The One True Free Life (12/26)
Title: The One True Free Life (12/26)
Characters: Alt!Ten/Rose, and everyone else I can cram in to the Alt!Verse, plus several OCs
Rating: Teen
Spoilers: Everything
Disclaimer: It would be a very different, and possibly quite upsetting, world if I owned these characters. For the sake of the world's children, I don't.
This chapter is as of yet unbeta'd, so read at your own risk.
Summary: When Rose and Alt!Ten return to Pete's World, after a much longer absence than planned, they find that things have begun to go a bit pear-shaped there. Can Our Heroes save the British Republic while at the same time working out their own Byzantinely complicated personal issues?
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23 | Chapter 24 | Chapter 25 | Chapter 26/ Epilogue | Whole story on Teaspoon
It was moments like this that seemed to justify the rather pompous grandeur of the old Whitehall cabinet offices. The monarchy may have been done away with, ministerial positions renamed secretarial, but the dark panelled offices, manly wet bars, and heavy velveteen curtains remained, and seemed to all collude to make occasions such as these all the more triumphant.
Vincent Heths placed a manicured finger on the intercom button, took a deep breath and tried to remove the emotion from his voice. "Send him in."
Mr. Carney entered, dressed in Savile Row as usual, and beaming, which was unusual. The two men clasped hands warmly and Heths walked over to the wet bar, pouring two glasses of twenty-one year old single malt.
"Don't protest about the early hour, Carney, please. Just take your liquor."
"Cheers," Mr. Carney said, taking the proffered crystal tumbler.
"Please, do sit down. Let's just have a moment here, shall we?" Heths walked back around his large oak desk and sat in his rather modern (and extremely comfortable) office chair. It was the one nod to function over form in his office.
"Thank you, sir."
"If I was a more religious man, Mr. Carney, I think I should see a bit of the hand of the divine working in our favour." He took a sip and let the fumes waft up in to his head.
"That would be hubris, sir," ventured Carney.
"It would, wouldn't it? But how else to explain our great good fortune, eh? And I would like to congratulate you on a job very well done. Who could have known that our routine monitoring would yield such a prize, yet you always did your duty with complete dedication, mundane though it may have been." Heths took another sip and set his glass down with the pleasing sound of heavy lead crystal on thick oak.
"Thank you, sir," replied Carney again. "Though I was just doing my job, you understand."
Heths laughed to himself. "That's what makes you so valuable, Carney. Too many people now-a-days try to rise above their station far too quickly. They try to start making the decisions on their own when they themselves can't see all of the various cogs turning. Men like that muck up the works and stall important projects."
Carney narrowed his eyes. "So, did you know, sir? About him?"
"Mm," he said in to his glass. "No, of course not. He's as much of a mystery to me as to you. If you'd never made a report to me about him, we wouldn't be here now. To a great extent, Mr. Carney, the success of this project is due to your quick thinking." He tapped his nose and winked. "I see great things in your future."
Mr. Carney simply nodded this time and drained the last of his drink.
"Now," began Heths. "I think it's time to brief Ms. Park. And I know just the man I can trust for that errand, eh?"
"Of course, sir." Mr. Carney rose to leave, but Heths remained seated, eyeing the last centimetre of Scotch in his glass thoughtfully.
"I don't think she needs to see him though. She's true-blue, Sophia, but you know women. It might upset her, seeing this sort of work taking place under her own roof. A pity he wouldn't cooperate. He could have been a national hero," he said, more to himself than to Carney.
Mr. Carney turned to leave, but before reaching the door stopped and took a rather formal about-face. "The Tyler girl, sir. Any special instructions?"
Heths' eyebrows rose. "Ah, yes. Good thinking, as usual. I've passed her along to a friend in intelligence. I think you needn't worry about her for the time being. You've got much bigger fish to fry, as they say."
"Very good, sir."
~o0o~
Rose knew that if she didn't get some sleep soon, she'd be a danger to herself and others. The only trouble was, where? She circled a few of the local greens on her motorbike, but they were all nearly completely devoid of cover, and full of teenagers on school holiday playing pick-up games of football, besides. She'd be like a sitting duck the minute she closed her eyes.
She swerved suddenly, and realized that on thinking about the danger she'd be in when she closed her eyes, she had actually closed them for a moment, while driving. Scraping the asphalt off of the Chiswick High Road with her body was just as bad a plan as handing herself to her enemies on the silver platter of Turnham Green, and she pulled over at the next side street, parking her bike and looking furtively around for cameras before removing her helmet.
Entering the stream of pedestrians on the High Road, she considered each shop front for soporific possibilities. A guest house where she could pay cash might do nicely. Something just dodgy enough that she could claim she'd lost her wallet and hadn't got her replacement identification yet and they would bend the rules for her.
All the while, the words "Liberty Systems" scrolled through her head on constant loop. Yet another coincidence? It couldn't be. She had to find out more about the company, but had been trying to avoid using her palmtop, fearing the wireless signal could be traced. With fatigue clouding her judgement, it's not a wonder that she walked past the Chiswick public library twice before making the series of connections that would lead her to an untraceable source of information, as well as a place to get some shut-eye.
She sat down at an out-of-the-way terminal and said a silent benediction to the integrity of librarians. As a united front, they guarded the safety of patron information jealously and had been nearly alone in spurning the mandatory use of the new universal identification cards, and keeping access to catalogues and computers free and unfettered by security checks.
A search on Liberty Systems revealed the company to not be in the mercenary or extraordinary renditions business, but education. "Liberty Systems Learning Services offers revision, tuition and supplemental classroom learning modules to help pupils develop their full educational potential," she read. "Success begins in the heart of each child," chirped friendly text surrounding their birdy, swooshy logo.
This can't be right, thought Rose. But she noted the address of the company headquarters in Whitechapel anyway, and scanned the corporate information for familiar names, finding none of note. The president of the company, Sophia Park, was pictured shaking hands with the Secretary of Education, but that seemed to be the only connection to anyone aside from the various school headmasters and mistresses quoted as being well pleased with Liberty Systems' products.
She rubbed her eyes, stretched, and cursed the physical needs of her body. She would have to sleep, even if just for an hour or two. Walking back in to the stacks of the library, she found a couple of old history books and carried them to a nearby reading nook, where she opened them in her lap, rested her head on the wall behind her, and hoped she merely looked like a girl hard at work on A-level revising.
~o0o~
"You know he'll be driven mad," the Doctor heard a woman say in hushed tones. Taking stock of his surroundings as he rose again from the black void of sedation, he found he was no longer quite so uncomfortable. Still unable to open his eyes, he felt that he was on a thin mattress, raised so he was sitting up slightly, a pillow under his head. Well that's a mercy, he thought.
A man's voice now swam in to his aural focus. "That's no concern of ours. He was given a chance and he refused. Besides, he's not even human. "
The Doctor tried to move his limbs but found that he was unable to do that as well. Machines in the room whirred and beeped, and there was the smell of disinfectant, rubbing alcohol, and harsh hospital soap.
"We don't even know if this will work," the female voice came again.
"That's why we do tests. Mr. Carney wants it to begin immediately though, so whenever you're ready, Deborah."
There was the sound of metal against metal, an implement being dropped on to a metal table perhaps, as a disembodied voice crackled through an intercom. "Are you ready? Is the vessel prepped?"
There was a heavy silence momentarily before the woman sighed in resignation. "Yes. We can begin," she said, loud enough for the intercom to pick up, but not loud enough to sound enthusiastic.
"Affirmative," came the voice through the speaker again.
"Affirmative," mocked the male voice in the room with him. "Honestly, those guys are so pretentious."
"Just check his IV and his vitals," replied the woman. "He's no use to anyone dead."
Any further conversation was lost to him, however, as he felt himself spiral downward, falling endlessly through pitch darkness, his stomach lurching and senses flailing around for anything to grab on to, any light, any sound, anything at all.
But when it came, he found it was not welcome. The bright lights swirling to either side of his field of vision, the sounds of people screaming in terror, the booming metallic drum beat of marching steel warriors, and suddenly now the true feeling of fear, fear for his own life, his family. What family? No, there they were, his little son and infant daughter, his wife with the magnificent curly hair that had first attracted him to her on a tourist boat ride down the Thames. And then they were lit up from behind by a great explosion, his son covering his ears with his hands and squeezing his eyes shut, his wife clutching their daughter to her chest, screaming his name. Why could he not go to them? What was happening?
Let them go! Take me instead, please take me!
(To Chapter 13)
Characters: Alt!Ten/Rose, and everyone else I can cram in to the Alt!Verse, plus several OCs
Rating: Teen
Spoilers: Everything
Disclaimer: It would be a very different, and possibly quite upsetting, world if I owned these characters. For the sake of the world's children, I don't.
This chapter is as of yet unbeta'd, so read at your own risk.
Summary: When Rose and Alt!Ten return to Pete's World, after a much longer absence than planned, they find that things have begun to go a bit pear-shaped there. Can Our Heroes save the British Republic while at the same time working out their own Byzantinely complicated personal issues?
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23 | Chapter 24 | Chapter 25 | Chapter 26/ Epilogue | Whole story on Teaspoon
It was moments like this that seemed to justify the rather pompous grandeur of the old Whitehall cabinet offices. The monarchy may have been done away with, ministerial positions renamed secretarial, but the dark panelled offices, manly wet bars, and heavy velveteen curtains remained, and seemed to all collude to make occasions such as these all the more triumphant.
Vincent Heths placed a manicured finger on the intercom button, took a deep breath and tried to remove the emotion from his voice. "Send him in."
Mr. Carney entered, dressed in Savile Row as usual, and beaming, which was unusual. The two men clasped hands warmly and Heths walked over to the wet bar, pouring two glasses of twenty-one year old single malt.
"Don't protest about the early hour, Carney, please. Just take your liquor."
"Cheers," Mr. Carney said, taking the proffered crystal tumbler.
"Please, do sit down. Let's just have a moment here, shall we?" Heths walked back around his large oak desk and sat in his rather modern (and extremely comfortable) office chair. It was the one nod to function over form in his office.
"Thank you, sir."
"If I was a more religious man, Mr. Carney, I think I should see a bit of the hand of the divine working in our favour." He took a sip and let the fumes waft up in to his head.
"That would be hubris, sir," ventured Carney.
"It would, wouldn't it? But how else to explain our great good fortune, eh? And I would like to congratulate you on a job very well done. Who could have known that our routine monitoring would yield such a prize, yet you always did your duty with complete dedication, mundane though it may have been." Heths took another sip and set his glass down with the pleasing sound of heavy lead crystal on thick oak.
"Thank you, sir," replied Carney again. "Though I was just doing my job, you understand."
Heths laughed to himself. "That's what makes you so valuable, Carney. Too many people now-a-days try to rise above their station far too quickly. They try to start making the decisions on their own when they themselves can't see all of the various cogs turning. Men like that muck up the works and stall important projects."
Carney narrowed his eyes. "So, did you know, sir? About him?"
"Mm," he said in to his glass. "No, of course not. He's as much of a mystery to me as to you. If you'd never made a report to me about him, we wouldn't be here now. To a great extent, Mr. Carney, the success of this project is due to your quick thinking." He tapped his nose and winked. "I see great things in your future."
Mr. Carney simply nodded this time and drained the last of his drink.
"Now," began Heths. "I think it's time to brief Ms. Park. And I know just the man I can trust for that errand, eh?"
"Of course, sir." Mr. Carney rose to leave, but Heths remained seated, eyeing the last centimetre of Scotch in his glass thoughtfully.
"I don't think she needs to see him though. She's true-blue, Sophia, but you know women. It might upset her, seeing this sort of work taking place under her own roof. A pity he wouldn't cooperate. He could have been a national hero," he said, more to himself than to Carney.
Mr. Carney turned to leave, but before reaching the door stopped and took a rather formal about-face. "The Tyler girl, sir. Any special instructions?"
Heths' eyebrows rose. "Ah, yes. Good thinking, as usual. I've passed her along to a friend in intelligence. I think you needn't worry about her for the time being. You've got much bigger fish to fry, as they say."
"Very good, sir."
~o0o~
Rose knew that if she didn't get some sleep soon, she'd be a danger to herself and others. The only trouble was, where? She circled a few of the local greens on her motorbike, but they were all nearly completely devoid of cover, and full of teenagers on school holiday playing pick-up games of football, besides. She'd be like a sitting duck the minute she closed her eyes.
She swerved suddenly, and realized that on thinking about the danger she'd be in when she closed her eyes, she had actually closed them for a moment, while driving. Scraping the asphalt off of the Chiswick High Road with her body was just as bad a plan as handing herself to her enemies on the silver platter of Turnham Green, and she pulled over at the next side street, parking her bike and looking furtively around for cameras before removing her helmet.
Entering the stream of pedestrians on the High Road, she considered each shop front for soporific possibilities. A guest house where she could pay cash might do nicely. Something just dodgy enough that she could claim she'd lost her wallet and hadn't got her replacement identification yet and they would bend the rules for her.
All the while, the words "Liberty Systems" scrolled through her head on constant loop. Yet another coincidence? It couldn't be. She had to find out more about the company, but had been trying to avoid using her palmtop, fearing the wireless signal could be traced. With fatigue clouding her judgement, it's not a wonder that she walked past the Chiswick public library twice before making the series of connections that would lead her to an untraceable source of information, as well as a place to get some shut-eye.
She sat down at an out-of-the-way terminal and said a silent benediction to the integrity of librarians. As a united front, they guarded the safety of patron information jealously and had been nearly alone in spurning the mandatory use of the new universal identification cards, and keeping access to catalogues and computers free and unfettered by security checks.
A search on Liberty Systems revealed the company to not be in the mercenary or extraordinary renditions business, but education. "Liberty Systems Learning Services offers revision, tuition and supplemental classroom learning modules to help pupils develop their full educational potential," she read. "Success begins in the heart of each child," chirped friendly text surrounding their birdy, swooshy logo.
This can't be right, thought Rose. But she noted the address of the company headquarters in Whitechapel anyway, and scanned the corporate information for familiar names, finding none of note. The president of the company, Sophia Park, was pictured shaking hands with the Secretary of Education, but that seemed to be the only connection to anyone aside from the various school headmasters and mistresses quoted as being well pleased with Liberty Systems' products.
She rubbed her eyes, stretched, and cursed the physical needs of her body. She would have to sleep, even if just for an hour or two. Walking back in to the stacks of the library, she found a couple of old history books and carried them to a nearby reading nook, where she opened them in her lap, rested her head on the wall behind her, and hoped she merely looked like a girl hard at work on A-level revising.
~o0o~
"You know he'll be driven mad," the Doctor heard a woman say in hushed tones. Taking stock of his surroundings as he rose again from the black void of sedation, he found he was no longer quite so uncomfortable. Still unable to open his eyes, he felt that he was on a thin mattress, raised so he was sitting up slightly, a pillow under his head. Well that's a mercy, he thought.
A man's voice now swam in to his aural focus. "That's no concern of ours. He was given a chance and he refused. Besides, he's not even human. "
The Doctor tried to move his limbs but found that he was unable to do that as well. Machines in the room whirred and beeped, and there was the smell of disinfectant, rubbing alcohol, and harsh hospital soap.
"We don't even know if this will work," the female voice came again.
"That's why we do tests. Mr. Carney wants it to begin immediately though, so whenever you're ready, Deborah."
There was the sound of metal against metal, an implement being dropped on to a metal table perhaps, as a disembodied voice crackled through an intercom. "Are you ready? Is the vessel prepped?"
There was a heavy silence momentarily before the woman sighed in resignation. "Yes. We can begin," she said, loud enough for the intercom to pick up, but not loud enough to sound enthusiastic.
"Affirmative," came the voice through the speaker again.
"Affirmative," mocked the male voice in the room with him. "Honestly, those guys are so pretentious."
"Just check his IV and his vitals," replied the woman. "He's no use to anyone dead."
Any further conversation was lost to him, however, as he felt himself spiral downward, falling endlessly through pitch darkness, his stomach lurching and senses flailing around for anything to grab on to, any light, any sound, anything at all.
But when it came, he found it was not welcome. The bright lights swirling to either side of his field of vision, the sounds of people screaming in terror, the booming metallic drum beat of marching steel warriors, and suddenly now the true feeling of fear, fear for his own life, his family. What family? No, there they were, his little son and infant daughter, his wife with the magnificent curly hair that had first attracted him to her on a tourist boat ride down the Thames. And then they were lit up from behind by a great explosion, his son covering his ears with his hands and squeezing his eyes shut, his wife clutching their daughter to her chest, screaming his name. Why could he not go to them? What was happening?
Let them go! Take me instead, please take me!
(To Chapter 13)