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  The Whitney Street Mystery 
 by Teyla  

 AN: Beta'ed by euclase.

---------------------------------------------------------

So far, it had been an extremely ordinary day. Wilson had gotten up at
seven thirty, as always, had gone through his usual morning routine, had
gotten stuck in the usual early morning traffic jam, had arrived at his
office at 9.45 sharp, as always, and had spent the next three hours
handing out good news and death sentences to fairly equal amounts. The
cafeteria lunch had been as taste bud-numbingly bland as usual, and right
now, he was sitting behind his desk and scheming a four week torture plan
for Mr. Sanderson, who was in for another round of chemo. Wilson didn't
expect the rest of the day to offer him anything out of the ordinary.

That conviction stayed strong even when House barged into his office
around four o'clock, announcing that he was holding an alien life form
captive in the isolation room. Wilson didn't even look up from his papers,
just indicated the couch with a hand-wave and asked House to tell him all
about it.

Wilson had to admit, though, that an X-ray that showed no lungs, but very
distinctly the shape of two hearts occupying the chest cavity, was
something even an oncologist didn't see every day.

He slipped his hands into his pockets and squinted at the light board.
"How did you do this?" he asked House, who was sprawling on the couch and
looking rather smug. "It looks perfectly real."

"Well, duh." House twirled his cane between his fingers. "Of course it
does. It is real."

Wilson rolled his eyes. "It is not." He gestured at the X-ray. "There are
no lungs!"

House shrugged and pulled his PSP from his pocket. "Call Lucy in Radiology
if you don't believe me. She took it."

Wilson stared at him for another moment, then sighed and went over to his
desk. The sooner he made the call, the quicker he'd get this over with and
get back to work.

"Hi, this is Dr. Wilson," he said when the phone was picked up at the
other end. "Dr. House just showed me an X-ray that can't possibly exist.
Could you -"

"Don't even talk to me about that," said Lucy. "And don't you dare tell me
I made a mistake when I took the image, because I didn't."

"You... " Wilson frowned and looked over at House, who was absorbed in his
game. "You're telling me you really did take this image?"

"I sure did, and I didn't make a mistake. Hell, I've been doing this for
almost twenty years; I know how to take a damn chest X-ray! If anything,
the machine's wonky."

Wilson opened his mouth and closed it again. "You... you're in on the
joke. Aren't you?"

"I'm in on no fucking joke!" At the volume of her voice, Wilson flinched.
"I took that X-ray, and I saw what was on it! I even took a second shot,
because I couldn't believe it, either. We've tested the machine, and it's
working perfectly fine. So either we're all seeing things, or that guy
really has no lungs and two working hearts." Wilson heard her take a deep
breath, and when she continued, she sounded a bit calmer. "What did you
expect from a guy who doesn't even have a damn pulse?"

Wilson blinked. "Uh... okay. Thank you, Lucy. Er. Bye."

He hung up and looked up at House, who had put away his PSP and was
grinning. "So," Wilson said and walked over to the X-ray again. "This is
no joke, huh?"

"No joke," House said, and he still sounded way too damn smug for Wilson's
tastes. Wilson squinted and inspected the X-ray more closely, took in the
two aortic arches and symmetric bulges of the twin hearts. He blinked.
Looking at this for too long made his head spin.

"Patient X, huh," he said. "Tell me about him."

"Well," House said, getting comfortable. "This afternoon at 2 p.m., Huey
and Louie from dispatch received an anonymous report of a body in a side
alley off Tedmore Street. They sent Dewey and Donald out in a unit, and
when they got there, they found a man, white, mid-thirties, wearing a suit
and a brown coat. Initially, Dewey and Donald assumed he was dead, because
they didn't find a pulse. But then, they realized that he was breathing."

"Breathing. Guy with no pulse, breathing. Come to think of it; guy with no
lungs, breathing."

"Admittedly only very shallowly."

Wilson chuckled and shook his head. "This has got to be a joke," he said.
"I mean, come on."

"Dewey and his uncle didn't really understand it, either, but since
they're aware that they're only two dumb ducks from Duckburg, they figured
they'd take him in and let the smart people figure out what was going on."

Wilson crossed the room to sit on the edge of his desk. "Okay, and so what
did the smart people do?"

"First of all, an ECG." House pulled a paper from his pocket and handed it
to Wilson. Wilson unfolded it and looked at the graphs.

"Wow." He raised his eyebrows. "His resting heart rate is 10?"

House rolled his eyes. "Leave it to you to pay attention to the smallest
detail first." He gestured in direction of the paper. "Look at the sinus
rhythm! Or should I say rhythms."

"He's got two," Wilson nodded and looked up. "Well, he would, since he's
got two hearts."

House nodded. "I guess it's less impressive when you've already seen the
X-ray. This is what we did next, by the way."

Wilson attention was still on the ECG print-out. "The rhythms are out of
phase," he said. "That would explain the no-pulse thing."

"Yup. While one heart's contracting and pumping out blood, the other one
is sucking it in. That way he gets a steady pressure in his vessels,
instead of systole and diastole."

"That's pretty amazing." Wilson nodded. "Did you do any other tests?"

House shook his head. "Not yet. Cuddy got cold feet when she saw the X-ray
and made us lock him up in the isolation room."

"Right." Wilson put aside the ECG paper and crossed his arms. "This is a
pretty elaborate joke you've set up there, and I have to say, the
explanation for the lack of pulse really is very original. What is it, my
birthday?"

House looked up and smirked. "Skepticism. All great scientists had to
fight the skepticism of their narrow-minded colleagues. Please don't make
me say that geocentrism is the only true religion."

Wilson held up his hands, but he couldn't fight off a smile. "C'mon,
House, I mean, this is all very well thought out, but do you really think
you could get me with an overlay of two ECGs and a fake chest X-ray?"

"Actually," House said and reached for his cane, "no. I didn't. And that's
why I stole this." He pulled something from his pocket and held it up.

Wilson squinted. "What is it?"

"They found it in his coat pocket." House turned the object in his
fingers. "I took it to find out what it does."

Wilson held out his hand, and House placed the object in it.

It was a silvery pen-shaped thing with a blue tip and several buttons. It
looked like an oversized LED light. Wilson weighed it in his hand. It was
surprisingly heavy. He looked up. "So, what does it do?"

House grinned. "Try it."

Wilson raised an eyebrow, then looked down and pressed one of the buttons.
The blue tip started to glow, but aside from that, nothing happened.

"You have to point it at something."

Feeling a little ridiculous, Wilson turned around and pointed the object
at his computer screen. He pressed the button - and jumped back when there
was a sudden whining noise, a flash, and then splinters from the shattered
screen flying in every direction.

"Fuck!"

He dropped the device and spun around. "You knew it would do this?"

House was looking at the shattered screen with raised eyebrows. "Actually,
no," he said. "When I tried it, all it did was put me on top of the Tetris
high score."

"Oh, great." Wilson began to brush plastic splinters off his shirt. "Good
thing I don't have one of those big old CRTs, isn't it?" he said, his
voice a bit testy.

"Who knows, maybe it wouldn't have exploded that one," House said. "Hand
me that thing, will you?"

Wilson reached down and carefully picked the pen-shaped thing from between
the ruins of his monitor. "Kindly don't break anything else, okay?" he
said as he gave it to House.

"This is fascinating," House said, and Wilson recognized House's
on-to-something tone. And that was the moment when it began to sink in
that House might not be joking. House definitely enjoyed a good prank, but
he was also the laziest person Wilson knew. Setting up a ruse like this
one would take much more work than he knew House would ever invest in
something that was supposed to be a simple distraction from every-day
routine. Also, House was smart, but Wilson didn't think he was quite
capable of building a device that exploded computer monitors. And there
was this tone he had used just now, the tone he only used when he had
found something new, something unexplained, something he would be able to
focus his attention on for a while without getting bored.

Something like a patient with no lungs and two hearts who carried
technology of unheard-of design with him in his coat pocket, maybe.

"So..." Wilson stopped brushing down his shirt and turned back to House.
"The patient's in the isolation room, you say?"

"Yeah. That's where Cuddy made us lock him up." With visible effort, House
tore his eyes away from the screen-shattering device and looked up at
Wilson. "Wanna go see him?"

Wilson nodded, and tried to ignore the way his stomach was clenching
nervously. "Yes, definitely."

-###-

They were just walking away from the elevators towards the isolation units
when House's pager went off. House fumbled for the small device and
squinted at the display. Wilson saw his eyes light up.

"He's awake!" House pocketed the pager and stepped up his pace. Wilson had
to actually take a couple of jog steps to keep up. They rounded a corner
and came up to a couple of nurses who were standing in front of the glass
wall of one of the isolation rooms. They were both staring at the occupant
of the room. Wilson came to a stop next to one of them - nurse Jenny from
the ER - and raised his head to see for himself.

The patient looked almost disappointingly normal. He was tall, with a
narrow face and rather unruly brown hair. He was also very skinny,
although not in an unhealthy way, and was wearing a green hospital
standard issue patient gown. Most of all, though, he looked agitated.

"I can explain everything," the man's voice sounded over the intercom.
"But you have to let me out of here."

Wilson turned his head and raised an eyebrow at House. "This is your
alien?" he asked in a low voice. "He's English!"

House tilted his head to one side and tried to look contemplative. "Could
be Scottish."

Wilson rolled his eyes, but before he could say anything, House had
stepped up next to the intercom speaker. "Hello there, my friend," he
said, and as the man in the isolation room turned his head to look at him,
he waved. "I'm Dr. House. I will make you tell me all your secrets."

The man frowned at House, and Wilson thought he looked wary. "What
secrets?" he asked.

"Oh, don't tell me you don't know what I mean. Even if you've never had an
X-ray before, I think at some point anyone would notice if they didn't
have a pulse. Wouldn't they?"

The man stared at House, eyes wide. Then he shook his head. "No," he said
in a low voice. "No, no, no. This is bad. This is very, very bad."

Wilson looked around at the two nurses. Jenny had stepped back and was
leaning against the corridor wall, watching the patient's every move with
a hawk's eye. The other nurse - a member of the cardiologic staff, but
Wilson couldn't remember her name - had slipped away towards the
elevators, presumably to summon Cuddy.

"And why's that?" House's voice returned Wilson's attention to the ongoing
conversation. "You don't want people to know that you're a freak of
nature?"

The man leaned back his head and squeezed his eyes shut in a gesture of
despair. "No, no, you don't understand. I can explain, but first you have
to let me out of this hospital. This is a hospital, right?"

"I sometimes have my doubts, but I think it's still listed as a hospital
in the yellow pages."

The man ran a hand through his hair, dishevelling it even more. "Blimey,"
he muttered, "this is- right, listen." He turned his head and fixed House
with an intense stare. "I know I look human, but I am not. I'm the Doctor.
And you cannot keep me here, because if you do, not only will it put a
friend of mine in great danger, but there is also a high probability that
your time line will be disturbed. And believe me, you don't want that."

So far, Wilson had been watching House throughout the conversation, but
this made him look around and stare at the guy in the isolation room. The
man looked perfectly sincere, imploring, even, and Wilson felt a small
stab of pity.

House laughed. "I knew this was going to be good. So, you're the Doctor,
huh?"

The man nodded, and House leaned forward on his cane. He was quite
obviously having a great time. "A doctor of medicine?" he asked.

The man blinked. "Of everything."

"Right!" House nodded knowingly as if someone had just pointed out a
perfectly obvious answer. "A doctor of everything. So what's your name,
Doctor of everything?"

"The Doctor. Just the Doctor."

"Wow. And here they say that names get longer the more degrees you have."

The man in the isolation room - the Doctor - let his shoulders sag. "Look,
I know you don't believe me, but it really is of utmost importance that I
get out of here. Will you let me out?"

House shook his head. "No. Not until we know what's going on with you."

The man stared, and then he nodded. "Right. Right. How could I have
expected anything else from you? Humans." He paced a few steps up and down
the room, and House looked around to exchange a glance with Wilson. Wilson
saw his eyes sparkling with amusement and fascination.

"One thing." The man's voice drew their attention back to him. "One thing.
Will you do one thing for me?"

House raised his eyebrows. "What would that be?"

"You still have my things, right? My clothes and everything?" The man
looked worried all of a sudden. "Please don't tell me you lost my coat."

"We still have your stuff," House said. "What's so important about the
coat?"

"Nothing in particular. I just happen to like it a lot." The man sounded
almost testy, but returned to his urgent tone as he continued. "Never mind
the coat. In one of my suit pockets, there should be a key on a string. A
normal key, on a long piece of string. Take it, and go to -" He broke off
and frowned. "What was the name of the street again? Broker? Brewer?
Something starting with a B..."

"Baker Street, maybe?"

"Yes!" the man exclaimed. "Baker Street! That was it." He tilted his head,
curious. "You know it?"

House smirked. "Oh, just in passing."

"Right." The man nodded. "So, the key. You take it, you go to Baker
Street, and at the street corner, you'll find a blue box."

"A blue box," House repeated. "What, like a tool box?"

"No, no, bigger. More like a phone box. It has Police Box written on it."

"Right." House nodded, and if Wilson hadn't known him so well, he'd
assumed he was taking the man in the isolation room completely seriously.
"On the corner of Baker Street, I'll find a blue box. And I take it I'm
supposed to unlock it with the key from your suit?"

"Yes," the man nodded, seeming relieved that House was on the same page
with him. "Unlock it, take a look inside, and then come talk to me again."

"You're not gonna tell me what's in it."

The man shook his head. "Go see for yourself, and then come talk to me
again."

"Gotcha." House winked, and then he actually gave the poor guy the
thumbs-up sign. "I'll talk to you later, then."

-###-

"Can you believe this guy?" They were in the elevator that was taking them
up to House's office, and Wilson couldn't remember the last time he'd seen
his friend this excited. "He seriously believes he's an alien! With time
lines and secret quests and everything. How awesome is that?"

Wilson pulled one corner of his mouth up in a half-smile. "Well, but there
still is the fact of the unexplained X-ray and ECG," he said.

House stared at him. "You don't actually believe him."

The honest answer would have been no. No way that man was an alien. He had
a British accent, for God's sake. But no would also have been the boring
answer that would have forestalled any discussion from the start, and so
Wilson only turned his head and looked at House. "Do you think that alien
life exists?" he asked.

House looked at him for a moment. "It doesn't matter whether it exists or
not," he said, and stepped out of the elevator doors that had just rattled
open. "The galaxy is a big place, and faster-than-light travel is
impossible for anything that's bigger than a strange quark."

Wilson followed House down the corridor, slipping his hands in his pockets
as they went. "What about travel in another dimension? Like, you know, the
Enterprise. Warp travel happens in subspace."

They had arrived at House's office, and House came to a stop outside the
glass door. He rested his hand on the handle and looked sideways at
Wilson, an amused glint in his eyes. "You don't know how to program your
alarm clock, but you can talk Trek tech. Wilson, you're one sad nerdy
geek."

Wilson grinned - he'd long ago learned to decipher Housian, and he
recognized a compliment when he heard one - and followed House into the
office, settling into one of the visitor chairs and stretching his legs.
"So, what's the plan?" he asked. "You gonna do an MRI? Is he even your
patient?"

"He will be as soon as I get my hands on his file," House said. He had
rounded the desk and seemed to be looking for something underneath it.
"For now, he's public property. A-ha!"

House straightened up, and in his hand he was holding a plastic bag.
Wilson recognized it as one of the patient belongings bags PPTH used in
the ER.

"You stole his personal things?" he asked, trying to sound shocked rather
than curious.

"Let's say I borrowed them." House turned the bag over, and several items
of clothing fell out onto his desk. "It's not like there's much to see."

Wilson moved his chair closer to the desk. "What if he has some highly
contagious disease?" he asked as he carefully picked up a bluish tie with
a red pattern and inspected it.

"Why would he have a disease? He doesn't seem sick to me," House said as
he sorted through the clothes. "In fact, I don't think there's anything
wrong with him. Aside from the obvious, that is."

"The obvious being that he's a lunatic who is breathing without having
lungs and is operating on what seems to be a dual cardiovascular system."

House looked up, a big grin on his face. "Dual cardiovascular system!
That's great. I like that. It's going to be the headline of my paper: The
Man With The Dual Cardiovascular System - Who Said That Aliens Were Just
Science Fiction?"

Wilson smiled. "Make sure to cite me," he said. He picked up a brown
pin-striped pair of suit trousers and shook them a little. There was a
metallic rattling sound. "Seems like he really does have something in his
pockets," he said.

"Gimme that." House tried to snatch the pants from him, but Wilson quickly
moved them out of reach. He reached into the right pocket and turned it
inside out. With a clatter, the contents fell onto the desk.

"What have we here," Wilson muttered and frowned at the small pile of
items. There was a piece of string, a cell phone, a toothbrush, a set of
horn-rimmed glasses, a wallet and something that looked like a squashed
rose petal. No key, though.

"Didn't they check his wallet for ID?" Wilson asked, looking up at House,
who was frowning down at the small heap of pocket contents.

"Believe it or not, but these things weren't in his pocket last time I
checked," he said. "When I went through his stuff the first time, all I
found was the pen thing." He pulled it from his pocket and placed it with
the other items.

"That's weird." Wilson didn't quite know what to make of this - it was
entirely possible that House was just leading him on, but what with all
the other strange, unexplained things, Wilson wasn't sure that was it. He
picked up the wallet and opened it.

It turned out to be not a wallet after all. As he pulled the two layers of
old, worn leather apart, Wilson was presented with an extremely official
looking ID card. There was the NASA logo in the right upper corner, and it
had the sleek, shiny look only the really fancy ID cards had to them.
Wilson squinted and read what was on it.

"John Smith, Lieutenant Colonel. Air Force." Then something else caught
his eye, and he couldn't suppress a small gulp. "House, this is an Area 51
access card."

"What?" House looked up from the suit jacket that he'd been inspecting.
"Let me see."

Wilson handed over the ID card, suddenly feeling more wary than amused
about the whole thing. House took it from him, took a look at it and
frowned at Wilson. "Haha, very funny," he said.

"What?"

House held the card up so Wilson could see it, and the expression on his
face communicated mild annoyance. Wilson stared at the ID card, then
looked back at House. "Yes?" he inquired.

"It's blank," House said. "And if you're going to make a lame joke like
that, go with a more inventive name than John Smith next time."

"House, what are you talking about?"

House looked at him, and a short flicker of doubt crossed his disapproving
features. "You can drop it now, Wilson."

"Seriously, House, I'm not joking. That's an Area 51 access card. Can't
you see it?" Wilson didn't quite believe he'd just said that, but the
statement did fit in very well with the bizarre rest of what had happened
today.

"This," House said and for emphasis waved the ID card in the air, "is a
blank piece of paper."

They stared at each other for a few moments, both searching the other's
face for any indication that he was joking. After a moment, House narrowed
his eyes, frowned down at the paper once again and then slipped it into
the inside coat of his jacket, presumably for later scrutiny. "Whatever."
He began rummaging through the jacket's pockets. "A key on a string, he
said, right?"

"Uh, right." Wilson nodded and resumed his search.

After a few moments, House grunted. "I think I've got it." He pulled
something from the jacket's pocket and let it dangle from his index
finger.

It was, indeed, a key. A normal enough looking key, too, not much
different than Wilson's office key, tied to a long piece of normal enough
looking string.

Wilson frowned. "Shouldn't the key to an alien device be a bit more
special? Shouldn't it, oh, I don't know, maybe glow in the dark or
something?"

"Maybe it does. It's not dark, is it?" House looked down at the key, his
expression contemplative. "What time is it?"

Wilson checked his watch. "Ten to five, why?"

"I'm off at five. And I was ten minutes early, so I can leave now."

"You were not early this morning," Wilson said. "I saw you come in half an
hour late, in fact."

"I was early Wednesday last week, though." House closed his hand around
the key and after a short moment's hesitation slipped it into his pocket.
"Does it matter? We're supposed to be going on a secret mission given to
us from the first alien ever to come to Earth!"

"He's not the first alien ever to come to Earth," Wilson said. "What do
you think they're keeping there in Hangar 18 of Area 51? Certainly not
Lincoln's grandmother's secret apple pie recipe."

House, who was in the process of shoving the mysterious patient's clothes
back into the bag, snorted. "As I said, Wilson. Sad, sad nerdy geek." He
dumped the tie on top of the rest and then shoved the bag under his desk.
"So, are you coming?"

Wilson raised an eyebrow. "Do I get a choice?"

"No." House picked up his cane. "We're taking your car. Cuddy will find it
suspicious if she sees me leaving while we've got an alien in the
lock-up."

Wilson got to his feet as well. "Just let me get my stuff and I'll meet
you in the parking lot."

-###-

They managed to get off the major roads just before the evening rush hour
and made it to House's neighbourhood in an acceptable twenty minutes'
time. As they turned into Baker Street, Wilson slowed the Volvo down to a
crawl, and the two of them squinted through the dusky late-September
darkness on the look-out for the blue box the man had mentioned.

"What if it isn't here?" Wilson asked, beginning to feel more than
slightly ridiculous for having agreed to come on this "quest".

"Then we'll go to my place, have some beer and pizza and watch E.T.,"
House said while gazing intently out of the passenger window. Suddenly, he
sat up a little straighter. "I don't think we'll have to, though."

Wilson followed the direction House was pointing in with his eyes and felt
a surge of excitement when his gaze fell on a big, blue, wooden phone box
that had Police Box written above the door.

Wilson pulled up on the side of the road and got out. He walked around the
car and stood a few meters away from the box, waiting for House to follow
him while he inspected the subject of their quest more closely.

Something about it was decidedly strange. With its bulky design and the
way it was positioned, blocking half the sidewalk, it should definitely
have gotten noticed. As soon as you looked straight at it, you realized
that it didn't belong here.

But that was just it. Nobody was looking straight at it. Even Wilson
himself, who knew it was there, who had come here to find it, found it
hard not to overlook it.

It was a decidedly creepy feeling.

House had come up beside him. There was the usual arrogance and scorn in
his expression, but beneath it Wilson could see that House had noticed the
strangeness, too, and that it was making him wary. This discovery didn't
exactly ease Wilson's mind.

"Right," he said, a little too loudly. "Should we open it?"

"It's what we came for." House pulled the key from his pocket and limped
the last couple of steps to the box. Before he inserted the key, House
gripped the door handle and rattled on it. From the rather unstable looks
of the door, Wilson half-expected it to just break down under House's
fingers, but it didn't. Actually, it barely moved.

House shrugged his shoulders, and with a quick movement, he unlocked the
box and stepped inside.

"Well?" Wilson called after a moment. "What's in it?"

It took another moment before House's muffled voice answered, "I think
you'd better come in here, Wilson."

"Into that tiny thing? Can't you just bring outside whatever's in there?"
Wilson wouldn't want to admit it, but he actually wasn't too keen on going
into that box.

"Just get in here, will you?"

House's voice allowed no protest, so Wilson swallowed once; then he pushed
the wooden door open and stepped inside as well.

The second he was over the threshold, he stopped short. He took a quick
step backwards and bumped into the door, pressing his back against it. His
eyes flitted across the inside of the box.

"This is impossible," he said, breathlessly.

He quickly reached out and felt for the door handle behind his back. The
second his fingers brushed over metal, he grabbed and pulled, spinning
around and quickly slipping back outside.

Back on the sidewalk, Wilson had to take a couple of deep breaths to slow
down his racing heartbeat. He slowly turned around and stared at the box
that stood there on the sidewalk, looking innocent in its weird,
inconspicuous way.

He took a careful step forward and put his hands against the rough,
weathered wood. He ran his fingers over it, feeling the edges and corners,
seeking for some hidden mechanism that would explain what he'd seen on the
inside.

He didn't find anything. Even when he walked around the box, inspecting
every side of it, it still continued to look like a blue, wooden,
old-fashioned phone booth. Finally, Wilson came to a stop in front of the
door again, and slipped his hands into his pockets, taking a deep breath.

Okay, he thought. He could handle this.

"House?" he called. "House, are you still in there?"

"Where else would I be?" The answer came immediately, and even though it
shouldn't, it startled Wilson. He swallowed.

"Are you seeing what I saw in there?"

"I have no idea what you saw. What I see is rather interesting. So will
you get over your freak-out and come back in so we don't have to yell like
that?"

Wilson took a deep breath and licked his lips before he clenched his teeth
and took the brave few steps that brought him back inside the box.

He came to stand just behind the door and looked around in wary amazement.
"House, how is this possible?"

The inside was huge. Instead of a small, cramped space that held a
telephone and maybe a few old and ragged phone directories, Wilson was
facing a more or less circular, hall-like room that was at least a hundred
feet in diameter and of indiscernible height. The lighting was of a
darkish, brownish orange that created shadows behind every edge and corner
and made the room look even deeper and more mysterious. In the middle of
the room, there was a structure, circular as well and reaching up into the
darkness that obscured the ceiling of the room. The floor was made up of
metal grating, and beneath it Wilson could catch glimpses of cables and
machinery.

"I have no idea," House said. He was standing beside the object in the
middle of the room and was frowning down at something that looked like a
control panel. "It's pretty awesome, though, don't you think?"

Wilson wasn't so sure about that. He liked foreign concepts like aliens
and faster-than-light travel as long as they stayed within the boundaries
of the pages of a book or the TV screen. He wasn't sure if he was ready to
welcome them into his every day life just like that.

"What is this place?" he asked and took a few tentative steps up the ramp
that led up to where House was.

House began to limp around the central object, running the tips of his
fingers lightly over the controls that were positioned seemingly randomly
all over the panels. "Assuming the man in the hospital - the Doctor -
assuming he really is an alien, then I suppose this must be his
spaceship." House looked up and grinned. "You might have been right,
Wilson. Maybe this has really something to do with different dimensions.
It's the only explanation for this place that would make only marginal
sense to me. But then, maybe it's something else entirely that our Earth
science has never heard of."

"Earth science." Wilson blinked and shook his head a little. "Right." He
took a deep breath and walked up to where House was, taking a closer look
at the colourful controls of the spaceship. If it was a space ship. "This
looks complicated," he stated.

"Not much more complicated than the MRI controls," House said, and before
Wilson could stop him, he'd reached out and had pulled one of the levers.

"House, are you insane?" Wilson grabbed House's hand before he could do
anything else.

House laughed. "Jumpy much?" he asked. "Don't worry, I'm pretty sure it's
safe."

Wilson wasn't really listening, though. He was too busy looking around and
waiting for the imminent catastrophe that House had most certainly caused
to manifest itself. When he caught a movement in the corner of his eye,
Wilson almost jumped out of his skin.

"This is security protocol 703," a voice from somewhere above announced,
and as Wilson turned his head, he could make out the flickering projection
of a man that looked one hell of a lot like their mysterious patient,
right down to the pin-striped suit, standing about six feet above the
floor on a broad ledge that circled the whole room and staring straight
ahead at the opposite wall. "This time capsule has detected the presence
of two authorised visitors. Welcome to the TARDIS, gentlemen."

"Oh, this is fantastic," House said. He stepped forward. "Who are you?"

"This is security protocol 703," the hologram answered. "I am a projection
in the shape of the current regeneration of this TARDIS' owner."

"Wow," House said. "Coolest thing ever." He leaned forward, balancing on
his cane. "What's a tardis?"

"TARDIS is an acronym of Time And Relative Dimension In Space and
functions as a designation for this time capsule," the projection
answered.

House turned around and looked at Wilson. "Hah, see? Told you. This is all
about different dimensions."

Wilson opened his mouth to answer, but his ability to speak seemed to have
deserted him temporarily. All he managed was a weak nod.

House had already turned back to the frizzling hologram, though. "Can you
explain to me how to work these controls?" he asked.

"You are not authorized to operate the TARDIS. Frankly, you wouldn't begin
to understand it if you tried."

Wilson looked up at the projection, surprised, then back at House, who was
looking at the hologram with an amused glint in his eyes. "Oh, wouldn't
I."

"House," Wilson said warningly. He knew that this remark had been the
perfect bait for House to go and try his luck. "Maybe we should get out of
here. Speak to the guy in the hospital again."

House looked over at him from the corner of his eyes, seemingly
contemplating the suggestion, before he returned his attention to the
projection. "The man whose shape you've taken," he said, "what's his
name?"

"He's the Doctor."

"Doctor who?"

"Just the Doctor."

Wilson could see the corner of House's mouth twitch in frustration, and
his nervousness grew. House, however, had apparently for once decided not
to insist. "Okay, he's the Doctor. What species is the Doctor?"

"The Doctor is a Time Lord."

"A Time Lord," House repeated. "Those are the guys with no lungs and two
hearts?"

"Gallifreyan physiology differs in many ways from that of humans," the
projection stated. Wilson thought it was beginning to sound rather bored.
House, on the other hand, seemed more interested by the second.

"Gallifreyan physiology? I thought the Doctor was a Time Lord."

"He is a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey."

"And his physiology is different from ours how?"

"This security protocol is not authorized to reveal that information."
Wilson knew he was probably imagining this, but he couldn't help the
impression that the projection - or the machinery generating it - was
getting impatient. He stepped forward and put his hand on House's arm.

"House, let's get out of here."

"Shut up, Wilson. I'm not done here." House didn't even look around.

Wilson licked his lips. "House," he said, trying for his most imploring
tone, "let's get back to the hospital. Please? You can ask the - the
Doctor all the stuff you want to know. He's the real thing, after all,
while this is just a - computer program or something."

"Which means it's more likely that I'll be able to outwit it than a real
person," House said. "You leave if you want. I still have a few
questions."

"You won't get the answers from me," said the hologram, and as Wilson
looked back up, he started. With its last statement, the projection had
stopped staring vacantly into space and had turned its head to look right
at them.

House had seen it, too, and Wilson could feel his muscles tense under his
fingers.

"This security protocol is part of the TARDIS mainframe," the projection
continued, and as Wilson was watching, it grew more solid and the
flickering stopped. After a few moments, it seemed as if it were a real
person standing up there on the ledge. "When I want to interact with
biological beings, I choose the retro hologram skin. It goes well with the
whole ancient technology thing this desktop theme has got going. Don't let
it fool you, though. I'm pretty sure your chances of outwitting the Doctor
are higher than your chances of making me give up information I don't want
to give."

With that, the hologram - if it had really been a hologram - disappeared.
Wilson only stared at the spot where it vanished, trying to grasp what it
had said. It had almost seemed as if they had been talking to an actual
intelligence, but that would mean that this box - this ship - was more
than just a ship, and that was not something Wilson's mind was willing to
accept right now on top of everything else.

His attention was diverted, though, when House disappeared from his side.
Wilson turned around and saw that House had walked back to the central
controls and was frowning down at them again. He quickly took a few steps
and came up beside him.

"Come on, House," he said. "Let's go."

"Not yet."

"House, come on." Wilson was determined not to back down. "If this is
really an alien space ship, I don't think you'll have any chance figuring
out how to work it. Not without the - the Doctor's help."

House wasn't listening, though. He had found something that looked a lot
like a monitor - it even had a couple of post-its sticking to it, Wilson
noticed with wonder - and was randomly pushing buttons on its frame.

"House, stop it," Wilson said. "You have no idea what this does."

"Neither do you," said House, but he pulled his hand back and only frowned
at the monitor-thing. Just as Wilson had decided to try again and coax him
outside, House suddenly reached out and pulled the biggest lever he could
reach.

"House, no!"

It was too late, though. The big glass tube towering over the controls lit
up, and a humming started to sound from the very depths of the space ship.

For a brief moment, they both stared at the fluorescent light flickering
in the glass tube.

"Whoops," House said.

Wilson broke free from his paralysis. "House, you idiot," he hissed and
grabbed him by the sleeve, beginning to pull him towards the door as
quickly as possible. "Come on!"

This time, House didn't protest but followed Wilson to the door and out of
the blue box. Wilson stumbled a few steps further away and then turned
around.

They were still on the corner of Baker Street, and so was the box. House
had closed the door behind him, and it almost looked as if there had been
no change - except that while Wilson was watching, the box suddenly
started to fade out, bit by bit revealing the grey wall behind it, only to
grow solid again a second later.

Wilson ran a hand over his mouth and swallowed. "Oh boy," he muttered.
House raised an eyebrow at him, and Wilson gestured at the disappearing
and reappearing box. "This is going to get noticed."

House took a long look at the box before he shrugged. "So let them notice
it." He stepped forward and used the key to lock the door of the box. As
soon as the key was in the lock, it started fading in and out as well.
Wilson blinked and shook his head, but House didn't seem to find it
disconcerting at all. He simply locked the door and pocketed the key. "No
one will get in without the key."

"They could simply break down the door," Wilson said, and House turned his
head.

"It's a space ship, Wilson," he said. "It has to be able to resist
atmospheric entrance and collisions with space debris. I don't think a
crowbar would quite do the job."

"What if they, I don't know, tow it?" Wilson was still watching the
disappearing and reappearing box. Simply leaving it here felt like the
worst idea ever, as far as he was concerned.

"Let them. We'll find a way to get it back." House sounded very confident,
and Wilson resigned himself to the fact that any objections on his part
would be dismissed without a second thought and that he might as well save
himself the trouble.

He did, however, silently resolve to refuse to pay any potential towing
fees.

They left the mysterious box to its own devices and got back into the car
in order to go and talk to that man again - the alien who called himself
the Doctor.

Wilson was pretty sure it would turn out to be a highly interesting
conversation.

-###-

When House and Wilson rounded the corner in the hospital's corridor and
came into view of the isolation room, the Doctor was already waiting for
them. He had been pacing up and down the glass wall like a caged animal,
but as he saw them, he turned around immediately and activated the
intercom.

"Did you find it?"

Wilson let House step forward and do the talking. He himself put his hands
on his hips and watched the man in the isolation room. If he really was an
alien, then Wilson was sure that there had to be something that gave it
away. Aliens that looked completely human - that was too easy, as far as
Wilson was concerned.

House leaned forward on his cane. "We found it. You can't begin to imagine
how many 'bigger on the inside' jokes I'm trying not to make right now."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Believe me, I've heard them all." His
expression changed back to intense worry immediately, though, and he began
to bounce on his toes. "Would you let me out now, please?"

"Not yet," House said. "I like being in a position of power when I'm
trying to make you give up information." He picked up his cane and began
to spin it. "It's an interrogation technique. I've learned it in a movie."

The Doctor stared at House; then he turned to Wilson. "Is he always like
this?" he asked.

Wilson pursed his lips and nodded. "Pretty much, yeah. He's actually being
nice at the moment."

"Charming." The Doctor turned back to House, and with a sudden movement,
he planted his hand against the glass wall and moved in closer. House
didn't flinch, but Wilson could see his shoulder muscles tense. "Listen,"
the Doctor said in a low, dangerous sounding tone. "There's an entity on
the loose in this town, a very dangerous one. It has to be stopped. The
only one who knows about it is me, and I'm also the only one who can stop
it. The longer you keep me locked in here, the higher the risk that it'll
start hurting people. I can't let that happen. So let me out of here now,
or I swear, I will make you."

For a brief moment, nobody said anything, House and the Doctor staring at
each other with only a couple of inches and a glass wall dividing them.
Wilson watched, holding his breath.

"How will you make me?" House asked, his tone far too calm to be anything
but a challenge.

The Doctor didn't move, but his eyes became even more intense, and Wilson
felt himself beginning to grow rather nervous. "Let. Me. Out. Now."

"House, maybe you should let him out," Wilson said. "You'll have to do
that eventually, anyway. Remember what you did to the box."

The words had a much stronger effect than Wilson had expected. The Doctor
broke eye-contact with House and spun around, directing his frantic gaze
at Wilson. "He did something to the TARDIS?" He sounded positively
panicked. "Please tell me nothing happened to the TARDIS."

Wilson exchanged a look with House before he faced the Doctor again,
feeling slightly sheepish. "Ah, well. It was - kind of an accident."

"What did you do?"

"House accidentally pushed some of the buttons," Wilson said and shot
House a brief glare to communicate him to keep his mouth shut for once.
"And then the box, well, it sort of started fading in and out."

"Oh, no." The Doctor put a hand over his eyes, and Wilson couldn't help
feeling a little sorry for him. "So many things about this are so very
much not good."

The Doctor dropped his hand, and his livid eyes went to House and then
flickered over to Wilson. "You two are the most disastrous humans I've
ever met," he said vehemently and then hesitated. "Well, not quite. There
were more disastrous ones. But you two definitely make the top ten. Okay,
twenty. But-"

"Alright, we get it," House said and walked over to the door of the
isolation room. "What's it going to be now, do you want out or not?"

"Ah, yes, out. Very good." The fierceness disappeared completely from the
Doctor's features, and once again his eyes lit up with busy excitement. He
hurried over to the door, all but bouncing on his toes impatiently until
House had unlocked the door.

"I need my things," he said as he brushed past Wilson. "And then I need to
get to the TARDIS as quickly as possible." He jogged a few steps down the
corridor; then he stopped and turned to face them with a slightly confused
expression on his face. "Which way out of here?"

-###-

They went to retrieve the Doctor's clothing from House's office, and the
Doctor made House give back the wallet, explaining curtly that it wasn't a
wallet at all but something called a psychic paper. Wilson didn't quite
grasp the concept of how it worked, but it seemed like it showed random
identification certificates to anyone except the really smart people, an
explanation that made House raise a very smug eyebrow. After that, they
briefly discussed the quickest way to get to Baker Street and decided to
take Wilson's car.

Wilson refused to allow anyone else but himself behind the wheel, and
House claimed the passenger seat as usual, which meant that ten minutes
later, the Doctor was trying to arrange his long legs in the foot space of
the Volvo's backseat, repeatedly poking Wilson in the back, and talking a
mile a minute, relating the most improbable tale Wilson had heard since
he'd worked night shifts in the ER.

"I'm actually not from this universe," he began, and Wilson felt another
poke as the Doctor shifted. "I'm from a parallel universe, which is
actually quite similar to this one, only that my Earth has more aliens. I
wonder what that says about my interference in their timeline."

"A parallel universe," House repeated. "Like in movies?"

"Actually yes, it's pretty much like that." Wilson stopped at a red light,
and there was another stab in his back. "Only that the getting back and
forth isn't as easy. Or it shouldn't be."

"So how come you're here, then?"

"Yes, well." The Doctor produced a cynic little snort. "As usual, this
started out with Torchwood meddling with things they have no business
meddling with. Really, those people. At the rate they're going, they're
going to cause some serious damage sooner rather than later."

"Torchwood?"

"Never you mind," the Doctor said. "I think they don't even exist for you.
What you need to know is this: a friend of mine got himself into a bit of
a fix by taking on the Ethmmoruraelry, transdimensional beings from the
dark times. They were trying to set up a network between the third
dimensions of the fifth level using power derived from the implosion of
two universes of the first level. Torchwood couldn't let that happen."

"Obviously." The dry undertone in House's voice was unmistakable.

The Doctor exhaled audibly. "They were trying to build a bridge between
universes by destabilizing yours and the one I'm from," he explained. "In
my world, Torchwood got wind of the plan and attempted to stop it, but
twenty-first century humans are no match for the Ethmmoruraelry. Even if
they have Jack."

"Who's that?"

As the Doctor answered, Wilson noticed his voice getting a hint tenser,
and he checked the rearview mirror to see the strange man staring out of
the car window into the night as if he were looking for someone. "That's
my friend I was telling you about. The second he attracted their
attention, the Ethmmoruraelry took him captive and then used him for their
own purposes." The Doctor looked around, and Wilson started as his gaze
was suddenly met by two dark, intense eyes. "The Ethmmoruraelry are
powerful beings, and the human mind is no match for their mental
abilities. They can't take on a corporeal form, so they possess lower life
forms if they need any sort of errand carried out. By taking over Jack,
they gained access to the most sophisticated technology on my Earth. They
made him use the Rift manipulator-"

"They made him use the what?"

Wilson was impressed at how House seemed to keep up with all of this. He
himself had by now resigned himself to the fact that whatever it was that
was going on, it went way over his head, and all he could do was tag along
and play chauffeur.

House seemed to be on top of things, though, and it reminded Wilson once
again of the reason why House always got away with everything: he seemed
to never lose track of things. So if he did something that seemed
completely insane, it wasn't him you questioned, but you ended up
wondering what it was that you were overlooking.

It was quite a neat trick, actually, now that Wilson thought about it.

"The Rift manipulator," the Doctor was explaining. "In my universe,
there's a Rift through time and space running right through the city of
Cardiff. Unfortunately, a couple of years ago, Torchwood found a Rift
manipulator, and ever since they started tinkering with it, the Rift has
been acting up, spitting out aliens in the middle of Central Square and
whatnot. The Ethmmoruraelry used Jack to manipulate the Rift to open a
small crack to this, your universe. That's how he got here, and I followed
him with the TARDIS."

"But why?" Wilson asked, thinking that this was the one thing he really
wanted to know. "What do your Ethmoh-whatever people get out of your
friend being in this universe?"

"Somewhere here in this town is a gap," the Doctor said. "Not a Rift, it's
not that big, mainly because there's no Torchwood in this universe
meddling with things they don't have the first clue about. It's just a
small gap, a place where the layer between the universe and the Void is
very thin. The mission Jack has been given by the Ethmmoruraelry is to
find that gap and tear it wide open. The matter in this universe and the
one in my universe will attract each other like magnets, and the force of
the collision will destroy both universes and kill every life form living
in either of them."

Silence followed the Doctor's words. Wilson tried to wrap his mind around
this explanation, but his mind refused to cooperate. The idea of an event
that would destroy not only everything Wilson had ever known, but also the
rest of the Earth and billions and trillions of other planets plus a whole
other universe - that thought was a little too H. P. Lovecraft to take it
in.

"I guess we'd better find that Jack person, then," House said, and his
calm, almost flippant tone completely fit the situation. They were on
their way to save two universes from ultimate destruction. There was no
other way one could talk about this than in a calm tone that audibly
expressed the small, ironic smile playing about one's lips. Wilson noticed
that House had the end-of-the-universe voice down pat.

"That won't be a problem once we get to the TARDIS," the Doctor said, as
appropriately unmoved by the gravity of their situation as House. "She can
find him."

They didn't talk until Wilson pulled up to the curb of Baker Street and
killed the engine. As he got out of the car, he looked over at the blue
box standing twenty feet away and still fading in and out of reality.

The sight had been mind-boggling before, and it was still rather strange,
but what Wilson found even more astonishing was that there was no crowd.
Not even a small one. No one was standing in front of the TARDIS, gaping
or shooting clips with their cell phone to upload them to YouTube first
chance they got. Nobody was pointing or yelling or calling the police. The
few people that did pass it by threw one or two anxious looks over their
shoulder and quickly walked away.

"That's some box you got there," House said.

The Doctor grinned happily. "I'd say so." He held out a hand. "Keys,
please?"

Entering the box was easier this time, but only a little. Wilson figured
that if he closed his eyes before he stepped over the threshold, maybe his
heart wouldn't do this small, worrying skip on entering, and so he almost
ran into House who had stopped right behind the door and was looking
around the impossibly big room.

"Sorry," Wilson muttered and manoeuvred around House, who wasn't paying
him any attention. Wilson walked over to the railing that ran along the
ramp that led from the door to the central console and leaned against it,
glad to have something solid under his fingers. The gridded floor with the
shadowy maze of machinery beneath made him feel a little like he imagined
walking on water would feel.

In the company of the Doctor, House was a lot less bold in here. He was
still bolder than Wilson, though. He limped up the ramp to where the
Doctor was bent over the console and leaned against the circular railing
behind him.

"So, what now?"

The Doctor didn't answer right away. Wilson could hear him muttering
something under his breath, and as he watched, he thought he could see him
running a caressing hand over the console. It almost seemed as if the
Doctor was stroking his ship, but Wilson dismissed the idea. After all,
how was he supposed to know how those controls worked? Maybe when you were
in a phone box that was actually a bigger-on-the-inside space ship that
wasn't invisible but couldn't be seen anyway, you stroked buttons instead
of pushing them.

Finally, the Doctor looked up, and directed his gaze at House. He didn't
look very happy. "What did you do?" he asked. "How did you manage to turn
on the Integrity Destabilizer without triggering the Vortex Avidity
Program? That shouldn't even be possible."

House raised an eyebrow. "'Impossible' is not a concept I'm familiar
with."

The Doctor looked as if he were going to reply, but then he only shook his
head and turned back to the controls.

While the Doctor and House had been talking, Wilson had slowly edged along
the railing towards the centre of the room, and was now standing close
enough to be able to see what the Doctor was doing. Not that it made any
sense to him whatsoever. The Doctor's fingers were moving with an amazing
speed; he was flicking switches and pushing buttons seemingly at random.
He had pulled the monitor closer and was frowning at it with a
concentrated expression on his face. The images flashing across the screen
didn't tell Wilson anything, and he exchanged a look with House, who
apparently didn't understand any of this either, but for some reason
managed to look a lot less lost than Wilson felt.

With a small jab of envy Wilson wondered how he always seemed to manage
that.

"There!" the Doctor suddenly exclaimed, straightening up and startling
Wilson out of his mesmerized daze.

"What?" House had pushed himself off the railing and was limping over to
look at the monitor.

"I found Jack," the Doctor said. "Well, not me, technically the TARDIS
found him. He's right..." He frowned at his monitor again and squinted,
and Wilson remembered the glasses they'd found among the Doctor's stuff.

"Where's Whitney Street?" the Doctor asked.

"Just down the street and around the corner."

The Doctor looked up at House, and Wilson saw him pale. "It's not that
small side street down the block, is it?"

"It is, actually, yes."

The Doctor quickly straightened up and grabbed his coat. "Come on, we have
to hurry!"

Wilson just managed to get out of the way as the Doctor brushed by him
towards the door. He exchanged a surprised look with House, then hurriedly
followed the Doctor. House's cane made a hollow thumping sound on the
metallic floor as House followed as quickly as he could.

"Doctor!" Wilson stood beside the door of the TARDIS, which had stopped
fading in and out and looked as solid as ever, waiting for House to catch
up, his eyes on the Doctor who was already halfway down the block. He
didn't stop when Wilson called out.

"Come on, Wilson," House said as he passed him by. Wilson closed the door
of the TARDIS behind him and took a few quick steps that brought him up
next to House.

"What's the hurry?" he asked. "What's in Whitney Street?"

House threw him a quick side-glance. "The mysterious Jack, I assume."

"But-" Wilson took a deep breath, not exactly knowing what he was
protesting against, and then shook his head. "This is crazy," he said.
"You've finally managed to drive me insane."

House didn't react, didn't even make some sort of sarcastic remark, and
Wilson would have commented on that if they hadn't arrived at the corner
of Baker and Whitney right that moment.

They rounded the corner and both stopped in their tracks.

In Wilson's book, meeting a man with no lungs and two hearts who owned a
space ship that looked like a telephone box was quite crazy, but still
somehow conceivable. After all, the concept of alien life forms with alien
technology wasn't new to him, even if it was a bit of a shock to have it
confirmed in real life.

What he was seeing now, however, lay so far beyond his realm of
understanding that at first, he was sure he was hallucinating.

Whitney Street, usually a small back alley of the seedy, creepy kind
running down the narrow gap between two building blocks, was completely
transformed. The first twenty feet were the dirty pavement Wilson was used
to seeing here, but then, the change started. There was a wall of white
light reaching up into the sky, going up all the way to the second floor
windows of the buildings lining the street. It wasn't transparent, Wilson
was sure of that, because somehow, he knew that the street he saw behind
that wall of light wasn't the Whitney Street he knew. Or at least it
wasn't only that street. It seemed like there were thousands of Whitney
Streets behind that barrier, each overlayed by another, creating the
impression of a blurred, three-dimensional photograph.

This part of the image wasn't the most disturbing aspect, though. There
was something between this street and the streets behind the light,
something that took up no space and wasn't visible, except that Wilson
could see it anyway. He had never experienced anything like that, except
maybe when earlier this evening, he had first laid eyes on the Doctor's
phone box. The feeling he'd had then had been unsettling, but this was ten
times stronger. There was something behind that light that wasn't there,
and it was wrong.

Wilson's throat dried up, and he took an involuntary step backwards. He
probably would have turned around and made a run for it if House hadn't
chosen that moment to reach out and grab his arm.

"Wilson, look!"

Wilson followed the direction House was pointing in with his eyes, and
realized that he'd only been taking in half the picture. Before the wall
of light stood a man. He was quite tall, with dark hair and broad
shoulders, and he was wearing a long coat that in the light of the wall
behind him seemed black. Wilson couldn't make out his features, but he
could see quite clearly what he was holding in his hand: it was a gun, an
old-fashioned revolver with a thin barrel, and he was pointing it at the
Doctor, who was standing between them and the man in the coat.

"Jack," Wilson heard the Doctor say. "Jack, put the gun down."

Nobody moved. Wilson's eyes flitted back and forth between the Doctor and
Jack.

"Jack, you know you don't want to do this. They are making you. Don't let
them control you, Jack, you're stronger than them."

Wilson thought he saw the gun in Jack's hand tremble, but Jack didn't
lower it, and when the Doctor took a small step towards him, he visibly
tightened his grip on the weapon. Wilson barely registered House's fingers
digging deeper into his arm.

"Stay where you are." Jack's voice was strained, but his words had
definitely been a warning. The Doctor apparently thought so, too, because
he stopped and slowly raised his hands in a gesture of peace.

"Okay," he said. "I'm not going near you. But you have to fight this,
Jack. You mustn't do what they want. I know you're strong enough, Jack."

"Go away," Jack said. "Go away, or I'll shoot."

"No, Jack," the Doctor said, imploringly, and Wilson had to admire his
courage, because he saw him take yet another step towards Jack. "You won't
shoot. You don't want to, don't let them make you."

Wilson could only see Jack's silhouette, but he could hear his harsh
breathing, and could see the gun's aim waver as Jack's arm started to
tremble with strain.

The Doctor had seen it, too, and he edged closer yet towards Jack, now no
more than three or four feet away. If Jack shot him now, there wouldn't be
much hope of survival for him.

"It's alright, Jack," the Doctor was saying. "You don't need to do this.
Don't let them make you. I can help you, just put the gun down and I'll -"

There were maybe two feet left between the two men, and Wilson was already
starting to dare hope that maybe this wouldn't end in a bloodbath when
suddenly, Jack made a strangled, desperate sound and turned the gun away
from the Doctor - and towards himself.

"Jack, no!"

The report seemed extremely loud in the confined space between the two
building blocks. Wilson flinched and ducked his head and felt House's grip
on his arm tighten some more. It happened all so quickly that Wilson
didn't even have the time to turn his eyes away.

Jack shot himself through the head. He collapsed the second the gun went
off, and all Wilson could do was stare at the dark outline of his crumpled
form on the pavement.

That was when he saw it. It was almost like the old special effects from
previous century movies when the protagonist died and their soul left the
body. Only that this wasn't happening on a TV screen.

There was a cloud of white mist rising from Jack's body. In the light of
the wall, it was almost invisible if it hadn't been for the changing,
moving swirls that Wilson could see inside the mist. They didn't take on
any particular form, but Wilson could tell that they were about to; if he
just looked a little longer, he'd see something in that mist; a face,
maybe, or a figure.

"Don't look at them!" It was the Doctor. Wilson registered him from the
corner of his eye, coming towards him and House. "Stop looking! It's the
Ethmmoruraelry."

With some effort, Wilson tore his eyes away from the changing mist and
looked at the Doctor. He was a mess. His front was spattered with blood.
There was even some in his hair, and Wilson was reminded of just how messy
it was when people got shot.

He also knew the slightly shell-shocked look in the Doctor's eyes,
remembered it from his late-night shifts as a young MD, although Wilson
had to give it to him that he was holding it together pretty well,
considering he was covered in blood and bits of a man's brain.

"Don't look!" the Doctor said again, and Wilson turned to House, who was
still staring in the direction of the wall of light. With an effort, he
pulled his arm from House's fingers and gripped his in return, shaking him
a little.

"House! House, look at me."

For a moment, Wilson thought House hadn't heard him, but then House slowly
turned his head, visibly reluctant to tear his eyes away.

"Look at me, House," Wilson said again to make sure he understood, and
also to give himself something to concentrate on. The urge to turn back
towards the misty swirls was strong enough for Wilson to believe the
Doctor when he said they were dangerous.

"Do not try and touch these humans!"

Wilson looked up and saw that the Doctor had placed himself between them
and the nebulous swirls, and was staring up directly into the whitish
mist.

"I will fight you for them, and you know I will win. Leave this dimension,
don't try to come here again. I will know it if you try, and I'll stop
you. You know I'm able to."

The urge to look up, to see the mist shifting into that final shape, grew
almost too strong for Wilson to resist. He grabbed both House's arms and
sought out his friend's sharp blue eyes, whose colour was perfectly
recognizable in the bright light of the gap between the universes.

"Look at me, House, don't look at them, look at me, alright?"

House didn't answer, his eyes wide, his whole body tense, and Wilson knew
that the only thing House wanted in this moment was to look at the
Ethmmoruraelry, to see their real shape, to know what they were. The
knowledge gave him the strength he needed to hold House's gaze, to make it
impossible for the other man to look away, and the Doctor's voice faded
into the background.

"Leave now, leave this plain of existence and return to where you came
from. Don't try to come back. Leave these worlds in peace."

Without breaking eye contact with House, Wilson noticed the quality of the
light changing, the brightness of the Ethmmoruraelry fading, moving away;
then, from the corner of his eyes, he could see the wall crumbling,
flickering and growing dimmer and darker. He was still looking at House,
but he knew all the same that right now, the thousands of Whitney Streets
behind the wall of light were fading out of existence, vanishing one by
one until all that was left was this one Whitney Street, and that the wall
was pulling together to one central point, like a slow-motion version of
an old TV screen going out in a whizz of static.

Wilson didn't look away, wouldn't let House turn his eyes away from him,
until he thought he could actually hear the fuzzy popping noise of the
light disappearing, and his surroundings grew as dark as it was
appropriate for this time of night. Only then did he allow himself to
blink and break eye contact.

House, who had been standing there frozen in place, shuddered and briefly
shook his head as if to clear it. "Let go of me, Wilson," he said. "You're
hurting me."

"Yes, sure, sorry." He let go of House and looked around for the Doctor.
For a short moment, Wilson thought he'd disappeared, too, but then he
spotted him crouched next to the dark, man-shaped form lying on the
pavement in the middle of the street. He felt a pang of sympathy, and
started to walk towards the Doctor, the tapping of rubber on pavement
indicating that House was following him.

As he came closer, he could hear the Doctor speak, and before long he
could make out the words. "... yourself into a big mess, and when I come
to help you out, you ruin my suit."

"I'm really sorry about that, Doctor. I'll get you a new one."

The voice was a pleasant tenor, the tone was slightly amused, the accent
was American, and Wilson stopped dead in his tracks, staring.

"He was dead. A minute ago, he was dead."

The man on the ground - the dead man - propped himself on his elbows,
squinting at Wilson and smiling. "So I was. D'you like this little trick
of mine?"

Jack let the Doctor help him up and stood, his coat swishing as he turned
around. The light from a street lamp illuminated his features, and Wilson
noticed with an emotion that he wouldn't have been able to describe if his
life had depended on it that not a single strand of hair was out of place.

"I'm Captain Jack Harkness. And who are you?"

"I'm Doctor Gregory House." Wilson's eyes flicked to the left, where House
had come up beside him. He was leaning on his cane and squinting at Jack.
"You just regrew half your head including most of your brain, your skull,
your skin and your hair. You even regrew the hair gel. How did you do
that?"

Jack's eyes, which had been resting on Wilson in a way that Wilson would
have described as flirty if he'd been in any state to give these sorts of
things any consideration, moved over to House, and his eyebrows drew
together. "Um, it's... "

"It's complicated," the Doctor interrupted. "Has to do with time and the
Vortex and the TARDIS and is way too complex to be explained right now.
Would anybody mind getting out of here? I really would like to change into
some clean clothes."

-###-

Wilson followed the other three men back up the street towards the blue
box, blocking out their voices and struggling to strengthen his grip on
reality, which was slipping. He concentrated on the sane, black pavement
under his feet, and his fingers on the sane, creased cuffs of his shirt.
With each step, he felt the real world moving closer and the faces he
hadn't seen in the misty white swirls moving away, and by the time they'd
reached the phone box, what had happened back in that side alley seemed
about as real to him as the events of the movie he'd watched last
Saturday.

Wilson found that he could live with that.

"We will have to hurry, Jack." The Doctor's words were the first thing
that reached Wilson as he returned his attention to his surroundings. The
four of them were standing next to the blue box - the TARDIS - and the
Doctor had slipped his hands back into his pockets, squinting at something
in the sky. "The gap won't stay open for much longer."

"You're going back to your universe?" That was House. He was leaning on
his cane and looking at the Doctor, and in his stance, Wilson could see -
something. It almost seemed as if House were apprehensive of something.

"Yes." The Doctor nodded. "We have to. Well, Jack has to. He's needed back
there."

Jack threw the Doctor a look that seemed almost reproachful. "So are you,
Doctor."

"Yes, I suppose." The Doctor lowered his eyes, and his gaze locked with
House's. Wilson watched the two of them, and he could tell that something
was happening, some unspoken communication was transpiring, but before he
could figure out what it was, House looked away.

"Good luck, then," he said, his tone gruff, but not hostile. "I guess I
won't see you around."

"Probably not." The Doctor sounded almost apologetic. Jack slipped his
hands into his coat pockets and lowered his eyes. Wilson had a brief
moment of feeling a bit useless, but then the Doctor looked around at him.
"Goodbye, Wilson." He paused. "Is that your first name, Wilson?"

"Ah, no." Wilson cleared his throat. "No, it's not. My first name is
James."

The Doctor smiled brightly. "That's a nice name. Goodbye then, James. And
Gregory. James and Gregory." He looked back and forth between House and
Wilson, and Wilson noticed a slight sadness creeping into his expression.

Then Jack took the Doctor by the arm. "Come on, let's go, before we end up
stranded here."

"Right, right, of course." The Doctor nodded and pulled open the TARDIS
door. A slant of bright, orange tinted light fell onto the pavement. "Have
a wonderful life, you two," he said. "I wish you all the best."

"Thanks." There was no sarcasm to House's voice, no undertone at all,
really.

The Doctor entered the TARDIS, and Jack followed him, with two fingers
tapping his non-existent hat in an informal farewell salute. The blue
wooden doors closed, and a moment later, the TARDIS began to fade in and
out again, accompanied by a whooshing, whining noise that for no reason
sent a cold shiver down Wilson's back.

Then the blue box was gone, and House and Wilson started to walk further
up Baker Street, heading for number 221B.

-###-

Wilson was sitting next to House on the couch in House's living room, a
beer that he'd barely touched yet growing warm in his left hand. The
silence was heavy, until Wilson eventually broke it.

"You wanted to go with him, didn't you?"

House didn't answer at first, nursing his own beer, staring at the
television screen that was, for now, still blank. "No," he said finally.
"Why would I want to do that?"

Wilson nodded, accepting the lie without a comment, and took a sip from
his drink. "You want to watch a movie?"

House pursed his lips in a way that might have communicated agreement, and
Wilson got up to walk over to the shelf with the DVDs, running an idle
finger over the row of plastic casings.

"No sci-fi," House said after a moment. "I don't want to watch any sci-fi
tonight."

"No," Wilson agreed. "Me neither."  
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Legal Disclaimer: The authors published here make no claims on the
ownership of Dr. Gregory House and the other fictional residents of
Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Like the television show House
(and quite possibly Dr. Wilson's pocket protector), they are the property
of NBC/Universal, David Shore and undoubtedly other individuals of whom I
am only peripherally aware. The fan fiction authors published here receive
no monetary benefit from their work and intend no copyright infringement
nor slight to the actual owners. We love the characters and we love the
show, otherwise we wouldn't be here.