The Librarians...meet the Doctor

1

Much to his dismay, not everything had gone according to plan. He had located the artefact, had discovered in whose hands it had fallen into and from then on...everything went wrong. He might have avoided a nasty situation had he remembered that the item's new owners were a very sensitive race before trying to pickpocket them. Of course they spotted him in flagrante delicto. It was only thanks to his extraordinary reflexes that he kept his hand attached to his body. 2000 years of practice paying off at that very moment. The aliens didn't take kindly to be robbed. The fact that they were visiting a foreign planet wouldn't stop them from applying the right punishment to the thief in accordance to their homeworld's rules. First they would cut the culprit's hand, claw, tongue or whatever he used to rob them. Then they would recover the stolen object and finally they would kill the thief to prevent him from ever reoffending them.

"No wonder they have the lowest crime rate in the entire galaxy," muttered the Doctor while fleeing in the dark streets of Maq'Nom, a small town lost on Loreïn, a peaceful planet, quite similar to Earth only with a more advanced space travel technology.

As he was trying to outrun his pursuers and reach the TARDIS before they reached him, the Doctor considered himself lucky. He had managed to retrieve the artefact, save his hand threatened by a laser knife and escape using his knowledge from the area. He had to revise the latter when he realised that two unfriendly aliens were standing at the far end of the alley he turned into. He could still hear heavy footsteps behind him. The aliens knew their way around the city too... He was trapped.

He flashed his sonic out of his jacket pocket and configured it while running. Then he unexpectedly rushed towards one of the buildings backdoor and worked the lock. The alley he was in was filled with heavy wooden doors opening to areas used by servants and other less respectable people. The Doctor wondered if he was about to burst into an illegal game session – his sudden arrival wouldn't probably be greeted by a warm welcome – or if he would emerge in a honest home's kitchen. When the door finally opened, it only revealed a black hole. The Gallifreyan didn't think twice. He shut the wooden frame behind him and locked it again with his sonic. It didn't take long for the angry aliens to start banging on the door. The Doctor quickly reset his sonic that almost instantly lit the surroundings. The green light revealed that had he taken two more steps, he would have fallen into a narrow descending staircase.

"So much for an escape route," he sighed, realising that he was indeed in a basement and that his only way out was behind him, blocked by some very angry aliens.

The Doctor walked down the stairs only to find himself in a narrow corridor. Heavy stones suggested that the cellar was also the building's foundations. Small rooms opened on each wall, full of food and water supplies. As the Gallifreyan feared, there was no exit. He had trapped himself.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid!" he cursed himself before taking a deep breath.

There was no point in expressing his frustration right now. He needed a plan very urgently. His pursuers were still banging at the door. It was only a matter of time before they would manage to break it – unless they decided to be clever and ask for the house's owner assistance...

The Doctor entered in one of the rooms and hid behind wooden crates on which the following words were printed in the Loreïn peculiar alphabet: FRAGILE – HANDLE WITH CARE. Sitting directly on the floor, so he wouldn't be seen from the corridor, the time traveller took the artefact from his pocket and started studying it. There was something extremely disturbing about the object. It was not its shape – it was a copper bracelet with nothing exceptional about it – but rather its source that puzzled the Doctor. Late 19th Century Earth. A reading from the sonic confirmed it while also revealing that the last owner had been an earthling who had died wearing it as the bone dust encrusted in it. How such a piece of jewellery had managed to travel half across the galaxy remained however a mystery. Objects from Earth didn't have such a great value to the rest of the universe, more interested in taking control of the blue planet and enslaving its inhabitants. Only the Doctor was fascinated by those items. When they landed far away from their rightful planet, it usually meant either an interesting story, trouble, or both. Right now, the thief considered the bracelet troublesome. The door seemed to be on the edge of breaking any moment now. The Gallifreyan forced himself to focus on the jewel. Something was engraved in it. Using the green glow of his sonic, he managed to make out the words.

"I shall lead the way and bring you back to Ariel," he read out loud.

This sounded much like a spell or a summon. The time traveller quickly assessed the risks trying on the bracelet but dismissed them even faster. He put the jewel around his wrist just as the door upstairs cracked open.