Hi guys! Did you miss me?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

So, this story picks up about five days after "Fail Safe" leaves off. It is not necessary that you read "Fail Safe" to understand what's going on here. This story is a totally different animal.

But here's what you need to know about "Fail Safe": The Tenth Doctor, through a bizarre set of circumstances, went rogue, like the Master. The bizarre set of circumstances involved becoming romantically involved with a post-Journey's End Martha Jones (who also went rogue for a while), and making the acquaintance of a UNIT physicist called Lawrence Fortis. In the process of deciding what to do about their rogue Time Lord friend, Larry and Martha's sister Tish met and began dating. Eventually, both the Doctor and Martha were pulled under control and made "good" again with the help of UNIT, and some of the last vestiges of compassion, humanity and love for her fellow man that Martha Jones possessed.

Oh, and, Martha was fired from UNIT. They offered her the job back, but she opted not to take it.

And now, it looks like they owe UNIT their lives. Or at least their sanity. But our heroes would help, even if that weren't true, wouldn't they?

This promises to be big and convoluted, and I just hope I can pull it off! Hope you enjoy!

Early September, 2008

It was a Friday… at least on Earth.

It had been five days since the Doctor and his lovely Companion had been subjected to several hours of testing by UNIT officials, to determine whether they were fit to be set free to roam the cosmos as they might. After a month-long bout of, as the Doctor had put it, feeling free from morality, UNIT was quite leery of the two of them. Even after they'd been put through the process of having their attributes targeted and their consciousnesses veritably turned inside-out through a localised black hole, the organisation had insisted that their energies be tested for ill intent, interference from outside sources, et cetera, et cetera.

The Doctor, in truth, wasn't sure how well those instruments worked, as far as what Colonel Mace and UNIT felt they needed to know about the two of them. But, he reckoned that resisting the tests in any way would be considered a sign of guilt. So he did it, and had advised Martha Jones to do the same. It made Mace feel better, as well as the team of physicists led by Dr. Lawrence Fortis, and the Doctor and Martha were sure, at this stage, that they were back to their old benevolent selves… so what harm could it do?

"I still have a headache," Martha complained at the end of breakfast on the following day. "Ugh. Do you think their blue beam gave me a tumour?"

He smirked. "It's probably just the wine from last night."

They had spent the evening at a wine tasting in Bordeaux; cheeses, fruits, various sauces, and of course, plenty of the Reserve blend being showcased at the centre of the whole affair.

"I thought good wine wasn't supposed to give you a hangover."

He smirked again. "Why don't you just take some paracetamol and go have a kip?"

"I feel like I've been horizontal, for one reason or another, for the better part of a month," she commented.

"You say that as though it were a bad thing."

"Well," she said, blushing. "Considering what was going on in my mind for most of that time, I…"

But she was interrupted by a phone call. Her iPhone buzzed in her pocket, and played the song It's End of the World As We Know It, so she knew it was someone from UNIT trying to get in touch. She cursed as she pulled out the device and set it on the table.

"Should I answer it?" she asked. "It's probably Colonel Mace calling to check up on us."

It was a fair assumption, as Colonel Mace had phoned twice in the past five days, just as a "courtesy."

"You'd probably better," he said. "We don't want them to think we're dodging them."

"Yeah, as much as we would like to," she muttered. She sighed and pressed the button that would allow the apparatus to become a speakerphone. "Hello?"

"Hey, it's me," a voice said. It was Larry Fortis, UNIT physicist and, as it happened, boyfriend of Martha's sister Tish.

"Oh, hi, Larry," Martha said. "Nice to hear from you, for a change. Mace got you doing his courtesy calls?"

"What? No," said the physicist gravely. "I need help."

"With what?" the Doctor chimed in. "You don't sound good."

"Larry, are you in trouble?" Martha wondered.

"No, not as such," he said. "But I've been called in on a case in the States, and…. I'm totally stumped. I think I need a Time Lord."

"Wait, you're in the States?" she asked. "Since when?"

"I arrived this morning."

"Are you in New York?"

"No, Colorado."

"Why?"

"Originally they'd called in operatives from the New York UNIT office, but when they got there, they couldn't identify a… never mind. It's a long story. Someone on the scene said she thought they needed a physicist, and the New York office doesn't have a physics department."

"They don't?" asked the Doctor.

"No," Martha sighed. "Only London and Tokyo have physics. New York and Rio have ballistics analysts and a forensic pathology team. Go figure."

"Okay…" the Doctor said, with a frown. "Why wouldn't London have those things as well?"

"Funding, I would think. I don't know."

"Anyway," Larry said pointedly through the phone. "There's this house… and things are weird here, you two. I'm here, Dr. Enger is here… between the two of us, that's five Ph.D.'s and about forty years of experience, and it's freaking us out. It's like nothing we've ever seen."

"All right," said the Doctor. "We'll be there in a few minutes. Can you give me coordinates?"

"It's 12th September, 2008, three-twenty-eight p.m. in Denver, Colorado. The address is 434 South Niagara Street."

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW

Three days earlier…

Diane Wesson drove west-bound down the street where she'd grown up. The dwelling was in the middle of a block on South Niagara Street, in Denver, as part of a neighbourhood that seemed frozen in time since the Post-War, American suburban expansion. It was a calm, sleepy little quarter; the houses were all single-story brick numbers, with a one-car garage and a nice square of manicured lawn.

Her mother, Lillian, now in her eighties, had rung ten minutes prior, frantic. Unable to discern what the elderly lady was actually saying, Diane had told her to sit tight, that she would be there in a few minutes – just as soon as she could get all of her gardening tools stowed away.

As she pulled up close to the house, she spied her mother, standing in the driveway in her tan velour jogging suit, with her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She was acting, as usual, as though it were freezing, though the temperature was very pleasantly hovering in the sixties. The garage door was ajar, and the Merlot-coloured Buick sat pristinely inside.

Diane parked her Honda at the end of the driveway (illegally), and got out.

"Mother, what are you doing just standing in the driveway?"

"Had to get out of the house, and I am not going back in."

"What? Why?"

"It is haunted!" She said each word in a very clipped, emphatic manner, as though she'd told her daughter a hundred times to no avail.

Diane sighed. "Don't be silly, Mom, now, come on…" She tried to take her mother's elbow and lead her back in.

Lillian pulled her arm away. "George McPhail came to the door."

"Mr. McPhail has been dead since 1979. Remember? You went to his funeral. We both did."

"Yeah, I remember. That's why I'm saying the place is haunted."

"Are you sure you're not just remembering a time when he did come to the door, when he was alive? He was our mailman. For years. I'm sure you have a lot of old memories of him knocking on the front door with a package."

Lillian frowned. Her drawn-on eyebrows crinkled, and her powdered makeup seemed to crack. "What do you take me for? I saw him this afternoon, clear as day! Clear as I'm seeing you!"

Diane's mother could be abrasive, and frankly, Diane had begun to wonder if she'd been losing her marbles just a little.

"Well," Diane said, tutting. "What did Mr. McPhail say?" She put both hands on her hips in wonderment. She was a tall woman, and had always been slim, but noticed today just how bony her hips had become.

"Just the usual things he always used to say," her mother told her. "'Good afternoon, Mrs. Handler. Nice weather we're having, eh? So, how're John and the kids?'"

"And what did you say?"

"Nothing! I screamed and slammed the door!"

"Then what happened? Did Mr. McPhail knock again?"

"How the hell should I know? I grabbed my cellular phone off the table and came outside to call you."

Diane regarded her mother for a few moments. "Mother, are you sure it was him? There are a lot of guys who could look like Mr. McPhail."

"It was him, Diane," her mother insisted, with finality.

Perhaps removing her from here wouldn't be such a bad idea, Diane thought sadly. She looked at the blonde brick house, the one her parents had bought forty-two years ago, and her heart sank. She felt something ending.

"Okay," sighed the daughter. "Why don't we pack a bag for you, and you can come stay with me for a few days?"

"What good with that do?" hissed the mother. "When I come back in a few days, the joint will still be haunted."

"Well, what do you want me to do about it? Perform an exorcism?"

"Call someone!"

Diane laughed. "Who am I going to call? The Ghostbusters?"

"There's got to be someone."

"Mother, the only kinds of people who respond to calls like this are frauds. Crackpots! Whackos!"

"No, that's not true," said Lillian. "I heard about…"

"Yeah, I know, you saw it on one of those cable channels," Diane sighed, having heard about numerous mediums her mother had watched on television, who seemed to have a link with the spirit world. "In any case, we can talk about it later. Let's get you out of the driveway." She began to tug again at the sleeve of the tan jogging suit.

"I am not going back in that house, Diane. You can pack me a bag. Make sure to bring my spare teeth, my crosswords, my reading glasses, my girdle…"

"Yeah, yeah, I know the drill," the daughter muttered, making her way up the driveway and into the house through the garage.

"I'll wait in the car," Lillian said, making her way toward the Honda. She opened the door, climbed in with some effort, and settled into the front passenger seat, seeming to brood.

Diane took about five minutes to pack up her mother's everyday things, plus three changes of clothes. Then she closed the garage door and slid in behind the driver's seat.

"I know what you're thinking," Lillian said, darkly.

"You do, do you?"

"Yes. You think I'm crazy. You think I've finally gone over the edge… senile dementia, or some such. And you're thinking that you're taking me away from here where I've fallen into a rut that might be destroying my mind, and that possibly, you'll never be bringing me back to live here. You're thinking that getting me out of this venue will do me some good… that I need to shake out the cobwebs, and play with people my own age. You might even be wondering if you could take care of me yourself, full-time."

"Mother…" Diane said, her face heating up. Inwardly, she was cursing her mother's still very acute intuition.

"Well, that's not going to happen, Miss Diane. I am not ready for that yet." She turned and faced her daughter, and used an index finger to make her point. "So you take me to your house, but then you call someone to get rid of that ghost so that I can live in my own house again. You are not going to use this as an excuse to put me in a rest home, have you got that?"

Diane started the car. "Yeah, I've got it," she said, blandly.

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