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As they all felt the TARDIS land, Martha was first to head out the door. Alice was just about to follow after her, only to be caught off guard by the Doctor gently touching her shoulder. She now turned to find him looking somewhat ashamed.

"Ally, about the other day, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have yelled at you like that. I took all my problems out on you. There's no excuse for..."

"I get it, alright," the redhead interrupted before any more was said with an understanding look, "Don't worry about it. Besides, no harm done, right," she returned with a small smile and shrugged that became a tiny grimace as she felt a slight twinge in her side, "Apart from getting hurt that is."

"Does it still hurt?" the Time Lord asked with a concerned frown before whipping out his sonic screwdriver and rapidly scanning it over her before looking at it, puzzled at what he saw. Yes, Alice was healing much quicker than a human should. Maybe the Chameleon Arch and some regeneration energy had something to do with it. Yet, he wasn't sure but would give it a closer look later.

"Everything alright then, Spaceman?"Alice asked, seeing the questionable expression on his face.

"Uh, yeah, everything's good healing as it should be. Will take a few weeks; you're fine," The Doctor fabricated with a small smile, putting his sonic away.

"Thanks, Spaceman, now let's go," the redhead returned gratefully with a wink, grinning as she went towards the doors, "Can't leave Martha waiting all by herself."

She didn't see the Time Lord blush for a moment. Before, he pretended to groan, making Alice briefly peer over her shoulder as he began grumbling to himself. She rolled her eyes and shook her head in amusement. But, honestly, he was a child. She silently snickered to herself just as he reached her, and they both headed out the door.

As the Doctor locked the door behind them, the trio took in their surroundings.

"So where are we?" the redhead was first to ask as they gazed out at the vast body of water, either a lake or the ocean.

There was a slight breeze whipping about. Alice had been grateful for swapping her cardigan for something more practical. The young woman notices they are on some island. She could also see a bench nearby.

"Ah!" the Time Lord inhaled with a grin, stretching out his arms, "Smell that Atlantic breeze. Nice and cold. Lovely. Martha, Ally, have you met my friend?" they all looked up, seeing the Statue of Liberty towering above them both young women gawking up at it eyes wide as saucers.

"Is that?" Martha asked, trailing off in amazement, unable to complete her sentence.

"Oh, my God! That's the Statue of Liberty!" Alice finished off with both women squealing excitedly and briefly hugging. She had always wanted to come to America when she was younger. Still, her parents could never afford to take her and Donna go. It'd be priceless to see her sister's face right now. But it still made her feel a little guilty that she hadn't told a soul where she was.

"Gateway to the New World," the Doctor added, smiling at them both before looking back up at the monument, "' Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to break free...'"

"That's so brilliant. I've always wanted to go to New York," Martha said, "I mean the real New York, not the new, new, new, new, new..." Together, the three walk towards the island's edge with a view of the stunning Manhattan skyline.

"Well, there's the genuine article," the Doctor nodded towards it, "So good, they named it twice. Mind you, it was New Amsterdam originally. Harder to say twice. No wonder it didn't catch on. New Amsterdam, New Amsterdam."

"I wonder what year it is 'cause looks, the Empire State Building's not even finished yet," Martha observed as she and Alice took a closer look at the skyline.

"Work in progress. Still got a couple of floors to go, and if I know my history, that makes a date somewhere around..."

"I'd say about 1930," the young Noble shrugged, taking a guess, her eyes not leaving the skyline.

"November 1st," Martha added, grabbing the newspaper nearby with the exact date.

"You're getting good at this," the Time Lord voiced irritably, not looking at them, "You both are!" he turned to see her holding a newspaper. But how did Alice figure out what year it was? A lucky guess, maybe?

"Eighty years ago," Martha mused aloud in thought as the Doctor took the paper, "It's funny 'cause you see all those old newsreels in black and white like it's so far away, but here we are. It's real. It's now," she laughed gesturing towards the city before glancing over at the Doctor, "Come on, you. Where do we go first?"

But he remained silent, still reading the newspaper, and both young women knew something was instantly wrong as one peered over each shoulder to have a look.

"What's wrong, Spaceman?" Alice asked with a frown as they looked at the headline.

"I think our detour just got longer," he tells them both.

"'Hooverville Mystery Deepens, '" Martha read aloud ", What's Hooverville?" before she and Alice looked over at him in confusion.

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A little while later found all three time travellers strolling through Central Park. The Doctor gave Alice a brief look of concern, wondering whether it was too soon for another adventure after what happened to her on New Earth after sustaining her injury. Then, her collapsing after the shouting match they had, her wound was healing rather well by all accounts, as it was only a day ago, which he found puzzling.

Also, he worried about Martha, of course. Still, it was just Alice that was becoming a growing concern and the Chameleon Arch hanging around her neck. Of course, he hadn't mentioned it to her as he was still trying to process things. Like how did they even get here in the first place? He also noticed she had been looking a little lost lately as well. He wanted to ask what bothered her but wouldn't force her to tell him. So, for now, he was going to leave it be.

"Herbert Hoover, 31st President of the USA, came to power a year ago," the Time Lord explained as they walked through the park, "Up till then, New York was a boomtown, the Roaring Twenties, and then..."

"The Wall Street Crash, yeah? When was that 1929?" the redhead added, turning the fact into a question just as she finished speaking.

"Yeah," the Doctor nodded with a slight frown to shake it off before talking, "The whole economy was wiped out overnight. Thousands of people are unemployed. Suddenly, the huddled masses doubled in number with nowhere to go. So they ended up here in Central Park."

"What? Do they live in the park? In the middle of the city?" Martha asked with a raised eyebrow, only to see for herself later.

They now take in the surroundings of Hooverville, a collection of quickly put-together shacks and tents with random barrels dotted throughout. It couldn't be more of a vast comparison to the towering skyscrapers of the rich, which the poor had once lived in. Alice and Martha feel sad looking at these people who have lost everything they've ever worked for.

"Ordinary people. Lost their jobs. Couldn't pay the rent, and they lost everything. There are places like this all over America. You only come to Hooverville when there's nowhere else to go," the Doctor added as they continued to walk down what appeared to be a small street, people watching them pass by, most likely judging the clean clothes they wore.

When sounds of fighting filled the air just as they entered another part of Hooverville, they saw a crowd gathering towards where the fight was happening. Alice, Martha and the Doctor joined the group to see what was happening.

"That's enough!" an older russet-skinned man yelled, holding one of the men back after trying to lunge at the other one. The man took a deep breath before talking more calmly but sternly, looking to both men, "Now think real careful before you lie to me."

"I'm starvin', Solomon," the man who tried attacking the other man spoke up with pleading eyes, making Alice feel sorry for the man.

"That's awful," she uttered. The Time Lord wants to put the young redhead at ease and resists the urge to wrap his arm around her shoulders no matter how much he wants to. But out of his eye, he sees Martha grabbing her friend's hand, giving it a brief squeeze to let go.

Soloman held out his hand to the accused man, who now reached under his coat, pulling out the loaf of bread and handing it to Soloman, who began to speak up, "We're all starvin'," he tears the bread in two, "We all got families somewhere," he passed a half to each man with a severe expression, "No stealin' and no fightin'," he went on, "You know the rules. Thirteen years ago, I fought in the Great War. A lot of us did. And the only reason we got through was because we stuck together! No matter how bad things get, we still act like human beings. It's all we got."

Both men went off their separate ways as the crowd began to disperse. It seemed to the Doctor that Soloman was the big cheese around here and that he might be the best to go to about the missing people first.

"Come on," the Time Lord went towards Soloman, Alice and Martha following not far behind, "I suppose that makes you the boss around here."

"And, uh, who might you be?" the man inquired with a frown.

"He's the Doctor, I'm Martha, and this is Alice," Martha introduces everyone before the Doctor could even get the chance to do it himself.

"A doctor," Soloman scoffed as he glanced over at the Time Lord before wandering towards a nearby fire as the trio followed after him, now warming his hands over it, "Well, we got, uh, stockbrokers, we got a lawyer, but you're the first doctor. The neighbourhood gets classier by the day."

The two women took in their surroundings again before Alice went to ask, arms now crossed between her and Martha, "How many people are living here?"

"At any one time, hundreds," Soloman answered, "No place else to go. But I will say this about Hooverville..." he stops warming his hands to look at them, "We are a truly equal society, black, white, all the same. All starving," he let out a small laugh before going on, "So you're welcome. The three of you. But tell me, Doctor, you're a man of learning, right?" he looked to the Doctor. Then he pointed toward the Empire State Building, "Explain this to me. That there's going to be the tallest building in the world. How come they can do that, and we got people starving in the heart of Manhattan?"

The Time Lord didn't have the answers for him. Well, he did. But the Doctor knew they wouldn't be what man Solomon needed to hear. As much as he wanted to help humanity, it was something they had to figure out on their own. Well, at least most of them would.

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Another while later, he finds the trio approaching Soloman again, who was just outside his tent, throwing some dregs of coffee into the fire.

"So..." the Doctor began to speak, gaining Soloman's attention. He took the newspaper from earlier out of his coat and held it up for Soloman to look at, "Men are going missing. Is this true?"

Solomon took the newspaper from the Doctor, sadly gazed at it and nodded, "It's true, all right," after a short moment, he retreated into his tent and the Doctor, along with Alice and Martha, followed, taking it probably wasn't something he wanted to talk about in public.

"But what does missing mean? Men must come and go here all the time. It's not like anyone's keeping a register."

"C'mon in," Solomon offers two seats opposite him to sit on. The Doctor allows the two girls to sit, and he remains standing, "This is different."

"In what way?" Alice asked with a confused frown.

"Someone takes them," Solomon answered the young redhead, "At night. We hear something. Someone calls out for help. By the time we get there, they're gone. Like they vanish into thin air."

"And you're sure someone's taking them?"

"Doctor, when you got next to nothing, you hold on to the little you got," the man replied, "Your knife, blanket, you take it with you. You don't leave bread uneaten, fire still burning."

"Have you been to the police?" Martha inquired in suggestion.

"Yeah, we tried that. So another deadbeat goes missing, big deal," Solomon returned in frustration before rolling his eyes.

"So, the question is, who's taking them and what for?" the Time Lord pondered as the two women nodded in sympathy.

Suddenly, a young man with a thick Texan accent, probably around Martha and Alice's age, poked his head into the tent door, "Solomon, Mr Diagoras is here."

Solomon excused himself once he had gone, stood up, and went outside. Not long after, the trio followed him into a large crowd who stood before a man with slicked-back hair wearing a fancy, probably costly, dark, pinstriped suit with two men standing on either side of him. To Alice, something about that man didn't sit right with her, a feeling that the man was up to no good.

"I need men," Mr Diagoras now announced, "Volunteers. I got some work for you, and you sure look like you can use the money."

"Yeah," the young Texan who popped his head into Solomon's tent earlier agreed with a nod before asking, "What is the money?"

"A dollar a day."

All the men grumbled at the very mention of the shoddy payment. One dollar was hardly anything to get by. They needed much more. Alice and Martha couldn't help but glare at him.

"What's the work?" Solomon asked as he took a step forward.

"A little trip down the sewers. I got a tunnel that collapsed and needs clearing and fixing. Any takers?" the man looked around at the crowd of men, but it seemed nobody was interested.

But Solomon wouldn't let Diagoras be sent to their death just for a dollar, not on his life, "A dollar a day? That's slave wage. Men don't always come back up, do they?"

"Accidents happen," the man casually brushed off with a shrug.

"What do you mean? What sort of accidents?" the Time Lord asked, stepping forward as the man's response was instead on the calm side of things for people disappearing or

Diagoras glared at the young redhead and briefly glanced at Martha, instantly knowing they were being judged just because they were women and probably wouldn't be up to the job he'd been suggesting, "You don't need the work? That's fine. Anybody else?" once finished speaking the Doctor quickly raised his hand, as the other man glared at him, "Enough with the questions."

Both women looked at him in confusion, wondering why he was raising his hand as Alice leaned towards the Doctor and whispered, "What are you doing?"

"Oh, I'm volunteering us," he answered with a smile, pointing to himself, Alice and Martha.

Alice now glared at him in disbelief before letting out a small huff and shaking her head, knowing there wasn't any choice. As she shared a brief look of annoyance with Martha, both young women rolled their eyes before raising their hands with false grins on their faces.

"I'm gonna kill you for this," the redhead uttered to the Doctor through gritted teeth.

"The feeling's mutual," Martha added just as Soloman and the young Texan man raised their hands.

As the group now follows Diagora's lead into the sewer, Alice gets an unpleasant warmth radiating from her locket as it rests against her skin. Suddenly, feelings of uneasiness and dread that weren't entirely her own washed over her like a cold breeze. As if she were being warned that danger was coming. The young Noble shook her head, not knowing it would be sooner than she thought...