looking up at the Tower of London. She had been here before, of course. She had lived in London her whole life and had gone on multiple school trips to this place. Although now she was looking at it with the knowledge that a secret government headquarters operated out of the building. Gave her a brand new perspective as she looked at it. She looked over at Akana when she commented that it looked like a fortress and felt herself smile a bit. The three of them stood there and she realized that they were at a bit of a loss at what to do. They had Dr. Taylor's pass, but had no idea how to use it to get into the place. There were the normal guards and the tourists that were out in plain sight, but there were surely other guards, UNIT guards, in the Tower's other, more secret areas. Adrian commented that they should wait for dark, but Akana shot that idea down with the logic that it would be less guarded during the day time. Cassie looked away from her companions to the building she had known her whole life and exhaled. Adrian suggested a side door, a suggestion that received no objection, and then they were off. Just a few more tourists visited this historic London attraction.

Cassie wasn't sure how long they had wandered around the Tower until she spotted a man who was wheeling a cart carrying a few oversize packages. Seemingly ordinary, but she couldn't help but think how the mail man seemed to be moving outside of the normal line of vision, and he was glancing around, as if trying to go unnoticed. If she hadn't been searching for a secret door or suspicious activity she wouldn't have spotted him. Someone delivering new souvenirs for the Tower's tourist business wouldn't be trying to to so inconspicuous. Maybe it was nothing, just her over active imagination. But she had a hunch. "This way," she said, taking Adrian's hand and pulling him after the suspicious looking mail man. She glanced back to check if Akana was following, then searched for the man with the packages. She thought she had lost him until she saws him swipe a card and enter through a door she hadn't noticed. It looked fairly ordinary when it was closed, but maybe a bit too ordinary when she really observed it. Smiling a bit, she looked back at the other two. "Secret entrance to a secret UNIT base?" she asked, gesturing towards the door.

Within minutes Adrian had swiped Dr. Taylor's pass and they had entered the Tower through the door. Cassie couldn't help but smile, despite the fact that she was breaking into a government facility with a couple of aliens. Surely this was breaking so many laws. But it was a bit exciting at the same time? When Adrian asked who's idea it had been to follow to suspicious mail man, she looked back at him and matched his grin. "Mine of course. You couldn't function without me, to be honest." She poked her tounge through her teeth for a moment before looking back at the hall. "Riiight. So if I were working in a top secret government base under the Tower of London, where would I stash a wrecked spaceship?"

~~~

When Malcolm had gathered up his nerve and grabbed onto him, Jack had grinned. "Right then. Welcome aboard, Doc. Next stop, UNIT." He was, of course, very aware of the base inside the Tower of London. He had, of course, run the Cardiff branch of Torchwood for a long while. He doubted UNIT officials would be very pleased with how much he knew about their base, although there were some areas he couldn't get to. He doubted even the Doctor, the real one, could get to with his TARDIS. But an innocent broom closet? No problem for a vortex manipulator at all. He tapped the buttons on his wrist, punching in the coordinates, and with barely even a zap they were gone.

The particular closet he had taken them to was sizable. Big enough to let Malcolm recover from their little trip. Even a second vortex manipulator trip was tough. Jack, a seasoned professional, leaned back casually. "I brought us a few hours into the future. Hopefully Adrian and Cassie have made it here by now. Or will make it here soon. Although our impostor might be back as well. We'll have to be clever to avoid him until we figure out how to expose him. But we need Martha. We need to find her now and convince her that they've all been taking the monster's orders this whole time. She can get the rest of UNIT on our side." Jack tapped his fingers on his arm for a moment before standing up straight. "Any ideas on where she'd be?"

Adrian stared at Cassie as if she had slapped him, the blank nearly uncomprehending look in his eyes as well as his gaping mouth. He looked about to say something but without any idea what he'd had on mind, it was the look she had given him, the tease and that look. An image of his dream flashed into his mind again, Cassie in a purple track suit holding a very large weapon. He shook his head as he felt Akana's hand on his shoulder, "I'm fine" he managed, "let's start moving and see if there are any sign posts." He was going to follow his own plan as they stepped into the otherwise insignificant looking corridor when he had the strangest feeling. It stopped in in his tracks as he was taking lead of the trio, he had been going right from the door when he turned slowly and looked behind him. He wasn't sure he could have gone any further if he'd tried to force himself, but he didn't, instead he followed the feeling and turned around. "I think...left is the right way..." He said the words quietly, he wasn't sure, but the feeling in his mind certainly was.

Adrian started walking again, this time nothing in his mind stopped him, at the end of the hall they were following was the mail sorting room. It didn't need a sign post on the door, it had a big enough window instead, the room was empty except for the mail man they had followed and he had his back to the door. The amnesiac led Akana and Cassie past quickly and quietly, he didn't look armed but there was really no way to tell.
It was two corridors later, a left and then a right when Adrian felt the stopping force in his mind again, it felt different, not as strong. It was while he took a moment to contemplate this that he heard the footsteps, they weren't rushing, but they were big booted and something in Adrian's mind said 'armed'. They were just coming round the corner when Adrian pushed Cassie and Akana back the way they had come. They were at a crossing of four corridors, the amnesiac only now realised how focused he had been on the part of his mind guiding him, he hadn't realised they had been traversing a maze.

A split second thought that barged its way to the front of his mind, this coupled with a massive sudden dose of adrenalin cause Adrian to grab Cassie and Akana. He threw them down a corridor intersecting the one they were in before it met the 'crossroad'. Moments later a pair of security guards came up behind where they had been, "there he is! Fire!" The pair immediately raised their weapons and started shooting, had Cassie and Akana not been thrown down the other corridor they'd likely have been killed. Akana grabbed Cassie, ripped open the door of a nearby storage room and shoved the girl in before following. Adrian started running as the bullets hit the walls around him like horizontal rain, hand guns, not machine guns from the rate of fire and fortunate for him.

Adrian ran past the crossing corridors, directly in front of the other pair of security guards, he kept going but the initial alert and gun fire from the other pair meant they were ready. He felt a sharp sting in his side but adrenalin kept him going, he vaguely heard a clatter and someone shout the word 'grenade' but he was already running at full pelt. It was the explosion which made a difference to his pace, it hit him from behind and blasted him forward. It was far enough away from Cassie and Akana that all they felt was the dull rumble of the roof collapsing from the explosion, the sound was something else however. One of the security personnel in the corridor yelled "you idiot! Alert Martha and the Doctor!"

Elsewhere the creature everyone was taking for the Doctor stepped out of the room with the sensor, his work was done here and now he needed to rid himself of possible dangers to his plan. The Doctor took companions for a reason and they always helped him...well...usually, however even those that had posed a problem at one point or another had saved his life in others. Rose Tyler was an example of this.
None the less, it proved that, Human or not, these 'chosen' of the Time Lord could pose a problem, whether or not the man himself had all of his memories.

Malcolm stumbled back from Jack and nearly found himself sitting in a cleaner's bucket. He stopped in a off balance position, most of his body leaning back and his right hand against the wall behind him. He only started breathing once he was steady, at which point his breaths came is gasps. For a scientist he found his mind working slowly, it took him time to work out what Jack was saying and that he had asked him a question. "Um...uh...umm..." He was off to a brilliant start, noises were coming out of his mouth before he had formed the answer never mind the words to give it.
"C...control centre I think...would be like her if she was ordered behind." They both knew she would have been on the field unless something or someone had kept he behind. Dr Malcolm Taylor didn't see any reason for the monster to have her with him, but there was a reason for him not to, she was one of the few people who would be able to pick out a fake Doctor from a real one. But then again, a regeneration could throw her off...could...maybe...Malcolm was still finding it hard to level his thoughts and a problem with too many variables was not what he needed.

Malcolm looked around and suddenly felt claustrophobic, he needed to get out into the corridor at least. He grabbed the door handle just as there was a yell from someone outside and the door was thrown inwards. He found himself with the wind knocked out of him, thrown to the ground with another body on top of him. All he knew about his apparently attacker was the fact she had blonde hair, he coughed and rested his head back with a wheeze.

Akana slammed the door shut and turned to find two others in the room she had chosen to hide with Cassie. In an instant her hood was down with one hand and in her other was a palm version of the Silurian rifles. She glanced at the ground where she had apparently managed to use Cassie to fell one of the possible attackers, her gun was pointed at the still standing one. "Who are you?" She hissed, if nothing else, her exposure to Adrian had taught her to pause before killing a possible threat, after all, the blonde and the amnesiac might still be useful.
Only the explosion drew the Silurian's attention away, "Adrian" she whispered, her face visibly paled at the thought the amnesiac might now be dead.

On the other side of the collapse Adrian coughed and lifted his face from the ground, he was sure he looked a mess, covered in cement dust. He touched under his nose and it came back red, cement dust and blood to boot apparently. As he heard the yell he looked behind him, there was no way anyone was getting through the collapse any time soon, it also didn't look like any patrols were on his side. He had thrown Cassie and Akana before anyone had seen them, so as far as he could tell he was still the most in danger...which he felt was a good thing.

Adrian slowly lifted himself into a kneeling position, or tried to, he stifled a cry as pain flared in his side. His hand grabbed the painful area on instinct, he rolled onto his left side and his right hand came away red from the area just above his hip. Adrenalin kept the pain from reaching him in its full glory, but he knew it wouldn't be long before he couldn't move, especially if he didn't get to it right now. Adrian's hand was already shaking, his right leg felt numb, there was another bullet in his thigh but he couldn't feel it yet. As he struggled, lifting himself (on his left leg and arm for the most part) to his feet he staggered to the wall. His breathing was as bad as his walking, it came in shaky gasps.
Adrian groaned in pain and leaned his head against the wall. He wasn't healing like he had before, "just when some alien weirdness would be handy" he muttered and tried to take a step forward. With his left hand against the wall and not too much weight on his right leg he took it as a chance he could make it.

The map was in his mind again, but it didn't feel like a memory, this was an insistent pull...something else was driving him. It held the pain at a bearable level, this allowed him to nearly walk but there was no way he could run. He could feel something hot and wet running down his shoulder, another bullet. It had taken the time between waking up from a post fight stupor, to finding Cassie's house before he had healed last time. Considering he was much more badly injured this time, he didn't want to think how long it would take to heal, if he lived long enough...
His mind had started on maths equations, the amount of blood loss of one bullet wound times the number of holes in him. Then there was another variable to consider, how long would it take him to reach the scanner, would he make it?
He staggered on till he reached an elevator, his left hand struggled to reach the right back pocket of his jeans, fortunately what he was reaching for was sticking out. He grabbed Malcolm's card and scanned it, but rather than flashing green - it came up red. Adrian gave a grunt somewhere in between anger and pain, he held the card in his teeth and reached for the time in his left back pocket. He grabbed the sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the elevator console, he could have laughed if it didn't hurt so much when the green light came on.

Elsewhere Martha had ordered a lockdown of the elevators to narrow the planet eater's options, she couldn't help but wonder where the thing was headed. She also couldn't help but grit her teeth in anger as she saw the thing use the Doctor's sonic screwdriver to gain access anyway. She turned away from the screen she had been looking at and grabbed her side arm, "I want the people he came in with found, I want them checked and in custody if they are Human, shot if they are anything else!" She ignored any questions as to what she was doing, she had seen where the elevator was headed. She was going to take the stairs and meet it there.

Cassie hadn't had the faintest idea where they were going. All she did was follow Adrian and Akana down the hallways, glancing around a bit as she walked to keep an eye out for any employees or people with guns coming out of doors, and occasionally making a face whenever the rubber soles of her trainers squeaked on the smooth floor. All in all it was a very quiet and rather uneventful little walk until she felt Adrian suddenly take hold of her and push her down a hallway. It caught her off guard and she let out a little gasp as she bumped against Akana, who had pushed along with her. Then she heard the shouts.

"Adrian!" she had wanted to shout before she heard the gunfire. She saw him start to run, but her vision became obscured by Akana, who had grabbed her and pulled open a door. Cassie stumbled backwards from the rough shove the Silurian woman had given her and she all but fell into the closet. The biggest surprise she received, however, was when she collided with someone and they fell to the floor together. Cassie was lying on top of the man (she supposed it was a man though it was difficult to tell in the dimly lit room and from her confusion) and she was stationary for a moment until she heard Akana's voice.

She looked up to see the Silurian standing above her, her hood down and a gun in her hand and pointing at someone. Cassie turned her head to see who it was and saw a dark haired man with a very familiar face standing at the other end of the closet. She felt her jaw drop. "Jack?"

~~~

"Cassie?"

Jack prided himself in not being surprised easily. But so far this day had been full of surprises. First watching the thing pretending to be the Doctor impale and absorb that unlucky soldier. Watching the door burst in on Dr. Taylor and a female figure knocking him to the ground before another one joined them hadn't really phased him. This was UNIT after all. Not even the second woman's reptilian face had made him blink. But hearing a familiar voice saying his name and looking down to see Cassie Baker looking up at him from where she and Malcolm had landed on the floor had, in fact, surprised him. He had known the girl was with Adrian but he hadn't been expecting to run into her right away. He hadn't even expected for the pair to have made it this far yet, especially with a Silurian in tow.

He watched as the girl looked down at the man she had knocked over and let out a surprised noise. "Oh, Dr. Taylor I'm so sorry!" She pulled herself off of him and onto her feet before leaning down to help the doctor up.

"Um, Cassie, want to tell your friend to lower her gun?" Jack was eyeing the Silurian woman uneasily.

~~~

"Akana, it's okay! I know them," Cassie looked over at her after she had helped Dr. Taylor off of the ground. "This is Dr. Taylor. He gave us the key into this place. And that's..."

"Captain Jack Harkness," Jack said for her, smiling. "Ex-Time Agent, Ex-Torchwood operative. Still a specialist in all things alien however." He looked at the Silurian, Akana, seriously for a moment. "And we're on the same side. If you're with Cassie then you're with Adrian. We're here to help him..."

He was cut off by the sound of the explosion. It made Cassie's heart almost leap out of her chest and her eyes went wide and she spun around to look at the doorway. "Adrian." She turned back around to look at the two men, her face pale. "Adrian's out there, they were shooting at him we have to help him! They think he's some sort of planet eating monster."

"Cassie I...," Jack began, but she was continuing.

"He can't be though. He saved my life, he's agreed to negotiate a treaty between Silurians and humans. Why would a monster do that?"

"Cassie,"Jack said taking her arms, which finally made her stop talking and look up at him. "I know. I know Adrian's not the monster. I've seen the real one."

Cassie's eyebrows furrowed. "Who is it?"

"The Doctor. Or the man people this is the Doctor. The man these people are taking orders from, the ones who sent them after Adrian. I saw him kill a soldier Cassie, I saw the monster. And he's after Adrian right now."

"Why would be be after Adrian?"

"Because," Jack said slowly, "I think Adrian is actually the Doctor."

Cassie glanced between the two men. "Who is this Doctor person? Dr. Taylor mentioned him earlier and now you keep talking about him. Doctor who?"

She saw Jack smile. "The Doctor is a long story that we don't have time for right now. Come on. We need to find Adrian. It's not safe for him to be alone."

~~~

Jack lead the four of the out of the door and down the hall towards the area of the explosion. He was walking with confidence until he saw a crowd of guards and soldiers rushing into the hallway. "Turn, go! Back the other way!" But when he turned he could see more soldiers cutting them off and leveling their guns at them. Jack placed a hand on Akana's arm to keep her from raising the gun she was holding.

"Take the three humans, but kill the other one like Dr. Smith ordered."

Jack's blue eyes went steely, but before he could plant himself in front of the Silurian he saw Cassie do it first. "If you kill her you'll start a war," she said and Jack heard her voice staying completely steady despite the number of guns pointed at her head. Cassie stared at them though, pleadingly, and if she was terrified she didn't show it on her face. Jack could see her fingers shaking slightly under the sleeves of the coat that was too big for her but she continued to stand her ground. "You'll have to shoot me first."

"Oh the hell with it," the soldier in charge said, and Jack could see his hesitance about gunning down a twenty one year old human girl just to follow orders. "Just take all of them into custody! Take them to control. Dr. Smith or the Doctor should be back soon." And Jack was still as the soldiers crowded around and arrested the two unknown humans, the one unknown alien, and one of their own scientists who had been compromised before shuffling them all down the hallway.

~~~

The thing that looked like Cassidy Marie Baker but really wasn't had no trouble at all getting into UNIT. It was easy really when she could just slip through the tiniest cracks and reform on the other side. She had waited before following her master and the people blindly following him, just as instructed. She had spent some time going through the original Cassie's closet and making a bit of a mess while she did so, tossing pants and shirts she didn't exactly feel like wearing onto the floor of the bedroom. She had finally emerged wearing something from the back. Nicer clothes that Cassie owned but didn't get a chance to wear anymore. The black pants and the silky purple blouse had felt good on her skin and she slipped on a pair of black boots to complete the look.

She had looked at the image in the mirror and had smiled at her stolen face. Cassie Baker didn't have an unfortunate face and sometimes her hair wasn't too much of a nightmare. If only she were taller.

Getting to the Tower had been simple after stealing some of Cassie's hidden money and hailing a cab. She had tipped the cabbie generously because she didn't exactly care about blowing someone else's money before circling the building. She blended in well with the tourists and visitors and children on school trips. Why shouldn't she? She came across an air vent and smiled before moving closer to it. She glanced around herself quickly, to make sure she was unobserved, before she melted into the form of black goo she truly was. The goo slipped through the vent and oozed through the tiny tunnels until it found an opening and began to drip through the cracks.

The goo made a puddle on the white floor before it rose and reshaped itself into the stolen form again. The fake Cassie smoothed the blouse before looking up to see herself in a mirror and the white face of a man washing his hands at the sink. He spun around to gape at her as she smiled sweetly. "I need your gun, please." She moved forward quickly and with the strength the real Cassie didn't possess smashed his head into the mirror. He fell unconscious and she had to resist the urge to consume him. She was so hungry...but her master had told her not to kill. So instead she shoved him into a stall and took his gun and ID key card.

She paused briefly at one of the unbroken mirrors and smoothed her hair a bit. Then she turned on her heel and went out into the hallway. the fake Cassie Bake raised her head and sniffed the air, catching the scent of the man her master coveted quite easily. A smirk touched her lips as she stared forward, following the scent as she clutched the gun in her right hand and the ID pass in the other.

The elevator stopped for Adrian on the 'tech' level, by the time it had started moving, both the floor and console were slicked with red blood. When the doors opened, a rather sad sight awaited anyone on the other side. Adrian was leaning against the left wall with his un damaged shoulder, his right side was the source of the mess in the elevator. His had tried staunching the flow from his shoulder with his right hand, hence the control panel for the elevator looking a mess.
Unfortunately, it wasn't a face that was ready to feel sorry for Adrian's rather sad state.
Fortunately the wasn't anyone there at all yet.

Adrian shuffled slowly out of the elevator, he looked down at his currently useless right hand as he walked. He could feel a familiar warmth spreading from the wound in his shoulder, "finally" he managed to murmur as he kept moving in his injured version of a walk. Movement had become noticeably easier by the time the map in his mind brought him before another doorway, this one was a set of large, reinforced double doors. His left hand still held the sonic screwdriver, he realised at that moment he must have dropped it somewhere behind him. He didn't expect Doctor Taylor would want his identification card back if it was covered in blood. The control panel next to the doors yielded to the sonic screw driver as well.
As the doors opened, Adrian stepped into the room beyond with only a slight pause as his nose once more cracked back into place. The back of his left hand came up to touch his nose in a futile attempt at making the pain fade away. He was healing faster now, but as helpful as it seemed to be, he couldn't hold the thought that this was a good thing. Instead, his mind told him something very clear, which even in his still pain boggled state, caused him to move faster. He needed to hurry up, time was running out.

The room beyond the double doors was a vault of sorts for unidentified, damaged but otherwise harmless technology. It was currently housing much of the Sontaran ship that had destroyed most of the Houses of Parliament. The particular part he wanted was sitting in the middle of the room, suitably pooled in the light from a spot lamp set into the ceiling above. It made the device look almost divine in its appearance. His heart beat faster at the sight of this device, this was the scanner, the one thing that could tell him for sure if all of the others were right and that he was a monster. Or if Cassie was right and he was...not a normal man, but not a threat to the planet at any rate.

He shuffled to the device, he didn't notice that the doors stood open behind him. There wasn't anyone else in the room that he could see, not that he cared. His heart beat so fast that again, it felt as if he had two of the things, maybe this device could tell him what was wrong inside his chest at the same time.
He reached the console and something struck him as odd, the control panel was open, not just the control panel to use it, but the one above that would allow information input. The Sontarans must have been keying in the planet eater's bio-signature when everything had gone to hell. Adrian only hoped that the code had been completed before the crash.

The amnesiac raised his left hand over the console, his little, ring and middle finger let go of the sonic screwdriver while his index and thumb kept hold of it. Now he just needed to figure out how to use the damned thing.

Martha had reached the elevator too late, she glared at the blood covering the floor before eyeing the trail. She took a step to follow the trail when a thought struck her. If this was a planet eating monster...why would bullets be affecting him? Why was there so much blood? More importantly...how was it still looking like blood? Surely that would be a waste for an 'injured' shape shifting monster, just leave behind bio matter and what would be the point of looking hurt? She knelt down near a large puddle of blood in front of the open doors of the elevator. He had been moving slowly, definitely injured then. She dipped her left little finger into the puddle and looked at the liquid more closely. It had the texture, the colour, even the smell of what it looked like, it was blood. It also wasn't eating into her fingers, the thought of which made her wipe her pinky on a clean bit of wall. Her mind paused as other possibilities she hadn't contemplated till now began to bubble up. What had this man, thing, whatever - actually done? The only 'proof' they had was from the mouth of a man who's words had always (or at least usually) gone unquestioned. Certainly, no one had even had a thought against him since this mess had started...until now anyway. The level she was on made sense now, the 'harmless' pieces of the Sontaran ship had been brought here, the techs had thought it odd that most of the equipment wasn't even designed for battle. But the ship also hadn't looked particularly 'smoothed out' as if it was a prototype that no one had finalised the designs of.

At this thought, Martha started sprinting, now she knew what the man was looking for. She should have been looking for the same thing.

Doctor Malcolm Taylor was fidgeting as the group was led down several more corridors. There was a bleeping coming from somewhere and he had a really bad idea as to where it was coming from. "What is that?" The Silurian woman - Akana, whispered to him, only to earn a shove from a guard that she very nearly hissed at. Malcolm pulled the device from his pocket and looked at it, he wasn't being discreet about it. "What is that?" The guard asked, the others stopped in their 'prisoner transport' and all their eyes fell on the doctor. "It a...a...energy reading from Adrian...he's been giving off massive readings of energy build up...inside of him...he's only getting worse." Now the guns were raised and pointed at his head, "why didn't you say this earlier?!" Malcolm panicked, "I thought we had time to explain the situation to Doctor Martha Smith!" Each guard looked at their officer for the kill order, Akana was just staring at the man in shock. She remembered the nightmare that had taken Adrian as he had slept, the result had been a release of golden energy.

Adrian let muscle memory guide his trembling fingers, the pain had just about dissipated, but now he kept having what he couldn't describe as anything else except 'hot flushes'. It felt like his whole body was healing over and over again, he removed his fingerless gloves and threw them aside. This action allowed him to see the backs of his hands and the fact his veins were pulsing with a golden light as every hot flush took hold. He frowned and lifted his right hand to get a better look in the light above. A bleep for the scanner brought his attention back to it and with his right hand working at the same time, he felt a little more comfortable as he worked. His finger found the buttons and keys until finally his left hand was on a screen scanning his hand while his right was resting on a lever, steady to pull it down.

"Go on then" Adrian turned his head at a familiar voice and found his eyes meeting Cassie's. "You made it" he said relieved, but a tiny part of his mind wondered 'how?' He frowned slightly as he noticed her clothes, had she changed in the time they had been apart? He didn't recognise the clothes as being on her, but the shade of purple her top was brought an image to his mind. Another blonde girl, straight hair, unlike Cassie and...there was something else about this other woman he couldn't out his finger on. Adrian pinched his nose as a headache came with the image, the shard of memory and the pain distracted him from noticing anything wrong with Cassie's appearance. "Activate it" her voice called him back to reality and he opened his eyes again. He turned his head, placed his left hand back on the scanning screen, now he looked at his right hand...and hesitated. Had he seen something akin to fear in her eyes? He closed his eyes again and pushed the lever down, the machine shuddered, but even damaged as it was and removed from the ship, it had its own power source and started working.
The lights which had been idly shining up and moving around from the screen under Adrian's left hand, now focused. They ran over his skin and each beam made his palm tingle. He opened his eyes to another shudder and a bleep from the machine. Symbols he shouldn't have and wouldn't have understood if he were Human, flashed up in a holographic fashion before his eyes. The answer was literally, staring him in the face, it even had a recording playing right next to it.

'DNA Recognised - 'Unnamed Planetary Threat' - Destruction HIGHLY Recommended.'

The recording showed the destruction of a planet, the true form of the monster, of -him- sliding over it and devouring everything from the atmosphere to the energy in the core. He knew just from watching it the people were long gone, the ships surrounding the planet. Even designed as they were for evacuation, he knew they were empty, the people inside were long dead. How could he know that if it wasn't true?

Adrian stumbled back from the scanner and turned slightly before collapsing into a sitting position. He sat on the ground, his body facing the double doors of the vault, his legs were in a half crossed position, hands resting on his slack knees. Adrian's head hung low, the hot flushes had been banished by how cold his body had become at the sight of the scan's result. He only looked up when he heard the 'click'.

It was Cassie, she had pulled the hammer back on a side arm, one she must have been carrying stuffed down the back of her pants. He swallowed and looked from the gun to her face, his face was reddening with the tears now welling up in his eyes. Adrian's face only held an expression of despair, Cassie's was set in one of satisfaction but also betrayal. He could feel niggling, yet growing tendrils of self hate unraveling in his mind and wrapping around his heart, making them selves known.
Cassie had come into the large vault and was now ten paces from Adrian, a rookie would have to be pretty bad to miss the target. But her hand was too steady, she wasn't untrained, something she hadn't told him? Or just certainty strengthening her resolve?

"I'm sorry, Cassie" Adrian whispered in the silence of the room. She didn't need to say her next words loudly for him to hear them, nor did she, they were whispered. "You lied to me" Adrian's face paled once more and he felt sick, he shook his head and gritted his teeth as the tears threatened to over flow. "No, please, Cassie, you have to understand! I didn't know..." He trailed off as she took a threatening step towards him. His hands had been raised in expression as he'd spoken, now though they clenched into fists and lowered back to his knees. He looked away from Cassie as his lips peeled back from his teeth in a despaired half snarl, half suppressed cry of anger focused as himself.
"There you go" Cassie whispered, catching his attention once more, "snarling like the rabid monstrosity you are." Adrian hiccoughed slightly as he chocked back a sob, tears ready to stream freely. It was as if she was reading his mind, he should have just jumped off of that building, damn Akana and her 'morality' she should have left him to it.

"I...I nearly didn't come here, you know?" His voice was shaking as he spoke, "I was ready to jump off a roof but Akana stopped me...said I should have spoken to you first..." He looked at the ground between the two of them, "should have saved us all the time and trouble of getting here, Monster. Should have been able to tell what I'd say too finding out what you really are." Now it was her turn to come close to tears, "why did you ever have to come into my life?" He looked up at her again, she looked so...crushed, he'd caused her house to be shot to pieces, her life turned upside down. "I'm sorry, Cassie..." He swallowed again, those words seemed to come to his lips so easily. 'I'm sorry' how often had he said those words before today? As he'd ripped through billions of lives and destroyed every last one.
"Do you know how many people I'll be saving by killing you?" She asked almost calmly. His answer for her words was quick, he didn't even need to think about it. "Not as many as I've killed" the words rang true in every part of his mind, nothing gave an answer against it.

Adrian heard the bullet before he realised it had hit him. The force of the projectile threw him back against the ground, he was lying face up when she stood over him. He felt the warmth of his unnatural healing pool around the chest wound, somewhere near his heart he imagined. Cassie frowned and levelled the weapon down at him again, now emptying the clip into his chest, left and right sides. His body jumped with every impact, now the warmth leaked away with his blood. But he could only look at Cassie and watch as she held the the gun is such a way that suggested she was about to club him to death with the butt of the weapon.

He barely registered the weapon being shot out of her hand, he couldn't lift his head and look at his 'rescuer'. He wanted to tell them not to, 'don't stop her' he wanted to say, 'use your gun too' but he couldn't form the words. His mind clicked over strange points, it held the fact that this must have been what dying felt like, not to mention that the warm liquid he was coughing up was blood. Considering the lead now in his chest, is was safe to say that Cassie had hit one if not both lungs.

Adrian's eyes unfocused, he shut them tight to try and get them back to normal, he wanted to see who finally finished him off after all.

Martha rounded the corner to the vault and stopped dead at the sight before her, the doors were wide open. She stopped and wondered what she might find in there, the Doctor's earlier words of warning about the planet eater caused her to hesitate. The sound of a gun shot pulled her out of the trance and she ran to the doors, weapon raised, she stopped and stared at the second sight to make her stop dead in as many seconds.
Standing - in very different clothing to the last images she had seen her in - was Cassie. She was alone and armed with a hand gun, standing over the otherwise prone form of 'Adrian'. Her brain froze entirely as she watched an innocent looking girl empty her clip into a defenceless looking man. Instinctively she shot the gun out of the other woman's hand, hopefully doing no harm to her, but she didn't have enough mind to think past the confusion of the situation.

Her mind cleared somewhat when the 'innocent looking girl' turned and looked at her with a snarl that no Human mouth had the muscles to make. The...thing...looking like Cassie Baker took a step towards Martha, who took a step back at the same time, weapon raised and aiming at a new target. The creature stopped moving and seemed to listen to something Martha couldn't hear, a moment later it turned and fled from Doctor Jones. Martha had an idea who it might be running to, but she still couldn't be sure.

Doctor Martha Smith raised her side arm at the prone form of the man before her. Only her medical training and especially her experiences with the Doctor kept her from shooting him. The man didn't even seem to realise she was there as his eyes opened and looked at the spot light above him. His eyes were soon most of the way closed, squinted with pain, his breathing was coming in quick, short gasps and his skin was deathly pale. Everything about him that she could see told her 'blood loss'.

Martha walked up to the man and lowered her weapon, keeping it away from him. His eyes opened slightly wider and he seemed to almost recognise her.
Adrian gave the smallest smile and whispered something that would have been too quiet for the security systems to pick up. Martha swallowed as her eyes widened, but she couldn't ask if she had heard correctly because at that moment, the man's eyes rolled back.

Martha dropped the gun and knelt at his side, she put pressure on the wounds too numerous to stop bleeding. She grabbed her radio from her belt and clicked it on, the next words flying from her mouth were the scream garbled orders for "bandages" as well as other medical equipment. Mixed up somewhere in it all was a call for medical personnel and for Malcolm and the other people to be brought to the vault.

"Alons y"

The frantic shouting over the radio allowed Malcolm to keep his head intact. At Martha's screamed orders the guards started running to take their 'prisoners' to the Sontaran tech vault. It was obvious from Doctor Smith's tone, never mind her words, that there was something terribly wrong.

Else where, the creature still in the form of the Doctor's eleventh incarnation smiled as his minion reformed from a ventilation shaft next to him. "I couldn't have you killing him just yet, I still need something from him." He was no longer talking 'in character' his voice changed dramatically when he wasn't drawing from the Doctor's memories to match his personality. He started walking with his creation close behind and made his way back to the vault.

The soldier's radios suddenly erupted with the sound of a frantic woman's voice, and Cassie could barely make out the words. She caught a few a midst the screams, like bandages and vault and Dr. Taylor's name. But suddenly they were being rushed in a whole other direction by the UNIT soldiers. It didn't help the growing feelings of unease and panic that were threatening to overwhelm her. What was happening? Where was Adrian? Wasn't the vault the place he had been heading to? She tired assuring herself that he was fine. He had that healing thing, after all, and they had come so far. He was fine.

She stumbled a bit in the rush, and she felt a strong hand reach out and keep her from falling over to get trampled. It wasn't until they had all been loaded into the elevator that she looked back at see jack looking at her. He was smiling in a comforting away, and he nodded at her. "Everything's okay, Cassie." He tone was confident, but she saw the nervous way his eyes seemed to flicker over to the solder's radios.

It took an agonizingly long time for the elevator to finally reach the vault and they were all shuffled out. Initially Cassie took a look around the room, taking in the technology from other planets and what was left of that spaceship that had destroyed parliament. Then she saw an attractive woman, a UNIt doctor, kneeling over something on the ground.

Not something. Someone. Lying in a pool of blood. In very familiar clothes. And Cassie couldn't stop herself from yelling. "Adrian!"

"Cassie, no, wait!" Jack tried to catch her by the elbow but he was too late. Cassie slipped out of his reach and ran forward, ignoring to shouts of the soldiers as she reached the bloody mess that was Adrian. She all but collapsed onto the floor next to him and she was very aware of the tears staining her cheeks. She didn't care that her jeans wear becoming soaked by the sickening amount of blood on the floor, only that she was careful with him. Cassie tore the coat that he had given her from her body and covered him with it, trying to stop the bleeding from the bullet holes that riddled him.

"Adrian?" she whispered to him, taking his hand in her own and squeezing it, as though it would give him life. "Adrian, please. It's me. It's Cassie!" Her voice was shaking, though she was trying to sound calm. She looked over at the woman and then at the people behind them. "Get bandages! Get a doctor! Help him, please!" The she looked back at Adrian and focused her attention on him. She used her free hand to push hair back from his forehead and to gently touch his cheek. "Adrian, you need to open your eyes," she said, practically begging at this point. "Please...please don't go. Don't die. Please don't leave me..." Her tears dripped from her face and into his clothes, already wet with blood. Blood...there was so much of it. She could feel it sticking to her, but she refused to let go of him. Not until he looked at her. Saw her. Smiled at her.

Until she felt Jack's strong hands take hold of her. He had already moved forward and pulled Martha back. He had whispered. "Martha Jones-Smith," into her ear and had smiled before directing her attention to Adrian's hands and pulling her away. She knew what it would mean. Cassie, however, was the newest in this world, the newest member of this unofficial society of the Doctor's friends. "Cassie, you need to get back."

"No!" Cassie shook her head, her tone stubborn and verging on hysterical. "No I'm not leaving him!"

"Cassie, you can't do anything for him..."

"No!" Jack managed to pulll her to her feet and back, away from her friend. Her friend who was dying. "No, let me go! I have to be with him! He needs..."

"Cassie," Jack said quietly to her, trying to soothe the trashing young woman. "I know it doesn't seem like it, but it's going to be okay. He's going to be okay."

Malcolm kept wiping the stress brought on sweat from his brow, all the while his eyes were locked on Adrian. Akana was looking from Malcolm to Adrian, "why are you still panicking?" She hissed at him, "if he's dead, the threat had passed, now we have to look after the interests of my people." Anyone who didn't know the Doctor, or had no idea what Malcolm was panicking about, would probably have snapped at her for being insensitive. As it was, Malcolm knew there was still a threat, "he's not dead, if he dies - we are dead...and so is most of London." His words were quiet, only for the Silurian next to him, he didn't want to start a panic, after all, there wasn't anywhere in England (that they could get to in time) that would save them.

The creature headed towards the vault, his clothing had shifted from the donated clothing to mimic the eleventh Doctor's attire. The copy of Cassie was right beside him, keeping up a charade was wired into his DNA and so hers as well. Even while he was relaxed as he walked, no longer concentrating on acting like the Doctor, he still moved like him, muscles copied too closely to move any differently.
He didn't pause as he walked into the vault, Martha was too busy to notice, she was staring at Adrian's hands, willing the golden light to reappear. 'I'm sorry, I didn't know, I'm so sorry' her mind kept running over the same useless, scattered thoughts. When she did notice, her weapon, which she had holstered (as Jack had pulled her away) was once more in her hand as 'the Doctor' walked into the room.

The Humans and Silurian were standing at the back wall of the vault from the door, across the room from Adrian. So when the creature walked into the vault and up to the near-corpse of Adrian, he seemed to be a safe distance distance from them. But no one in the room could have any idea what this creature was truly capable of.
The monster looked down at Adrian, as Martha had raised her weapon, the other soldiers had done the same. Malcolm grabbed Jack's shoulder and shook his head, when the other man had moved in such a way that gave the doctor the impression he was reaching for his own weapon.
"My dear...companion" the creature spoke, he was using the Doctor's voice but not his tone, this was too 'sweet'. The Cassie copy, who had been grinning at the real Cassie from the point she had walked in the room, now gave all of her attention to her 'master'.

"Kill the soldiers, leave the...tastier ones for me." Cassie grinned as he gave the order, then her gaze turned to the Human soldiers. Before the men could react, she carried out her order, Weeping Angel style, it took only a blink for her to complete three actions. The first was raising her right arm, the second was stretching that arm, the third was driving it though the soldiers. There was a fourth action but it took longer, as the black flesh of Cassie's copy wound through the group, it began to spread through and convert the bodies it had impaled. In a matter of seconds, the men had turned to black goo and been absorbed into the arm/tentacle. The copy drew it back into her self, she took a moment to pull Martha's gun with it, then just for effect she licked her finger tips. She hadn't even given the soldiers a chance to scream, but any who had viewed their faces would have seen the pure agony in their expressions.

Now the monster looked at the group, "I have something to finish, you will have to bare with me a moment." At this, he knelt down and grabbed Adrian around the throat, lifting his limp form from the floor and into the air. The ease with which he did this made Adrian look as if he weighed nothing at all.

Elsewhere, the man in question stared at darkness.

"Don't leave me"

A stranger's voice echoed through darkness. Adrian was floating in something, his fingers twitched as he tried to identify the texture, it was a slimy liquid. No...not slimy, more like powder...but it was a liquid at the same time...
He frowned, his own description confused him, the substance was cool though, relaxing, comforting and somewhere he felt he wanted to stay.

"Please don't leave me"

The voice echoed again, he could understand the words, but he couldn't recognise who the speaker was.

"Don't leave"

His face relaxed, his lips pulled back in a contented smile. It was far easier to just enjoy the sensation of the strange liquid around him that to...what was that word? He frowned again, but just before he was about to let the thought go, it came to him.
Fight.
It was far easier to give in than to fight.

"Don't leave us just yet, the party has only just started." This voice didn't just echo through the darkness, it rumbled in its very foundations.
Outside the creature placed his free hand on Adrian's chest and grinned, the reason for his expression became clear moments later.

Blood began to seep through Adrian's clothing once more, the hand that had once been on his chest had split in two. Tentacles of black sludge had buried them selves into Adrian's chest, digging inside to grab the pair of hearts and begin a macabre form of CPR. The monster kept 'beating' the hearts a their otherwise natural rhythm.
The glow began to return to Adrian's hands.

In his mind light opened above him, he felt a pull begin to draw him out of the strange liquid. Now he found the will to fight, he wanted to stay in the darkness, there was something in the light he didn't want to see, didn't want to feel.
"Come now, wake up, my dear friend, this isn't the time to sleep" the voice was close, Adrian didn't want to see the source, didn't want to-

Too late.

Adrian opened his eyes to the discomfort of something in his chest.
He looked down, the had that had been at his throat had moved to his shoulder, the monster wanted him to see this. The pain only hit him as his eyes settled on the sight of the things in his chest. This was the point he began to yell and struggle, but it counted for nothing, he moved so weakly, creature only laughed and began to withdraw its tentacle. Adrian quieted as the golden energy sealed the wounds that had ironically brought him back from the brink of death. Without the pain to keep him aware, his body was now trying to concentrate on healing, staying awake was becoming harder and harder.
He stayed standing with the support of the creature as the hand on his shoulder moved back to his throat and lifted him in the air again.

His eyes rose as his body did, gaze settling on the creature, his memories of the last time he had been awake returned. He tried to look at Cassie, but both versions were too far for his restrained gaze to find. His eyes moved back to the familiar face, he couldn't have spoken even if his air passage wasn't blocked. The part of his mind now awake and aware wished the man to just kill him, get it over with, save these people's lives. Another part wondered though, what sort of people were they to seek a man like this to save them?
The tiniest part of his mind, not fogged by pain or anguish, began to understand what he was looking at.

"There's no need to play this game any more" 'The Doctor' placed Adrian back on the ground and the monster's hand again moved from his throat to his shoulder, holding him up. Adrian's head was hanging forward now, gold pulses under his skin were getting stronger.
Adrian felt as his head was held under his jaw by the Doctor's free hand, his face turned this way and that as the other man looked at his appearance. How ever fog filled mind was, he couldn't help but pick up on 'the Doctor's' next words.
"Doctor, you didn't change much in your last several regenerations - not that they lasted that long." If he hadn't been held up by his shoulder, his body too weak trying to heal itself to struggle, he'd have stumbled back in shock. "Is a tampered scanner all that you need to give up on life?" The planet eater grinned as Adrian no longer needed his support to lift his head and meet his eyes. His injury slowed mind struggled to understand, to get past his initial thoughts of being the...very creature standing before him.

"Then..." Adrian tried to form the question, get his head around the creature's near enough admission that he wasn't this 'Doctor'. For those with a clearer mind, the fact the monster called Adrian 'Doctor' should have been enough to prove who the amnesiac really was. But in the time it was taking for Adrian to wrap his mind around this fact, the hands the creature had on his jaw and shoulder moved to either side of his face.

"Save the messing around, Doctor, give me what I want" the creature grew several inches as he spoke. It's legs and torso stretched oddly, he seemed to forget about the audience, the meals could wait, he had something far more important to find out. Adrian's reaction to the now much taller man was nearly instinctive, "my name is Adrian" the words were stated, clear, if quiet due to the state he was in. "Enough, give me what I want and I'll leave this planet, you've given me a good game...I'm feeling generous." The creature didn't sound generous, he sounded angry.
But Adrian was looking at him blankly, not understanding or remembering what it was the creature wanted. "I don't-" "I have lived far longer than you, far longer than your now dead race, Time Lord. Do not play with me, the process your body is now ready to undergo, I want it, I want your power of regeneration." His voice didn't even sound remotely like the Doctor any more. Instead, it was as if he was speaking with the voices of all of the people he had killed and absorbed.

Adrian was now finding the strength to try and pull the creatures hands from his face, but his still weak attempts did nothing. The creation was still mimicking Cassie, it was now standing in front of the group, keeping them from moving to try and help. "You somehow kept it from me, you have it, you can tell me how to-" he stopped as Adrian's eyes locked on his, the light there was no longer confusion, his struggling had increased as the pulses of light beneath his skin lasted longer. "Ah" the creature's breath came as a whisper, he shrank back to his body's normal size and wrapped his arms around Adrian. "No-" he managed in a strangled whisper.

Adrian's struggles meant nothing as the form of the copied eleventh Doctor's body turned back to the creature's black near liquid flesh. Martha grabbed for Jack's weapon, back handing Malcolm aside as he moved to stop her. She grabbed the pistol and wrenched it free of the holster, only Akana was heeding Malcolm's motioned pleas for those armed to not fire. All the while, Cassie's clone was laughing.

Martha emptied the revolver into the black egg that now surrounded Adrian, but the bullets bounced off. As much as it resembled liquid, the substance was perfectly solid.
Akana forcefully held Martha back as she made to attack with another weapon and grabbed Jack's arm (pre-emptively) incase he chose to do the same.

But even the Silurian's arm slacked as the clone of Cassie began to scream, Malcolm initially looked at the real Cassie to see if it was anything she had done. He and Akana had been too far from her (blocked by Martha and Jack) to stop any action she may have chosen to take. As it was, anything she had chosen to do was not the cause of the copy's agony.

The egg was no longer its original shiny black colouring. Instead, in several places the surface seemed to have thinned, the most interesting thing was that through these thinner areas, was golden light.
"The planet eater just saved our lives..." Malcolm murmured, awed by he sight.
The thinning areas turned to cracks and molten edges fell inwards, the copy stopped screaming as this started, falling into the sludge that was its real form.
The light dimmed as enough of the egg fell away to release the rays to such an extent that if it had been as bright as it had started out, the group would likely have had to cover their eyes.

Instead, as the last pieces fell to ash, Adrian, looking exactly the same as before, though far healthier and fully healed, was left standing at the centre. The man looked at them and blinked, Martha made a move first towards him, but he raised his hand to wave her back. "There....there's..." He sounded out of breath, but Malcolm finished it for him, "there's more" he was holding his scanner again. "Not enough to cause anyone harm if we stay at this distance...I think this is...normal."

"Cassie..." Adrian whispered, his eyes falling on the blonde, his expression apologetic and pained.

As if to prove Malcolm's point, Adrian's arms were thrown out at his sides against his will, equally so for his head as it was thrown back. The uncomfortable position he was forced into was hidden by the bright stream of golden light. It was no longer restrained by the darkness he had only moments ago burned away.

In his mind everything burned, Adrian could almost taste the memories that kept him from being the man he had been before. He reached out for them, every beat of his heart - his hearts - echoed the name of a race, his race, 'Time Lord, Time Lord, Time Lord, Time Lord..."
In the light he could see silhouettes of people, thirteen men stood and watched him. Because of the bright light behind them, Adrian couldn't see any detail of their faces or even their clothes. Just their stances stood out as familiar to him, but that was it for any true memory.
Then he noticed one of the thirteen was missing, he turned his head and found himself face to face with the very creature that had caused his death in the first place. His first reaction was to stumble back "Calm down, I'm not that...thing" the stranger tightened his bow tie, "I'm the original" he frowned then, "sort of." Adrian was still gaping at him, "oh don't give me that look, I only mean that...technically, I -was- the original, I was the first out of the two of us to have this face" he grinned as if he'd said something smart.
Adrian couldn't actually understand what he had said.

"And now?" It was the only two words that could leave his lips at the moment, "now? You're the original" Adrian relaxed, of only slightly at these words.
"Where are we?" He felt as if his head was moving awfully slowly, "that's because it is" the man, the Doctor, the 'eleventh' incarnation answered the unspoken question first. "We're in your head - our head, some things need moving around." Adrian looked around, all he could see was light, bar the silhouettes, it was almost peaceful - but it hurt his eyes...if he had any with this not being real and all. When he looked back the eleventh had changed, "does this make you feel better?" The Eleventh had changed, thinner, older, the Tenth now stood next to Adrian and the amnesiac visibly relaxed, he nodded. Now he wasn't faced with what had been a nightmare the last several days, he could think clearer, if only a bit.

"What needs moving around? Why can't I remember anything if we're in my...our...head?" Now the Tenth grinned, similar but bigger than the Eleventh's it even touched his eyes. "I think I'm going to take a back seat, all these memories can be overwhelming, get your feet, make a mark in here. Then....it'll still be you when you do remember everything, you won't be...'over written'".
The Tenth stepped away from Adrian then, walked towards the other silhouettes, "you'll remember this - and don't worry, we'll always be here, watching...in a good way." He paused and turned around, "and stop thinking of Rose when you look at Cassie, they really are very different." Adrian frowned, "who's Rose?" He called, but the Tenth had already joined the others.
"Keep her close, keep her safe, she's good for you." The words were whispered into his ear by many different voices, not as many as the monster had spoken with, just thirteen.

Finally his eyes opened to the real world, now the burning was back and it made him want to cry out but he wasn't sure if he actually managed it or not.
What was left behind as the light died was a very different looking person. He leaned against the scanner, the clothes once worn by the Adrian Cassie would recognise were still on his body, but they were clearly too tight on this new form. A noticeably taller man had taken his place, eyes dark enough to be mistaken for black fell on Cassie. His hand reached up and pushed aside hair that had grown nearly down to his shoulders. Now his view of Cassie was clear, he could see the way the others were looking at him. He frowned and reached back to the hair he had nearly pushed aside without a thought, there wasn't anything in the way of curls in it. The shade of his hair was slightly lighter than it had been earlier, not that Adrian would know, he had barely had the chance to look in a mirror.

"Cassie?" He paused at his own voice, it sounded completely different, but not much deeper, his accent (one he hadn't realised he'd had) was gone. He could tell because his pronunciation of 'Cassie' sounded wrong to his own ears, while in fact he was probably saying it 'correctly'. "I feel...different" he said, his words sounded stupid to his own ears, "you look it" Malcolm answered quickly, if unhelpfully. Akana looked as if she had somehow been expecting it, Martha seemed ready to collapse but...Adrian couldn't see their faces, he was too busy watching Cassie.

It all seemed to happen very quickly after Jack had pulled her away from Adrian's battered body. Cassie had protested and fought against him, of course, but it had been a useless effort. her eyes, wide with panic and struggling to hold back tears, refused to look away from her friend. Until the sound of two pairs of footsteps filled the air and she almost instinctively turned her head to look at the newcomers. The man was someone she had never seen before, an ordinary looking bloke with goofy looking clothes and a strange sort of gait. Almost clumsy. But his eyes seemed...predatory. But it was hard to focus on him when she say the person walking beside him.

It was her. Same petite height and build, same green eyes, same blonde tangle. Cassie felt as though her heart had stopped beating entirely and she almost went limp with shock. If Jack still hadn't been holding her she would have collapsed. Her eyes were round as she stared at the copy, the other her. She was wearing a different outfit, clothes that Cassie vaguely recognized as her own, but other than that it was like looking into a mirror. They were exactly the same. Until her reflection locked eyes with her and her lips spread into a smirk that Cassie could never make in her life. The expression on her face chilled her to the bone and Cassie drew away, holding onto Jack's forearm's for support.

Then the man gave an order and...it was too terrible to watch but Cassie couldn't look away. Jack tried to shield her as much as he could but it happened so fast that his reaction was too slow. Cassie watched as the girl who was her, or looked like her rather, impaled the soldiers. With her arm. It had become a mass of black ooze but it impaled them all the same. The men might not have been able to scream as they died but Cassie did, and she watched in horror as the fresh corpses seemed to dissolve into the same ooze before they were absorbed into the creature who had stolen her face.

The creature was grinning at her again, a wicked expression that Cassie hadn't known her face was capable of. Then she winked, as though promising her that this was going to be her fate as well. Cassie leaned weakly against Jack, who had drawn her back with the few who remained: Dr. Taylor, Akana, and Martha. The little group huddled together, no one daring to make a move while Cassie's copy guarded them, and they all watched as the man approached the huddled mess that was Adrian.

Cassie didn't want to watch, she wanted to do something. She wanted to run to Adrian, or scream, or do anything other than stand paralyzed in a corner. But there she stood, rooted to the spot as the monster they had all been chasing lifted Adrian into the air, holding his throat as the limp dying body dangled there. Cassie couldn't see clearly what the creature was doing to him, but after several agonizingly long moments she heard a familiar voice shouting and saw Adrian, awake and struggling behind the man before he was lifted into air once again.

The confrontation seemed to take ages, and it felt even longer due to the fact that Cassie had no idea what was happening. Jack was still holding her up and she leaned heavily against him as she watched the figures on the other side of the room. The monster seemed agitated and angry as it demanded whatever it wanted from Adrian, who seemed to either be refusing the demands, or, more likely, had no idea what was happening. It almost felt like hours before something happened. The monster man wrapped his arms around Adrian's form, almost like he was embracing a friend or brother. But then the facade of the Doctor melted away, revealing the same black ooze that her copy had used to murder a roomful of men, and it enveloped Adrian like a cocoon.

"No!" Cassie screamed, finally finding her voice. Jack had finally released her, and she fell to her knees as he moved forward with Martha. She had taken his gun from him, however, and she emptied the weapon into the black mass. It proved to be fruitless, however, as the bullets simply bounced off. Cassie was barely aware of Akana moving forward to draw Jack and Martha back, and she vaguely noticed the sound of her copy cackling using a voice that she recognized as a twisted, unsettling version of her own. All she could look at was the black egglike thing that had surrounded and was killing her friend. A tear rolled down her cheek and dripped off her her chin.

Then the cackling turned to screams, and before her eyes the black sludge seemed to harden and crack, with golden light pouring out from the inside. Cassie found herself paralyzed again, still kneeling on the floor as she watched the ooze that had been the creature begin to disintegrate, and she was aware that the creature wearing her face had suddenly gone silent. She forced her head to turn enough to see the last of her dissolve into a puddle of goo before looking back towards the egg. Just in time to see the last of the cracked pieced to crumble and to be blinded by the intense light. Cassie's eyes snapped shut and her arms covered her face as she turned away from the light.

She wasn't sure how long it had lasted but she eventually was able to open her eyes again and look around the room once again. The monster was gone, her copy too. Both destroyed. And Adrian, looking as healthy as she had ever seen him, was standing there. Cassie vaulted to her feet, her lips spreading into a smile as her heart soared, but before she could take her first step he waved his arm and shouted from them to stay back.

It wasn't over. Whatever it was.

The smile slipped from her face as she looked at him. She seemed to memorize everything about his appearance in that moment, to his curling hair to his disheveled clothes. Then they locked gazes and Cassie though that he looked so sad. Like he was saying sorry. She saw his mouth move but only barely heard his voice say her name.

Then it was like he exploded. A force caused his head to be thrown back and his arms to be thrown out at his sides, and the golden light seemed to erupt from his skin. Cassie stumbled back in blind shock, her eyes squeezed shut from the brightness of the light, even brighter than earlier. It was hard to tell how long it lasted and she wasn't sure if she had heard Adrian screaming or not. All she knew was that one moment there was blinding golden light and the next there was not, and she opened her eyes slowly. She was so afraid to open them, like she knew that once she did everything was going to have changed.

A stranger stood where Adrian had been. A man she had never seen before was standing where Adrian was supposed to be, was wearing the clothes that Adrian was supposed to be wearing. She stood quite still as she looked at him, her breathing very fast and her eyes very wide. The man was taller than Adrian was, had darker eyes than Adrian did, and his hair was longer, straighter, and lighter than Adrian's was. His facial features were...probably more classically handsome than Adrian's were. More delicate maybe. Younger, perhaps. Cassie was suddenly aware that she was very, very scared of this new man. What had happened to Adrian, where was he?

"Cassie?"

The sound of her name being spoken by this man, in a voice so different from Adrian's, startled her. They were suddenly gazing at each other, and Cassie didn't seem to be able to look away from him. after a few moments of staring at the man she almost started to back away. But Jack was there, both hands on her shoulders as he leaned town to speak softly into her ear.

"Go to him Cassie."

"But...but I don't know him," she said, the words sound small and lame to her ears once she said them.

"Yes you do."

"No...I don't. Adrian...what happened to him?"

"He is Adrian." Jack's voice was patient and gentle to her ear but what he was saying was...crazy. It had to be.

"But he can't be."

Jack smiled. First timers. "But he is."

"No he isn't," Cassie was fighting to remain calm, but her voice was breaking and she felt her eyes begin to tear. "It's impossible."

"As impossible as lizard people living beneath the city? Or a planet eating monster? Or a doppelganger? Or a man who can heal his injuries?" Cassie was silent in response to this and was still staring at the stranger with uncertainty. Jack squeezed her shoulders. "Go to him. Give him a chance. He needs you." Then he nudged the young woman forward and she moved towards the man, her first few steps a a little shaky.

She finally stopped a few paces away from the stranger, looking him up and down as though he was a particularly confusing riddle that she was trying to solve. She was biting her lip and clenching her fists nervously when she finally met his gaze again, and it took a little bit longer for her to speak. "A...Adrian?" Cassie finally said, her voice a hoarse whisper.

A complete lack of recognition, that was what Adrian saw in Cassie's eyes. He didn't realise quite how much it hurt him till he tried to stand up from leaning against the scanner. He held onto the alien device as he felt his knees about to give way. Adrian managed to hide the moment of weakness, if barely. He didn't feel it would have helped the situation to fall to his knees and cry, all because Cassie's couldn't see it was him.
Adrian didn't miss what Jack was doing to help him, he couldn't hear the words clearly but from what he could make out along with the actions, it was clear as day.

As Cassie took her first step towards him, Adrian glanced at Jack in a silent thanks. He knew he would have to talk to the man later to ask what the hell had just happened, he had clearly seen this process before.
Adrian kept quiet as he watched Cassie walk up to him. He could understand her reaction, if he had had enough time to get used to his face before and had a mirror now, he expected he would be similarly shocked. But how much had he changed? There was no doubt he felt different...stronger, certainly, but he had been dying earlier. His voice was different, if it sounded odd to him, how might it sound to the other people in the room? His hair was longer and had no curls, that wasn't a huge change but the curls would be missed. There wasn't all that much he even knew about his old appearance to complain about this one, but it wasn't half distracting how tight his shirt felt.

Adrian focused on Cassie and pushed aside the thoughts of how he looked, he was still himself after all. Tying his own mind around how he looked would only add his own apprehension to the mix, he felt that at lest one of them had to remain somewhat calm. He eyed her expression and the way she bit her lip, his eyes ran down to her fists and how tightly they were clenched. He'd have to keep an eye out for this body language in the future. If one meant fear and the other was a sign of her fighting against the need to do something, namely run away...he...didn't remember being so unfocused brained before. Or perhaps he was focusing on too many things, had his mind changed with his body? Was he still Adrian?

He felt like he was.
Didn't that mean something?

He knew it meant something to her, so when she stopped a short distance from him, he was as close to unafraid as he could get when it came to meeting her eyes. He started with a nod as she said his name, because he couldn't immediately trust his voice. "It's me." He finally said after a few seconds. "I'm still Adrian, I'm still me." As he said the words, he could almost physically feel something slide into place in his mind. The first piece in 'making his mark' in the mind of a legend.
He had some shoes to grow into.
But right now he wanted to hug the woman in front of him.

Adrian's knees had enough feeling in them that he felt comfortable taking a step towards Cassie. The step was slow, small and very careful, as if he was afraid to scare off a frightened deer. She may not have been a forest animal, but from what he could tell of her, she most certainly looked ready to bolt.
"Cassie..." He'd have to get used to how his voice sounded. "I'm still the same person." He raised his right hand and tapped on the side of his head with his index and middle fingers. "In here." Adrian added as he tapped.
He waited a few seconds. "So...how do I look?" He asked quietly, there was the hint of a smile on his lips. Couldn't this version of him stay serious? Or was that his mind's reaction to this change? It didn't matter, what did was Cassie's reaction. Of all these people who apparently knew the Doctor, she was the one who knew him as much as he currently knew himself.

Waiting for him to respond threatened to overwhelm Cassie. She was so nervous and terrified that it was a miracle she was managing to remain standing, and she wanted to look away. To the alien scanner, the group behind her, to the wall, to anything. She didn't want to look at him and see that he was someone else entirely. That Adrian, her friend, was gone forever. But she refused to cave in and she didn't look away from his eyes, his eyes that were so dark they were borderline black.

Someone who should have been a complete stranger was standing in front of her. But Jack had said he was the same person. And she wanted to believe it so much.

"A-Adrian?" she had asked him, and she had tried to keep the desperation out of her voice. But Cassie was desperate. She had to know if her friend was gone forever, or if had been...apparently reborn like Jack had said. And she was terrified of the answer.

The man had kept his distance and didn't speak initially. His first response was to nod his head, and Cassie felt her heart-rate increase slightly. Then he finally spoke, the sound of the voice still all but foreign to her. "It's me. I'm still Adrian, I'm still me."

Cassie hadn't noticed her vision getting blurry until the first few tears were already sliding down her cheeks. Were these tears of sadness and disbelief? Or of hope and relief? She honestly couldn't tell yet. She had unclenched her hands from firsts, and used them to rake her long hair away from her face. They trembled slightly as she did so. "...Really?' she asked, unable to hide a break in her voice. She so wanted it to be true, more than she had ever wanted anything else before. Cassie wanted to believe...

He took a slow step forward, closing the small distance between them a little bit more. Cassie didn't flee or even flinch. She was too busy gazing into his eyes, as though searching for a trace of the old Adrian in the unfamiliar irises. And...she might have seen something. Might. It seemed like a bit of a long shot but....even though the eyes themselves were different the way he was looking at her was the way Adrian had always looked at her. And it wasn't just his eyes. His face and features may have been different but his expression was familiar. And the voice was unrecognizable, but the way he had said her name and the tone of his voice was the same. It was all the same...he was the same. He just...looked different. But that was crazy, wasn't it?

"Cassie...I'm still the same person." It was like he had read her mind. "In here." He tapped his fingers against the side of his head, and Cassie let out a shaky breath and she could feel herself staring to believe...even if it was crazy and impossible. But it was like Jack had said. She had seen so many crazy and impossible things within the last couple of days. What made this any different? She couldn't find her voice yet, so all she did was nod her head slightly and hoped that got something across.

"So...how do I look?"

The man...no not "the man." Adrian. He was Adrian. She just didn't know exactly how or why yet. Adrian had half a smile on his lips after he had asked his question. The smile and the inquiry had both caught her off guard and she felt herself smiling a little instinctively. A small giggle escaped her, but she quickly composed herself. "Um...you look...different." His change had been so abrupt and so complete that it was hard to find any other word beyond "different" to describe him. "But it's a good different! I think...sorry I'm new at this." Cassie felt herself blushing a bit and took the opportunity to wipe away the stray tears on her cheeks before looking back at him. Her smile was more certain now and after a moment she rushed forward, closing the distance between them.

She had her arms wrapped firmly around him, as though she was afraid he was going to explode again and the only thing that would keep him the same was her embrace. "Adrian. Adrian I thought...I thought you were dead," Cassie said thickly, finding herself in danger of crying all over again. She suddenly pulled back and punched him lightly in the chest. "Don't scare me like that ever again, you hear me?" She looked up at him seriously for a long moment waiting for his response. When he did she took a moment to consider it before softening again and moving in for another hug. After a few moments she leaned her head back to meet his gaze. "Promise me you're the same person? The same person who wandered into my pub asking about hotels and ordering Cokes and everything?"

Good different? In who's opinion? Adrian began to wonder to himself, he felt the line of thought shatter as Cassie wrapped her arms around him. Adrian instinctively replied on kind, wrapping his own arms around the small woman. He felt much taller, he could now comfortably rest his chin on top of Cassie's head, something his last form would have had to stretch to do, even if only a little.
He didn't say it, but he nearly replied with 'I thought I was dead too' and he most certainly didn't mention how close he had come to accepting it. Had he been able to remember life as he was feeling it now, he couldn't imagine he'd have relaxed in the grey waters and let death take him.

He felt a lump rise in his throat as Cassie pulled back, tears sprang to his own eyes as he felt her punch. "Never, never again. Not to you, not for anyone." As he wrapped her in another hug he couldn't help but look past Cassie's blonde locks to the people behind her. They hadn't trusted him, these friends of the Doctor, the man he was supposed to be. Her meant what he said to Cassie...not for anyone...but somewhere inside his mind he heard an echo - the Doctor lies, it said. Adrian may not have known better than most (those who knew the Doctor at least) at that moment, but even he had a feeling the Doctor had lost more than one life protecting this planet.
Adrian looked down at Cassie as she spoke, in some way the Doctor had sacrificed himself to save her too, long before either of them could have met her.

Adrian smiled at her words, the new mouth felt odd and he knew he would have to shave, the scruff hadn't been this distracting in the last body. "I'm still him, I'm still me." He most certainly wasn't the Doctor yet after all. "I promise." He added then paused and frowned slightly. "Speaking of which, I'm starving." He added in a bid to lighten the mood and grinned to try and hide the fact he himself was on the verge of tears, he gave Cassie a kiss on the forehead and hugged her tightly again.
That wouldn't do at all, save a planet and start the waterworks, a universal legend crying because he almost died. It really wouldn't be a good start to him filling the Doctor's shoes.

Of those watching, Martha had pulled a smaller radio from her back pocket, a spare since the last had been damaged in the excitement. As the new comer to the Doctor's crazy world (or universe) got to grips with the fact her friend had just transformed, she was speaking into the radio. "We'll need a clean up crew...probably quarantine the area too..." Akana was watching the woman as she spoke, she glanced at Adrian then looked back at Martha. The man was the amnesiac (if he still counted as such she wasn't sure) form of a man they clearly respected, but he was still by all rights - disabled. Akana took the initiative and placed a hand on Martha's shoulder. To the Silurian's slight surprise, the woman (who had looked as of she had been concentrating) didn't jump or even tense at the contact. Instead, Martha paused and lowered her radio and turned to look at Akana.

"I was brought here with the promise the man I know as Adrian and you know as the Doctor, would be able to help me negotiate for my people beneath London." Ever the one to get straight to business, Akana explained the situation without sugar coating it for the woman. Martha wasn't the sort to need sugar coating though, she was slightly surprised though. "Another outpost?" She lifted the radio again. "And bring someone cleared for negotiating with Silurian's." The voice on the other end gave a quick affirmative. "We'll have it cleared up for you, if he trusts you and your outpost then there won't be any issue." Martha reassured the Silurian.

Any further conversation was stopped when something shining gold flew through the air. The item darkened as it travelled across the room, it's entry point still rippled with whatever energy had sent it. It only shone silver because of the reflected lights when it made contact with Adrian's head. His resulting cry was one of shock than pain. One of his hands held his head, but the time had already started its descent. A 'ping' of metal on concrete broke the following quiet. Adrian's hand lowered from his head, he was uninsured, only surprised. He took a moment to step back from Cassie and picked the time up from the ground.

"It's a key." He said in a dumbfounded voice, clearly not recognising the significance. However, the noise that started behind him was as recognisable for him as it was for Jack and Martha, if for different reasons. When the wind picked up, Adrian hugged Cassie close again to protect her, this hadn't been in his hallucinations. The forming blue box was a sight he couldn't feel anything but glee at the sight of. He relaxed his protective grip on Cassie as the wind died down and the TARDIS landed.

Adrian didn't need anyone to tell him what to do, he looked at the key still in his grip and then at the lock on the door. He pulled back from Cassie for a moment and smiled down at her to reassure her. "It's okay, I recognise this." He whispered to her and stepped away from her to then begin walking towards the box. He placed an hand on the door a moment and slowly pushed the key in place. The TARDIS had landed between the door and the scanner. Adrian didn't notice the globule of black matter drop off of the side in a manner befitting a very much dead creature.
Adrian turned the key and pushed the door open, the sight of the console room had him entering the TARDIS in a dreamlike state. Shadows of memories came to the forefront of him mind to make themselves known. But so many doors still stood closed, their knowledge locked away from him, so the significance of names that came from the faded memories was lost upon him.

A creak snapped Adrian out of the dream state, he had just stepped over the threshold. He whipped round to face the doors as they closed and locked.
"No..." His muttered and rushed at the doors, his frantic hands found the lock and twisted but the mechanism wouldn't budge. His heart rate only skyrocketed when he heard the sound of what he recognised to be the engines start up again behind him. "No, no, no!" He cried as he battered on the doors. "Cassie!" He yelled, outside the blue box began to fade again. "I'll come back! Cassie! I will! I'm coming back! Cassie!!!" He couldn't hear anything on the other side, a small part of him mind guessed that part of the reason for this was his yelling and banging. It certainly wasn't helping him hear any reply from the other side of the door.

The TARDIS faded completely, leaving as if it and Adrian had never been there.

Cassie felt herself smiling against his chest when the new Adrian's arms looped around her for the first time and she felt his embrace. His hugs were the same, although she supposed hugs from anyone would feel physically the same. But his hug gave her the same warm feeling of affection, peace, and safety that she had felt before and she willingly accepted it, almost seeming to melt into him. He vowed to never scare her they way he had that day again. He would never scare her like that again for anyone. After he had said this and before she had slid back into another hug she had smiled at his words, biting a corner of her mouth as she did so. "Yeah? Not for anyone?" Then she had been enveloped in another warm embrace again. "I'll hold you to that," Cassie said, a content sort of tone in her voice.

She'd half forgotten the group of people still in the room watching them, and Cassie supposed they must have looked a bit ridiculous. Two grown adults just standing there hugging each other like they were the last two people on the planet. But she didn't really care what they thought at the moment so she wasn't too bothered by their audience. She cared about Adrian at the moment. That he was still alive, that they both were. That they had both made it out of this despite all of the odds that had been against them. And all she seemed to be able to do to celebrate was hug him and smile. Plus she was also afraid that she would slide to the floor and pass out if she let go of him.

He confirmed once again that he and the Adrian she had spent the last several hours with were one and the same and Cassie nodded her head as she looked up at him and took a moment to study his features again. Despite the fact that she did believe it still seemed hard to...he just looked so different now. She supposed that this was all going to take some getting used to. Not just Adrian's new face but Adrian himself and the other secrets he was hiding. Not to mention aliens and monsters and secret government organizations. But Cassie knew she could get used to it, or at least she believed she could. All she needed was time and she definitely had time.

He mentioned that he was starving, making a corner of her mouth twitch into a crooked grin. "I am, too. We should go get breakfast. Or actually...lunch? Is it lunchtime? I'm not sure." She let out a small laugh, but was silenced when she felt his warm lips press against her forehead. She closed her eyes as she allowed herself to be pulled into another hug and felt utterly content to stay there for a while.

Then the moment passed and she heard Adrian cry and out felt his head jerk a bit. Cassie's eye opened and she pulled away from him slightly to look up at his face, her brow furrowed. "What's wrong?" she started to ask but was interrupted by the sound of something small and made of metal falling to the ground by their feet. Cassie looked down but Adrian had bent down to pick the thing up and it wasn't under he was standing again and looking down at his open palm that she saw what the object that had struck him was.

A small metal key.

Cassie looked from the key up to Adrian, almost ready to ask an inquisitive question, but a strange sort of grinding sound filled the room before she could say anything. The grinding was quiet at first, but gradually grew louder and louder, and as it did wind seemed to swirl around the room, blowing her hair into and around her face, and Adrian drew her into his arms again, protectively this time. And out of the corner of her eye she saw something beginning to materialize in front of them. Cassie watched, utterly mesmerized as the object seemed to fade in and out of existence to the sound of the grinding until everything finally stopped. And Cassie found herself staring at a wooden box roughly the size of a telephone booth, painted a brilliant blue color and with the words Police Public Call Box over the doors.

It would have been such an ordinary looking thing if it hadn't just appeared ot of no where, and so Cassie looked at it with an utterly fascinated, albeit slightly intimidated, expression. Adrian seemed elated b the sight, and at the sound of his reassuring voice she looked up to see him smiling broadly at her. Then he looked back at the box and moved towards it. Cassie hung back, watching as he slowly reached out and used the key to unlock the doors and open them. Cassie couldn't really see the interior beyond a glowing light spilling from the doorway, but she was mainly watching Adrian as he took his first steps inside of the box.

Then it happened rather fast. Cassie heard the creaking of wood and saw Adrian spin around in time to see the box's doors swinging shit and locking on their own accord, with him inside and her out. Cassie could feel her heart almost stop beating when the door's lock clicked, but it wasn't until the same grinding noise started to fill the air again that she realized what was happening. She let out a strangled cry of, "NO!" and rushed towards the doors, trying to pull them open initially but quickly gave that up when they wouldn't budge. She then started pounding on the wooden doors. "Adrian?! Adrian!!"

She could feel pounding on the other side of the doors, and Adrian's frantic voice shouting her name. "Cassie!"

The box was beginning to fade in and out again and Cassie felt herself panicking. "Adrian!" she shouted back, not knowing it he could hear her. Her hands we pressed against the doors, though they were becoming less tangible by the second.

"I'll come back! Cassie! I will! I'm coming back!"

Cassie was still for half a moment, suddenly aware of her vision becoming blurry as she watched the box flicker away, taking Adrian with it.

"Cassie!!!"

"I'll wait for you!" Cassie yelled to him through the door as a tear slid down her cheek. "I promise! Come back to me!"

And then it was gone, her hands that had been pressed against the door town touching only air. A breath escaped her, the sound quivering slightly as she stared straight ahead of her into the empty space the box had occupied only seconds ago. She felt gentle hands touch her shoulders.

"He'll come back." It was Jack.

"What if he can't?" Cassie was surprised by the fact that her voice didn't crack.

Jack chuckled. "Oh, I don't think he'd let anything stop him from coming back for you, Cassie."

Cassie closed her eyes. "How can you be so sure?"

The man was quiet for a moment. "Because of the way he looks at you. And also...the Doctor always needed friends and companions. Why would Adrian be any different?" His hands left her shoulders. "I think you're going to do great, Cassie Baker. Perhaps even better than great." And then Cassie was left standing there for a long while.

She wasn't sure how long she stood there but by the time she turned around Jack was gone and a large UNIT team had entered, some of them working to clean, others on quarantining everything. There was a man appearing to be in the middle of negotiating with Akana, and soldiers and security professionals making everything..secure again. And talking to Martha and Dr. Malcolm was Patrick Kingston, who had been the one to lead them all.

Cassie moved towards Martha, Malcolm, and Pat after making sure she didn't look like she had been crying, and as she got closer she guessed that Pat had been brought up to speed on what exactly had happened. He had been looking at the two doctors when he said, "So that's it? Monster's destroyed and the Doctor's back...well sort of, at least. But that's it right? it's over now?"

"Not quite," Cassie said, slightly surprised since she hadn't really been planning on talking. But she seemed to be working on instinct. She almost marched up to Pat and planted herself in front of him as she gave him an unwavering look. "What about my house?"

Pat seemed taken aback. "Your...your house?"

"Yeah," Cassie said as she folded her arms. "MY house. The house that your people swarmed around and shot up with bullets and broke into and stampeded around in. That house."

The man looked uncomfortable and awkward after she said this. "So, um, you're Cassidy?"

"Cassidy Baker," Cassie confirmed in her business like tone. "Yep that's me. The girl with the house filled with a fortune's worth of damages. Damages cause by your people and that monster who almost killed me. Damages to the house that I grew up in and that my grandparents left me in their will. As well as damaged furniture and the door that got kicked in. And who's going to pay for all of those repairs? Me?"

Pat looked from Martha to Cassie before looking back at Martha, as though pleading for help. Cassie, meanwhile, tilted her head as she watched the government employee she was making more and more flustered by the minute, and smiled a crooked little smile.

If Adrian had thought about it, his reaction to being locked in the box would have fit in a cheesy romance novel. But how many cheesy romance novels involved spaceships that looked like blue boxes? It was a few hours before Adrian stopped pounding on the doors. He stopped partly because something in his head was telling him how pointless it was, but mostly because he had a severe headache. The ache was making his hands numb and he knew exactly how little sense that made. Perhaps it was just the pounding that made his hands numb and the headache was stopping his thought processes.
He wasn't sure and was currently too tired to care.

Adrian turned around to look at the console room again, he didn't think that there were many novels in general that had anything like what he was looking at in them. In keeping with his thoughts of being 'too tired to care' Adrian slid down the doors at his back till his bum hit the floor. He sat there for several seconds. It could have been minutes, or hours...or even days for all he cared or the room showed. The metal walls, supports, railing and (quite frankly) awful lighting didn't change with the time he spent sitting and staring into space.
"I'm not moping." He stated to no one in particular, he just felt like he had to say something. He felt as if the room was expecting him to say something, anything. He also felt as if someone was meant to be there, but not just that Cassie should have been with him, others had been in the console room. But those people hadn't been with him, they had been with the person he was trying to be, the one in his head who had left him to 'make a mark'. Something felt off about the situation, he just couldn't piece it together. For starters, he wasn't actually sure what 'situation' he was in. He'd just (apparently) been kidnapped by the one thing he had felt a link to from his past.

So much for making a mark.

For his denial, Adrian was moping, he wouldn't have admitted it to anyone else and certainly not Cassie. But he was getting close to admitting it to himself. He rubbed his head, there was a faint, but familiar, pulse of a headache letting him know of its presence. Adrian stood slowly and walked up to the console. None of the controls he saw made any sense to him, it looked like junk thrown together in such a way as to look like something from a science fiction story.
It certainly didn't look as if it worked though.

A soft cough made him pause, he stood straight from having been bent over the controls. Another cough made it clear to him that what ever was making the noise, was doing so on purpose, to get his attention. Adrian turned around slowly and felt his pulse quicken at what he saw. As his brain pulled itself back into gear from the shock, he corrected his earlier thought, he had two hearts, it was 'pulses' - plural, not singular. He could have slapped himself on the American line of thinking, he really could stay on one subject for long.

"That's shock, you'll get used to it." The bow tie wearing figure of the Eleventh Doctor explained helpfully. "You..." Adrian dumbly pointed at himself then the Doctor and back again. "Me? I'm not part of you, I can't read you mind, you'll have to be a little bit clearer." Adrian felt his mostly unspoken question had been answered, but it was the sort that led onto other questions.
"Who are you then? Why do you look like that?" Adrian watched as the Eleventh narrowed his eyes for a moment, as if to consider which question to answer first. "I was programmed by the Doctor, you, but in your Eleventh incarnation." The figure flickered and Adrian blinked in realisation. "Programmed...you're not really here..." The hologram shrugged. "I am here to some extent, I was originally supposed to be a way for you to speak to the TARDIS directly, but I wasn't completed." The image paused, watching Adrian, he realised it was actually gauging his reaction. "I am connected to the telepathic circuits and through them, to you. But I can't read your mind, even though...technically I am based and working off of part of it."
"Which part?" It seemed like the next best question to Adrian.
"The part...rather 'parts' you aren't using. Old memories in particular." The hologram put his hands behind his back. "You can remember things...I mean...access them?" Adrian looked hopeful if slightly wary. "I was designed to access part of the TARDIS you couldn't, your mind is simply a reuse of still useful - though incomplete - programming."

Adrian scratched the back of his hand in an absentminded way as he thought about the 'situation' as it now stood. "TARDIS..." Adrian began. "Time And Relative Dimension In Space." The hologram added helpfully. "Speak to the TARDIS you said, it's alive?" Adrian asked, somewhat disbelieving and the hologram frowned at him. "She." He corrected, as if it had been his ship referred to as 'it'. "And 'she' is called 'Sexy'." Adrian sputtered with laughter in reaction, the stress was either getting to him or his disbelief was turning to humour. Either way, he couldn't help the sudden burst of laughter.

Adrian laughed after a good few minutes of listening to his laugh echo through the room. It still sounded like a stranger's voice to him, but he was at least getting used to how it sounded whilst speaking. "I'm not sure which is funnier, the fact she was named that, or that I supposedly named her that." Adrian sniggered and wiped his eyes, it must have been the stress getting to him.
"You did, you're-"
"Can you fly her?" Adrian interrupted the hologram, who shook his head and the amnesiac's shoulders slumped. "I can show you how though." The image offered and stepped towards Adrian from where he had been standing next to the stairs leading to the catwalk. Adrian tensed as the hologram moved, not because he wasn't expecting it could do that, the image looked solid enough, but because of who he looked like.

"Fear..." The image looked at Adrian, confused at his emotional (and so physical) reaction. The hologram blinked and flickered, he was thinking, but also accessing Adrian's / the Doctor's memories to find out why. "Oh...I see, the Enemy took this form even when you had this appearance." The image nodded in understanding. "But I can't change my appearance, I wasn't even supposed to look like anything. My 'sentience' is an effect of your split mind, otherwise I would have taken the appearance of what the TARDIS wished to look like, had I been completed."

Even with the hologram's words, Adrian still couldn't help but stand on the other side of the console as the image stepped up to the controls. "You realise that you'll have to do this? I can't actually make contact with anything, I said I can show you." The hologram's voice had turned (if only slightly) annoyed. Adrian wondered if that was in part due to him feeling foolish for backing off from what was essentially a three dimensional image.

Adrian stepped forward, a very much forced movement if how slowly he did it was anything to go by. Nonetheless, the hologram took the hint and began point out the controls Adrian would need to use, as well as explain their functions. When it came to the point for Adrian to begin using them, the hologram moved around the console so the man could reach the controls without having to come too close. His hands just shook too much when he came near.

Adrian had failed at getting the machine to start when he remembered something. He was quite sure it was a 'Doctor Memory' because he had no idea where it had come from in his own mind. "I need to set the date." As he spoke he stepped around the console and reached for another control, then paused. The hologram watched and waited, a surprised yet pleased expression on his flickering face, at least until Adrian looked at him. "I don't know what to do with it." The had a nearly mirrored disappointed look as teacher explained to student how to set the date. Feeling generous, the hologram told him the date he had left.

"The month is jammed." Adrian snarled and pushed harder at the month controls. "Ah, no." The hologram snorted, he didn't look away when Adrian turned his glare on him, he just smirked. "She's not letting you go back to the start, at least she's making it clear." Adrian tried clicking the year but it only went back from where it was set to the one after when he had left Cassie. All Adrian really had free range on was the day, which he set to the first. All in all, the date was just about six months after he had left.
"She's going to hate me." Adrian suddenly found himself complaining. "Oh don't mope." The hologram snapped, gaining another glare. "Six months isn't bad, better than several years...I know that's happened before." Adrian eyes widened slightly as he heard this, he turned back to the console without admitting that yes, six months could have been worse.

When the hologram led Adrian through another try at 'launch', the amnesiac followed a little closer. When the engines roared to life neither particularly cheered, even though it held the Eleventh's form, the Hologram did not share his personality to that degree.
The location had not been set for the vault in UNIT, rather it hadn't been set at all. Something which required Adrian to launch the TARDIS - again - when the error caused the engines to quiet again.

One of the few available locations came up in the screen, which was to say there was one. Adrian had no idea where Cassie lived but the location was in London. He had walked far enough to know that it didn't matter how far away the TARDIS landed, he wouldn't need any other transport than his legs to get there.
When Adrian did step out of the TARDIS however, he found himself on a familiar street. "Her house is near here...really near." Adrian muttered to himself, only for the hologram to peek his head out from the still open doors. "You realise that your clothes are too small and her house is on this street? You look like a homeless bum." Adrian turned and looked at him, excitement draining from his features as he understood the otherwise unspoken command to 'get back in and get dressed'.

Being led through the TARDIS meant he didn't get lost and waste more time. When it came to clothes the choice was relatively easy, loose plain white shirt over jeans, similar if less scruffy to the appearance of his last self. But the jacket was the problem, there was one made of leather but it was too big for him, it also smelled a little too old for how he felt. It looked as if the sad looking leather jacket had been through a war.

After nearly an hour, Adrian finally stepped out of the TARDIS into the midday sunshine. Though it could have been late afternoon for all he could tell, everything -felt- bright to him. All he had with him item wise was a version of the sonic screwdriver (as far as he could tell), the TARDIS key, a blank wallet and Doctor Taylor's access card. He wasn't sure how he had kept hold of the final item, he was petty certain the man wouldn't want it back (bent and shot as it was) but he felt the thought counted.
Adrian had been trying to use those thoughts to distract himself from hoping foot to foot as he stood outside Cassie's door. He wasn't sure whether to knock or ring the doorbell, he hadn't even remembered how the building was supposed to be riddled with bullet holes. Instead the man stood and stared, deciding and failing to come up with a way to just get her attention in the house. He settled on a few soft knocks on the wood with his knuckle, only for his hand to come away with some pain. Adrian hadn't realised that he had hit the wood a little harder than first intended, if only to succeed in making the 'soft knocks' audible.

In six months Cassie's life had...changed quite a lot, actually.

What had changed wasn't simply limited to the way she saw the world and the universe, nor that she stargazed way more than she used to. She had also quit her job and gotten a new one. Yes, about one month after she had met Adrian and the incident at UNIT had happened Cassie had finally quit her job at the pub. It was more bittersweet than she had been expecting, mostly due to the fact that she would miss the people there. The work hours and late night to early morning shifts? Not so much.

She had found herself a new job at the London Library, which she had applied for on a whim. The library had been one of her favorite places as a child (her grandparents had taken her almost every time she had asked them to), and she enjoyed books and reading them. So she had though hey, why not, and applied for it, and then she got an interview. Then she had actually gotten the job, and ended up loving it. She wasn't an actual librarian, just a clerk and assistant, but she still loved it. And not just because of the reasonable work hours, either. Cassie started considering perhaps returning to university once she raised the money for it, something a bit closer so she could get a degree and become an actual librarian. She could see herself being happy in that future.

Another change was that after years of not touching her hair beyond the occasional trim, Cassie got it chopped off about a week after the day at UNIT. The tangled mop that had once hung down her back, edging towards her waist, now could barely even brush the tops of her shoulders. Honestly it had felt so very weird to not have all that thick hair anymore, but it had been a good sort of weird. And it had become surprisingly easier to manage and less of a tangled mess once she started wearing it short. Cassie had also died it from her natural honey blonde to a dark brown, another change that she enjoyed. She had decided to change her hair not only because of the fresh start she decided to make with her life, but also because every time she looked in the mirror she saw the thing that had murdered dozens of people right in front of her eyes. Cassie knew that hadn't really been her, just some copy of her, but she couldn't fight the feeling of unease. So she had changed her appearance as much as she was able.

Over the last six months she had also become good friends with Martha Jones-Smith, despite the circumstances of their initial meeting. Martha had been the one overseeing the repairs to her house, repairs that Cassie had coaxed UNIT into paying for, and Cassie had offered her some tea while the repair men worked on fixing her door, replacing the windows, and patching up all of the bullet holes. One thing had led to another and soon tea in Cassie's kitchen became drinks at the pub, or afternoon luncheons at a cafe, or day trips around London. She got the idea that Martha had needed a friend as much as she had, someone to help her escape from work for a while every few days. And she was glad to fill the role. Cassie had even been to dinner at Martha's house with the woman and her husband, who had also become a friend. They had both known Adrian before he had been Adrian, back when he had been the Doctor.

They didn't talk about him much though. Cassie didn't want to. Being left behind, him abruptly disappearing, was still a fresh wound. Even if it had been by accident. Martha was confident that he'd come back for her, just like Jack had been.

"It's almost been six months. Maybe he...moved on," Cassie had told the other woman about a week ago. But Martha had shook her head and told her again that she'd see him again, that there was no way that he would leave her behind forever. Martha never seemed to want to tell her what would happen after he eventually came back for her. She always just smiled and said that she didn't want to ruin the surprise.

So while Cassie had continued on with her life and had made some fresh changes and new beginnings, she still waited for Adrian to return. She had promised him that she would. Waiting was the hardest part, quite frankly. Six months passed, each day beginning with hope and ending with disappointment, and some night she had to remind herself that she hadn't invented him. Adrian was real, he was out there somewhere, and she missed him. It was hard to hold on to hope, but Martha's confidence that he was coming back helped.

It was her day off, and she was spending the afternoon at home. Cassie was feeling blissful today, maybe because she had slept in, and was lounging in the city room looking into local university programs and munching on her lunch of apple slices, cheese, and bread, when there was a knock on the door. It was soft at first, and she thought she had imagined it for a moment until she heard another knock, louder this time. Cassie glanced at the clock, despite being fully aware that she hadn't lost track of time and she wasn't meeting Martha for dinner for several more hours. But she wasn't raised to be rude, so she set aside the computer and rose to her feet, stretching a little before moving through the house to the recently repaired front door. She ran her fingers through her freshly trimmed and touched up brunette as she moved, then brushed some lint from her jeans and loose gray t-shirt before opening the door.

Cassie felt her heart skip a beat and her mouth fall slightly open when she saw who was on her front step. She had been scared that she had forgotten what he looked like, since she had only known his newest face for a matter of minutes before he had been torn away. But she recognized Adrian as soon as she saw him, and it had been foolish of her to think otherwise. His dark eyes, nearly shoulder length hair, and handsome face were just how she remembered. In fact he looked just like he had six months ago, with the exception of his clothing, which were much less ragged and scruffy looking than what she was used to him wearing.

She was so surprised to see him that at first the only thing she was able to say was, "Hello." Then she was silent for several long moments, looking him up and down a few times as though she could barely believe it was him. Cassie almost wanted to reach out and touch him, just to make sure he wasn't a hallucination. Finally her eyes rose to meet his and she took a deep breath. "You," she began, leaning against the door frame and folding her arms loosely over her chest, "are late. Unbelievably late. Six months late, to be precise." Cassie went quiet again for a moment, looking at him with a slight frown as she did so. She wanted to be mad, let him know how terrified she had been when he had disappeared, how much it had hurt missing him. Cassie did not want him to know how much she wanted run into his arms and hug him and never let go, at least not yet. But after a moment of serious silence she couldn't stop a corner of her mouth from twitching into a half smile and her eyes sparkled. "You're also not half unconscious and bleeding all over my welcome mat, so I guess...it's a slight improvement."