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Itwasicycold,andMarthatookasharpbreathinasthethingstruck her face. But it was blocking her mouth and nose, squirming and writhing as though it were trying to enter her throat.

Desperately, she grabbed at it with her hands: it was shiny and hard like leather, yet viscous and flowing like oil, and her fingernails made no difference.

With slow and inexorable force, the tentacle pushed her back against the wall, flowing around her head. She could feel it creeping slowly over her ears as she struggled, smothered in its grasp. Dizzi-ness washed over her as the oxygen in her lungs began to run out. In her panic, Martha kicked out at it. It felt like kicking a tree.

This is it, thought Martha through the fear, through the red haze clouding her mind. She dug her fingernails into the soil at her sides.

This is it.

Her life didn’t flash before her eyes. There were no visions of her family, no Mum, no Dad, no Leo or Tish. No Doctor. There was just the redness and the cold and the pain in her chest.

And then, as she felt her body sag, there was a lightness, a feeling of letting go. Somewhere, way away in the distance, she could see a faint, blue light. Was that. . . was that where she was supposed to go?

Into the light?

Then, suddenly, the light was gone, the coldness ripped from her and something pale burst out of the darkness.

‘Martha Jones!’ bellowed a voice that must have been her father’s.

‘Where are your Wellingtons?’

Martha took a huge, huge breath and the darkness swallowed her up again.

‘Get her out,’ ordered the Doctor, lifting the young woman’s body up towards Ty and the others. They hesitated. ‘Now!’ he shouted, his face as dark as storm clouds.

Ty stepped back as three of the men who’d come with them to find the Doctor’s ship rushed forwards and manoeuvred the unconscious girl – Martha – up and out of the otters’ nest.

‘What was that?’ asked Ty as Martha was laid gently on the rain-soaked ground and the Doctor leapt nimbly out through the hole he’d made in the nest’s canopy. The otters had scattered as the Doctor had crashed in.

‘This?’ The Doctor brandished a small, pen-like device in his hand –

the device that had, somehow, made the. . . the thing. . . wrapped around Martha’s head pull away and vanish into the water at the bottom of the nest.

‘No – that,’ Ty said, pointing back into the ruined nest.

The Doctor shook his head as he knelt down beside Martha and checked her pulse and breathing. ‘Oh that? No idea. But at least we know it’s not very partial to focused ultrasound, don’t we?’

The Doctor pulled back Martha’s eyelids to check her pupils. He seemed satisfied, and nodded.

‘She’ll be fine.’ He paused and brushed at the hair on her temples.

A pattern of tiny, red dots – pinpricks of blood – was visible. ‘Not so sure about this, though,’ he added, his voice low and concerned.

‘Um, why’s she dressed like that?’ Ty asked, realising even as she said it that it probably wasn’t quite the right thing to say under the circumstances. Martha was wearing an extremely dirty, extremely ripped silk ball-gown, and on her hands were elbow-length gloves.

Ty couldn’t imagine clothing more unsuited to Sunday. Was this how adjudicators dressed?

But the Doctor didn’t answer, sitting back on his haunches and peering down through the hole in the roof of the nest.

They’d been tramping through the dawn-lit forest for almost half an hour, on their way to rescue the Doctor’s ship – his TARDIS, as he’d called it – when suddenly he’d stopped.

‘Hear that?’ he said, holding up a hand for silence.

Ty hadn’t heard anything.

‘It’s Martha!’ he’d shouted, before haring off.

Ty and the others could only race after him. By the time they’d caught up with him, he was standing in the bottom of an otter nest, the roof caved in where he’d smashed through it. And he was holding out the pencil-thing with a glowing, blue tip – holding it against. . .

Ty didn’t know what he’d been holding it against. All she could see in the gloom of the nest