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Leela reached Chloe just as she was pushing herself upwards. She grabbed her under the arms and heaved her to her feet. Using the forward momentum of her run and their combined loss of balance she flung them both to the edge of the track and tumbled them over the low fence. The lorries thundered on by, hooting and howling.

Shit,' Chloe moaned, 'that hurts.' She turned over and sat up. I bet I'm a mass of cuts and bruises,' she said, examining her hands and knees and touching her face. 'Is my face bleeding?' She peered at Leela. 'Yours isn't.'

'Can you see it?' Leela asked, gesturing at the track. 'Can you see where we are?'

Chloe took a deep breath and let it out slowly. 'Oh yes,' she said. 'And do you have any idea at all how we ended up on the motorway with no motor?'

'You do not remember what happened?'

I remember being chased about the campus by a walking corpse. But there was no walking corpse was there? And I don't suppose it was the campus was it?' She shook her head and groaned. The pain seems real anyway,'

she said.

"This is all real,' Leela said.

'I hope so,' Chloe said. 'I didn't like The Matrix all that much. I like it a whole hell of a lot less now I find I'm in it.'

'Do you know why the Tesh want you dead?' Leela asked, going to retrieve her knife from where it lay under the low fence.

'No?' Chloe asked.

'That is unfortunate; Leela said. 'It is easier to find and fight an enemy whose purpose you understand.'

'We could ask them,' Chloe suggested.

When I find them I will kill them,' Leela said flatly. Their reasons will be of no help.'

'Isn't that a bit drastic?' Chloe asked.

Leela looked into her face and saw her uncertainty. It struck her that the Tesh was someone the student knew. 'You think you know who it is who did this to you.'

'I still don't know why,' Chloe said. 'But I think I might have recognised that voice after all. Well, not so much the voice as the way he kept calling me

"girl".' She sat staring at the traffic.

'It is someone you know,' Leela prompted.

'I'm not a bad person,' Chloe said. 'Why would someone I know want to kill me? What have I ever done to make Josh Randall hate me that much?'

'You've worked in the same academic institution for several years, but you've never so much as visited this?' the Doctor said. 'I find that hard to believe.' He was finding the conversation difficult to maintain. Barry Hitchins' mood had not improved despite an invigorating walk.

'You're something of an innocent aren't you,' Barry remarked gloomily.

They were approaching the low, grass mound studded with intertwined spirals of clear glass and opaque photovoltaics which was the roof of the developmental engineering department. Most of the department was underground and it was accessed through a revolving doorway set into one side of the turf-covered roof dome. The whole installation was located at the extreme edge of the university's property, and its only link to the main complex of buildings was one straight path through the elegant parkland.

'Weren't you the slightest bit curious?' the Doctor asked.

"This is Finer's fiefdom. I don't think even Bill Parnaby's had the conducted tour, and he's the nearest thing the man has to a friend.' Barry said.

'Whereas me? I'm not exactly top of his Christmas card list. I'm a pariah you realise, academically speaking.'

'Not any more,' the Doctor said cheerfully. 'You're unemployed now, academically speaking.'

They walked down the slate-tiled cutting that led to the revolving door. The door stopped revolving as they approached it.

'We don't have the required security clearance,' Barry said as the Doctor gave it a futile shove.

'Required by whom?'

Barry shrugged, 'The university? Finer? Does it really matter?'

The Doctor stepped back from the doorway. 'Of course it really matters,' he said in a loud voice. How do the students get in?'

"They're registered and