Until We Burn | Dr Who

Chapter Eighty-Five: The Doctor's Daughter

TW// Guns, death

—

It isn't long before we are brought to a halt again, now in unfamiliar territory, far from the base. "Wait!" the Doctor calls, examining the map through his glasses. "This is it, the hidden tunnel. There must be a control panel."

I join him by the wall, banging on it and shifting the low-hanging cables in search of any kind of entry. I am only half-aware of Donna's footsteps until she calls out to us from a little further along. "It's another one of those numbers. They're everywhere."

The Doctor doesn't look up from his sonic, giving an off-hand comment, "The original builders must've left them. Some old cataloguing system."

"You got a pen, bit of paper?" He sticks the sonic between his teeth for safekeeping and looks through his coat again. Rolling my eyes at his bizarre expression, I take the device from his mouth and wipe it off on my trousers with a grimace before resuming the scans myself. "'Cause, d'you see, the numbers are counting down. This one ends in '1-4', the prison cell said '1-6'."

"Always thinking, all of you. Who are you people?" Jenny huffs.

"I told you, I'm the Doctor."

She turns her sharp gaze on him as he takes over the manual search for a doorway. "'The Doctor'? That's it?"

Donna shrugs, still gazing up at the numbers and noting them down. "That's all he ever says."

"So you don't have a name either. Are you an anomaly, too?"

The whirring of the sonic pauses for just a second. I look to him and notice his brief wince. "No."

Our friend scoffs, "Oh, come off it! You're the most anomalous bloke I've ever met."

I prepare myself to deflect any more of Jenny's questions but a plank of wood clatters off of the wall. "Here it is!" the Doctor cheers, stepping back to reveal a small handle on the stone wall beneath.

"And Time Lords, what are they for exactly?"

"'For'? They're not— They're not 'for' anything."

He takes the sonic back and tries to open the door up. Jenny doesn't take it as a sign to give up, resting her hands on her hips — another mannerism I am well-accustomed to. "So what do you do?"

"I travel through time and space."

"He saves planets, rescues civilisations, defeats terrible creatures." The girl's eyes brighten with each new description Donna gives. "And runs a lot," she adds. "Seriously, there's an outrageous amount of running involved."

A loud grating noise echoes throughout the tunnel as the door slides open. "Got it!" The Doctor falters at the sound of Cobb's shouts in the distance. "Now, what were you saying about running?"

I wait until he is already ahead before grabbing the fallen guard's gun. We make it to another turning. Then we stop.

Before us lies an open corridor. The air is laced with strings of red light, all darting off in different angles to create an impassable net. "That's not mood lighting, is it?"

The Doctor responds to Donna's hopeful question by taking out the wind-up mouse and throwing it. The second it hits one of the lasers, it falls into smoking pieces.

"No," she groans, "I didn't think so."

"Arming device."

He rushes to the control box at our side. Jenny and I are quick to offer our help but Donna passes once more, distracted by yet another plaque on the wall. "There's more of these. Always eight numbers, counting down, the closer we get."