‘Is that him?’ Donna whispered.

The Doctor shook his head. ‘Nope. Shame.’

‘Excellent,’ the man intoned, a slight accent marring his otherwise precise English. ‘You are the Doctor.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘We can sense that you are not… entirely human.’

‘“Entirely”?’ The Doctor seemed affronted. ‘I’m not remotely human, thank you. Dreadful species. Always fighting and grumbling.’

‘Oi!’ said Donna.

‘See what I mean? Barely raised themselves above the use of guttural noises and, blimey, that stuff they call pop music. I mean, I know I’m getting on a bit, but it comes to something when you really can’t tell the boys from the

girls or understand the lyrics, doesn’t it? Then of course there’s the food. Have you ever had one of their hamburgers?’

The older man raised his hand to stop the Doctor’s gabbling, so he did, but smiled. ‘I could go on all night, but I’m guessing that might annoy you, so what do you say we just chat instead about why you’ve taken over these poor people’s minds?’

‘It’s lineage,’ the little man replied.

The Doctor threw a look to Donna, and she could see that wasn’t an answer he’d been expecting. ‘As in genealogy?’ he called back.

‘Four of the humans here can trace their families back to one specific place in time. That gives me power over them.’

‘And the others?’

‘Drones. Slaves. Willing servants.’

‘Willing? Really? That’s nice. Not really true, though, is it? But if you want to believe it, fair enough.’ The Doctor started walking towards them, so Donna had to follow. ‘OK then, where are you from originally?’ He pointed up to the face formation in the skies. ‘Something to do with that, I’m guessing.’

The small man with the scar shrugged. ‘All in good time, Doctor. Madam Delphi needs to speak with you.’

He raised his arm in the Doctor’s direction and, before Donna could so much as gasp, a thick, crackling blast of purplish-red light shot out from his fingertips, smacking the Doctor straight in the chest and knocking his body back a couple of feet.

He was almost unconscious by the time Donna reached him. ‘Get away… warn people…’ was all he managed before his eyes rolled back and the rhythmic rising and falling of his burned chest slowed to an unconscious crawl.

Donna knew there was nothing she could do right away other than what he’d asked of her. She had to find help.

‘And the human?’ asked one of the others in the group.

‘Kill her,’ the man replied, and Donna saw the others all raise their arms in similar gestures.

‘Not today, thank you,’ Donna yelled and ran back towards the French windows, zigzagging as she ran, aware of bolts of purple energy crashing into the trees on either side of her.

She was almost at the French windows when they exploded into metal and glass around her.

Throwing her arms over her face, Donna ran straight through the debris and into the darkened mansion. She made her way into a hallway, where a huge wooden staircase went to the upper levels.

‘Seen the movies,’ she muttered. She headed to the rear of the steps where, sure enough, there was a doorway leading to a cellar.

She wrenched it open, counted to three and slammed it shut, really loudly.

She then tiptoed to one of the offices and slipped inside it.

Seconds later, alerted by her ruse, a small group of the people from outside arrived at the cellar door. She watched as two of them walked down the steps, leaving

one on guard. Damn, she had hoped they’d all go down and she could shut them in down there.

The one on guard seemed to be looking around and for a second Donna thought he’d work out where she was hiding. Then another person she’d not seen before suddenly crashed into the man, sending him flying heavily into a wall.

The newcomer rammed a chair against the door handle of the cellar, trapping the two inside as Donna had planned and then yelled straight at her: ‘Come on!’

Donna ran straight to her new ally and allowed herself to be led down a corridor.

‘Kitchen…’ the newcomer breathed. ‘This way…’

There was a small explosion and Donna guessed the duo had blasted their way out of the cellar. ‘Good idea while it lasted,’ she grinned. ‘I’m Donna Noble.’

‘I’m Miss Oladini,’ said Miss Oladini hurriedly. ‘Nice to meet you. Car?’

‘Came by cab.’

‘No, their car?’

‘Worth a try.’

They crashed through the kitchenette door and into the staff car park, straight towards the abandoned car. Donna took the driving seat.

‘Keys?’ asked Miss Oladini.

‘No keys,’ Donna said. ‘Cos life’s never that convenient.’

Miss Oladini reached down under the dashboard and yanked out some wires. ‘Misspent youth,’ she said.

The engine turned over sluggishly, and then died again.

‘Once more,’ Donna urged. ‘But if it doesn’t work, give up, cos they’ll know where we are by now!’

Miss Oladini tried the hotwiring again, with no luck.

Two of their pursuers appeared at the kitchen door, arms raised.

‘Run!’ Donna screamed and threw herself out and away from the car as the purple energy smashed into it and the car exploded.

Donna was lying in some bushes, Veena’s dress in tatters. ‘Oh I am so dead,’ she muttered.

There was no sign of Miss Oladini, but it was difficult to see anything with the burning car blotting out her view.

Donna looked around and saw a bicycle propped up against a far wall.

‘You have got to be kidding me,’ she muttered, then looked at her clothes. ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’

Hoping the same flames that were hiding her attackers from her would keep her out of their point of view, she slipped across the lawn to the bike.

With one last look around for Miss Oladini, and a sad realisation that the car had most likely become her funeral pyre, Donna grabbed the bike and clambered onto it. She wobbled slightly, slowly getting used to riding again, and then shot off down the pathway and then onto the main road.

No way was she going to get back to Chiswick by bike, she didn’t have three days spare, but it might get her to the nearest town.

As Donna pedalled furiously, the burning car lit up the front of the Copernicus Array behind her, flames

reflecting off the mansion’s huge windows. But of people she could see no sign.

SUNDAY

When she was growing up, Donna had heard the phrase ‘the shot that was heard around the world’ used to describe the effect the assassination of US President John Kennedy had on the whole of western civilisation. People always said they could remember where they were when it happened.

As a child of the 1970s, she grew up hearing about things like the moon landing, the murders of both Kennedys and Martin Luther King, and Winston Churchill’s state funeral, but never wholly understood them. In a childhood of spacehoppers, Donny Osmond, chopper bikes and Green Shield Stamps, words like ‘Blitz’

and ‘rationing’ and ‘bubble and squeak’ just meant the old people were reminiscing about twenty years previously and probably moaning that the youth of today never knew when they had it so good.

The first time Donna had found herself saying that – to

one of the neighbourhood kids who’d scratched her late father’s car – she was appalled at herself. She had finally become exactly what she’d derided in her parents and grandparents when she was their age. Nowadays there was nothing she liked to hear more than Granddad Wilf go on about the war, his life in the parachute regiment or Nanna Eileen’s days as a Land Girl.

Today was a day like 22 November 1963 – a day when another shot would be heard around the world.

Sunday had, to be honest, started pretty badly. Donna had woken in her bed (this was a good thing), although she’d only had about two hours’ sleep (this was a bad thing).