Clocksleepers (2/2)
Title: Clocksleepers (2/2)
Author: shinyopals
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Rose/Ten II
Summary: Seven pm, Saturday nights. BBC One. A new smash-hit sci-fi drama has half the world on the edge of their seats every week. The thrilling adventures of an enigmatic and quirky hero are so exciting that nobody can look away. What could possibly be wrong with that?
Author's notes: Thanks to ginamak for beta reading and various others for encouragement!
Episode 18 of a virtual series at the_altverse, following The Game is Afoot last week.
Virtual Series Masterlist
Part 1
The floor was hard and cold. Rose was vaguely aware of being contorted into a corner. She opened her eyes and immediately screwed them shut again. Too bright. She groaned involuntarily. Her head was pounding. What had happened?
They’d been driving and... light? No, not driving. Parked. Parked outside the given address of a hypnotic alien lunatic called Cara or Bob. She groaned again, this time at the situation as opposed to her aches and pains. They might not’ve had much choice in what to do and they might’ve known they were facing a trap, but they’re still been caught when it had been sprung.
At last, she worked up the willpower to push herself up off the floor. She sat, leaning against the corner she’d been lying in, eyes still closed. Was it safe to open them? She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to face reality, but the Doctor could be in trouble and the treacherous edge of her mind was trying to force images of Captain Jed and Isabelle into her imagination. All she wanted to do was think about the show.
Gingerly, she opened her eyes, squinting in the light to take in her surroundings. It was a rather tragically decorated laboratory, the walls mustard yellow and the floor a sort of murky green. The equipment was a mixture of ages out of date and stuff she didn’t even recognise. There was no sign of the Doctor, but the room wasn’t empty. When her eyes finally focussed properly and her brain took in the person she was seeing, she stared for a moment.
Then she shut her eyes again, deciding this was a dream.
Or probably not, she thought grumpily. At most, she’d bumped her head and that, combined with the hypnosis, was making her see things. But all things considered, the person she’d seen standing there wasn’t exactly the most ridiculous thing she’d ever seen in her life. Probably not even in that week, now that she thought about it.
She opened her eyes again and stared irritably at the woman holding the gun. The woman who, in fact, looked exactly like Isabelle Buchanan did in the episode she’d seen five minutes of, down to the perfectly styled hair and the Blondes Have More Fun! t shirt.
The gun she was holding was even more familiar: Torchwood standard issue in fact. Rose checked her belt and swore under her breath.
“Don’t make any sudden moves!” ordered Isabelle - or whatever she was called. Rose shook her head slightly. Isabelle Buchanan was a TV character. Either her brain was projecting a shape onto someone convenient through hypnotic suggestion, or she was talking to an actress.
“Wasn’t gonna,” she replied. She was pretty sure that gun was set to stun, but she didn’t especially want to get shot. Although she couldn’t tell for certain if the woman had even taken the safety off. “I’m Rose, by the way. Rose Tyler.” The woman’s hold on the gun was a bit wobbly, so she probably hadn’t used one much. People who thought they could use guns were often far more dangerous than those who actually could, though, so that wasn’t much comfort. “Look, maybe we can just put the gun down and talk about things?”
Isabelle - no, not Isabelle, the woman - looked tempted for a second, but then she narrowed her eyes.
“That’s exactly what he said you’d say! I’m not going to let my guard down!”
Rose blinked. “Who said I’d say that? Bob Charila?”
The woman looked equally confused. “Who? Captain Jed said that, of course.”
Rose shut her eyes again. It was just one of those days.
“Not so cocky now, are you?” said the woman who probably was going to say her name was Isabelle. “You just wait! Jed’ll be here any minute now and he’ll stop your evil plans.”
“Let me guess,” said Rose, looking up at her again, “your name is Isabelle Buchanan?”
“Well of course you knew that,” Isabelle scoffed. “The Movridons will have told you all of that!”
“The... what? Oh, Movridons. Them.” Rose’s brain caught up with her as she remembered the passages from the book about the series. If she was seeing Isabelle Buchanan, she was probably imagining things from the rest of the show as well.
Or was she imagining things? Ever since she’d realised she was being hypnotised, liking the show had felt wrong, somehow. She could feel some external force exerting an influence. But right now... she could still feel that influence tickling in the side of her mind, but it was telling her that meeting the actress who played Isabelle Buchanan was the best thing that had ever happened to her! Even the hypnosis was trying to convince her that this was the actress, and not the character.
Which left... Isabelle being real? No, of course not. She dismissed that one as quickly as she’d thought of it. Clocksleepers was a TV show and not a biographical show.
Had the actress been brainwashed?
“Where were you born?” she asked quietly.
Isabelle stared. “Is this some sort of joke?”
“Humour me,” said Rose.
“Well I- I was born in London, of course,” she replied uncertainly. “What’s this about?”
“Where in London? Which hospital?”
“Well I hardly know-“
“What’s your mother’s name?”
“I- I don’t think you should-“
“Father’s? No? Have you got any brothers or sisters?”
“Listen, whoever you are, you can’t-“
“Who was your best friend, growing up?” asked Rose. “C’mon, you must have had one. I used to sit at the back of the classroom with my mate Shareen. What about you?”
“I don’t- I can’t-“ Isabelle broke off and clutched her head with one hand, the gun was waving wildly now but she kept it pointed at Rose. “Shut up! Just shut up!”
Rose hesitated, and decided to stay quiet. Isabelle looked in genuine pain, and she remembered what trying to throw off the hypnosis had been like at first. She didn’t think she’d have any chance with getting through to whoever the actress was, though: she didn’t even know her name. It was only Rose’s trust in the Doctor that had made her think for a second that maybe he was right.
“Isabelle,” she said gently, getting slowly to her feet but staying back against the wall. “Someone’s been messing with your head. I’m not working for the Movridons. I want to stop them too.”
Isabelle looked up again to see Rose standing. “Don’t come any closer!” she ordered.
Rose help up her hands. “I’m staying back,” she said.
Backing away a couple of steps, Isabelle placed the gun down on one of the lab counters. It was still pointing at Rose, but her hand was no longer on the trigger. Rose briefly considered diving for it - she could probably make it. It seemed far better not to risk it, though, since Isabelle didn’t seem like the type to shoot in cold blood.
What was she the type to do? Rose wished she’d read the Authorised Guide in more depth. The book had made enough of Captain Jed’s refusal to shoot things, but it hadn’t said anything about Isabelle. Looking at her now, though, Rose could see a frightened young woman, one hand still to her head and the other leaning against the lab bench for support. She’d not been a steady shot and she’d not had her own gun, so she was probably more like Rose had been when she’d first met the Doctor.
Probably intentionally, Rose reminded herself grudgingly. Although whoever was behind this couldn’t have known her at nineteen, so it was probably at least partly coincidence and partly someone who’d watched too many Bond movies.
“Do you know where we are?” she asked Isabelle.
“How do I know I can trust you?” Isabelle demanded, forcing herself to stand up straighter and eye Rose again.
“What did Captain Jed tell you about me?” asked Rose.
“That you- you’re a great enemy,” she seemed to stiffen at the memory. “He would never lie to me!”
Rose nodded sympathetically. Even if it was hypnosis, nobody was getting between Isabelle and Captain Jed.
“I used to work for the Movridons,” she said, hoping against hope that this would work. “They tricked me. I thought what they were doing was good.” She hesitated for a second. What was it the Movridons were supposed to be doing? Then she remembered. “I thought they were preserving the timeline,” she continued hurriedly. “When I found out they were destroying it, I ran.” Holding her breath hopefully, she watched Isabelle.
The other woman seemed to relax a little, although she stayed back by the gun.
Rose let out her breath. If the story was believable, that was half the work done. Now she just had to convince Isabelle she wasn’t lying.
“They... tricked you?” She sounded more sympathetic than sceptical already. Rose shaped her features in a way she hoped was upset and angry, wishing she’d been better at drama at school.
“They said you two were trying to destroy humanity!” She attempted to look embarrassed. “I can’t believe I fell for it. And then I learned the truth.”
“How do I know this isn’t all some trick on me?” asked Isabelle.
“You keep my gun,” said Rose, after a moment’s hesitation. Perhaps she could teach Isabelle a thing or two about it. “But we need to get out of here, wherever we are. My husband is probably somewhere out there.”
Isabelle chewed on her lip for a few moments, but then picked up the gun and gestured towards the door. Rose walked slowly towards it, making sure not to get too close to Isabelle. She wondered if she was going to end up getting shot in the back by a TV character. It wasn’t the way she’d have chosen to go.
When she opened the door, and stepped out, she stopped in her tracks and stared around. She’d expected maybe a corridor or another lab or something similar. Instead, she was hit by a blast of icy wind as she stared out onto a field with blue grass and a dark grey sky.
“Oh!” said Isabelle, behind her. Rose turned back. “It wasn’t like this earlier,” she explained. “It was a forest.”
Rose blinked, then noticed the door behind them. She could see the laboratory, but as Isabelle shut the door, the picture was replaced by a haze, behind which she could see another field. Reaching back, she found the door was solid to the touch, but when she felt around the sides there was no wall. It was just there in the middle of nowhere. Presumably the doorframe was bigger on the inside.
“It’s Movridon technology,” said Isabelle, disgusted. “We should go that way.” She pointed behind the door.
“Why do you say that?” asked Rose, glancing around the field as though there might be some clue.
“I came from over there,” she said, pointing in the opposite direction. “And if you try to go anywhere off the path it leads you back.”
Rose frowned, but nodded. “If you say it was different earlier, it’s probably one big illusion,” she said. They might still be in the warehouses. So she hoped, anyway. That was better than being on some alien planet.
She set off in the direction Isabelle had pointed. Isabelle fell into step slightly behind her, still carefully holding the gun.
“How’d you end up here, anyway?” she asked, after a few minutes of listening to the wind. When Isabelle didn’t answer, she glanced back over her shoulder to see a slightly distrusting stare and she raised her hands. “Sorry, sorry.”
“I don’t remember,” said Isabelle eventually. “One minute I was with Jed - my boyfriend, sort of anyway - and the next I woke up here.”
Rose grimaced sympathetically, before reminding herself that it wasn’t real.
“Did you just wake up in a lab, like I did?” she asked.
“Not a lab,” said Isabelle. “In a living room. Just... a normal living room. It had a TV and everything.” She paused for a moment. “There are other doors,” she said. “Like that one. And other corridors. It’s like a maze or something.”
“Have you seen anyone else?” she asked, looking around at the field again. They were coming up to what looked like some sort of fence, but other than that, the fields seemed to carry on all the way to the horizon.
“Nobody human,” said Isabelle, with a shudder. “I saw some Movridons. And I thought I saw some Jrempys as well.” The name meant nothing to Rose, but it was probably another made up alien species.
She scrambled over the worn stile in the fence and started walking again.
“Wait, stop,” instructed Isabelle. “We’re at a crossroads.” Rose blinked. Isabelle pointed down the fence they’d just crossed. There was a little path leading off in each direction, perpendicular to the path they’d been walking down. “All of the corridors are marked,” said Isabelle. “I think. You just have look for it.”
Rose nodded. “So which way do we go?”
Isabelle shrugged.
Rose bit back the urge to ask why they’d even bothered to stop. This wasn’t getting them any closer to finding the Doctor and she had the distinct feeling that it was all just a big distraction from the end of the universe. Instead, she turned to the left and strode forward down the side of the fence and... into a house.
“What?” she blurted out. Spinning around, she saw Isabelle was also there and they’d just appeared to have turned out of a long, dark red corridor and into one that was more blues and greens.
“Oh, I hate the inside ones,” said Isabelle, running a hand through her hair. “They’re all claustrophobic.”
“What... just happened?” asked Rose faintly.
“Some of the corridors turn into new places,” said Isabelle.
“Right,” said Rose.
Now it looked like they were in some old Victorian mansion, quite dark and dingy and with portraits hanging on the walls.
She sighed. “If we turned back around that corner?” she said.
“We’d be back in the field,” said Isabelle. “Probably. It sort of changes.”
“If this is a set maze, we’d be back in the same corridor even if it looked different,” said Rose. “But if it’s all an illusion, then who knows.”
She stepped forward to a door in the side of the corridor and gestured for Isabelle to stand to the side.
“Be ready to shoot,” she instructed.
“But I don’t...” Isabelle started and then trailed off.
“D’you want to give me the gun?” asked Rose, with a raised eyebrow. She glanced over at the gun. “First you’d need to take the safety off,” she said, reaching over to do it.
“Oh,” said Isabelle, looking embarrassed.
“Point, look and shoot,” said Rose. “It’s a beam, so it’s got a good range. So look first. It might be your bloke or mine and you don’t want to shoot either of them.” Or me, she mentally added, wondering if these would be her last words before getting knocked out.
She reached over to the door handle and held onto it, holding up three fingers, then two, then one, then...
It was a beach. Of course it was a beach. What else would you find on the other side of a door in a Victorian mansion but an empty beach? Rose sighed. This place was not growing on her.
Along the edge of the sand was the faintest trace of a path, and Rose guessed this was what Isabelle had meant when she’d said the corridors were marked out. And when she looked along right to the end of the beach she could see movement. Something else was there. It was too big and bulky to be the Doctor or, indeed, any human. It was getting bigger and bulkier too, and Rose realised it was coming towards them.
Beside her, Isabelle had gone pale. “It looks like... it can’t be...”
Rose grabbed her arm, slammed the door shut, and ran. She ran straight down the corridor for fifty feet or so before dragging her companion to the left and into a forest. The shock of the change made her hesitate, but Isabelle had found her own feet by now and dragged Rose forward. While Rose might have been (rightly) sceptical about Isabelle’s firearms skills, she was impressed with her running. Still, she supposed anyone who travelled through time trying to save the universe probably had to know how to run.
They turned down a little woodland path and everything stayed forest, but fifty feet later a right hand turn brought them into a dank industrial looking corridor with blue lights.
Another door led off to the right. Rose grabbed the gun from Isabelle before opening the door, braced to shoot anything that jumped out at her.
Things were mercifully still and silent. She barrelled Isabelle inside and shut the door behind them, leaning against it and panting to catch her breath. Isabelle did the same, as they both surveyed the room they’d just entered.
It was an art gallery of some sort. The walls were white with paintings of a species Rose didn’t recognise. There were two rooms for them to choose from that did not lead back the way they came. Rose forced herself to listen at the door, but could hear no trace of pursuers.
“Did you see what they were?” she asked Isabelle.
“Movridons,” said Isabelle. “Didn’t you?”
“Bad long distance vision,” lied Rose. She’d seen the bulky shape and shades of purple and grey, which would have been enough if she’d ever seen a Movridon before, like she was supposed to have done. She thought she vaguely recognised the colour scheme from one of the aliens on the front of the book the Doctor now had.
“You took my gun!” said Isabelle, seeming to realise for the first time, eyes widening in worry.
Rose clicked the safety on and offered it back politely, half forgetting it was really her gun in the first place.
“No, no, you can shoot better than me,” said Isabelle at last. “I suppose if you’d wanted to shoot me...” She trailed off nervously.
Clipping the gun back to her belt, Rose stepped forward away from the door and chose a gallery. If this was a Movridon trap, they should not have been able to run away so easily. No species was stupid enough to create a trap like that, surely?
She nearly stopped in her tracks, then. What was she thinking? Movridons were fictional.
Weren’t they?
Sighing, she rubbed her eyes and strode forward once more. She was losing track of the bigger picture.
“Are you all right?” Isabelle asked.
“Yeah, sorry,” she said. “This maze is doing funny things to my head.”
Taking a deep breath, she tried to think it out. Bob Charila or Cara Bilboh was mocking them, that much was clear. They’d planted those alien bombs, which had just seemed insane at the time. But was it all part of some game? Clocksleepers hadn’t been enough, by itself. Bob or Cara had known that they’d find out, and they’d come looking, so this maze existed. Isabelle was hypnotised to believe she was Isabelle Buchanan. Presumably somewhere there was a Captain Jed who believed the same. What about the Movridons? Hypnotised aliens? Part of the illusion? Humans in silly masks? Or even a real species who were in on the plot?
The aim was distraction, of course. The show was distracting anyone who owned a television, which included Torchwood and any other organisations. This maze was distracting her and the Doctor - and possibly trying to kill them.
And at seven thirty-five tonight, the walls between the universes would rip open once again.
She’d hardly had time to think about that since they’d arrived left Holmes and Conan Doyle. The key had seemed so small. Conan Doyle had just walked through a door from one world to another with hardly any danger or Daleks and without years of work on a Dimension Cannon. This was the result now, though. The instability he’d created had grown and someone - Bob or Cara - was planning on using it somehow.
Together, she and Isabelle walked through a door... and onto a snowy mountain road. Rose shivered and zipped up her coat even further.
She turned around again. A door. A door between two worlds. Not between parallel universes, no, but it might as well have been. An illusion, but one that looked suspiciously like what Conan Doyle had done.
Had he destroyed the key? Or had it, a hundred and thirty years later, fallen into the hands of someone else?
“Rose!” hissed Isabelle, clutching her arm suddenly.
Rose whirled around. Isabelle was staring up and Rose followed her gaze to see a hovering swarm of creatures. All about a foot in length, their butterfly wings were in all patterned shades of white and grey, making them almost invisible against the snowy mountain. The creatures’ bodies were less like butterflies and more like miniature bears. Rose stared up at them. Real aliens, or an illusion?
The swarm was hovering, seeming to be waiting for something. All eyes were on the creature at the front. The leader, Rose guessed.
Slowly, she reached for her gun and raised it, although this caused no reaction.
“Are they intelligent?” she muttered to Isabelle.
“Huh? Oh! I think so. I think they’re telepathic, though.”
More fictional aliens, then. Or at least, aliens that had appeared in the show. Rose took a deep breath and trusted either the TARDIS translation circuits or the fact that all the aliens on the show probably spoke English.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said, as loudly and clearly as she could. “If you let me and my companion just go on our way, then no one gets hurt. How about it?”
For a second, all she heard was the flap of their wings. Then, the swarm flew backwards and up, out of sight in and amongst the falling snow and rocks of the mountain above them.
Isabelle let out a sigh of relief. “I thought we were for it, then!” she said cheerfully. “You know, you reminded me a little bit of Jed for a second there.”
“Thanks,” said Rose, through gritted teeth, reminding herself that Isabelle was in love with the man and had probably meant it as a compliment.
Then suddenly the swarm was back, five times more than there had been before, diving down towards them shrieking and growling.
“RUN!” screamed Rose, grabbing Isabelle’s hand again as they staggered backwards.
The swarm was coming too fast. They missed the door they’d come in, staggering back along the narrow mountain pathway. On one side was a sheer drop. On the other, a faceless mountain.
“Look for a door!” Rose yelled. “Keep me on the path!” She turned back over her shoulder and fired. The energy beam knocked several of the miniature bears out of the sky but wasn’t strong enough to take out the whole lot. She fired again, ducking and dragging Isabelle down with her as three of the creatures dove towards them.
“Come on!” shouted Isabelle, pulling her back. “A door!”
One of the creatures grabbed at her hair. Another two went for an arm. Flailing wildly, Rose fired again several times in quick succession. One bit her wrist and she shouted in pain and dropped the gun. She made a dive for it, but Isabelle dragged her backwards suddenly through a door. She slammed it shut, and silence reigned.
Rose let out a laugh and sank to the floor. They’d ended up in a faceless grey corridor with identical green doors leading off at odd intervals. It was light and clean and neither too warm nor too cold, and for now there were no aliens attacking them.
Isabelle flopped down next to her, also laughing.
“We’re not a bad team,” said Rose, with a smile to Isabelle.
“Yeah,” she agreed, smiling in return and laughing again. “I tell you what, though, you might have sounded a bit like Jed when you told them where to go, but when they came back and tried to kill us I really thought I was with him for a second.”
Rose chuckled, thinking of her own adventures with the Doctor.
That was what Isabelle and Captain Jed were supposed to be, of course. She kept forgetting that. Isabelle might not remember anything outside of her show identity, but she didn’t half feel real. Was everything she was a fake, or was the real woman - whatever her name was - shining through?
“C’mon,” she said, when they’d got their breaths back. “We’ve gotta find these blokes of ours.”
Before they started walking, though, Rose pulled off her jacket and inspected the bites in her arms. There was blood, but only a small amount, and it seemed to be clotting already. Just a minor wound, she thought, examining the bite pattern, but then putting her jacket back on. They never knew when they’d end up somewhere cold or snowy again, so there was no sense in leaving clothing behind.
The corridors remained grey and featureless for far longer than Rose was used to. The scenery had seemed to change every two to three corners they’d turned before, but now as they walked ahead, there was nothing but greyness. It was a little unsettling, actually. There was no sense of distance, only more corridors. Was this real, or just another illusion leading them in circles?
The two of them stuck close together, Rose wishing she’d been able to keep hold of her gun. If those creatures had been part of the illusion, then she was in deeper than she realised. They’d bitten her, after all. Or was she only imagining it?
Whoever had created this stupid thing was doing a good job of driving her crazy, she thought with a sardonic smile.
Behind them, a door opened.
They both spun, ready for action. They had barely twenty feet of space between them and whatever it was that was about to emerge. That wasn’t enough to run, if it was quick.
“Rose!” The Doctor’s head peered around the door and split into an enormous grin when he saw her. “Fancy seeing you here.” She beamed at him, heart thudding in her chest. He was all right!
“Oh my god, Doctor! I didn’t know what you were!”
She made to step forward, but suddenly the ground gave way beneath her feet. She and Isabelle tumbled down a pitch black slide, bumping into the walls. She heard the Doctor’s scream of her name echoing down the slide as she scrabbled for hand holds or footholds or anything. There was nothing. They fell and fell until they tumbled out the bottom of the slide into a messy heap.
Isabelle jumped to her feet and backed away from Rose. “You... you...!”
She didn’t finish, though, her eyes moving to something over Rose’s shoulder.
Rose didn’t waste time looking, instead she leapt forwards and scrambled to her feet, taking off down the corridor and dragging Isabelle with her.
Behind them, she heard a roar and the stamp of boots running, and she risked a look to get her first close up view of the Movridons. There were two of them, but that was more than enough to hurt both her and Isabelle given their size. Fortunately, they were also slower runners.
Rose grabbed a door handle without thinking and pulled Isabelle through it, setting them down in another forest.
This one wasn’t so empty. Up ahead were three more Movridons and someone else. She froze, not daring to go back. Then looked around and darted behind a bush at the side of the road, pulling Isabelle with her.
Ahead, one of the Movridons looked over to where they had been, but by this point the two that had been pursuing them had appeared through the door. Whatever noise the first had heard, he put down to the two that now joined him. Rose could hear them talking in deep voices that were surprisingly smooth, but she couldn’t make out any individual words.
She heard a whimper, and she turned to see that Isabelle was crying.
“Shhh!” she urged frantically. “Don’t worry - we’ll be OK!”
“It’s easy for you to say,” muttered Isabelle. “You’re going to kill me and they’ve got Jed.”
Rose glanced up through the bushes again to see that the figure with the five Movridons was indeed wearing the garish costume of Captain Jed.
Then she realised what she’d heard and turned back to Isabelle. “I’m not going to kill you,” she said, confused. “I thought we settled that. Not with them. If I was, don’t you think I’d be out there?”
“Not with them, no,” said Isabelle, through sniffles. “With him.”
Ah, thought Rose. That explained it. Why she hadn’t thought of it, she didn’t know. If Isabelle had been convinced that Rose was a traitor, then she must have been told the same about the Doctor. Who she’d just seen Rose run towards.
“He’s reformed too,” she said, hoping that would cover it. “Come on, Isabelle, if I wanted you dead I’d’ve done it ages ago.”
Isabelle sniffed again. “He’d never reform,” she said.
“The Movridons tricked him too.”
Her eyes narrowed and Rose realised she’d made a mistake. “He doesn’t work for the Movridons,” Isabelle said. “He’s worse. Jed wouldn’t say much. He never tells me things.” She blew her nose at this point and Rose winced. Fortunately, the Movridons seemed distracted. “But he knows him from ages ago.” She paused and looked up at Rose, eyes wide. “Did he tell you he used to work for the Movridons too? Did he trick you?”
Rose hesitated. Clearing suspicion of herself would implicate the Doctor.
“Look, it’s complicated,” she murmured. “But trust me, he’s not killing anyone if he can help it.”
Isabelle looked doubtful, but before she could say anything more, the Movridons started to march back towards them. Rose could see Captain Jed more clearly now, the smooth, handsome face in the middle of the large, brutish creatures. He was being held by two of them, but he wasn’t restrained in any way that she could see.
She gestured for Isabelle to follow her and they crept after the Movridons. The group bypassed the door Rose and Isabelle had come through and kept to the forest corridors, which was something of a relief. It was easier to sneak on soil and dirt than it was indoors.
“Don’t suppose you’ve got anything handy in your pockets?” she asked Isabelle.
“No,” said Isabelle slowly, “but I think Jed has a sleep grenade. He usually does. It makes them drop like flies.”
“OK,” said Rose, “we’re gonna do something stupid.” She glanced to the side of the forest path and picked out a tree that looks sufficiently easy to climb. “When I give the signal, shout at them, and then run!” she said, dashing forward before Isabelle could protest and scrambling up the tree.
She waved frantically at Isabelle as she began to pull herself out along the branch. Isabelle hesitated, and Rose waved again.
Isabelle screamed. She was very good at it. Ahead, the Movridon guard spun around. Rose could just make out Captain Jed’s horror before the Movridons began to lumber forward.
“GET YOUR HANDS OFF HIM!” yelled Isabelle, before turning tail and running.
The Movridons began to pass under Rose’s tree and she dropped off her branch and kicked out as she did so. Small as she was compared to them, they weren't expecting it , and two of the five fell. One of those still standing kept running after Isabelle.
Another reached out to grab at Rose, yoinking her arm half out of her socket. She kicked back violently, trying to aim for the crotch and then the stomach, flailing her remaining arm to try and reach the eyes. The Movridon roared at her.
“You little...”
Then it dropped to the floor, dragging her down with it. The smell of stale sweat hit her as she landed half on top of the beast that was now snoring away.
Dazed, she stared up to see Captain Jed taking a moment to give a heroic pose.
“I took them out with a sleeping grenade,” he said dramatically. “Just the thing for a hoard of Movridons.” He looked up into the sky for a moment before turning a sombre eye to the scene. “What a waste. If only they learned their true potential. They could do such good for the universe.” He then put a hand to his heart and lowered his gaze. Rose stared in disbelief, then scoffed and rolled her eyes. He was just reaching down to offer her his hand in assistance as she got to her feet.
“You’re useful!” she snapped sarcastically at him. “Now come on! Isabelle!”
Captain Jed did not appear to be used to being hurried through these things, and she vaguely recalled him stopping to give a speech mid-rescue on the show. Bloody typical. Still, if Isabelle could be made to be helpful in a crisis, then so could he.
“I’m Rose, by the way,” she said, as they started to run.
“I know who you are,” he said. “And yet you assisted me?”
“I was tricked by the Movridons, I’m actually nice,” said Rose between breaths. She did not have the time for this.
“I am... Captain Jed,” he said, as though expecting a thunderclap. Despite apparently knowing who she was, he didn’t want to miss the opportunity to introduce himself in as ridiculous a manner as possible. He ran a hand through his hair with a smile he clearly hoped was devastatingly attractive. The gesture might have seemed more familiar if his smile had done anything for her.
Then Jed stopped in his tracks.
Rose skidded to a halt and stared back at him, disbelieving.
“I have no more sleeping grenades!” he proclaimed. “I must find some other way to save Isabelle.”
“Well why don’t we hang around here and talk about it for a bit?” snapped Rose. “Think while you run!” She set off again. Fortunately, he seemed to get the message and started to follow her.
There was another shriek from up ahead and Rose sped up. Isabelle was lying on the floor, cowering against a tree. In front of her stood the Movridon, tree branch raised above its head to strike a deadly blow.
She was too far away, Rose realised with a sick horror. Isabelle was going to be crushed!
A door in the rocks flung open and the Doctor ran out, sonic at the ready. Even from a distance, the noise halted her, the high pitched scream of the screwdriver making her clamp her hands on her ears in pain. Squinting, she saw Isabelle doing the same and the Movridon also frozen in pain. Captain Jed was similarly incapacitated. The Doctor was the only one seeming to be unaffected and he darted forward, and shoved the Movridon out the way, making the giant creature topple. Then he grabbed Isabelle’s hand and ran towards them.
The sound vanished. Rose stared at the approaching Doctor for a second, then looked to see the Movridon recovering too.
She turned and fled.
Captain Jed was standing a little behind her. “You!” he shouted at the Doctor. “You are here now!”
Rose changed her course a little and barrelled into Jed. “RUN, YOU IDIOT.”
To her relief, he did.
~*~
Seeing Rose again, after what felt like an age of wandering through this ridiculous maze, had been the only thing the Doctor had been hoping for. He’d stopped thinking too hard about the end of the universe and had concentrated on finding his wife. A little voice at the back of his mind had told him that was a bad idea, but he’d ignored it and decided that exploring the maze was the best way to find out how to save the world anyway.
The sonic had revealed nothing other than that it was an illusion. Without Theseus’s mythical ball of thread, he’d been stuck wandering aimlessly and hiding from the occasional species of alien. The Authorised Guide had told him all about the strong sense of smell that the Mdictos had, and how to distract a Fording with leaves and had helped him work out the right sonic frequency to use on the Movridons, who seemed to be the most common.
Rose didn’t have this book, though. And she didn’t have a sonic screwdriver. All he’d been able to do was hope and keep looking.
Then, he’d stuck his head out into a boringly grey corridor and there she’d been, standing there with someone else, safe and alive and well!
And of course, at that moment, a floor panel had swung open and the two had dropped down a slide. That had been the point where the Doctor had really started to hate Bob Charila’s supposed sense of humour, as Rose had called it.
By the time he’d got down there, there’d been no sign of Rose or the other woman. There’d been the noise of running Movridons, though. He’d run through the corridors almost blindly, following the sound. He hadn’t been prepared to give up on her yet. He’d found himself in another featureless corridor, listening to the silence desperately, until someone had screamed.
Now, he was holding the hand of a blonde who definitely was not Rose, while Rose was holding the hand of someone he couldn’t help but notice resembled the fictional Captain Jed. He supposed if there were Movridons in this maze, then Captain Jed and Isabelle - who he now realised he was dragging along - was not exactly a surprise.
“About time!” Rose said to him with a grin. “Cutting it a bit fine, weren’t you?”
“You know me, I like to make an entrance!” he said.
“Here!” she pointed to another door and pulled her companion through it. The Doctor followed, urging Isabelle in front of him. Behind them, the Movridons screamed.
They were faster, though, and Rose seemed accustomed enough to running them through the landscapes. She led them through a space base, a suburban street, a tropical rainforest and along the top of a stony cliff down to the sea before they found themselves in a classroom.
“I think we can take a break now,” said the Doctor, cheerfully enough. He dropped Isabelle’s hand and turned to grab Rose, picking her off the floor as he hugged her. She nuzzled his neck and murmured something happily into his collar. He grinned broadly over her shoulder, taking in the other two also exchanging hugs.
When they pulled apart and turned to stare, the Doctor moved back, a little reluctantly.
Then he saw the blood on Rose’s arm and took hold of it gently. “What happened?”
“Flying bears,” she said. “With butterfly wings.”
He inspected the cut and soniced it to clean it, but the wound seemed to be healing well enough and he gently pulled her sleeve back down over it. Then he turned to look at the other two.
Captain Jed was aiming some sort of weapon at him.
The Doctor stared. What the hell had he done to deserve this?
“Jed! You never use that!” squeaked Isabelle, clutching the top of her t shirt in shock and horror.
“I’m sorry, my dear Isabelle,” said Jed, with overly dramatic forlornness. “There are things I’ve never been able to tell you. Terrible things. What this man has done can never be excused.”
“But you don’t kill people!” said an appalled Isabelle.
Rose had made the most of this speech to sidle in front of the Doctor. They had a brief and silent argument with hands and elbows which she won, so he dropped back a little, prepared to move out of the way to give Jed a clear shot if need be. Nobody was shooting Rose to get to him.
Jed shook his head sorrowfully, as though this was weighing terribly on his mind. The Doctor wondered if he was trying to be ridiculous.
“Some things must be done, Isabelle,” he said. Then he looked up to see Rose blocking his shot of the Doctor, and started. Apparently this wasn’t in the script. “Rose Tyler,” he said. “You have such potential to be good and great and yet you ally yourself with the Movridons. How could you betray your own species like that?”
The Doctor blinked. What? What the hell was going on?
As if fake aliens trying to kill them wasn’t bad enough, the famous Captain Jed and companion thought they were evil. Of course he did. The Doctor sighed. Bob or Cara was sitting somewhere and laughing at this, weren’t they?
To his surprise, Rose raised a hand to her forehead in a dramatic pose. “I know!” she said, in the over the top tone she used when she was trying to act. She wasn’t very good at it normally, but she seemed to fit right in with Jed’s speeches. “It was a terrible thing. The Movridons tricked me! When I found out the truth I was truly horrified and... I felt really bad!”
The Doctor desperately turned his laughter into a coughing fit. Rose kicked backwards and got him in the shin.
“It’s true!” chimed in Isabelle. “Rose and I - we worked together. She could have killed me hundreds of times and instead she saved my life. Oh, Jed, you can’t shoot her!”
Jed looked disconcerted. This wasn’t, apparently, how he’d expected things to go.
“No,” he said at last, looking deeply, deeply relieved. “I cannot take her life. But can’t you both see? I must stop the Doctor now, before it’s too late!”
“He’s reformed too,” said Rose. “You saw him save Isabelle back there. When he saw what... erm... terrible things the Movridons were doing, he decided the only way was to fight them.” She paused and glanced at the Doctor. “For the good of humanity!” she added as an afterthought, then raised her eyebrows expectantly at him. “He’s you,” she hissed. “Tell him what he wants to hear.”
The Doctor spluttered for a moment. The so-called Captain Jed was nothing at all like him, and spending this time in his company had convinced him of that.
Rose cleared her throat and kicked him again.
“Rose is right,” he said at last, reluctantly joining in the farce. “What the Movridons are doing-“ Here he hesitated. What were they doing? “Trying to destroy the humanity, I mean,” he continued when the memory came to him, “has made me erm... re-evaluate everything I believed to be true. Now I can see that the brilliant, wonderful things humans do are so worth preserving.” He glanced at Captain Jed, waiting for a reaction.
The Captain already seemed somewhat taken in, which the Doctor considered insulting. He was not nearly so stupid as to just accept the word of some sworn enemy. Especially not the really doubtful sounding word that had been forced out at someone else’s prompting.
“Rose and I have got married, you know,” he added hopefully. “We want to save the universe from the Movridons so we can settle down and live happily ever after.” He paused thoughtfully. “And atone for all the terrible things we have done.”
“You’re really...” Jed seemed at loss for words.
“We want to help you,” the Doctor assured him. “There’s no greater aim than saving the world!” he added, grinning. He was, he reflected, getting a little into this.
Jed dropped his weapon and stared at the Doctor, stunned, but eyes filling with tears of joy.
Then, suddenly, he rushed at the Doctor and hugged him. The Doctor stood stiffly and patted him on the back. Rose mimed wiping away a tear and he looked away from her, scowling. Then he quickly made his face blank and turned his gaze to Isabelle. She looked delighted with this turn of events and had apparently not noticed his glares.
The Doctor took a deep breath and did his best to keep his face empty. This was ridiculous.
“I’ve always hoped,” said Jed, pulling back from the hug and wiping his eyes. “I’ve always thought back to when we were children and running across the fields. We were best friends. And then all that happened to you. But I always knew there was some goodness left inside! Even when all you talked about was the drums!”
The Doctor froze.
His blood ran cold and he felt his lone, single heartbeat start to race. Just the one heart. Just the one. Not like others. Others who he couldn’t sense any more. Others who could be here, in this universe, right now.
“But it can’t be!” he spat out, only half aware of the others turning to look at him.
The bomb, the cameras, the hypnosis, the ridiculous parody of their lives, the games and the danger and the end of the world. It all suddenly came together with horrible clarity. Who else would do all that?
Ears ringing, the Doctor staggered back away from Jed. “You couldn’t know that- You wouldn’t say that- He died.”
Died in another universe. Died in the Doctor’s arms in another universe.
But the key! Of course, the key! Conan Doyle hadn’t destroyed it. What human would?
“The end of the universe in his hands and he couldn’t destroy it!” he snapped.
“Doctor?” said Rose nervously, stepping forward. “What is it?” Isabelle and Captain Jed had stepped back away from him.
“Rose, we have to get out of here. Now! We have to get away. There has to be some way! Did you see anything? Anything at all? We need to get out!”
“Awww, but if you wanted to leave, you shouldn’t have dropped by in the first place.”
That voice.
The classroom around them had melted into a plain white room.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered to Rose.
She gaped at him, clearly afraid now. But she should be afraid. Oh, Rose. What had he done? He’d been so impossibly glad that Rose had been in a parallel universe for that entire, terrible year. She’d been safe and alive. And now... now she was here and so was he.
“Aren’t you going to say hello?” came the voice again. The Doctor squeezed Rose’s hand, not wanting to turn and make it real but knowing he had to.
Stiffly, he revolved on the spot, keeping Rose behind him as much as he could.
“Hello, Master,” he said at last, looking into the eyes of the man he’d watched die. The man who’d refused to regenerate. How was this possible?
“Ooh! Say it again! It gives me such a buzz when you use my name!”
Rose tightened her grip on his hand and, far from finding it reassuring, he wished she wasn’t there. He’d put another universe between them to save her from this. But now he had no choice. They were at the Master’s mercy.
TO BE CONTINUED...
To be concluded next week in The Broken Key, the series finale.
Author: shinyopals
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Rose/Ten II
Summary: Seven pm, Saturday nights. BBC One. A new smash-hit sci-fi drama has half the world on the edge of their seats every week. The thrilling adventures of an enigmatic and quirky hero are so exciting that nobody can look away. What could possibly be wrong with that?
Author's notes: Thanks to ginamak for beta reading and various others for encouragement!
Episode 18 of a virtual series at the_altverse, following The Game is Afoot last week.
Virtual Series Masterlist
Part 1
The floor was hard and cold. Rose was vaguely aware of being contorted into a corner. She opened her eyes and immediately screwed them shut again. Too bright. She groaned involuntarily. Her head was pounding. What had happened?
They’d been driving and... light? No, not driving. Parked. Parked outside the given address of a hypnotic alien lunatic called Cara or Bob. She groaned again, this time at the situation as opposed to her aches and pains. They might not’ve had much choice in what to do and they might’ve known they were facing a trap, but they’re still been caught when it had been sprung.
At last, she worked up the willpower to push herself up off the floor. She sat, leaning against the corner she’d been lying in, eyes still closed. Was it safe to open them? She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to face reality, but the Doctor could be in trouble and the treacherous edge of her mind was trying to force images of Captain Jed and Isabelle into her imagination. All she wanted to do was think about the show.
Gingerly, she opened her eyes, squinting in the light to take in her surroundings. It was a rather tragically decorated laboratory, the walls mustard yellow and the floor a sort of murky green. The equipment was a mixture of ages out of date and stuff she didn’t even recognise. There was no sign of the Doctor, but the room wasn’t empty. When her eyes finally focussed properly and her brain took in the person she was seeing, she stared for a moment.
Then she shut her eyes again, deciding this was a dream.
Or probably not, she thought grumpily. At most, she’d bumped her head and that, combined with the hypnosis, was making her see things. But all things considered, the person she’d seen standing there wasn’t exactly the most ridiculous thing she’d ever seen in her life. Probably not even in that week, now that she thought about it.
She opened her eyes again and stared irritably at the woman holding the gun. The woman who, in fact, looked exactly like Isabelle Buchanan did in the episode she’d seen five minutes of, down to the perfectly styled hair and the Blondes Have More Fun! t shirt.
The gun she was holding was even more familiar: Torchwood standard issue in fact. Rose checked her belt and swore under her breath.
“Don’t make any sudden moves!” ordered Isabelle - or whatever she was called. Rose shook her head slightly. Isabelle Buchanan was a TV character. Either her brain was projecting a shape onto someone convenient through hypnotic suggestion, or she was talking to an actress.
“Wasn’t gonna,” she replied. She was pretty sure that gun was set to stun, but she didn’t especially want to get shot. Although she couldn’t tell for certain if the woman had even taken the safety off. “I’m Rose, by the way. Rose Tyler.” The woman’s hold on the gun was a bit wobbly, so she probably hadn’t used one much. People who thought they could use guns were often far more dangerous than those who actually could, though, so that wasn’t much comfort. “Look, maybe we can just put the gun down and talk about things?”
Isabelle - no, not Isabelle, the woman - looked tempted for a second, but then she narrowed her eyes.
“That’s exactly what he said you’d say! I’m not going to let my guard down!”
Rose blinked. “Who said I’d say that? Bob Charila?”
The woman looked equally confused. “Who? Captain Jed said that, of course.”
Rose shut her eyes again. It was just one of those days.
“Not so cocky now, are you?” said the woman who probably was going to say her name was Isabelle. “You just wait! Jed’ll be here any minute now and he’ll stop your evil plans.”
“Let me guess,” said Rose, looking up at her again, “your name is Isabelle Buchanan?”
“Well of course you knew that,” Isabelle scoffed. “The Movridons will have told you all of that!”
“The... what? Oh, Movridons. Them.” Rose’s brain caught up with her as she remembered the passages from the book about the series. If she was seeing Isabelle Buchanan, she was probably imagining things from the rest of the show as well.
Or was she imagining things? Ever since she’d realised she was being hypnotised, liking the show had felt wrong, somehow. She could feel some external force exerting an influence. But right now... she could still feel that influence tickling in the side of her mind, but it was telling her that meeting the actress who played Isabelle Buchanan was the best thing that had ever happened to her! Even the hypnosis was trying to convince her that this was the actress, and not the character.
Which left... Isabelle being real? No, of course not. She dismissed that one as quickly as she’d thought of it. Clocksleepers was a TV show and not a biographical show.
Had the actress been brainwashed?
“Where were you born?” she asked quietly.
Isabelle stared. “Is this some sort of joke?”
“Humour me,” said Rose.
“Well I- I was born in London, of course,” she replied uncertainly. “What’s this about?”
“Where in London? Which hospital?”
“Well I hardly know-“
“What’s your mother’s name?”
“I- I don’t think you should-“
“Father’s? No? Have you got any brothers or sisters?”
“Listen, whoever you are, you can’t-“
“Who was your best friend, growing up?” asked Rose. “C’mon, you must have had one. I used to sit at the back of the classroom with my mate Shareen. What about you?”
“I don’t- I can’t-“ Isabelle broke off and clutched her head with one hand, the gun was waving wildly now but she kept it pointed at Rose. “Shut up! Just shut up!”
Rose hesitated, and decided to stay quiet. Isabelle looked in genuine pain, and she remembered what trying to throw off the hypnosis had been like at first. She didn’t think she’d have any chance with getting through to whoever the actress was, though: she didn’t even know her name. It was only Rose’s trust in the Doctor that had made her think for a second that maybe he was right.
“Isabelle,” she said gently, getting slowly to her feet but staying back against the wall. “Someone’s been messing with your head. I’m not working for the Movridons. I want to stop them too.”
Isabelle looked up again to see Rose standing. “Don’t come any closer!” she ordered.
Rose help up her hands. “I’m staying back,” she said.
Backing away a couple of steps, Isabelle placed the gun down on one of the lab counters. It was still pointing at Rose, but her hand was no longer on the trigger. Rose briefly considered diving for it - she could probably make it. It seemed far better not to risk it, though, since Isabelle didn’t seem like the type to shoot in cold blood.
What was she the type to do? Rose wished she’d read the Authorised Guide in more depth. The book had made enough of Captain Jed’s refusal to shoot things, but it hadn’t said anything about Isabelle. Looking at her now, though, Rose could see a frightened young woman, one hand still to her head and the other leaning against the lab bench for support. She’d not been a steady shot and she’d not had her own gun, so she was probably more like Rose had been when she’d first met the Doctor.
Probably intentionally, Rose reminded herself grudgingly. Although whoever was behind this couldn’t have known her at nineteen, so it was probably at least partly coincidence and partly someone who’d watched too many Bond movies.
“Do you know where we are?” she asked Isabelle.
“How do I know I can trust you?” Isabelle demanded, forcing herself to stand up straighter and eye Rose again.
“What did Captain Jed tell you about me?” asked Rose.
“That you- you’re a great enemy,” she seemed to stiffen at the memory. “He would never lie to me!”
Rose nodded sympathetically. Even if it was hypnosis, nobody was getting between Isabelle and Captain Jed.
“I used to work for the Movridons,” she said, hoping against hope that this would work. “They tricked me. I thought what they were doing was good.” She hesitated for a second. What was it the Movridons were supposed to be doing? Then she remembered. “I thought they were preserving the timeline,” she continued hurriedly. “When I found out they were destroying it, I ran.” Holding her breath hopefully, she watched Isabelle.
The other woman seemed to relax a little, although she stayed back by the gun.
Rose let out her breath. If the story was believable, that was half the work done. Now she just had to convince Isabelle she wasn’t lying.
“They... tricked you?” She sounded more sympathetic than sceptical already. Rose shaped her features in a way she hoped was upset and angry, wishing she’d been better at drama at school.
“They said you two were trying to destroy humanity!” She attempted to look embarrassed. “I can’t believe I fell for it. And then I learned the truth.”
“How do I know this isn’t all some trick on me?” asked Isabelle.
“You keep my gun,” said Rose, after a moment’s hesitation. Perhaps she could teach Isabelle a thing or two about it. “But we need to get out of here, wherever we are. My husband is probably somewhere out there.”
Isabelle chewed on her lip for a few moments, but then picked up the gun and gestured towards the door. Rose walked slowly towards it, making sure not to get too close to Isabelle. She wondered if she was going to end up getting shot in the back by a TV character. It wasn’t the way she’d have chosen to go.
When she opened the door, and stepped out, she stopped in her tracks and stared around. She’d expected maybe a corridor or another lab or something similar. Instead, she was hit by a blast of icy wind as she stared out onto a field with blue grass and a dark grey sky.
“Oh!” said Isabelle, behind her. Rose turned back. “It wasn’t like this earlier,” she explained. “It was a forest.”
Rose blinked, then noticed the door behind them. She could see the laboratory, but as Isabelle shut the door, the picture was replaced by a haze, behind which she could see another field. Reaching back, she found the door was solid to the touch, but when she felt around the sides there was no wall. It was just there in the middle of nowhere. Presumably the doorframe was bigger on the inside.
“It’s Movridon technology,” said Isabelle, disgusted. “We should go that way.” She pointed behind the door.
“Why do you say that?” asked Rose, glancing around the field as though there might be some clue.
“I came from over there,” she said, pointing in the opposite direction. “And if you try to go anywhere off the path it leads you back.”
Rose frowned, but nodded. “If you say it was different earlier, it’s probably one big illusion,” she said. They might still be in the warehouses. So she hoped, anyway. That was better than being on some alien planet.
She set off in the direction Isabelle had pointed. Isabelle fell into step slightly behind her, still carefully holding the gun.
“How’d you end up here, anyway?” she asked, after a few minutes of listening to the wind. When Isabelle didn’t answer, she glanced back over her shoulder to see a slightly distrusting stare and she raised her hands. “Sorry, sorry.”
“I don’t remember,” said Isabelle eventually. “One minute I was with Jed - my boyfriend, sort of anyway - and the next I woke up here.”
Rose grimaced sympathetically, before reminding herself that it wasn’t real.
“Did you just wake up in a lab, like I did?” she asked.
“Not a lab,” said Isabelle. “In a living room. Just... a normal living room. It had a TV and everything.” She paused for a moment. “There are other doors,” she said. “Like that one. And other corridors. It’s like a maze or something.”
“Have you seen anyone else?” she asked, looking around at the field again. They were coming up to what looked like some sort of fence, but other than that, the fields seemed to carry on all the way to the horizon.
“Nobody human,” said Isabelle, with a shudder. “I saw some Movridons. And I thought I saw some Jrempys as well.” The name meant nothing to Rose, but it was probably another made up alien species.
She scrambled over the worn stile in the fence and started walking again.
“Wait, stop,” instructed Isabelle. “We’re at a crossroads.” Rose blinked. Isabelle pointed down the fence they’d just crossed. There was a little path leading off in each direction, perpendicular to the path they’d been walking down. “All of the corridors are marked,” said Isabelle. “I think. You just have look for it.”
Rose nodded. “So which way do we go?”
Isabelle shrugged.
Rose bit back the urge to ask why they’d even bothered to stop. This wasn’t getting them any closer to finding the Doctor and she had the distinct feeling that it was all just a big distraction from the end of the universe. Instead, she turned to the left and strode forward down the side of the fence and... into a house.
“What?” she blurted out. Spinning around, she saw Isabelle was also there and they’d just appeared to have turned out of a long, dark red corridor and into one that was more blues and greens.
“Oh, I hate the inside ones,” said Isabelle, running a hand through her hair. “They’re all claustrophobic.”
“What... just happened?” asked Rose faintly.
“Some of the corridors turn into new places,” said Isabelle.
“Right,” said Rose.
Now it looked like they were in some old Victorian mansion, quite dark and dingy and with portraits hanging on the walls.
She sighed. “If we turned back around that corner?” she said.
“We’d be back in the field,” said Isabelle. “Probably. It sort of changes.”
“If this is a set maze, we’d be back in the same corridor even if it looked different,” said Rose. “But if it’s all an illusion, then who knows.”
She stepped forward to a door in the side of the corridor and gestured for Isabelle to stand to the side.
“Be ready to shoot,” she instructed.
“But I don’t...” Isabelle started and then trailed off.
“D’you want to give me the gun?” asked Rose, with a raised eyebrow. She glanced over at the gun. “First you’d need to take the safety off,” she said, reaching over to do it.
“Oh,” said Isabelle, looking embarrassed.
“Point, look and shoot,” said Rose. “It’s a beam, so it’s got a good range. So look first. It might be your bloke or mine and you don’t want to shoot either of them.” Or me, she mentally added, wondering if these would be her last words before getting knocked out.
She reached over to the door handle and held onto it, holding up three fingers, then two, then one, then...
It was a beach. Of course it was a beach. What else would you find on the other side of a door in a Victorian mansion but an empty beach? Rose sighed. This place was not growing on her.
Along the edge of the sand was the faintest trace of a path, and Rose guessed this was what Isabelle had meant when she’d said the corridors were marked out. And when she looked along right to the end of the beach she could see movement. Something else was there. It was too big and bulky to be the Doctor or, indeed, any human. It was getting bigger and bulkier too, and Rose realised it was coming towards them.
Beside her, Isabelle had gone pale. “It looks like... it can’t be...”
Rose grabbed her arm, slammed the door shut, and ran. She ran straight down the corridor for fifty feet or so before dragging her companion to the left and into a forest. The shock of the change made her hesitate, but Isabelle had found her own feet by now and dragged Rose forward. While Rose might have been (rightly) sceptical about Isabelle’s firearms skills, she was impressed with her running. Still, she supposed anyone who travelled through time trying to save the universe probably had to know how to run.
They turned down a little woodland path and everything stayed forest, but fifty feet later a right hand turn brought them into a dank industrial looking corridor with blue lights.
Another door led off to the right. Rose grabbed the gun from Isabelle before opening the door, braced to shoot anything that jumped out at her.
Things were mercifully still and silent. She barrelled Isabelle inside and shut the door behind them, leaning against it and panting to catch her breath. Isabelle did the same, as they both surveyed the room they’d just entered.
It was an art gallery of some sort. The walls were white with paintings of a species Rose didn’t recognise. There were two rooms for them to choose from that did not lead back the way they came. Rose forced herself to listen at the door, but could hear no trace of pursuers.
“Did you see what they were?” she asked Isabelle.
“Movridons,” said Isabelle. “Didn’t you?”
“Bad long distance vision,” lied Rose. She’d seen the bulky shape and shades of purple and grey, which would have been enough if she’d ever seen a Movridon before, like she was supposed to have done. She thought she vaguely recognised the colour scheme from one of the aliens on the front of the book the Doctor now had.
“You took my gun!” said Isabelle, seeming to realise for the first time, eyes widening in worry.
Rose clicked the safety on and offered it back politely, half forgetting it was really her gun in the first place.
“No, no, you can shoot better than me,” said Isabelle at last. “I suppose if you’d wanted to shoot me...” She trailed off nervously.
Clipping the gun back to her belt, Rose stepped forward away from the door and chose a gallery. If this was a Movridon trap, they should not have been able to run away so easily. No species was stupid enough to create a trap like that, surely?
She nearly stopped in her tracks, then. What was she thinking? Movridons were fictional.
Weren’t they?
Sighing, she rubbed her eyes and strode forward once more. She was losing track of the bigger picture.
“Are you all right?” Isabelle asked.
“Yeah, sorry,” she said. “This maze is doing funny things to my head.”
Taking a deep breath, she tried to think it out. Bob Charila or Cara Bilboh was mocking them, that much was clear. They’d planted those alien bombs, which had just seemed insane at the time. But was it all part of some game? Clocksleepers hadn’t been enough, by itself. Bob or Cara had known that they’d find out, and they’d come looking, so this maze existed. Isabelle was hypnotised to believe she was Isabelle Buchanan. Presumably somewhere there was a Captain Jed who believed the same. What about the Movridons? Hypnotised aliens? Part of the illusion? Humans in silly masks? Or even a real species who were in on the plot?
The aim was distraction, of course. The show was distracting anyone who owned a television, which included Torchwood and any other organisations. This maze was distracting her and the Doctor - and possibly trying to kill them.
And at seven thirty-five tonight, the walls between the universes would rip open once again.
She’d hardly had time to think about that since they’d arrived left Holmes and Conan Doyle. The key had seemed so small. Conan Doyle had just walked through a door from one world to another with hardly any danger or Daleks and without years of work on a Dimension Cannon. This was the result now, though. The instability he’d created had grown and someone - Bob or Cara - was planning on using it somehow.
Together, she and Isabelle walked through a door... and onto a snowy mountain road. Rose shivered and zipped up her coat even further.
She turned around again. A door. A door between two worlds. Not between parallel universes, no, but it might as well have been. An illusion, but one that looked suspiciously like what Conan Doyle had done.
Had he destroyed the key? Or had it, a hundred and thirty years later, fallen into the hands of someone else?
“Rose!” hissed Isabelle, clutching her arm suddenly.
Rose whirled around. Isabelle was staring up and Rose followed her gaze to see a hovering swarm of creatures. All about a foot in length, their butterfly wings were in all patterned shades of white and grey, making them almost invisible against the snowy mountain. The creatures’ bodies were less like butterflies and more like miniature bears. Rose stared up at them. Real aliens, or an illusion?
The swarm was hovering, seeming to be waiting for something. All eyes were on the creature at the front. The leader, Rose guessed.
Slowly, she reached for her gun and raised it, although this caused no reaction.
“Are they intelligent?” she muttered to Isabelle.
“Huh? Oh! I think so. I think they’re telepathic, though.”
More fictional aliens, then. Or at least, aliens that had appeared in the show. Rose took a deep breath and trusted either the TARDIS translation circuits or the fact that all the aliens on the show probably spoke English.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said, as loudly and clearly as she could. “If you let me and my companion just go on our way, then no one gets hurt. How about it?”
For a second, all she heard was the flap of their wings. Then, the swarm flew backwards and up, out of sight in and amongst the falling snow and rocks of the mountain above them.
Isabelle let out a sigh of relief. “I thought we were for it, then!” she said cheerfully. “You know, you reminded me a little bit of Jed for a second there.”
“Thanks,” said Rose, through gritted teeth, reminding herself that Isabelle was in love with the man and had probably meant it as a compliment.
Then suddenly the swarm was back, five times more than there had been before, diving down towards them shrieking and growling.
“RUN!” screamed Rose, grabbing Isabelle’s hand again as they staggered backwards.
The swarm was coming too fast. They missed the door they’d come in, staggering back along the narrow mountain pathway. On one side was a sheer drop. On the other, a faceless mountain.
“Look for a door!” Rose yelled. “Keep me on the path!” She turned back over her shoulder and fired. The energy beam knocked several of the miniature bears out of the sky but wasn’t strong enough to take out the whole lot. She fired again, ducking and dragging Isabelle down with her as three of the creatures dove towards them.
“Come on!” shouted Isabelle, pulling her back. “A door!”
One of the creatures grabbed at her hair. Another two went for an arm. Flailing wildly, Rose fired again several times in quick succession. One bit her wrist and she shouted in pain and dropped the gun. She made a dive for it, but Isabelle dragged her backwards suddenly through a door. She slammed it shut, and silence reigned.
Rose let out a laugh and sank to the floor. They’d ended up in a faceless grey corridor with identical green doors leading off at odd intervals. It was light and clean and neither too warm nor too cold, and for now there were no aliens attacking them.
Isabelle flopped down next to her, also laughing.
“We’re not a bad team,” said Rose, with a smile to Isabelle.
“Yeah,” she agreed, smiling in return and laughing again. “I tell you what, though, you might have sounded a bit like Jed when you told them where to go, but when they came back and tried to kill us I really thought I was with him for a second.”
Rose chuckled, thinking of her own adventures with the Doctor.
That was what Isabelle and Captain Jed were supposed to be, of course. She kept forgetting that. Isabelle might not remember anything outside of her show identity, but she didn’t half feel real. Was everything she was a fake, or was the real woman - whatever her name was - shining through?
“C’mon,” she said, when they’d got their breaths back. “We’ve gotta find these blokes of ours.”
Before they started walking, though, Rose pulled off her jacket and inspected the bites in her arms. There was blood, but only a small amount, and it seemed to be clotting already. Just a minor wound, she thought, examining the bite pattern, but then putting her jacket back on. They never knew when they’d end up somewhere cold or snowy again, so there was no sense in leaving clothing behind.
The corridors remained grey and featureless for far longer than Rose was used to. The scenery had seemed to change every two to three corners they’d turned before, but now as they walked ahead, there was nothing but greyness. It was a little unsettling, actually. There was no sense of distance, only more corridors. Was this real, or just another illusion leading them in circles?
The two of them stuck close together, Rose wishing she’d been able to keep hold of her gun. If those creatures had been part of the illusion, then she was in deeper than she realised. They’d bitten her, after all. Or was she only imagining it?
Whoever had created this stupid thing was doing a good job of driving her crazy, she thought with a sardonic smile.
Behind them, a door opened.
They both spun, ready for action. They had barely twenty feet of space between them and whatever it was that was about to emerge. That wasn’t enough to run, if it was quick.
“Rose!” The Doctor’s head peered around the door and split into an enormous grin when he saw her. “Fancy seeing you here.” She beamed at him, heart thudding in her chest. He was all right!
“Oh my god, Doctor! I didn’t know what you were!”
She made to step forward, but suddenly the ground gave way beneath her feet. She and Isabelle tumbled down a pitch black slide, bumping into the walls. She heard the Doctor’s scream of her name echoing down the slide as she scrabbled for hand holds or footholds or anything. There was nothing. They fell and fell until they tumbled out the bottom of the slide into a messy heap.
Isabelle jumped to her feet and backed away from Rose. “You... you...!”
She didn’t finish, though, her eyes moving to something over Rose’s shoulder.
Rose didn’t waste time looking, instead she leapt forwards and scrambled to her feet, taking off down the corridor and dragging Isabelle with her.
Behind them, she heard a roar and the stamp of boots running, and she risked a look to get her first close up view of the Movridons. There were two of them, but that was more than enough to hurt both her and Isabelle given their size. Fortunately, they were also slower runners.
Rose grabbed a door handle without thinking and pulled Isabelle through it, setting them down in another forest.
This one wasn’t so empty. Up ahead were three more Movridons and someone else. She froze, not daring to go back. Then looked around and darted behind a bush at the side of the road, pulling Isabelle with her.
Ahead, one of the Movridons looked over to where they had been, but by this point the two that had been pursuing them had appeared through the door. Whatever noise the first had heard, he put down to the two that now joined him. Rose could hear them talking in deep voices that were surprisingly smooth, but she couldn’t make out any individual words.
She heard a whimper, and she turned to see that Isabelle was crying.
“Shhh!” she urged frantically. “Don’t worry - we’ll be OK!”
“It’s easy for you to say,” muttered Isabelle. “You’re going to kill me and they’ve got Jed.”
Rose glanced up through the bushes again to see that the figure with the five Movridons was indeed wearing the garish costume of Captain Jed.
Then she realised what she’d heard and turned back to Isabelle. “I’m not going to kill you,” she said, confused. “I thought we settled that. Not with them. If I was, don’t you think I’d be out there?”
“Not with them, no,” said Isabelle, through sniffles. “With him.”
Ah, thought Rose. That explained it. Why she hadn’t thought of it, she didn’t know. If Isabelle had been convinced that Rose was a traitor, then she must have been told the same about the Doctor. Who she’d just seen Rose run towards.
“He’s reformed too,” she said, hoping that would cover it. “Come on, Isabelle, if I wanted you dead I’d’ve done it ages ago.”
Isabelle sniffed again. “He’d never reform,” she said.
“The Movridons tricked him too.”
Her eyes narrowed and Rose realised she’d made a mistake. “He doesn’t work for the Movridons,” Isabelle said. “He’s worse. Jed wouldn’t say much. He never tells me things.” She blew her nose at this point and Rose winced. Fortunately, the Movridons seemed distracted. “But he knows him from ages ago.” She paused and looked up at Rose, eyes wide. “Did he tell you he used to work for the Movridons too? Did he trick you?”
Rose hesitated. Clearing suspicion of herself would implicate the Doctor.
“Look, it’s complicated,” she murmured. “But trust me, he’s not killing anyone if he can help it.”
Isabelle looked doubtful, but before she could say anything more, the Movridons started to march back towards them. Rose could see Captain Jed more clearly now, the smooth, handsome face in the middle of the large, brutish creatures. He was being held by two of them, but he wasn’t restrained in any way that she could see.
She gestured for Isabelle to follow her and they crept after the Movridons. The group bypassed the door Rose and Isabelle had come through and kept to the forest corridors, which was something of a relief. It was easier to sneak on soil and dirt than it was indoors.
“Don’t suppose you’ve got anything handy in your pockets?” she asked Isabelle.
“No,” said Isabelle slowly, “but I think Jed has a sleep grenade. He usually does. It makes them drop like flies.”
“OK,” said Rose, “we’re gonna do something stupid.” She glanced to the side of the forest path and picked out a tree that looks sufficiently easy to climb. “When I give the signal, shout at them, and then run!” she said, dashing forward before Isabelle could protest and scrambling up the tree.
She waved frantically at Isabelle as she began to pull herself out along the branch. Isabelle hesitated, and Rose waved again.
Isabelle screamed. She was very good at it. Ahead, the Movridon guard spun around. Rose could just make out Captain Jed’s horror before the Movridons began to lumber forward.
“GET YOUR HANDS OFF HIM!” yelled Isabelle, before turning tail and running.
The Movridons began to pass under Rose’s tree and she dropped off her branch and kicked out as she did so. Small as she was compared to them, they weren't expecting it , and two of the five fell. One of those still standing kept running after Isabelle.
Another reached out to grab at Rose, yoinking her arm half out of her socket. She kicked back violently, trying to aim for the crotch and then the stomach, flailing her remaining arm to try and reach the eyes. The Movridon roared at her.
“You little...”
Then it dropped to the floor, dragging her down with it. The smell of stale sweat hit her as she landed half on top of the beast that was now snoring away.
Dazed, she stared up to see Captain Jed taking a moment to give a heroic pose.
“I took them out with a sleeping grenade,” he said dramatically. “Just the thing for a hoard of Movridons.” He looked up into the sky for a moment before turning a sombre eye to the scene. “What a waste. If only they learned their true potential. They could do such good for the universe.” He then put a hand to his heart and lowered his gaze. Rose stared in disbelief, then scoffed and rolled her eyes. He was just reaching down to offer her his hand in assistance as she got to her feet.
“You’re useful!” she snapped sarcastically at him. “Now come on! Isabelle!”
Captain Jed did not appear to be used to being hurried through these things, and she vaguely recalled him stopping to give a speech mid-rescue on the show. Bloody typical. Still, if Isabelle could be made to be helpful in a crisis, then so could he.
“I’m Rose, by the way,” she said, as they started to run.
“I know who you are,” he said. “And yet you assisted me?”
“I was tricked by the Movridons, I’m actually nice,” said Rose between breaths. She did not have the time for this.
“I am... Captain Jed,” he said, as though expecting a thunderclap. Despite apparently knowing who she was, he didn’t want to miss the opportunity to introduce himself in as ridiculous a manner as possible. He ran a hand through his hair with a smile he clearly hoped was devastatingly attractive. The gesture might have seemed more familiar if his smile had done anything for her.
Then Jed stopped in his tracks.
Rose skidded to a halt and stared back at him, disbelieving.
“I have no more sleeping grenades!” he proclaimed. “I must find some other way to save Isabelle.”
“Well why don’t we hang around here and talk about it for a bit?” snapped Rose. “Think while you run!” She set off again. Fortunately, he seemed to get the message and started to follow her.
There was another shriek from up ahead and Rose sped up. Isabelle was lying on the floor, cowering against a tree. In front of her stood the Movridon, tree branch raised above its head to strike a deadly blow.
She was too far away, Rose realised with a sick horror. Isabelle was going to be crushed!
A door in the rocks flung open and the Doctor ran out, sonic at the ready. Even from a distance, the noise halted her, the high pitched scream of the screwdriver making her clamp her hands on her ears in pain. Squinting, she saw Isabelle doing the same and the Movridon also frozen in pain. Captain Jed was similarly incapacitated. The Doctor was the only one seeming to be unaffected and he darted forward, and shoved the Movridon out the way, making the giant creature topple. Then he grabbed Isabelle’s hand and ran towards them.
The sound vanished. Rose stared at the approaching Doctor for a second, then looked to see the Movridon recovering too.
She turned and fled.
Captain Jed was standing a little behind her. “You!” he shouted at the Doctor. “You are here now!”
Rose changed her course a little and barrelled into Jed. “RUN, YOU IDIOT.”
To her relief, he did.
~*~
Seeing Rose again, after what felt like an age of wandering through this ridiculous maze, had been the only thing the Doctor had been hoping for. He’d stopped thinking too hard about the end of the universe and had concentrated on finding his wife. A little voice at the back of his mind had told him that was a bad idea, but he’d ignored it and decided that exploring the maze was the best way to find out how to save the world anyway.
The sonic had revealed nothing other than that it was an illusion. Without Theseus’s mythical ball of thread, he’d been stuck wandering aimlessly and hiding from the occasional species of alien. The Authorised Guide had told him all about the strong sense of smell that the Mdictos had, and how to distract a Fording with leaves and had helped him work out the right sonic frequency to use on the Movridons, who seemed to be the most common.
Rose didn’t have this book, though. And she didn’t have a sonic screwdriver. All he’d been able to do was hope and keep looking.
Then, he’d stuck his head out into a boringly grey corridor and there she’d been, standing there with someone else, safe and alive and well!
And of course, at that moment, a floor panel had swung open and the two had dropped down a slide. That had been the point where the Doctor had really started to hate Bob Charila’s supposed sense of humour, as Rose had called it.
By the time he’d got down there, there’d been no sign of Rose or the other woman. There’d been the noise of running Movridons, though. He’d run through the corridors almost blindly, following the sound. He hadn’t been prepared to give up on her yet. He’d found himself in another featureless corridor, listening to the silence desperately, until someone had screamed.
Now, he was holding the hand of a blonde who definitely was not Rose, while Rose was holding the hand of someone he couldn’t help but notice resembled the fictional Captain Jed. He supposed if there were Movridons in this maze, then Captain Jed and Isabelle - who he now realised he was dragging along - was not exactly a surprise.
“About time!” Rose said to him with a grin. “Cutting it a bit fine, weren’t you?”
“You know me, I like to make an entrance!” he said.
“Here!” she pointed to another door and pulled her companion through it. The Doctor followed, urging Isabelle in front of him. Behind them, the Movridons screamed.
They were faster, though, and Rose seemed accustomed enough to running them through the landscapes. She led them through a space base, a suburban street, a tropical rainforest and along the top of a stony cliff down to the sea before they found themselves in a classroom.
“I think we can take a break now,” said the Doctor, cheerfully enough. He dropped Isabelle’s hand and turned to grab Rose, picking her off the floor as he hugged her. She nuzzled his neck and murmured something happily into his collar. He grinned broadly over her shoulder, taking in the other two also exchanging hugs.
When they pulled apart and turned to stare, the Doctor moved back, a little reluctantly.
Then he saw the blood on Rose’s arm and took hold of it gently. “What happened?”
“Flying bears,” she said. “With butterfly wings.”
He inspected the cut and soniced it to clean it, but the wound seemed to be healing well enough and he gently pulled her sleeve back down over it. Then he turned to look at the other two.
Captain Jed was aiming some sort of weapon at him.
The Doctor stared. What the hell had he done to deserve this?
“Jed! You never use that!” squeaked Isabelle, clutching the top of her t shirt in shock and horror.
“I’m sorry, my dear Isabelle,” said Jed, with overly dramatic forlornness. “There are things I’ve never been able to tell you. Terrible things. What this man has done can never be excused.”
“But you don’t kill people!” said an appalled Isabelle.
Rose had made the most of this speech to sidle in front of the Doctor. They had a brief and silent argument with hands and elbows which she won, so he dropped back a little, prepared to move out of the way to give Jed a clear shot if need be. Nobody was shooting Rose to get to him.
Jed shook his head sorrowfully, as though this was weighing terribly on his mind. The Doctor wondered if he was trying to be ridiculous.
“Some things must be done, Isabelle,” he said. Then he looked up to see Rose blocking his shot of the Doctor, and started. Apparently this wasn’t in the script. “Rose Tyler,” he said. “You have such potential to be good and great and yet you ally yourself with the Movridons. How could you betray your own species like that?”
The Doctor blinked. What? What the hell was going on?
As if fake aliens trying to kill them wasn’t bad enough, the famous Captain Jed and companion thought they were evil. Of course he did. The Doctor sighed. Bob or Cara was sitting somewhere and laughing at this, weren’t they?
To his surprise, Rose raised a hand to her forehead in a dramatic pose. “I know!” she said, in the over the top tone she used when she was trying to act. She wasn’t very good at it normally, but she seemed to fit right in with Jed’s speeches. “It was a terrible thing. The Movridons tricked me! When I found out the truth I was truly horrified and... I felt really bad!”
The Doctor desperately turned his laughter into a coughing fit. Rose kicked backwards and got him in the shin.
“It’s true!” chimed in Isabelle. “Rose and I - we worked together. She could have killed me hundreds of times and instead she saved my life. Oh, Jed, you can’t shoot her!”
Jed looked disconcerted. This wasn’t, apparently, how he’d expected things to go.
“No,” he said at last, looking deeply, deeply relieved. “I cannot take her life. But can’t you both see? I must stop the Doctor now, before it’s too late!”
“He’s reformed too,” said Rose. “You saw him save Isabelle back there. When he saw what... erm... terrible things the Movridons were doing, he decided the only way was to fight them.” She paused and glanced at the Doctor. “For the good of humanity!” she added as an afterthought, then raised her eyebrows expectantly at him. “He’s you,” she hissed. “Tell him what he wants to hear.”
The Doctor spluttered for a moment. The so-called Captain Jed was nothing at all like him, and spending this time in his company had convinced him of that.
Rose cleared her throat and kicked him again.
“Rose is right,” he said at last, reluctantly joining in the farce. “What the Movridons are doing-“ Here he hesitated. What were they doing? “Trying to destroy the humanity, I mean,” he continued when the memory came to him, “has made me erm... re-evaluate everything I believed to be true. Now I can see that the brilliant, wonderful things humans do are so worth preserving.” He glanced at Captain Jed, waiting for a reaction.
The Captain already seemed somewhat taken in, which the Doctor considered insulting. He was not nearly so stupid as to just accept the word of some sworn enemy. Especially not the really doubtful sounding word that had been forced out at someone else’s prompting.
“Rose and I have got married, you know,” he added hopefully. “We want to save the universe from the Movridons so we can settle down and live happily ever after.” He paused thoughtfully. “And atone for all the terrible things we have done.”
“You’re really...” Jed seemed at loss for words.
“We want to help you,” the Doctor assured him. “There’s no greater aim than saving the world!” he added, grinning. He was, he reflected, getting a little into this.
Jed dropped his weapon and stared at the Doctor, stunned, but eyes filling with tears of joy.
Then, suddenly, he rushed at the Doctor and hugged him. The Doctor stood stiffly and patted him on the back. Rose mimed wiping away a tear and he looked away from her, scowling. Then he quickly made his face blank and turned his gaze to Isabelle. She looked delighted with this turn of events and had apparently not noticed his glares.
The Doctor took a deep breath and did his best to keep his face empty. This was ridiculous.
“I’ve always hoped,” said Jed, pulling back from the hug and wiping his eyes. “I’ve always thought back to when we were children and running across the fields. We were best friends. And then all that happened to you. But I always knew there was some goodness left inside! Even when all you talked about was the drums!”
The Doctor froze.
His blood ran cold and he felt his lone, single heartbeat start to race. Just the one heart. Just the one. Not like others. Others who he couldn’t sense any more. Others who could be here, in this universe, right now.
“But it can’t be!” he spat out, only half aware of the others turning to look at him.
The bomb, the cameras, the hypnosis, the ridiculous parody of their lives, the games and the danger and the end of the world. It all suddenly came together with horrible clarity. Who else would do all that?
Ears ringing, the Doctor staggered back away from Jed. “You couldn’t know that- You wouldn’t say that- He died.”
Died in another universe. Died in the Doctor’s arms in another universe.
But the key! Of course, the key! Conan Doyle hadn’t destroyed it. What human would?
“The end of the universe in his hands and he couldn’t destroy it!” he snapped.
“Doctor?” said Rose nervously, stepping forward. “What is it?” Isabelle and Captain Jed had stepped back away from him.
“Rose, we have to get out of here. Now! We have to get away. There has to be some way! Did you see anything? Anything at all? We need to get out!”
“Awww, but if you wanted to leave, you shouldn’t have dropped by in the first place.”
That voice.
The classroom around them had melted into a plain white room.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered to Rose.
She gaped at him, clearly afraid now. But she should be afraid. Oh, Rose. What had he done? He’d been so impossibly glad that Rose had been in a parallel universe for that entire, terrible year. She’d been safe and alive. And now... now she was here and so was he.
“Aren’t you going to say hello?” came the voice again. The Doctor squeezed Rose’s hand, not wanting to turn and make it real but knowing he had to.
Stiffly, he revolved on the spot, keeping Rose behind him as much as he could.
“Hello, Master,” he said at last, looking into the eyes of the man he’d watched die. The man who’d refused to regenerate. How was this possible?
“Ooh! Say it again! It gives me such a buzz when you use my name!”
Rose tightened her grip on his hand and, far from finding it reassuring, he wished she wasn’t there. He’d put another universe between them to save her from this. But now he had no choice. They were at the Master’s mercy.
TO BE CONTINUED...
To be concluded next week in The Broken Key, the series finale.