‘Think a cross between Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Richard Branson and you have Dara Morgan.’

‘And who’s he when he’s at home?’ asked the Doctor.

‘He runs MorganTech. Been around for a few years now. We did some research on him at school, but there’s not that much out there. He’s not keen on unauthorised biogs.’

The Doctor looked at the group in the van. ‘So let me get this right. We have beams of light hitting the ground, hypnotised people chanting to the stars thanks to a newspaper astrologer telling you she’s changing the world, new gadgets given away free to people who are of Italian descent and no one thinks to tell me they’re all

connected?’

The others looked at each other. Donna spoke eventually. ‘We can’t be expected to make the leaps of logic you do, you know.’

‘They’re not leaps, they’re clearly defined paths of evidence and… oh, never mind. Where do I find this MorganTech?’

‘Near where we live,’ Lukas said. ‘In Brentford.’

‘Oh that’s right,’ Wilf said. ‘They have that big office and hotel complex on the Golden Mile.’

‘And the guy in charge is called Dara Morgan?’

‘Yup.’

‘Course he is,’ the Doctor muttered. ‘He would be.

Lukas, I want you to try and remember everything you can about him, all right?’ The Doctor chucked the M-TEK

onto the floor, and Joe went to scoop it up. ‘Leave it alone, Joe – it’s dangerous.’

He sonicked the back of the van, and the doors sprang open. ‘Come on, we’re not going to get past this lot, we need to walk and find new transport.’

‘Doctor,’ Wilf protested. ‘Netty’s…’

‘Hey,’ Netty said. ‘I can walk as well as you can, Wilfred Mott.’ She linked her arm through his. ‘We can support each other.’

He smiled down at her.

And Donna was going to do the same until she saw the look on the Doctor’s face.

Like it had been at dinner the night before.

He was looking at Netty… strangely.

Donna pulled the boys closer to her. ‘Stick with me,’

she told them, ‘and we’ll help the Doctor put an end to all this.’

‘Donna,’ the Doctor said suddenly, and in a way Donna had got used to. It was his warning voice.

Between them and the chanting crowd was a group of people. People Donna recognised from the night before, at the Copernicus Array.

‘Not good?’

‘Not good.’

‘How did you reprogram the M-TEK?’ asked the little man at the front of the group. Donna remembered him, too. He had led them, and she realised from his accent he was, of course, Italian.

‘Talent,’ the Doctor said.

‘That is not part of the plan,’ the little man said. ‘We cannot allow a weak link in the chain.’

‘Oh, sorry,’ the Doctor said, indicating with his hand for the rest of his group to move away, slightly behind him, leaving him stood between the Mandragora-powered group and the van. ‘I left it in the back. Do you want me to get it?’

‘You will leave it,’ the Italian said, as he pushed past the Doctor and clambered into the van.

The Doctor smiled at the rest of the group. An elderly duo to one side, four younger people at the back, a heavily built man to the left.

‘I wonder how many of you are actual San Martino descendents, and how many are just their… slaves?

Helpers? Unwitting participants in the murder of innocent professors at observatories? If you can fight Mandragora,

maybe we can—’

The Doctor hit the tarmac hard as the blue van exploded into flames and debris.

Donna and the boys were already running, Wilf and Netty, staggering after them.

Good.

He glanced at the funeral pyre for the little Italian man that had once been a van.

‘That’s one way of eliminating the weak M-TEK, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Bit OTT if you ask me though.’

And he got up, to be surrounded by the group. The burly man seemed to be their new leader and when he spoke, the Doctor recognised a strong Greek accent.

‘Madam Delphi wants to see you.’

‘Well, all right, but I want to check my friends are OK.’

‘They’re coming too.’

‘Aw, I’m not sure I agree to that part of the deal.’

‘Or we kill you now,’ the Greek added.

At which point Wilf, Netty, Donna and the boys emerged from hiding and were quickly rounded up.

The Doctor sighed. ‘I think that was probably a bluff,’

he said to Wilf. ‘They wanted me alive, remember?’

‘We’re in this together,’ Wilf said. ‘When I was in the paras, we never left anyone behind.’

The Doctor nodded. ‘Oh well, now we’re all here. Got a firm’s coach?’

‘We walk,’ said one of the older people, an American woman.

‘It’s a long way,’ Donna said.

One of the younger men shrugged. ‘It’ll keep us all fit,

then.’

And they began the walk across London.

Everywhere they went, little groups of people were together, chanting to the skies.

Others could be seen, hiding, scared, occasionally looting shops, probably assuming this wasn’t going to be cleared up any time soon, and that food would become scarce.

‘It’s like the Blitz,’ Netty said at one point, as they walked through Leicester Square.

‘Without the bombs and collapsed buildings,’ the Doctor said. ‘Thank goodness.’

The Doctor allowed his group to separate slightly, Donna noted. She was bringing up the rear with the boys, and Wilf was getting tired, and was only a few steps ahead. Behind her, the Greek man and older Americans.

Ahead of the Doctor, the four younger people.

The Doctor was with Netty, having swapped places with Wilf, his arm now linked with hers.

Donna couldn’t hear what he was saying, but Donna could tell from the urgency he gave off in waves and the lack of response from the old lady other than the odd nod, that they weren’t really discussing London’s architecture.

She almost asked her granddad what he thought it was about, but didn’t. Because if it went wrong, if it all turned out bad, she didn’t want him blaming the Doctor for anything.

Donna realised this was the first time she’d actually found herself questioning the Doctor’s actions for quite some time. And she didn’t like it.

A couple of hours passed. They had been allowed to stop occasionally, the younger people sorting out food (usually by using their Mandragora powers to blow doors off shops and nick stuff).

At one point, the Doctor and Netty had sat together in a deserted burger place, while the boys munched on cold chips and muffins. Netty had found some paper on a clipboard and was writing something on it, and the Doctor was nodding.

Wilf asked Donna whether there was any point in trying the microwave ovens, and when she glanced back Netty was alone, and the Doctor was trying to talk to the Greek man.

There wasn’t time for microwaving burgers, as they were told to start walking again, despite the Doctor’s protestations.

The boys were soon tired again. Netty and Wilf were very tired indeed. Donna was utterly exhausted, but the Doctor… he just kept going. He had Lukas and Joe up front with him now, trying to take their minds off it all by giving them a history of Cromwell Road and the various buildings as they marched along it.

The old American couple by rights ought to have been dead on their feet, but no, they were always there, one or other, sometimes both, with their arms pointing forward, ready to use their Mandragora power as she’d seen at the Copernicus Array the night before.

It was dark by the time they reached Hammersmith, and Donna reckoned it would take another hour or so to reach Brentford. Possibly longer, as Netty and Wilf were

stopping more and more often.

‘My granddad is very old,’ she said at one point to the Greek man, eliciting an outraged, if exhausted, ‘Oi, I’m fine’ from Wilf.

The Greek man just shrugged and said that Madam Delphi would not be kept waiting.