"Where are we going?" asked Rose, coming into the console room. In the green, organic light, her blue jeans and grey vest looked black. So much for fashion, she thought.

"Haven't got a clue," the Doctor grinned. The light gave his face a cadaverous look. Only the mischievous sparkle in his eyes told Rose that he was more full of life than he had been for a long time.

"Not Earth again?"

The Doctor looked up at her, suddenly serious. "You're not bored of your little piece of rock, are you? Because, you know, whole galaxy to choose from."

"Not bored, no," Rose said, grinning. "But more often than not, that's where we end up."

"Are you being sarky?" the Doctor asked.

"Well, come on then, take me to one of these far-flung planets you're always banging on about. Somewhere with a beach. I could do with a tan."

"A beach?" The Doctor took a step back from the console, aghast. "A beach? If a beach is all you want, why don't you just hop on a plane to Magaluf? Here I am, offering you a guided tour round the seven hundred wonders of the universe and you want to lie on a beach supping Malibu and buying T-shirts with "I Heart Wherever It Is I Am" printed on the front. Or even worse, "I'm With Stupid"."

"No beach."

"No," the Doctor said. His face lit up in a smile suddenly. "I've got a much better idea!"

***

"You'd better wrap up warm," the Doctor said as the TARDIS ground to a stop. "Lovely scenery but a bit nippy."

Rose, excited by the mystery, skipped out of the console room, went down the corridor, up the stairs, past the strange collection of wheelie bins that seemed to be emptied every Tuesday and past the swimming pool. In the wardrobe, she selected a thick faux-fur lined coat that reached down to her knees. It had a hood but one look in the mirror told Rose that with it up, she looked more like Nanook of the North than she cared to. Still, hood down, it was a nice coat.

Striding back to the console room, she found the Doctor standing, rubbing his hands together with excitement. He was still wearing his battered leather jacket and navy blue jumper. Rose considered asking him whether or not he was going to wrap up warm, but then decided against it. The Doctor never seemed to be bothered by the heat or the cold.

"Where did that other TARDIS go?" asked Rose, referring to the souvenir from a recent adventure. She'd passed by where they'd stored it and it wasn't there anymore.

"It's not there anymore? Hmm. Never mind, got a mind of their own these things." He patted the TARDIS console affectionately. "Now, outside of that door is the great Imperial palace on Zargoleanderboudliator. Carved out of a mountainside it is, the entire place. Been the imperial residence for, oh, about seventeen millennia. Beautiful place. All waterfalls and caves. Kept meaning to stop by but things kept coming up. You know, saving your planet and all that."

Ignoring his sarcasm, Rose edged forward

"Well, go on then," the Doctor said. "You have opening privileges this time."

"Thank you," Rose said, curtseying slightly. Then she ran towards the door. Pulling it open, she jumped outside.

The ground was soft and moist. Were these Zargoloids or whatever amphibious? Then, the smell hit her. It was like a thousand rotting carcasses had been left out in the sun for a year.

Rose gagged, and fell into the undulating mass.

Smiling, the Doctor came to the door. He poked his head round the frame. When he saw Rose, however, he frowned and instinctively extended a hand towards her.

Grasping it, Rose pulled herself up. Only when she was standing in the doorway of the TARDIS did she look back to where she had fallen.

It was a congealed mass of bodies and blood.

She tried not to scream.

***

To all intents and purposes, Marcus Ashe did not exist. He had no social security number, no identity papers in that name nor did "Marcus Ashe" have any bank accounts. What he did have, however, was what the ordinary population referred to as a "Goldcard". Only around two hundred of them had ever been issued in Britain at any one time. This almost mythical identity chip, which was not gold at all, but a sub-dermal implant like any other ID chip, gave Ashe unlimited access to funds, proof of identity (even if that identity was not his own) and full diplomatic immunity. Fitted under the skin of his forearm, it would be removed and replaced with an ordinary one upon his departure from the Centre.

As he disembarked the Trans-Pacific bullet train in the centre of Neo-Tokyo, the air-stewardess who had been eyeing him up for the entire two hour journey, smiled at him.

"I hope you had a pleasant journey, Mr Rook," she said.

"Yes, thank you very much," Ashe replied. Clinton Rook, a billionaire software engineer was his current alias, and the name, which would flash up on any ID scans, even those run by the US government.

There weren't many people on the bullet train. Ever since the popularisation of T-Mat, it was only the rich who could afford to take the long way round. Ashe simply couldn't abide the idea of his molecules being zapped, one by one, up to a satellite and then back down to a spot halfway across the world. Thankfully, his cover as a billionaire gave him the license to do as he pleased. It was an added bonus that it also gave him the opportunity to wear decent clothes. Half of the agents he knew preferred to dress down, like normal people, thinking they didn't stick out. Ashe thought they were wrong. People only noticed people when they were on the same social level. By dressing like a man with more money than God, people would notice the money, yes, but they would not notice him.

"I'm off duty now, Mr Rook," the stewardess continued. "Could I interest you in a late lunch?"

With considerable effort, Ashe smiled. "I would be delighted," he lied smoothly. "Unfortunately I have to meet someone straight away. Another time, perhaps?"

"Another time," the stewardess agreed.

Stupid woman, Ashe thought as he collected his attaché case from the T-Mat luggage point. As if I would ever be interested in a woman like her. He watched her out of the corner of one eye as she joined her colleagues, laughing and smiling, no doubt bragging about nearly pulling a billionaire.

Once they had vanished off in the direction of the staff room, Ashe headed for the facilities. Making sure they were empty, he pressed a small button on his mobile phone. He had thirty seconds now before the security cameras came back online

Resting his attaché case on the lip of the sink, he pressed his thumb against the lock-scanner and said, "Gallifrey." This code word, chosen at random by the Centre mainframe computer, in addition to his fingerprint, unlocked the case.

Ashe lifted the lid and inspected the contents. Good, he thought. Everything was intact and accounted for. He clicked the case shut, the locking light turning green as the catch clicked into place.

Now, to keep his appointment.

***

"Some sort of plague, perhaps?" the Doctor wondered aloud.

He'd helped Rose out of the mass grave. They were now sitting on the edge of it, upwind from that awful smell.

What really got to Rose was the fact that he hadn't apologised for landing them in the middle of whatever this was. A concentration camp? Rose could remember watching videos at school of places like Auschwitz where people - dead people - had simply been dumped in pits like this one.

Naked and dead.

It was a struggle for her to keep from being sick.

"A revolution perhaps? A coup? First against the wall then into a pit?"

"I take it then, that this isn't Zargolia or wherever?" Rose asked, trying to keep her mind off the sheer number of bodies.

"Zargoleanderboudliator," the Doctor supplied, none too helpfully. "And yes, this isn't it. These are humans, Rose. And I'm pretty sure that we're on Earth. Sun's about the right size and colour. Gravity seems to be Earth normal. And that smell, it's unmistakable."

"Death," Rose said darkly.

"Death? No, burgers. Rather unpleasant. Burnt, too." He pulled his hands out of his pockets and gestured for Rose to stand up. "Come on, let's find out exactly where we are. Then maybe we can sort out this whole mystery." Despite all the death around them, the Doctor smiled. It made Rose feel a little better inside.

Together they strode off towards what the Doctor insisted must be a fast food restaurant.

***

It had taken Ashe a little longer than he had anticipated to get to the offices of Omega Holdings, the front for the Centre in Neo-Tokyo. The underground was crammed with brash young schoolchildren; many of them reading Manga that Ashe would have balked at giving to a child.

"You can go right in," the receptionist at Omega Holdings said in unaccented English.

Ashe said a curt thank you and entered the office without knocking. It was empty. Smiling coldly, Ashe moved round the desk and looked at the chair. It was nice. Real leather too, he decided, brushing the tips of his fingers over the soft material; a great rarity these days.

With a sigh, he pulled the chair from underneath the desk and sat down in it. It was as comfortable as it looked. He leaned back, instigating the mechanism. With a whirr of motors, the wall behind him, and the chair he was sitting on, turned through a whole one hundred and eighty degrees.

"Marcus," the Japanese man he was now facing said with a smile. "It's good to be working with you again."

Ashe grunted in a non-committal way. Takashi Yamoto, head of Centre operations in Japan smiled benignly. He was a man of about sixty with a neat, steely grey head of hair and thick, black-rimmed glasses. Yamoto was lean and, Ashe suspected, would still be able to hold his own in a fight. He wore a simple, though most probably very expensive, black suit and a white silk shirt. If it was not for the tie, which depicted a cartoon marsupial from a popular new kid's TV show, Ashe figured he wouldn't look out of place at a funeral.

"I presume you have the file for me," Ashe asked.

Yamoto merely nodded and slid a thick pink cardboard folder across the desk to Ashe. Most delicate information was only kept in hard copy these days. The Intra-Net was too unstable.

"It's getting worse, Marcus," Yamoto said as Ashe leafed through the documents in the file. Most of the material was the ordinary, routine stuff: Incident reports, crime scene photography, police statements.

"How so?" Ashe asked absently. As much as he didn't like it, Yamoto was his superior (although the Japanese man would never pull rank, he was too much in awe of Ashe) so he supposed he should make some attempt to show interest in what he had to say. Neo-Tokyo was fairly unfamiliar turf as well. Yamoto's local knowledge could prove to be useful.

"Nothing's gone public yet, you understand. But the sheer number of deaths... It has people scared. The government's placed a seven o'clock curfew. That's just before it gets truly dark, and while most of the public are dismissing it as superstitious nonsense, there has been mention, by Kaneda Otomo of all people - he was, until last year, a popular novelist, until he accidentally shot his wife, now he publishes newsletters from the City Detention Facility, exposing ever more lurid and, to be perfectly frank, insane notions. He has, however, through accident or design, stumbled upon the truth. The Lord of Time... we have evidence now going back to the 1990"s."

"This Otomo, I assume you've censored him?" Ashe asked.

"There is no need. Any overt action on our part would only cause the public to believe there is some truth in his writings. Trust me, Marcus, his own paranoid ramblings have done more to discredit him than we ever could, and more efficiently, too. Only three months ago, he claimed that Ancient Martians were planning to leech the Earth's atmosphere for their own no doubt nefarious uses."

Ashe said nothing.

***

"Do you have a superhuman sense of smell or something?" Rose asked. They had been walking for hours with no sign of a fast food restaurant or even a burger van. Every so often, the Doctor would pause, sniff the air and set off once more, consumed by purpose.

"Well, since I am an alien and therefore human standards do not apply to my, quite frankly, amazing olfactory functions, yeah, I do. Sometimes I wish I didn't though. There was this one time at a production of The White Devil, bloodthirsty bugger that Webster... no, it's too horrible to even recall."

More horrible than a mass grave? Rose wanted to ask. She didn't, however, because the Doctor suddenly stopped and spread his arms out wide.

"Civilisation!" he shouted.

***

In the evening sunlight, the city looked like it was shining. As they made their way into the centre, Rose could see why. All the buildings were glass and chrome.

"Looks like Japan," the Doctor commented.

"How can you know that?" Rose asked. So far they hadn't met a single living soul and most of the shops - with English signs - were closed. It certainly didn't look like Japan to Rose. More like Milton Keynes, the modern city gone wrong. There were no big video screens endlessly advertising electronic gadgets. No late night sushi/karaoke bars. Nor did it look anything like medieval Kyoto, where they had been with Captain Jack, just before all that mess with the Daleks.

The Doctor pointed to a sign:

WELCOME TO NEO-TOKYO, it said.

"Ten out of ten for observation," Rose grumbled. So they were on Earth after all. The future, from what Rose had seen. For some reason that fact made their discovery of the mass grave all the more disturbing. This was Earth: Her home.

"If I remember my history correctly, old Tokyo, your Tokyo, was destroyed in the 2030's by some bizarre superweapon. The Japanese blamed the Americans, but the Americans protested their innocence. Always meant to go back and see just what did happen."

"To try and stop it?" asked Rose.

"No. Because I hate mysteries," the Doctor replied. He sounded contemplative.

Rose decided to ignore that last comment. It unnerved her sometimes how the Doctor could just let disasters happen, even though it seemed alien to his nature. "So they built Neo-Tokyo over the ruins, did they?"

"Yeah," the Doctor replied. "Literally. They levelled over what was left and filled it in with concrete. On the top, Neo-Tokyo, the most modern city in Japan. Beneath, centuries of culture. And Nintendo."

"So any idea about the time yet?" Rose asked.

"Judging by the state of the architecture," the Doctor mused, brushing his fingertips over the chrome of a nearby building, "I'd reckon mid to late twenty-first century. Not exactly one of humanity's crowning moments, to be honest."

"How so?" Rose asked. "Looks pretty peaceful to me."

"Yeah. A little too peaceful. There's dozens of wars boiling over in the Middle East. Your lot and the Yanks last desperate grab for the little oil that's left. Oh, in the affluent countries, America, Britain, France, Sweden, you'd think you were living in a utopia. You've learnt how to control the weather, so finally a decent British summer, they've finally got round to developing a quality sound recording system, so you can listen to Pink Floyd's The Wall the way they originally intended. And you've got T-Mat."

"T-Mat?" Rose asked. They were still walking along the street. So far, no shops seemed to be open, despite the fact that it only seemed to be early evening. Had shop hours returned to nine-to-five, or was it really late at night, just at the height of summer? It didn't feel like summer. Not that it was cold enough to justify her choice of knee-length coat. If anything, it felt like spring, with the promise of long, glorious days and cloudless skies, but first, the threat of incipient showers.

"Travelling Mat, as one of my less learned friends once called it. Magic carpet. Should probably be called Transmat, but you know what your lot are like for giving things cute names. Like you just can't call a duck a duck."

"What does it do?" Rose asked.

"Well, you stand in your T-Mat booth, get molecularly disintegrated, zapped up to a satellite, then pop, reintegrated somewhere entirely new, all in the space of about a second. It's the same basic technology that the Daleks were using on the Game Station, but without the fear of death at the other end. It's like the Underground, really. But cleaner. And without the trains. And quicker."

"So it's a bit like on Star Trek then?"

"Does everything have to boil down to Star Trek with you? If I didn't know better I'd say you were... hang up. There's a light! Haha!" The Doctor strode off.

" ‘Hang up, there's a light?' " Rose asked, struggling to keep up with the Doctor's sudden increase of pace.

"Yeah," the Doctor said, pointing. "Looks like that burger bar I've been smelling. You hungry?"

"Starving," Rose admitted. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been able to sit down and enjoy a proper meal. "You got any money?"

"Ah," the Doctor said, stopping up shortly.

"You're skint, aren't you?" Rose chided him.

"Well, it's not like I expected to end up in twenty-first century Japan." He pulled a small metallic creature from his inside jacket pocket. It wriggled between his fingers. "On Zargoleanderboudliator, this would be enough to live like a king for donkey's years."

"You could always pawn it," Rose suggested. "If Neo-Tokyo's anything like the Tokyo of my time, they love their technology."

"Nah," the Doctor said. "In the wrong hands, Jimbo here could bring about the destruction of the planet." He replaced the creature inside his jacket.

Rose wasn't sure if he was joking or not.

"How about this instead?" he suggested, waving the sonic screwdriver in front of her. She remembered how he'd been able to get money out of a cash machine on Satellite Five.

The Doctor wandered over to what looked like an ATM to Rose. He waved the screwdriver over the scanner. The machine bleeped, gurgled and then disgorged a thick bundle of multi-coloured notes that looked blank to Rose until she held them in a certain way.

"Fantastic," the Doctor said, divvying them up. "Of course, we don't know what the exchange rate is. All of this might just be about enough for a portion of chips. Did I ever tell you about the time I spent in 1930's Germany? Huge economic recession. I had to take four wheelbarrows full of Deutschmarks to the pub just to buy meself a pint."

"YOU!" a voice shouted across the empty street. "Halt!"

Rose looked over her shoulder and saw three men dressed up like they were in the SAS, submachine guns grasped in both hands. Their faces were covered with mirrored visors.

"When I say run," the Doctor whispered to her, his hands held up in a gesture of surrender. "Run."

"They've got guns," Rose protested.

"Head down that alley," the Doctor instructed, pointing out the one he had in mind with a gentle movement of his head.

Rose looked out of the corner of her eye. It looked dark and dingy. Dumpsters dotted the walls though, as did ladders for fire escapes. As places to run went, it was the best possible one. "What about you?"

"I'll manage," the Doctor grinned. To the soldiers he said, "So, are we in a police state or - RUN! - is this some sort of national emergency? Because I am rather good with those. National emergencies that is, not the whole police state issue."

Rose almost missed the unexpected instruction, but managed to leg it down the alley before the soldiers had a chance to react. Her coat flapped out behind her, she turned a couple of corners and leaned up against the wall, hidden from general view by a bin, a little out of breath from her sudden sprint

A noise crackled from the way she'd run. Gunfire? Could they have got the Doctor?

Rose pulled off her coat and dumped it into the bin. Then she pulled her hair back and fastened it into place with a hairgrip she found in her jeans. It wasn't much, but it did change her appearance slightly.

Wiping a fine layer of sweat from her brow, Rose emerged onto the street. It wasn't the same one she had just run from. All the shop signs were different, although they were still in English. What was with that? There was no sign of either the Doctor or the soldiers.

Rose wandered down the street, only finding out as she turned a corner that it was a dead end. A huge department store, a hundred times bigger than the one she's worked in back in London. Cursing softly to herself she turned round -

And found herself facing the muzzle of a gun.

***

The Doctor looked down on the soldiers from the roof of a building. They seemed to have no idea that he could have escaped onto a roof. They were just searching the alleyways, the searchlights fitted onto the end of their guns switched on now in the darkness, cutting through the night.

His stomach rumbled. He'd really fancied some chips. Oh well, he thought. They would have to wait. There were more important things to do. First, rescue Rose, second, find out what these soldiers wanted them for and thirdly, discover who or what was behind that mass grave in the countryside. Only then could he decide if something needed to be done about it.

As far as he was aware, no plagues had ravaged Japan in the twenty-first century, and since the rebuilding of Tokyo, no wars or conflicts had touched this small island.

Memories of Rwanda in the 1990's came back to him. How long ago had that been for him? Five hundred years? More? Still the memories chilled him. It was one thing to bear witness to a creature of pure hate like a Dalek killing millions, if still difficult. But it was something else entirely to see men, people with souls and a conscience, commit such atrocities against their fellow beings.

"You smell different," came a soft, lilting female voice.

The Doctor tried to look and sound surprised, even though he'd heard her shoes across the puddle-spotted roof.

"Who are you?" he asked.

***

"Who are you?" she asked.

Two faceless guards bundled her into a cubicle, ignoring her cries. The harsh, naked strip lighting hurt Rose's eyes after the dark of the truck she'd been transported in.

"Go UV," one of the guards said.

The light turned purple.

"We got a temperature reading yet?"

"One hundred degrees," the other guard replied.

"Could she have just fed?"

"It's possible."

"Don't be stupid. She's got a heartbeat. She's a warm-body."

"Strip," a guard ordered Rose.

"Sod off," retorted Rose.

"Strip," the guard repeated. He brought his gun to bear. "I have no hesitation about using this."

Rose felt like crying. Slowly she turned around and peeled off her vest. Then she unbuttoned her jeans and stepped out of them.

Once they were lying on the floor, a guard picked them up with a mechanical arm, like what rubbish men used to pick up stray bits of litter. He dumped them in a plastic container full of liquid.

"All of the way," the guard said.

Just as Rose was about to tell him where he could stick his order, he fired off a single round. It thudded into the wall behind her. She felt a few chips of concrete bounce off her skin. Grimacing, she undid her bra and pulled her knickers down. Again, these were plucked up and dumped in the container.

"All right, clear!" one of the guards shouted.

The front door of the cubicle slammed shut and almost instantly a foul liquid began sputtering from the ceiling. Was this meant to get her clean? Rose wondered. Or was it a tidy way of killing someone. The liquid smelt like disinfectant. Then, just as it had began; it stopped, replaced by jets of freezing cold water assaulting her from all sides. It was so cold that it physically knocked the breath from her.

Probably the hot wax next, Rose thought sarcastically as the water slowed to a steady drip. She hugged herself, as much out of modesty as from the cold.

Then, with mounting panic, she noticed the thick yellow gas that was coming into the cubicle through what she had taken for an air vent.

"Let me out!" she screamed, futilely banging her fists on the thick metal door. The clanging resounded round the cubicle.

The heavy gas was almost to her face. Rose coughed as she breathed it in. The noxious fumes burned at the back of her throat.

She never felt herself hit the floor.

***

"They call me Hilary," the girl said. "You shouldn't be out at night. It's not safe. That's why they have soldiers." In the dark, her Oriental skin was blue, her eyes two black blemishes. The moonlight glinted off them.

"What about you? How are you safe?" the Doctor asked. So, he surmised, some sort of national emergency. A curfew? An uncomfortable thought occurred to him.

"The monsters," the girl said. "They think I'm like them, so they leave me alone. Sometimes they bring me leftovers. Already dead. Can't eat."

"Are you a monster?" the Doctor asked softly. The girl - she didn't look more than sixteen, he guessed, but then he had never been good with ages - might be dangerous. If not to him, then possibly to herself. She certainly sounded half-crazy.

"Sometimes I wake up and think I am because I can't see myself and if I can't see myself, am I invisible? How can I be normal if I can't see myself?" Hilary said.

The Doctor looked at her properly, taking in her features. She was wearing a school uniform; white shirt, blue blazer and a tartan skirt. Socks, which might once have been white, clung to her calves. "You look normal to me," he said.

The girl - Hilary - laughed. "That's because you smell different. You're not like them," she said, gesturing down onto the city below. "You don't see the reality. You choose what you want to see. Only the good in this person, only the bad in the monster. It must be a very comfortable way to live. But sometimes the big bad wolf is just hungry. Doing what he needs to survive."

A chill went up the Doctor's spine. Contrary to what the girl was saying, he felt very uncomfortable.

"Who are you?" he asked her again.

"I'm Hilary," she said as though he were simple. "Born in London to Laurel Barter and Tetsuo Chan. They've been dead for fourteen years now. I was twelve when they died. I went to London from Kyoto to live with my Uncle Matthew. He did unspeakable things to me."

Twenty-six? The Doctor appraised her. She didn't look that old. She looked younger than Rose. Good skincare? He was sure Rose would love to know what moisturiser she used. Or were his suspicions correct?

"He died, in the end, my Uncle Matthew. Horrible man. So I came to Tokyo, where my father lived before he married mama." Hilary stopped and looked at the Doctor for a long time. "If you aren't human, what are you?"

***

Marcus Ashe looked at the young woman lying on the hospital bed in front of him. She'd been out for an hour or so now. The gas should be wearing off shortly. Meanwhile, all he could do was wait. She'd been decontaminated and, according to the lab technicians, she had no trace of the virus in her body. But she didn't have an ID chip.

That was very unusual.

No, thought Ashe. Scratch that. It is absolutely bloody impossible. Everyone was implanted with a chip at birth. The only way to get it removed was to attain a particularly high position at the Centre, but even then, a replacement chip was implanted straight away.

There was no way to get food or money or even use a local T-Mat booth without a chip.

Ashe briefly considered the possibility that she may be a spy from one of the communist nations. They didn't use any form of electronic tagging. But just as swiftly, he had discounted it. Even the Koreans wouldn't be so remiss as to send an operative to Japan without giving her a chip first. It was an elementary mistake. Far too elementary for the sort of people that Ashe dealt with.

If, however, she was neither spy nor civilian, what were his other possibilities? She could be a refugee from one of the war-ravaged countries in the Middle East, but she was Caucasian and Lieutenant Bachman's report had stated, quite strongly, that when she had spoken, it had been with a Cockney accent. That meant the only possibility left to him was something Ashe didn't like to think about.

And what of the man Lieutenant Bachman had reported seeing with the girl? Could he be the Lord of Time they were looking for?

If it was that man, then it was an awfully big coincidence. Ashe didn't trust coincidence. It usually denoted a trap.

As far as Ashe knew, and he had read every single report available on the subject, there was no way for the virus to hibernate in the human system, only to take over later. If there were, it would be a perfect way to infiltrate a Centre installation and devastate it.

There came a point however, where science simply couldn't do anymore and superstition and mythology took hold.

With this in mind, Ashe reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small piece of metal. He pulled back the bedclothes, noticing with distaste that the hospital staff had neglected to even dress her in a gown, and pressed the cold metal against the pale flesh. When nothing happened, Ashe returned it to his shirt pocket.

He was glad she hadn't reacted. This operation needed to be as swift and clean as possible. Civilian casualties were always messy and when things turned messy, the job became so much more difficult.

Ashe rose. He removed his glasses - another part of his cover, after all, anyone who stared at computer screens everyday for twenty years would develop some sort of eyesight deficiency - and pinched the bridge of his nose. Tiredness pulled on every limb. Hs muscles ached. There was no time for sleep, however. He removed a small vial from his attaché case and pressed the thin needle on the end of it to the vein in the crook of his elbow. The chemical compound, an unholy mixture of caffeine, adrenaline and endorphins, flooded his system, snapping him awake instantly.

Stretching out, he loosened up all of his muscles. It would be something he would have to pay for once the operation was over, with various withdrawal symptoms and an enforced coma, but for the moment, that price was worth paying.

***

"I'm looking for my friend," the Doctor said. "You seen her?"

"Smell her," Hilary said.

What are you? the Doctor wondered. But he supposed he already knew the answer. He just didn't like it one bit.

"Can you take me to her?" he asked, looking straight into her dark eyes.

Hilary stared right back at him. "Smell her on you. You stink of her. And death. So much blood..."

"Yeah, well," the Doctor began defensively. "We landed next to this mass grave. Bit of an accident. We were on our way somewhere quite different." The Doctor paused, to himself he said, "I checked the location before we left the TARDIS. This shouldn't be Neo-Tokyo. We're about ten million parsecs out for that. Not to mention a couple of geological ages."

"Not the blood on your hands," Hilary said. The Doctor thought he could see hunger in her eyes. Her voice started to tremble. "You and the wolf, the bad, bad wolf, so much blood on your souls."

The Doctor felt anger flare inside him. He'd done all her could, hadn't he? But... "Bad wolf? That's the second time you've used that phrase. How do you know about Rose?"

Hilary didn't respond however. She just stood, her eyes fixed on some distant point. "All that blood. Rivers of it, like Enoch promised. Rivers, running throughout all time."

Furious, the Doctor gripped her by the arms and shook her. Her limp head lolled back and forth on the pivot of her spine. "Where's Rose?" he asked. Desperation was starting to overcome him. If Hilary was what he thought she was, Rose was in danger.

"They took her far away. The men with guns. Under the city. Into the ruins... We don't go there."

"Under the city? Old Tokyo?" The Doctor loosened his grip and turned away, lost in thought.

"I wonder what you taste like," Hilary said. She parted hungry lips.

***

"You're the British government?" Rose asked, for what seemed like the fifth time. Her head was still thick and groggy. The lean man in the immaculate suit that stood before her, nodded. The tight curls on his head shook slightly.

"I am an operative in the secret services, part of the Coalition. But for now I represent the British government," Marcus Ashe said.

Rose shifted uncomfortably in the chair. The hospital staff had given her some clothes out of the stores. This being a military hospital, the clothes amounted to a pair of khaki trousers with more pockets then even Rose could do anything with and a black T-shirt. It still beat being naked though. The thought of her naked, unconscious body being manhandled by those SAS men made her shiver. They could have done anything to her.

"What is your name?" Ashe asked.

"Rose. Rose Tyler."

Ashe flipped up the lid of his palmtop and tapped a few keys.

"Date of birth."

Rose told him.

"1986?" Do you mean to tell me that you're sixty years old?" Ashe asked, disbelieving. Then his computer bleeped. He looked at it. It had brought up a newspaper report from London in 2006. Girl missing, it read, then gave the particulars of a girl named Rose Tyler, age nineteen. There was a picture. It matched, bar the hair colour which was easily achievable with a bottle of peroxide.

"See," Rose said, catching a glimpse of the picture on the miniature computer.

"How?" Ashe asked. "We've checked you out. You're not one of them. How?"

"One of them? One of who?"

"The Lords of Time," Ashe said.

"The Time Lords," Rose asked, confused. Of course, the Doctor had mentioned that he could look the same way for centuries without ageing. Did they think she was like the Doctor?

"No, vampires," Ashe said.

***

"You will have to keep on wondering, youngling," came a deep, sonorous male voice.

The Doctor span round, forgetting about Hilary, his full attention focussed on the new arrival.

It was a tall, lean man. His black hair had started to go grey at the temples. His eyes were cold and cruel.

"Good evening, Doctor," he said. "I've been waiting for you for a very long time." He smiled, but it was a smile without warmth or even humanity. "You don't recognise me, do you?"

"Sorry," the Doctor apologised. "Should I? It's just I meet so many people it's hard to keep track."

"We fought alongside each other, Doctor, before your people turned on us. Before you drove us out of this universe."

"The Great Vampires," the Doctor said, his voice a shocked whisper. "I thought you were all dead... well, undead anyway."

"I am the last, Doctor. You remember me now?"

"Algernon," the Doctor nodded. "What do you want with me?"

With a blur of movement Algernon was standing next to him. The Doctor felt the vampire's breath - a vestigial muscle reflex from their time as living beings - on his neck.

"I want your life," Algernon said. Then he bit down, into the Doctor's neck.

Next: The Architecture Of Morality