Apologies for the long wait. As said in my other story I've been in the hospital and just got out. So it's been a bit hard to write. Still, enjoy.

Harry sprinted down the hall behind the two odd people he'd inadvertently liberated. He kept his eyes darting everywhere, looking for a new door they could hide behind, but also he was just trying to take in details about the new people he'd met. They were an odd sort but he usually had a pretty good read on people these days. They didn't seem to mean him harm. In fact the man seemed over eager to meet him. That was something Harry wasn't exactly new to but with this Doctor it seemed different. Harry couldn't even begin to explain how it was different though. It just was.

"Oh! There's another one." The woman got out just barely higher than her normal speaking voice. Her hand was motioning to a hallway to the right which held a small wooden door.

"Agh!" The man let out the weirdest sound, startling Harry. "Wood? Can't do wood."

Harry bolted ahead of the two not sure what the man meant by 'can't do wood'. He tried the knob and found it resolutely locked in place. The woman came up beside him as he attempted to twist it and she shared a look with her friend.

"S'pose we'll have to find another way then."

"And be quick about it." The Doctor said fidgeting with the need to keep running.

"I've got it." Harry said with a shake of his head. 'Must be muggles' he thought, but then why had they seemed familiar with his name? "Alohomora." He muttered, wrenching the door open the moment the latch clicked.

The Doctor shut the door behind them and turned the latch to lock it. "Brilliant!" He exclaimed turning to Harry.

Harry's eyebrows rose. That wasn't a reaction he'd come to expect from muggles or wizards. It was just a simple unlocking spell. First years were capable of it yet this man looked like he'd never seen anything more amazing in his life. But at the same time it wasn't the all out awe of someone who'd never seen magic before. The man was a conundrum.

"So are we safe for a bit?" Rose said putting her hands on her thighs and leaning over in an attempt to regain her breath.

"It does seem that way doesn't it?" The Doctor didn't seem out of breath at all. Instead he was surveying the room they'd found themselves in. Pipes and tubes ran along the wall and a big silver machine rested near the back. There was no other exit point. If their pursuers found out they were in here they'd be trapped… and yet that didn't seem to be what was capturing the Doctor's interest. He was following the strict lines of the pipes with his eyes and the machine, massive as it was, had garnered his interest.

"How far are we from the TARDIS?" Rose asked, distracting the Doctor from his inspection.

The man shook his head and offered the woman a light smile. "Not too terribly far."

Harry looked between the two with confusion. "Where are we anyway?" He asked. They looked at each other before turning their attention to him.

"You don't remember how you got here?" the Doctor asked with a small, concerned frown.

"Like I said," Harry reiterated. "I don't even know where here is. Care to enlighten me?" He crossed his arms as a small bit of annoyance surged in him. He'd woken up on a floor surrounded by blue goop, not that they had known that, how the hell would he have had any knowledge of where he was?

"Truth is," Rose offered, "We don' even know where we are." She chuckled a bit at that. She looked a hell of a lot calmer now that they were in a room that didn't include people with guns.

Harry took a deep breath to hold back his annoyance. Sure he'd found allies, possibly, but they didn't seem to be any better off than he was.

"We were on our way to…" Rose started speaking again only to glance sideways at the Doctor as if questioning how much she should say. Harry's eyes narrowed at the stop. The Doctor made a motion over his shoulder for her to keep going. Apparently he'd sidled off to start poking at the machinery in the room. "Well, we were going somewhere." She frowned. "Not sure where really. The Doctor's got a bit of a habit of not talkin' 'bout where we're goin' 'til we're there."

Harry quirked an eyebrow at her.

"Anyway, suddenly we're here. Pulled off course… again…" Rose let out a sigh but gave Harry a warming smile. "Haven't seen a friendly face 'sides yours since we got here… wherever here is."

"Sistoma, Eighth planet in the Quilon system." The Doctor spoke up suddenly. He had his 'screwdriver' pointed towards the machine in front of him which was displaying a fair amount of information on the screen in a language Harry couldn't read. He squinted at it, but it was like nothing he'd ever seen before.

Still, the Doctor motioned to the symbols on the screen in a way that showed he could read them somehow. Maybe he was bilingual?

"It's a small deserted planet in the middle of nowhere." The doctor said with a scowl. "Who'd want a base here of all places?"

"I'm…. not following." Harry shook his head. Maybe he'd chosen to follow the wrong people. "Sistoma? Quinto? I've never heard of either of those places."

"Quilon." The Doctor corrected. "And you wouldn't have. Your story originated on Earth."

Harry blinked. "On Earth?" he mimicked. "Like there are other options?"

"Quite a few." The Doctor continued not bothering to face the startled wizard. "Humans always did have a flare for the dramatic that other species couldn't quite replicate though. It always made their stories a bit more… impressionable."

Harry was just staring at the man like he'd lost his marbles. Presumably, he had. He glanced right to Rose. She was giving him an encouraging smile but he could see sympathy raging behind her warm brown eyes.

"He's bad at explaining things, yeah?" Rose offered.

"I think that's an understatement." Harry shook his head. "So what you're trying to say… is we're in space. This is another planet. And somehow I travelled hundreds of millions of miles without knowing it."

The Doctor stopped fiddling with the equipment, focusing instead on the young man in front of him. "How you got here…" he trailed off as key made it into the lock of the door behind Harry. "Is a really long and complicated story that we don't have time for right now." The man whispered as he pulled Harry out of the direct line of sight of whoever was opening the door.

"It is a set back, certainly." A female voice said sounding snide.

"You can lose the smug attitude." A younger, male voice Harry was all too familiar with replied. "They escaped on your watch."

"On yours as well." The woman bit back as she passed through the door.

"At least-"

"We don't have time." Both voices stopped immediately, which was odd. It wasn;t said in a particularly authoritative manner. If anything the man seemed panicked.

Silence reigned for a few moments before footsteps echoed through the room. An older man passed, followed by a woman in her mid thirties. Finally a man in his late teens or early twenties passed through the door and Harry's heart leapt into his throat. He'd never forget that face and yet he didn't think he'd ever see it again. Tom Riddle, but not the face he'd grown accustomed to seeing. This was a younger Voldemort. His face had yet to shift into that terrible snake-like mask.

The Doctor placed a hand on his shoulder and he turned to the strange man with a raised eyebrow. Did the Doctor think he was going to jump out and attack his enemy? No, he'd faced Riddle before and really he wasn't looking for another go at it. He'd barely won the first time.

Rose seemed concerned too but that seemed to be more because of the people only feet away from them, one of whom was twirling the most powerful wand in all of creation between his too thin fingers.

Harry's fingers twitched. Would he be able to cast a notice me not charm without alerting the new arrivals to their presence? He swallowed thickly.

The Doctor tugged his arm, motioning to a small space behind one of the groups of pipes. It was just large enough to let a relatively thin person hide. Thankfully all three of them were pretty thin and the pipe section seemed to stretch for five or so feet.

"Hmmm…" the older man hummed to himself tapping the screen in front of him. "The calibration is off, perhaps that's the cause of our problem."

Now was their chance. Riddle and the woman had moved toward the man examining the computer. Rose slid in first, gesturing for the other two to follow. The Doctor gave him a glance and a nod and was in the tight space in less than a second. The man really was exceptionally thin.

Harry shifted to follow and his foot caught on the edge of the pipe bracket closest to him. He just barely bit back an ungodly wail but fortune seemed not to be on his side right then because his right arm, which had instinctually flung out to counter balance him, crashed right into one of the many pipes. A hollow ringing resounded through the room and he knew he was outed.

Two of the three whipped around, Riddle and the woman. "Potter?" the man spat and his recognition seemed to throw off his companion because she hesitated. That was all the opportunity Harry needed.

"Stupefy!" He screamed letting the curse hit its mark with Riddle before quickly switching his sights to the woman whose eyes were cold. She was raising a hand and he really didn't want to know what she could do so he sent a quick impedimenta her way. She froze just long enough for him to shout out "Petrificus totalus!"

And down she went. Harry made to stand only to find his right sleeve frozen to the ground. His eyes widened. With the exception of Riddle's uttering of his name neither of the two before him had spoken a word. His eyes travelled to the man cowering against the computer. Clearly this wasn't his doing. One of the two he'd just stunned were capable of wandless, wordless magic. That took an exceptionally powerful wizard and now Harry was glad he'd gotten to them before they got to him.

"Are you okay?" The Doctor was at his side trying to help him up.

Harry waved him toward the other man. He couldn't get an accurate aim to disable the unknown in the room from his odd angle and he'd be damned if he was just going to let someone get shot or killed or worse because they were helping him instead of focusing on the other guy.

Luckily the Doctor seemed to catch his meaning because he switched his attention to the other man quite quickly. Rose came in the Doctor's place to try and free him from the floor. The ice was acting like an adhesive.

The Doctor knelt next to the man who had his head pulled into his lap. "Who are you?" he asked with a frown. The man let out a squeak, probably at having realized the person who'd approached him wasn't one of the two he'd walked in with. He seemed to be a complete coward. "Now, there's no need for that."

The Doctor moved slowly, acted kindly. Harry could honestly say it was very different from how he would've treated someone he knew had walked in with Tom Riddle.

"Nobody here is going to hurt you." The Doctor said, reassuringly.

"Unless you do something stupid." Harry tacked on, arm finally free.

"Not helping." Rose said with a nervous sort sideways smile that clearly meant 'shut up'.

The Doctor simply ignored the addendum. "So I'll ask again, who are you?"

Grey eyes peered past an arm and connected with the Doctor's warm brown gaze. "Name's D'mitri." He answered lowly.

"Nice to meet you D'mitri!" The Doctor greeted enthusiastically. "I'm the Doctor, that there is my lovely companion Rose, and next to her…"

"One of the set backs." The man seemed to have spoken without realizing he was doing it as his eyes landed on Harry. He immediately slapped a hand over his mouth.

The Doctor's eyes darkened a bit. "You know about what's happening then." He asked the older man. "Who's behind all of this? And where did they get the matter stabilization equipment?"

"I'm a bit lost here." Harry interjected. He wanted to know what the man was going to say but he felt like he was already way outside of the loop here. "What does he mean by set backs? And why are you all talking like there's some giant evil scheme I got dropped in the middle of?"

A beat of silence followed his questions. Rose seemed to be the first able to piece together her thoughts.

"Hate to break it to you but guns, giant facility, people tryin' to kill us." She gestured around herself wildly as she spoke. "You're definitely in an evil conspiracy."

Of course he was. Harry sighed. He always was. He couldn't seem to escape them. With no further protestation on Harry's part the Doctor turned back to the man he'd been questioning and raised a brow.

The man seemed nervous, but he started a bumbling answer. "Years ago a man approached me in my home." He started fingers twitching. "He said that with my knowledge of theoretical physics and thermodynamics we could make impossible things happen. He said together we could make fiction reality. Turn the universe on its ear."

The Doctor frowned. Harry felt his shoulders slump just the slightest bit. The guy didn't seem all that dangerous.

"We flew here. A precaution, he said. Because we didn't know if the machines we built would be safe. He didn't want to hurt anyone. I believed him. Fifteen years we spent perfecting these." The man nodded to the pipes and computers. "So long I nearly gave up hope. But one day he comes to me and says 'D'mitri you must see this, it's worked'. And it had. The machine produced a human. He was skinny and sickly but he was there."

"Who is the man that helped you?"

Harry's eyes flicked to the Doctor and then back. There were so many questions to ask. Why was the Doctor focusing on the identity of the guy who helped? Harry was more curious to figure out how the man had created human life and why he'd called him 'one of the set backs'. Had Harry been trying to thwart whatever was going on here before he'd ended up in that weird blue goo? But if that were true why wasn't he calling the Doctor and Rose set backs also? They were clearly trying to stop whatever these people were doing. Harry had a bad feeling about all of this.

The man shook his head. "He never gave me a proper name. Not in all that time I spent with him. He just kept calling himself the Master, of what I couldn't tell you."

The Doctor's face had gone ashen at that.

"You know the name." Harry observed.

"Well." The Doctor agreed.

"Th' Master." Rose repeated the name, a look of dawning comprehension on her face. "'S that like the Doctor? 'S he a time lord?"

"Time lord?" Harry mimicked with curiosity.

The Doctor was nodding though and he didn't look happy about it.

Harry glanced down at the stunned man on the floor. He never thought he'd have to see Tom Riddle, AKA Lord Voldemort again. He supposed he could sympathize with less than pleasant reunions.

"Alright, so I'm gathering there's some sort of human experimentation going on here and it's not for good causes if you've got people like Riddle here walking around. So we need to put a stop to it." Harry surmised moving forward. He looked around at the computer screens. "So… where's the off button?"

He'd never been good with muggle machinery. Maybe he could just zap it with a spell and let his magic do the hard part for him.

"It's not that simple!" the man on the floor seemed to fold out of himself to stop Harry.

Harry's eyes narrowed as he turned. "It sounds that simple." He replied flippantly.

"There are back up terminals." The man said shaking his head. "And I'm fairly certain he's been copying all the notes I've made on the machine's workings. Given enough time he could simply replicate it and start from the beginning."

"You said this took you fifteen years." Harry said incredulously.

"The first time I wouldn't doubt it." The Doctor chimed in. "But with notes and settings this could be set up again in a few months by someone who's smart… and that man is brilliant."

Harry twitched. "We can't just leave it here." He protested.

"By all means, no." The Doctor agreed. "But the Master needs to be dealt with first."

A bubble traveled imperiously up on its way to the top of the liquid dissolvent. The man in front watched it until it caught on the palm of the girl they'd just encased in it. A small frown tugged at his lips.

His companion rattled off numbers and statistics without end. Truth be told, the thing was running well. So why did they keep running into so many hiccups in the product. He glanced left and his eye caught a small blue puddle.

"What happened there?" he gestured to the puddle and completely cut off the man in the process.

The secretary fumbled with his notes. "It, um, it appears there was a slight malfunction with holding tubes B67 through C12."

This brought the Master's full attention onto him. "Were there any subjects in them?"

The secretary seemed on the verge of hyperventilation now that his boss was paying attention. "B90 had a subject two days ago but it was reported as diminished twelve hours ago."

The Master actually let his shoulders start to slump.

"Oh, um…"

Sharp eyes darted back to the secretary.

"C6 had a recent addition."

"Did they find it?"

"There's… no report saying so."

"I think it's time I had a talk with the personnel coordinator."

The secretary shivered.

I suppose it's because the story is still short but it hasn't seen many views yet. I hope you guys are enjoying it. Another update will be coming soon as long as my body will let me write again. Thanks for your patience.

Til next time!

~kanathia