Martha padded down the hallways of the TARDIS on her first night as a proper traveler in her stocking feet, looking for the kitchen and tea. She'd only seen the place once, and since she generally had a good sense of direction, she suspected that the rooms in here moved about. She wouldn't put it past anything the Doctor was so fond of. It had been one hell of a day, though, and she needed tea. Saving New York or London or New New York or wherever from monsters was one thing, but seeing her sister threatened by a giant scorpion monster was quite another.

She stopped, though, when she heard a voice she didn't recognize.

"This is Emergency Programme Nine…Be back in a couple of minutes, so just stay put… amme Five… TARDIS, you'll be safe inside, but I need you to…"

It wasn't the Doctor speaking—-this voice was lower and had a distinctly Northern accent—but it was the middle of the night. Well, it was the middle of the night as far as she was concerned, and the Doctor hadn't implied anything about late-night guests. She was near the door where the voice was coming from, and she approached it as quietly as she could. It was the console room.

"Programme Three… at jiggery-pokery, so try not to touch the… This has to be precise, so pay attention… This is Emergency Programme One," the voice said, finally stopping the DVD skip impression. "Rose, now listen, this is important. If this message is activated, then it can only mean one thing."

Rose.

That caught her interest, if nothing else. Rose, the friend he was so eager to reassure her was safe with her family. (Because, really, you only say a person is fine that many times if something devastating happened).

She peeked around the door frame, but it didn't seem likely that the mysterious Rose was around. The Doctor was standing with his back to the external door, holding a button on some kind of complicated contraption and bathed in blue light, which seemed to come from the man (or the hologram of a man?) who stood in front of him. The second man, the Northerner, had a shaved head, a big nose, bigger ears, a tough-looking leather jacket.

"We must be in danger, and I mean fatal. I'm dead or about to die any second with no chance of escape," he was saying, and then paused briefly, though the Doctor made no response.

"And that's okay," he continued. "Hope it's a good death. But I promised to look after you, and that's what I'm doing. The TARDIS is taking you home."

The hologram man paused even longer this time, staring intently at the Doctor, who still made no move or sound. Just to make absolutely sure, Martha looked at the rotor, but it was still. In fact, the only thing in the entire console room making any noise at all was Big Ears in the hologram. Didn't the ship itself usually make more little noises?

"And I bet you're fussing and moaning now, typical," he finally continued. "But hold on and just listen a bit more. The TARDIS can never return for me. Emergency Programme One means I'm facing an enemy that should never get their hands on this machine. So this is what you should do: let the TARDIS die."

Martha felt her mouth drop open. This magnificent ship? Dead?

"Just let this old box gather dust. No one can open it, no one will even notice it. Let it become a strange little thing standing on a street corner. And over the years, the world will move on and the box will be buried. And if you want to remember me, then you can do one more thing. That's all, one thing."

Suddenly the hologram man's head turned, and he grinned heart-rendingly at someone who wasn't there. He was, however, looking nearly right at Martha, which made something in her chest clench up.

"Have a good life. Do that for me, Rose. Have a fantastic life."

The hologram flickered out, casting the Doctor in darkness. Even the rotor, the heart, he sometimes called it, seemed to give off hardly any light.

Rose. Rose, who was fine, home, safe with her family, but not here. Had she ever heard that message?

For that matter, who was the message from? He talked about the TARDIS as if he owned it. And if it was clear that the Doctor loved Rose, it was just as clear that the man in the recording did.

She hoped it was a freaky alien thing, and that the Doctor hadn't… well. Tea was sounding better with every passing second, but she didn't move.

The Doctor stood still for so long that Martha thought she might get cramps from holding still herself. Finally, he moved forward to put his contraption next to the console, then back to stand where the hologram had stood. Martha shifted behind the door again as he turned.

She heard some rustling of fabric, and the squeak of trainers on the grate floor as he shifted about. After a while he cleared his throat, hummed a few bars of something from My Fair Lady, his voice cracking less as he went on, and did something with that sonic screwdriver of his.

"This is Emergency Programme One," the Doctor said. "Martha, listen. If this message is playing…"

Martha was gripped with the sudden conviction that she should not hear whatever he was about to say. She got up as quietly as she could, stiff muscles protesting, and chose a hallway at random.

And she devoutly hoped that she would never hear those words again.