DISCLAIMER: I do not own Doctor Who, but Alexia and the plot are mine.

"Who are you affiliated with?" I hiss in the man's ear once he steps out of the blue crate, some sort of historic phone box. When the thing appeared out of thin air, I jumped out of my look-out tree and landed on top of it, waiting for something to come out. This man walked out and I landed behind him with a dagger to his throat.

"Hello, it's quite lovely to meet you." He has a strangely cheerful voice with a British accent.

"Who ever you are, your squadron isn't here. You're all alone. Now tell me, who are you and who are you allied with?"

"Well, down to the business, yeah? I'm the Doctor. But can you tell me, what day is it?" His upbeat demeanor is beginning to irritate me. His question catches me off guard for a split second but that's all he needs to escape from my grasp and disarm me. I look him dead in the eyes; if he's going to kill me than he's going to have to fall asleep every night being haunted by my stare. Instead he throws it to the side. Apparently, this war is going to be taking prisoners.

"Weapons. Disgusting things, really." The man mumbles, mostly to himself.

"I will not be you prisoner." I spit defiantly. "I will not join your army. When your troops arrive, you might as well have them shoot me down. I will not aid in the destruction of this planet!"

"Destruction of the planet?" He pauses for a moment, seeming to be in deep thought. "You never told me, what day is it?"

"I-I don't know. I've been out here for a while, maybe a few months. I think it might be April."

"And what's the year?" What kind of nut-job is this guy?

"2453. Who are you?"

"I told you, I'm the Doctor." He smiles as if that explains everything.

"The doctor? What's your name?"

"The Doctor."

"Doctor Who?" I demand, then curse myself for my loudness. I scan the surrounding woods for any sign of an attacker.

"Are you looking for something? Are you alright?" I spin around to him.

"Am I alright? The world is on the verge of a third world war, the country's power has been cut off, and I'm hiding in the middle of the woods. Yeah, everything's just fine." I snap at him.

"Third world war?" He looks as if this is news to him. "What did you say the year was?"

"2453."

The man's eyebrows knit together, either in worry or concentration. Maybe he doesn't know that I fled from the military and he isn't after me, hunting me down like a wild dog. In that case, I have certainly just made myself a target by talking to him.

"That's impossible. There shouldn't be a war here in another 20 years." Again, he's mumbling to himself.

"What are you talking about? Haven't you heard about any of this? China cut off our power supply along with our allies'. Now we only have primitive forms of communication and a half-defenseless military force. How can we wait another 20 years? There's only a few weeks at best before the countries open fire."

He looks up at these last few words with something close to fear in his eyes. Does he really not know about any of this? Who is this man?

"Where did you come from? How d-" I cut off when a nearby tree spontaneously goes up in flame. Shit, not again! "RUN!" I scream at the strange doctor and grab his arm, dragging him with me as I sprint through the forest, dodging trees and fallen logs.

"What is it? Why'd that just happen? " The man asks as he runs along side me. I'm surprised to see that he can keep pace with me.

"They set the trees up on fire." I manage between breaths.

"Who did?" I don't bother answering him. "Come with me, I know a safer place to go." He adds, yanking me the opposite way, back to the fire. I let go of him and pull away, but he just grabs my hand. Again, I flinch away. "Come on! Do you want to live or not?" We're both standing here, in the middle of the burning woods. I know that if I stay here debating over who should lead us out of this mess, we'll both be cooked alive. But if I go with him, I might be brought to a military base to be tortured. I decide to just follow him. Either way, my odds aren't in my favor, but if there's even a chance of safety then I'll take it.

"Okay." The doctor grabs my hand again and I fight the urge to tear my hand away from his.

We run back to the blue phone box, fighting our way through a cloud of smoke and ash, trying to find a path around the glowing embers and flames. The doctor opens the doors to the phone box and pulls me in after him. He closes the doors behind us. I forget to yell at him about how stupid it is to hide from fire in a wooden box because the inside is so enormous. There's a big blue column in the center surrounded by a series of buttons and gadgets of a control panel. Helplessly, I can only stare wide-eyed at it. Horror begins to claw it's way up my throat.

"Wh- How- but this is impossible!" I stammer. He brushes pass me to the central control station. "Wh- what are you?" I feel panic begin to work its way into the edges of my mind even though I try my best to fight it off.

"Okay, now, this is very important. Are you listening to me?" He walks back to me, his big brown eyes locked onto mine. I can only nod at him. "I need you to tell me everything that happened leading up to the country's loss of power." Trying to calm my breathing, I think back to the first days of things going astray.

"Well, tensions have been rising between China and the United Nation. We've been having an arms race to build the best nuclear weapons as fast as we could. Both countries where competing to be the most powerful. Then, one day, I was waken from the emergency alarms. Everyone in my unit all got dressed and we spilled out into the halls, trying to find our ways to our stations but it was so dark! None of the lights were working. I was to report to the general's meeting room. There was a few lights on. The military bases all had power, just a limited amount of it. We had to conserve. Lights were on only at the most vital work stations during the most critical of work hours. We had to eat, sleep, and bathe in darkness. My base was an underground facility. We've been trying to think of ways to slow down China's production line within the confines of the Peace Treaty of 2399." I explain.

"Was there anything else out of the ordinary? Before the arms race or before the loss of power?" He asks, and then I realize that this man may be a spy. Maybe he's trying to see what I'd be willing to tell the enemy.

"I- I can't say. I may not fight for my country by destroying it or its enemies, but I am not a traitor." I glare at him.

"I don't care! I don't care about the war! If you want to live and if you want this world to see the new generation, you have to tell me! I'm here to help." He begins to scream and I think that maybe his eyes will pop out of his skull. I shrink away from him.

"What can you do? You're only one person. Even if I help you, how can two simple humans stop a nuclear war!" My voice comes out harsh and ridged.

"Well, Sister Jane, I'm not human. I'm not from your world. I'm not even from your galaxy, for that matter." He lifts an eyebrow as if this intrigues him.

"Then where are you from?" I demand and clench my teeth. He looks deep into my green eyes.

"A place far way from here…. But tell me, do you remember anything out of the ordinary."

"No, nothing particularly…" I try to think back to the start of all this. "Well, there's some things, but they really don't mean much. It was probably just my imagination or something." Now I was the one beginning to ramble to myself.

"Anything can be useful. Tell me, what do you remember?"

"Well, before I was stationed at the underground base, before the arms race got too far underway, there was this sudden…noise, that never went away. Only it's not something that I could hear, exactly, it was more like a change in the air pressure, as if it was a frequency humans couldn't detect." The doctor looks at me and I can tell that this means something to him.

"A noise that wasn't a noise, yet a noise nonetheless." I'm not sure if he's talking to himself or me.

"There's something else, now that I think about it." He looks at me with such an intensity that I have to look way. "The sky is different. It's like the sun got duller, only just so slightly that it's almost impossible to tell. I only noticed it because I was outside and it was like a thin cloud floated under the sun, only there was no cloud."

"Oiy." He ran his fingers through his hair.

"What? Does that mean something to you?"

"Can you get me to this base you were working at?"

"I can get you close, but I can't get you in. I'd be making bait out of you." He looks at me questioningly. "I ran away. They are going to start a war! One that can devastate the entire planet! I would rather die than bring that about."

"That's understandable. Come on, then, we have some work to do you and I, Miss…?"

"Alexia."

When we exit the phone box, what the doctor explained as a "TARDIS", the woods hold no sign of ever being caught on fire. The Doctor took out a strange devise. He noticed me staring at it.

"Sonic screwdriver. Comes in quite useful. Does this always happen when the trees burn?"

"How'd you know that they've burned before?" I eye him suspiciously.

"You practically told me. You saw one tree catch on fire, and you knew. You knew to run."

"I don't know. I've always ran away from it. Never bothered to look back. I'm not a suicidal maniac." I look at him pointedly but he ignores it. He waves around his sonic-whatever and it makes some weird whirring sound.

"Hmm… I don't think that it's China that stole the power. In fact, I highly doubt they have any power themselves."

At this information, an image pops into my mind of Chinese officials gathering in a meeting room, speaking of the ways to get revenge on the United Nation for hacking into their power grid. I shove the image away, one of many visions that I've had my whole life. I look up at the doctor as he looks up at the same time, his face mirroring my own as if he had seen the same thing I just did.

"They think that we stole their power." I say. There's a beat of silence before he says "Perhaps."

"Not perhaps, I know they do. And they're planning an attack." His eyes ask an unspoken question.

"We better get moving."

It's a three day journey to the base, at best. We hike along in the woods, mostly in silence which is just fine by me; I like being able to hear the world around me.

"Always on alert, you are." The doctor observes.

"It's what keeps me alive, Doctor."

Again, we plunge into a steady silence until he finally breaks it again. "Is there any water about? I'm dying for a drink."

I know where every river and lake is between our location and the base, so I lead him to a nearby stream. "You drink first. I'll stay on look-out." Once he's done drinking, I take a turn. "Just stand very still and listen to any sign of trouble." I order him.

"Tell me, is it really necessary to be carrying all that metal? Must weigh a ton, that lot." He asks after I get a few handfuls of water; he's referring to the vast array of swords sheathed to my belt. Weapons clearly made him uneasy. I could only imagine his reaction of seeing the daggers that lined the inside of my jacket. With that thought, my mind focuses onto a vision of just that:

I unzip my jacket, glancing over the equipment with speed, trying to determine the best blade for the job. There's a sudden intake of breath beside me; the Doctor, though he doesn't look surprised by this at all. What a strange man he is; like he knows everything yet still is affected by what he sees-

The vision changes half way through:

I'm crouched by the creek as the Doctor stands over me, watching the woods with an untrained eye. I hear them approach, but too late. A twig snaps behind us. A gun is cocked.

"RUN, DOCTOR!" I scream, but not soon enough.

I snap out of the vision.

"We need to go, NOW!" I grab the doctors arm and take off with him. Up ahead there's a tree that looks simple enough for a novice to climb. "Up the tree. Hurry." I push him towards it. He doesn't question me, just complies. "As high as you can make it." I order, following closely. We perch up high in the branches, the full leaves creating a perfect camouflage. I press my index finger to my lips, demanding silence.

After about ten, painfully long minutes, a squadron of troops runs by below us, guns in hand. They scatter out, scanning the area thoroughly. The doctor stares at me, another question neither of us puts into words. I pull out a pair of tiny binoculars that are secured to my belt and take a glance around. There are no more soldiers hiding anywhere else. All we have to do is wait out for this troop to go back and we could be on our way.

When they are gone, we scale back down the tree.

"You knew, didn't you?" The doctor asks.

"There are a lot of things that I know, Doctor." I say, only he doesn't understand just how true that statement is.

A few nights later and we're just feet from the entrance of the base. It took us only two days to reach the bunker.

"Now all we have to do is get inside to scan their maps to see where the main support of the power grid is, since you don't know what city it is in." The doctor runs over the plan for the hundredth time. I have to admit that I admire his thoroughness, only there's one part of what he says that is wrong.

"Not we, you. I can't go in there."

"But you need to. You know the layout of this bunker like the back of your hand, plus you know the security codes which will work a lot faster than my screwdriver."

"How? How are you going to get me into that place? It will never work."

He reaches out and grabs the handcuffs attached to my belt. "It will if we use these." I study him, analyze his face for any sign of deception, but for some reason, deep within my bones, I trust him. As irrational and psychotic as it may be, it is still there, a tiny gleaming crystal of trust. I hand him the cuffs and turn around so he can clip them into place.

"Ready, Alexia?" He asks; I nod my head yes.