The Doctor was out, again playing hooky when it all began to change.

 The Time Lord was sprawled indolently on a park bench in one of Miskaritic Otherversity's many beautiful gardens. Slumped back, feet crossed at the ankle, hands folded in his lap, the floppy brim of his faded blue hat pulled down low over his face.

 Open next to him on the bench sat 'Ptashnei's Practical Physics, 3rd Edition', his excuse to be relaxing out here in the warm noonday sun in a secluded corner of the hedged and walled garden.

 He sat, nodding, then began to doze. Chaos began to nibble politely at the corners of his imagination and memory, stripping little snippets away from the swirling dream images. He stirred slightly, as if shaking off flies. Much good would that do... Plenty of that to spare...

 He sighed, reaching to scratch his nose, then settled down again...

 The Scream jolted him upright. He sat perched tensely on the bench's edge, staring with wide, unseeing eyes, straining to hear the dying echoes of the cry as it scaled down into silence.

 There had been *words* in that cry.

 "It has begun."

 The Doctor turned his head to see a robed and hooded figure standing five meters away from him on the velvet moss lawn.

 "What has begun?"

 "We must meet. Kislalioglu Theater."

 Between one heartbeat and the next, the apparition was gone. The Doctor blinked. So someone was projecting, eh? That took quite a lot of mental discipline and energy...

 He got to his feet, picked up the text book, shut it, tucked it under an arm, and set quickly off.

 The holiday was over.

 She heard a muffled shout of thanks as she turned back to the auto valet to check on Wil's clothes.

 S'funny, she thought. It starts off as an ordinary day, and then before you know it, you're doing laundry for somebody from another universe. And a rather appealing somebody from another universe, at that...

 Crossing over to a chair, she sat down and waited for her guest to present himself.

 He appeared a few minutes later, temporarily clad in shorts and a shirt left behind by a male friend of hers. Pausing in his hair-toweling, he smiled. "Thanks."

 She smiled back. "My pleasure."

 There were a few moments of silence while he vigorously finished squeezing the water out of his hair. Rather longer than required for the amount of hair he had, actually. He glanced around, the crumpled towel in his hands.

 "Here. Just toss it in the valet." Gui leaned forward and pointed. "That little port, right over there."

 He obeyed, then took a seat on the other chair, looking all around at the small but neatly-kept room before finally looking over at her again. "What are you studying?"

 "History."

 "Oh, well, you ought to meet the Doctor then. He's full of it. History, I mean."

 Gui smiled. "How about you and your friends? What are *you* studying as you travel?"

 Wil's answering smile was grim. "Survival."

 Gui looked intrigued. *And you never know when there's going to be a pop-quiz..* Wil finished, silently.

 Guiarin opened her mouth to comment--

 The Scream rang through the residence hall, carried over the intercom. Gui and Wil sat petrified as the obscene cry rose and fell.

 After it was over, they stared at each other from pale faces as doors began to open and excitedly-talking students emerge into the hallway just outside.

 It was a babbling that was curiously coordinated, Wil noted, as he got to his shaky feet. Taking two steps towards the door, he opened it a crack and peered out.

 The hallway was full of people, all shuffling aimlessly like a pack of zombies, and gabbling incoherently. Wil gawped at the bizarre spectacle, then slammed the door shut, as several heads turned as if noticing him.

 "Can you lock this?" he asked quickly.

 Guiarin frowned. "Yes; turn that little knob, there--"

 He clicked the lock home, then turned to see his host looking at him strangely. "Oh! I'm sorry! But there are people in the hall, and they're acting really strange I think we ought to--"

 He stopped as she threw back her head and laughed. "Oh, that's just Meeting -- didn't you hear the Call?"

 Wil blinked. *I've got a real bad feeling about this..*

 "But I'm glad you want to be alone with me; I think you're very attractive." She got sinuously to her feet. Wil took an instinctive step backwards as she moved towards him, raising a hand. It, the skin, was now covered with fine, iridescent blue scales.

 "Gui?" Wil whispered. "What happened to your arm...?"

 Her suddenly dark, almost totally black eyes narrowed. "My arm? Nothing -- it's the way it's always been." She moved over to him, as he tried to back out of her way, becoming trapped in the corner where two bookcases met.

 She leaned forward, placing an arm on either side of him, hemming him in, her dark hair falling like a curtain. "I'm glad I met you, Wil Young. I'm so going to enjoy sucking your brain out..."

 Wil stared. "No! It's a nightmare -- it has to be a nightmare!" Giving her a violent shove, he broke free as she stumbled backwards. Darting for the door, he managed to twist the lock-knob smoothly, ignoring the strange little shriek it produced, flung the door open, and dashed into the hallway.

 Dozens of heads turned to stare as he froze momentarily. Each person there sported some sort of deformity he'd never seen on any of the natives before. One girl had totally yellow eyes with no iris; another's stringy hair was moving slightly, in a disturbing fashion. One fellow, not much older than Wil, had an arm which truncated at the elbow.

 It was a fresh stump.

 As he stared, horrified, the student smiled slightly, a trickle of red running out of the corner of his mouth.

 Wil turned and bolted in the opposite direction, disappearing down the corridor and stumbling down the stairs.

 One-arm let out a peculiar baying howl, then loped off down the hall after him. Several other students followed.

 Audio-processors automatically filtered the decibels to a manageable level, since she happened to be sitting right under one of the campus intercoms that had been discretely placed around campus.

 Angela Ferris sat frozen in dread, hearing that cry. It seemed to carry all the terror and suffering in the universe.

 Shadowmaker-00 clinically sifted the tones through its language-ID program. A 60.620917% probability that there was some meaning imbedded in that cry.

 As it scaled down to silence, Angela got to her feet, trembling. A Damned Soul, lost to the Goddesses' Mercy... She needed to get back to her traveling companions.

 But nothing was the same now; she couldn't forget that she carried Death. And all around her as she ran, she saw that the reality she and her friends had been enjoying for the past few days was turning into Hell.

 Blinking around in the semi-darkness, he struggled to recall exactly he'd been doing before ending up here.

 A woman, attractive brunette, slightly snarky, enough to intrigue him into banter. Claimed to be a student. Had propositioned him, then laughed, taking his arm and leading him to the local watering hole.

 Realizing that he could go quite far on the cachet of being an Extra-universal Traveler, and still not quite sure what he thought of her probably still-genuine offer, he'd let her buy him a drink.

 Boom.

 But what was the point? No one was out to get them, the world wasn't about to end, no one was invading...

 Jadi reached, in the darkness, for his wallet. Maybe he'd just simply been rolled.

 It was still there. He frowned. Odd. Something else, then.

 Sitting up, he got carefully to his feet, and moved towards the thin crack of illumination that hinted at a door. His hands crept around the outline. A closed door. No handle.

 Locked in.

 Angered, he drew back his booted foot to deliver a hearty kick, then hesitated as a sound came from whatever room lay outside his prison. He pressed his ear to the door's surface.

 A thin, keening sound. Jadi felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. Someone or some*thing* was crying out there, mourning without a scrap of hope.

 A young man was walking along the walk-way, smiling widely as he drew a large kitchen knife down a bare arm, leaving a bloody furrow. Pausing to admire it, he suddenly noticed the Doctor, who was staring at him.

 "It's my new project; do you like it?" the student called out cheerfully. When the Doctor said nothing, instead looking up and meeting his eyes--

 The young man jerked back as if struck, and saw that the man in the long green coat had stumbled back as well, was pale and trembling.

 Seized with sudden inspiration, the student brandished the knife and started forward. "You should participate, too. Here--"

 The stranger in the long coat turned and fled. The art student followed.

 To be continued...