Back to the game! My usual Ten/Martha M.O. resumes. This story is a stand-alone (at least as far as I know), so the relationship is more or less canon here. I don't know if there will be time or space (ha!) for romance in this story... I don't yet have a "feel" for it. Which is weird for me. :-)

There's not much to say about this story (yet), except there will be A LOT going on, a lot of questions and mysteries introduced, and I hope you enjoy and stick with them! And please take a moment to leave a review when you get to the end of the chapter! Reviews are love.

Here we go!

CHAPTER 1

It was a clear, sunny morning in London, in the spring of 2007. Miss Jones, a medical student, and a group of her cohorts, went on rounds with one of the attending retired-surgeons-turned-overpaid-consultants. She did not like working with Mr. Stoker - he had a knack for making otherwise capable students feel small and incompetent.

Case in point, when they visited Ms. Finnegan, admitted with some dizziness, he sarcastically called them "Britain's finest." This was just before they nervously put in their two cents on Finnegan's condition, and he rather gleefully shot them down cold. Later, he implied that this group of students were an "affliction" upon him.

Later still, upon meeting a patient known as John Smith, he dared Miss Jones to "amaze" him by seeing what she could find, as ailing the patient. As it turned out, Miss Jones heard two separate, distinct heartbeats coming from the patient. She did not know how to react, but her delay caused Stoker to wonder aloud at the safety of any future generations, as it seemed to him that Miss Jones could not actually locate a human heart. He put snarky, sardonic pressure on her to come up with a diagnosis, which she did shoddily in her confusion, and which he promptly stomped upon.

Miss Jones, though, was fairly well able to separate herself and her ego from Mr. Stoker's abuse. Some of her attending physicians she really respected, and she relished constructive criticism from them. Some of them she... well, she respected them less. She was never insolent toward them, and always listened to what they had to say regardless (even mean and impatient people could have knowledge to impart, even if it was simply about how not to do things). People like Stoker, she just had to take with a grain of salt. This experience was part of the game, and it was a necessary evil if she was to get where she was going.

Though, she felt a little sorry for Oliver and Julia, who were not as well-equipped for fending off Stoker's brand of belittling. Which was ridiculous, because Oliver Morgenstern was one of the most compassionate human beings she had ever met, and Julia Swales was one of the most thoroughly knowledgeable medical students currently in the game. Perhaps those qualities made them more sensitive than she?

No matter. Her mind was mostly on her family today anyway.

Though, the man with two hearts was indeed something interesting to think about. For a few reasons, actually...

Perhaps she would bring up the anomaly with one of the cooperating physicians in the next day or so. Though not Mr. Stoker. He did not deserve to have this shared with him.

The man known to the hospital's staff as John Smith noticed the heckling tone of Mr. Stoker's voice, and reckoned the pompous consultant was probably a bomb of insecurity of some sort. He knew, though, that to get to this point, year three or four of medical school, those kids must have some mettle, and a denigrating middle-manager-sort shouldn't be enough to deter them from becoming good doctors.

Perhaps Stoker thought he was building character in these young people, by being such an arse to them.

Then again, maybe he was just an arse.

Stoker, though, he filed away as ultimately unimportant and most likely harmless.

But Miss Jones caught his eye. And not just his eye. His ear. His sensibilities.

She'd listened to his dual heartbeat and not freaked out, nor told anyone. He'd winked at her knowingly, and she looked back at him steadily, with conspiracy in her eyes. There were her cryptic words about taking off his tie - she was telling him she had seen him before... but was she speaking in code? And there was the mischievous look she'd given him as the group moved away from his bedside, and she had trailed a bit behind them.

He had to admit, she was lovely. She was beautiful, in fact, and different. She was small, watchful and dark-skinned. All of these things were a coup to him... though he tried not to think too hard about it. It would ruin all of the surprise and mystery for later.

He decided that he couldn't just cool his heels in this hospital as long as she was here, so he would risk a quick consult with her, just to get a read on things. Maybe he could move on from this project, or maybe not.

He pulled on a dark blue bathrobe and followed the group of students without being seen. He did not hear them speaking to patients or being further battered verbally by Mr. Stoker - all of it was non-essential to him. He just wanted to watch where they went so he could see if he could get Miss Jones alone. He wondered if perhaps she'd get a break soon and come looking for him, but then again, he could count on nothing. She had the advantage - she seemed to know what was up. So he followed.

After about an hour, the group disassembled and seemed to take a breather. Miss Jones went to the ladies', then made her way down the hall to the locker room where doctors, nurses, orderlies and med students stored their personal effects. She appeared to be completely alone in the room...

"Hello," he said, standing at the end of the row of lockers.

She jumped. "Oh!" Then she pressed her hand to her chest. "You startled me!"

"Sorry."

"Mr. Smith, you really shouldn't be in here... shouldn't be out of bed. Does Dr. Ernst know..."

"Stop it now," he chided, taking a couple of steps forward. "We haven't got much time."

She pulled her phone from inside her locker and took a couple of steps back away from him. "Time for what?"

"How long have you been here? Infiltrating this hospital?" he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Uh" she riffed, her eyes searching him. "Well, I've been working here for about three months, if that's what you're asking."

"Three months?" he asked, disbelieving. "Blimey, where have I been?"

"Mr. Smith..."

"Have the plasma coils been working on the hospital for that long, or do you have some... prior knowledge?"

"Excuse me?"

"Is there some kind of repercussion that I need to know about?" he wanted to know. "Or even one that I don't need to know about?"

She denied knowing anything of what he was talking about. Though, he did not seem to be listening to her.

He put one hand behind his back and asked, "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"How the hell should I know?" she shrugged.

"I must not be paying much attention," he mused. "Listen, we need to talk properly, you and I..."

"No, you need to return to your bed right now, or I need to call security." She was surprisingly calm, and even smiling slightly, even as she brandished her mobile phone.

And so, John Smith, better known as the Doctor, backed off, with apologies. But now, he was rather confused himself.

Something was clearly wrong. Either she didn't remember him (how could she not? That was something to investigate, in and of itself.) or she was in some kind of deep cover and could not risk any sort of complicit remarks. But then, why the eye-flashes earlier? Why the conspiratorial smirks?

Either way, she'd made it perfectly plain that she was going to deny any involvement in the plasma coil investigation. Translation: she wanted him to leave her alone. At least for now.

Another hour and a half, and then the lunch hour arrived. And with it, a peculiar upward rain that the Doctor understood was caused by electromagnetic activity from the plasma coils. It was an H2O scoop that transported the entire hospital to the moon. Only later did he understand that it was an alien race with no jurisdiction on Earth, from above, attempting to contain the hospital, in the only way they could. It was not, in fact, someone or something on the inside.

And again, Mr. Smith and Miss Jones found themselves crossing paths.

He attempted contact again. This time, they were rather beyond the calling of security. She did not urge him back to bed, or seem to treat him as a mental case. This was a step in the right direction. If they were going to work together, she had to concede something to him, deep cover or not. It would just be a waste of time not to.

And in the next few minutes, the things she said only built on the case, that he was right about her. He called her "brilliant," and learned that she'd chosen the undercover moniker of "Martha Jones." He liked it. He wondered where that had come from. John Smith was common as a cold, it was a go-to name for anonymity. Martha Jones had a similar ring of everyday to it, and yet, it had that ring of not-so-everyday as well.

She pointed out to her friend that the air would have been sucked out already, if it were going to be, in the atmosphere on the moon. She rebutted his claim that they might die, simply with, "We might not." And out on the balcony, when she'd forced him to confess who he was, he'd said, "I'm the Doctor," as if she didn't know. Her answer was, "Me too... if I ever pass my exams."

Well. That clinched it.

And then she told him that he had to earn the right to be called Doctor by her. (Did she know something he didn't? Well, clearly she knew lots that he didn't... but what was that about? It wasn't the first time he'd contemplated having to earn that name, but... yikes.)

But then there was the thing about Canary Wharf, and her cousin. Her timid confession of believing in extraterrestrials, and her seemingly genuine surprise at seeing the Judoon crossing the lunar surface.

It was all dizzying. For a while.

They chased through the hospital staying one step ahead of the Judoon. They cloak-and-daggered about, investigating and surmising, and Martha Jones let the Doctor take the lead.

Hours later, by the time they came back to Mr. Stoker's office, and she tenderly, respectfully, closed the eyes of the rude consultant's corpse, given the evidence he had seen, in spite of some indicators of his initial assessment, he was now more or less convinced that he had been mistaken. She was not who he thought she was.

But she'd been so brilliant. And it wasn't the first time they'd met. But she was totally, seemingly, oblivious to that fact... so who the hell was she?

And when they exited the office, looked to their left and saw the Judoon coming at them, he knew he had to slow them down, in order to get to the MRI in time not to barbecue half the Earth.

In that moment, his state of more or less convinced necessarily became one hundred per cent certain. He had to make a snap decision, and it was the only thing he could think of. He needed something to make the Judoon stop moving forward for a few minutes. He could do that by confusing the scanners, but the way things were going, it looked like Martha Jones was going to register as purely human.

"Just forgive me for this," he said to her. "It could save a thousand lives. It means nothing... honestly nothing."

And he kissed her. Well and truly. Kissed her like he meant it.

He'd been hoping that traces of his saliva on her would be just enough to make the Judoon's hand-held thingie go haywire and make them wonder what the hell she was. (Perhaps if they ever found out, they could tell him.)

If there had been anything amiss at that point, both of their sensibilities would have tossed them apart in a nanosecond and ended that kiss as an assault on space and time. But nothing unpleasant happened. In fact, the kiss was very pleasant. He actually would have liked it go on longer, but he had an MRI to get to...

Damn.

Did this mean he had a huge ego? No, no... that notion had gone out the window. It just meant that he rather liked kissing beautiful women - no big revelation there.

But humans can sometimes harbour mystery, innocent as they often tended to be. There was nothing in their interactions that suggested that Martha Jones might be up to no good, but he still had to know. If nothing else, something had been set into motion today - something big - that much was clear, and he reckoned it was his job to make sure that that something was seen to.

And, well... he liked her. Can't fault him for that, right? Cool in a crisis, clever, self-sacrificing, and not, in any way, bad to look at.

"I just thought, since you saved my life, and I've got a brand-new sonic screwdriver that needs road-testing, you might fancy a trip," was what he said to her.

But in his mind...

Well, sometimes humans harbour mystery and something big was in motion. For now, he'd just leave it at that.