The man looked at her curiously. "Sorry, who are you?" He asked in a mild American accent and she strode up in front of him.
"Captain Cassie Reynolds." She said firmly and puffed her chest out at him, trying to make up for the 10 inches between them.
"Ah," The newcomer smiled. "Well, Cassie, I'm Captain Jack Harkness, and I think you'll find I override the authority of everyone on this ship." He said confidently and Sam scoffed.
"What, even the alie-" He started but the Captain swiftly clamped a hand over his mouth.
"This is Sam Peers, my [mechanic?]." The Captain introduced him smoothly.
"Nice to meet you Sam." Jack winked and shook his hand warmly. Too warmly.
"Hi." Sam replied, unusually abashed and from in the shadows behind them the Doctor rolled his eyes.
The Captain then stepped back into the limelight and budged Sam out of the way with her hip. "So, 'Captain' Jack Harkness, how the hell did you just get onto my ship?" The Captain asked him with a threateningly sweet voice.
"Vortex Manipulator." He explained with a smug smile and tapped his leather wristband. "Can travel anywhere in time and space, so long as you have the right co-ordinates. I just latched onto the trail an old friend of mine. Speaking of that, where is-"
"Sorry," Clara burst out, unable to contain herself any longer. "But are you the Captain Jack Harkness?" She asked and Jack looked at her in surprise, but smoothly broke into a charismatic smile.
"The one and only." He replied flirtatiously. "And you are?"
"Clara," She smiled back. "Just kinda got caught up though, not part of the crew." She said and Jack smiled.
"Like a traveller huh? So," He started and looked over to the grey-haired man with a sceptical raised eyebrow. "Who's Grandpa?" He asked with a smirk and looked around at them when no one responded. Clara sniggered and the Doctor just raised his eyebrow even more, if such a thing was possible. Then Jack finally realised.
"Ah." He said lightly and checked out his old friend. "Doctor." He said and focused on the wrinkles around his eyes, of which he himself was proudly devoid. "Well, regeneration certainly didn't favour you this time!" He joked with a wink and turned around to the others. "I think I'll stick with the girls, no offence Sam." He added and Sam raised his hands in understanding.
"Nice to see you again too, Jack." The Doctor sighed, but smiled despite himself.
Then Jack noticed Maria who'd come up behind him and gave her a disarming smile.
"I'm sorry, I don't think we've been introduced? Although I can't imagine how that happened..." He said, giving her his best smooching voice and held his hand out for hers.
"Maria Blake, UNIT." She replied with a small smile and willingly placed her hand in his. His eyebrows raised.
"Well, sorry, but with no contact with your superiors, you're going to have to hand your 'mission' over to me-" He stopped and looked at her curiously as she tried to shake her head as subtly as possible.
"I'm just here for the ride home." She stressed. He still looked puzzled but thankfully accepted it for now.
"Then that won't be a problem, Miss Blake." He smiled again and finally raised her hand to kiss it.
"Well, I don't usually get that reaction, is she alright?" Jack asked as Sam rushed over to her.
"She just suffered from oxygen deprivation - she'll be fine in a minute." Sam explained and pulled her away.
"Why, what happened?" Jack asked in concern.
"Well if you've finished flirting with everyone, we lost the entire third sector of the ship, we have no docking bay!" The Captain stressed and Jack still looked at her blankly. "In case you haven't noticed, Captain Charisma, we are under attack."
"What? From who?" Jack asked and the Doctor stepped in.
"They're called the Hriekel, they came from Gallifrey but nobody's seen them since the Time War. They said they were here for something called 'The Architect', sound familiar?" The Doctor asked but it drew a blank and Jack shrugged.
"Sorry, never heard of it." He replied.
"But you said that there was something here you wanted, what is it?"
"I don't know. I got a tip-off from one of our contacts in UNIT that this ship was carrying something advanced, real advanced. Not just alien but from the future, then I saw your signal coming from the ship, latched on and figured you'd know." Jack explained. "I take it you don't?"
"Looks like none of us do. It's something then, not someone. We know that at least." The Doctor reasoned.
"Doctor, the TARDIS was in Sector 3!" Clara suddenly realised and grabbed his arm.
"Oh yes, so it was. How depressing." The Doctor feigned a dramatic sigh and spotted the Captain sporting a look that could almost be considered guilty out of the corner of his eye. He looked back at Clara's puzzled look and winked at her, putting his finger to his lips for her to keep quiet.
"No TARDIS, great!" Jack said sarcastically and laughed to himself. "So what's the plan?"
The Doctor sighed again and looked around him. "Torchwood and UNIT on the same ship? Someone must really hate me out there..." He complained.
"Hey!" Jack protested.
"Ok, well first we have to get these Hriekel to talk, I'm not killing anyone unless I have to Captain Jack Harkness, keep that in mind. Not until we've given them a chance."
"Looks like they weren't pretty keen on your 'chance' Doctor." The Captain said.
"That was one soldier!" The Doctor protested. "Ok we need to get to the control room in Sector 1, and we're at the bottom of Sector 2."
"The control room pretty much is Sector 1 though." The Captain added.
"That doesn't sound so bad... what's the catch?" Jack asked.
"We don't know where the Hriekel are. If they planned ahead enough to sabotage Sector 3 with us on it, they could be just waiting for us anywhere from here to Sector 1." Sam imparted and Jack smiled wryly as his suspicions were confirmed.
"Ok then, how about the Captain and I provide a little, ah, rough and tumble for them while you all run ahead and deliver your message?" Jack asked after a moment of thought.
"A distraction? That'll work fine if you can hold out long enough." Sam reasoned.
"Oh I can hold out more than long enough for you kid." Jack grinned and the Captain was still dubious about what he meant by 'rough and tumble'.
"Alright," The Doctor nodded. "If you're sure."
"Completely." Jack replied and made sure that the ammunition in his guns was full.
"You'd risk your life for this?" The Captain asked doubtfully.
"I'm not risking anything." Jack replied knowingly and went ahead. "So where to Sammy Boy?"
"Uhh there's a passage to the living quarters not far ahead, I reckon they'll come through that." Sam replied.
"Right. Don't take too long with the message will you? Dying, it kinda hurts" Jack asked with a wink and jogged up the hall with the Captain.
"Good luck!" Clara called after him.
"Right, Maria are you alright?" The Doctor asked her and she looked up from her bent over position against the wall, her eyes shining and wincing at the same time.
"Yeah, I just need a moment. I'll catch you up." She said and waved them on.
"Let's go then." The Doctor said to Clara and they followed Jack's footsteps.
Sam, however, stayed behind and turned to Maria.
"It's getting worse isn't it?" He asked and she grabbed his arm as she straightened up. "You have to talk to him, no more delaying."
"Yeah," She said breathlessly and swept some stray curls away from her face. "I don't have much longer, I think I just remembered an entire life." She said and grinned in disbelief. "But not with Clara around, she's too clever. She'll get the wrong end of the stick." She said and looked at Sam expectantly.
"Well what do you want me to do? She's stopping me at every turn, I can't even talk to him without her giving me the evil eye!" Sam hissed and she looked around desperately for a moment. Her eyes latched onto a nearby computer console built into the wall and she snatched a sticky pad and a pen off it.
"26th Century and they still have sticky notes." She muttered to herself.
"What?" Sam asked in bafflement and she looked up blankly.
"Sorry, not sure why I said that..." She said and tore off the note she'd just written on. "When I give her this note grab her and take her to the cargo hold or something." She said and waggled the note in front of his face. "I know what to do from there."
"Ok, sure." Sam replied.
"But don't hurt her!" Maria added as an afterthought.
"Maria. I'm not a heartless grunt." He said dryly.
"Sorry." She apologised and started walking after the Doctor and Clara.
"Are you sure this is the best idea?" He asked and she nodded.
"Perfectly, I can remember him now." She smiled distractedly and ran to catch up with the others. Sam wasn't so sure if that was a good thing, but he had no choice but to follow her lead.
When they caught up Sam sidled up behind them like he'd never been gone at all, but kept a firm eye on Maria. She waited until they'd gone up a bit more and were about to come up to a junction with door-less passages leading right and left, exactly where she wanted them. She was going to just hand Clara the note straight away, but then she remembered something she'd said before...
"Clara," She said quietly and pulled her back from the Doctor a bit. "You said before, that the Doctor had a wife?" She asked with a frown. Clara nodded.
"I think she was called River, why?" Clara asked.
Maria's heart fell but she cleared her head of it and smiled at her pleasently.
"No reason, here, take this..." She said and handed Clara the note, making sure Sam saw it.
"What is-" Clara started as she looked down at the note and failed to notice Sam coming up behind her. She gave a muffled scream as Sam put his hand over her mouth and pulled her into the right passage behind them.
"Sam what are you doing?!" Maria shouted to cover herself.
"Clara!" The Doctor yelled and started after her.
"Wait!" Maria called and pulled him back. "I know where he's taking her, there's a shortcut, come on!" She said and ran down the left passage. The Doctor followed her closely as she took a few twists and turns until they came to a small white room with another open door on the other side. The centre square of the room sunk down a bit with three steps leading down to it, with one small pillar with a blue interface on top in the centre of it. He thought nothing of it and was prepared to go through without a second thought. Maria had gotten slightly ahead of him however and momentarily leaned back against the small pillar in the middle of the room, supposedly to catch her breath. As soon as the Doctor had entered she pressed a button on it out of his sight, and the doors slammed shut.
"No!" She protested convincingly with him. He immediately went to the other door and started using his sonic screwdriver on it.
"Why isn't it working?" He muttered and slammed his palm against the door. Maria opened her mouth as she tried to figure out how to start, when her hands touched the interface on the pillar again and blue sparks leapt off it. She jumped back from it but dived in again curiously as the Doctor did the same.
"What happened?" He asked as he turned his sonic on it.
"I don't know, I just touched it." Maria said in equal puzzlement and looked closer as another blue spark leapt off the interface from the touch of the Doctor's finger.
"It appears to be..." He started.
"Some sort of residual catamorphic biometa energy channelled by the electrical interface, reacting to the touch of void-sensitive tissue." They both said at the same time and they simultaneously looked at eachother in surprise.
"I...studied biomorphics at university." Maria explained vaguely and continued prodding the interface, but the Doctor didn't stop looking at her.
"That's impossible, humans don't even know the existence of biomorphic energy until at least the 40th century." He said and Maria scrambled for an explanation.
"Oh...I probably heard a passing alien say it or something on a mission... I retain really strange things." She laughed awkwardly. Thankfully for her the Doctor was more concerned with saving Clara than probing her bouts of out-of-time genius.
"It must be coming from somewhere below us to get into the wiring like this. Not the engines... what's beneath us?" He asked and frowned puzzledly at the console pillar.
"Just the cargo hold." Maria said helpfully to promote the change of subject, then internally kicked herself.
"The cargo... everything leads to the cargo." He muttered darkly and went back to the door they came through. He started using his sonic screwdriver around the doorframe and rotated it to switch the settings when it didn't work.
Maria looked up at him nervously and on a spur-of-the-moment decision quickly swiped the screen on the pillar to bring up a full-body scan of the Doctor. He was so engrossed in trying to open the door he didn't notice it happening. When the scan displayed his full body and spurted a load of technical script next to it she simply tapped several buttons and brought up a display of his extremely complex DNA. She zoomed it in further and further, right until she'd framed the exact bumpy strand of DNA she wanted. Then she entered some complex code until an image of the blue biometa energy they'd just seen appeared on the screen, and attached to the DNA strand. All in a matter of seconds.
She looked up at the Doctor still frantically turning his screwdriver and beeping it at the door, holding her breath. Then the blue sparks started appearing around his body and she relaxed. It was working.
"You won't get through you know," She said but he didn't turn around. "They're deadlocked. This entire room is." She said and took a deep breath. "I know because I'm the one who put them there. I locked them, I sent that message... I brought you here." She admitted and the Doctor went deadly still. The sonic cut out as he was no longer pressing it and he slowly turned around to her, rising as he did.
"You, brought us here?" He asked slowly and Maria nodded, not sure whether to be nervous or relieved. Then he suddenly stormed down towards her and leant right into her face. "What have you done with Clara?" He seethed and Maria spluttered. He was so busy being angry he didn't notice the blue sparks forming around his face.
"Nothing, she's fine!" Maria insisted as she watched the thick, grey tufts of hair turn into longer, brown strands that fell onto his forehead. He brushed them away automatically. "Sam just took her away so I could speak with you, he won't hurt her, he probably let her go after we left." She assured him and he pulled away.
"You-you planned all this?" He asked in a much younger voice, totally lost for once and ran his hand through his hair, not noticing the change.
"Yes, well no, this part was actually quite spontaneous, but yes, I planned it." She rambled nervously.
"You sent that message?! But how?" He asked in amazement and turned back around to her. His now-brown hair ruffled from him running his hand through it and his face was completely different, but so familiar.
"I... I have no idea." She admitted and had to stop herself from grinning uncontrollably when she looked into his deep, brown eyes. "It wasn't the message I was planning to send, something must have happened..." She trailed off and realised, for once, she was making absolutely no sense to him. "Look," She started and rubbed her hands over her face. "I-I'm dying. I brought you here because you're the only one who can help." She admitted and he looked at her sharply, now she'd caught his attention. "Ever since I was a kid I've always had these memories flashing through my head, only brief, tiny ones, but they weren't mine. As I got older, hit puberty, they became more frequent. But I didn't just remember things, I knew things that I never did before too. Languages, numbers, facts, sciences... I always hid from them, never focused on them or told anyone about them. I don't know why, instinct I suppose, but then when I was 17 I finally snapped. I was just so confused and frustrated with them all, I focused on one as much as I could and let them all flood in."
"What happened?" The Doctor asked.
"I went into a coma for seven months. The doctors didn't believe me afterwards about the memories, thought I was delirious - an after-effect from the coma. And that was just from focusing on one memory. That was when I realised, the more I remembered, the more headaches they brought, they were going to kill me. The more I remember the closer I come to it." She said and slumped down on the steps opposite him. "It was awful, I'd lost seven months of my life, but I remembered so much more. So many different lives from different eras in the history of the human race, but then there was one set of memories that didn't come from Earth or any place I knew. I was a child, running in fields of red grass under a burnt orange sky. Watching the glorious suns set over the deep red mountains from my balcony in the outer rim of a great city, encircled in a glass dome, spires over fifty stories high reaching for the sky..." She said and looked over at the Doctor who was looking back at her with a face as pale as the white room he was in.
"You-you're saying you're a...Time Lord?" He almost whispered.
"Nothing so pompous." She laughed. "I never trained. Or my father -whoever he was- never let me at least." She admitted and the Doctor looked at her with, quite literally, new eyes. "But I was some kind of, ah, technician or inventor, or something, and I remember making this thing...like the chameleon circuits you have in your TARDISes. But instead of turning me into a human once, I'd live and die ordinary, pre-programmed human lives over and over again, with my consciousness just taking a hidden ride in all of them, until my father or another Time Lord came and unlocked me. I wasn't ever supposed to remember anything but then somewhere after the 21st century I met you. Your Time Lord DNA must have confused the programming because every life after that, I kept bumping into you again, remembering more and more every time, until I got to this life and started remembering bits of everything. That's why I joined UNIT, to track you down. I was a genius so they could hardly refuse. To find the only Time Lord left alive, so you could fix me." She finished with an expectant sigh and looked over at the silent Doctor.
"Do you know who you were?" He asked and she shook her head.
"No, it's the one thing I can never remember. Nothing that can make me remember who I was...I can't even remember my parents." She said despairingly and hid her face in her hands.
"And if you die..."
"I'll reset probably. Starting the cycle again, living through dull lives, never doing anything important or knowing who I was - who I was supposed to be. Provided I don't meet you again of course." She laughed and looked at his despondent face in puzzlement. "But, that won't happen, not when you've changed me back." She continued and leapt up, presenting herself in front of him eagerly.
"So...go on." She urged him and he put his face in his hands. As he pulled them away he stared at them, figuring out what to say to her, then he really looked at them. He frantically flipped them over and frowned deeply. They weren't his hands.
He looked up at Maria's guilty smile. "What have you done?" He asked in alarm and ran his hands all over his new facial features. He then ran over to the window and stared at his reflection.
Maria bit her lip guiltily. "I scanned your DNA before while you were trying the doors. I used the biometa energy we found to pick out a specific strand of one of your previous regenerations and activate it. The tenth one to be specific, it's the face I always remembered you with. I did study biometa at university, just not human university... I thought it would help with the memories." She admitted, only half-lying. The rest of the truth, that she did it for her own preference, wouldn't help her case after all. "I can change you back if you want." She offered as he turned back to her but he silently shook his head. He continued to say nothing and slowly walked back to the step he sat on before. Maria shuffled her feet awkwardly as he sat down in front of her and the impenetrable silence continued.
"Look, if you don't believe me, I said your name once so I could do it again-" She suggested and closed her eyes to try and focus on it.
"No!" The Doctor suddenly cried and launched towards her, grabbing her head with both hands to stop her. "The last time you said it I think it killed you, don't even try to think about it." He warned but Maria wasn't listening, she was hearing something else. Her eyes snapped open in his hands but they were glazed over, his touch had brought on a new memory.
"Theta Delta," She said his old nickname vacantly and his eyes widened. "I always hated you, the new rebellious Academy initiate who was always so popular with everyone except the professors. I played with you on his estates, in the pastures under the shadow of Mount Perdition. I always tried to outdo everything you did, and succeeded, but kept it to myself. Then you joined that band of rebels, The Deca, made of the students at the top of their class, with Koschei, and I couldn't join you. Koschei..." She trailed off and blushed as she remembered the obsessive blooms of a childhood crush. Then she came back into focus as the memory released her from its grip and the Doctor pulled his hands away.
"Yeah, he came back as The Master, be glad you never met him." He said and looked at her warily.
"Sorry," She said and gestured to his hands. "Whenever you touch me I remember more, it's how it happened before, just brief touches, bumping into you in a hallway, a handshake and so on. Time Lord DNA thing." She shrugged and laughed it off.
"Ah, right, sorry." He said and raised his hands in the air in a hands-off position.
"What?" He asked.
"You're not ginger." She said smiled and he laughed softly at the memory. [What I mean is that kind of high pitched and trailing-off laugh David Tennant does, but I'm not sure how to describe it]
"Yeah, 'still not ginger'" He recalled one of the first things he said in his eleventh regeneration. "But how did you know that?" He frowned.
"Know what?" She asked and he gave her an odd look.
"Nothing." He said lightly and brushed the thought aside. [I might put this scene somewhere later on in the story but I'll leave it here for now.]
"So..." She said, trying to urge him back to the original conversation."I believe you..." He sighed and she gestured/motioned for him to continue.
"And?" She asked as he still looked at her in conflict and a feeling of dread began to churn in her stomach, why was he delaying so much?
He groaned awkwardly and turned around on the spot, tangling his hands in his hair. Then he finally gave in to defeat and smoothed it back from his head, though it immediately fell back.
"I'm sorry, but I have no idea how to change you back." He admitted with sorrowful eyes and her face froze. "I've never heard of this, or you, before. Your father must have died with the knowledge." He tried to break it gently but she stepped back in horror and shook her head.
"But if you can't change me back, then..." She whispered and the Doctor grabbed her shoulders to focus her, being careful not to brush her skin.
"I will do everything I can to help you I swear." He vowed and looked at her right in the eye, assuming she was talking about being killed by the memories.
"Of course, thank you..." She nodded and smiled back at him weakly.
"We have to sort this out with the Hriekel first though, and something tells me everything we're looking for is in the cargo..." He said and she nodded absently. "Can you get us out of here?" He asked gently, trying not to be too frantic as she was still in shock, but there was no need. As soon as he'd finished the door they'd arrived through blasted open, the Doctor shielded Maria with his body as he kept his own head down and winced as the door slammed down on the floor in front of them. They coughed and squinted as the Doctor tried to waft away the dust with his hand. Then a figure started to come through and they squinted even more to try and make it out.
"There you are, come on, these Hriekel didn't exactly respond well to our little distraction." Jack said to the two figures he correctly identified as Maria and the Doctor, but then the dust cleared and his eyes fell on the man he'd never thought he'd see again.
"Doctor?!" He said in absolute shock, almost dropping his ever-present gun.
"Yeah yeah it's me," The Doctor said as he bounded up the steps past him to the door. "It's...complicated, I'll explain later. But we need to get to the cargo hold. Have you seen Clara?" He said almost too quickly for him to register.
"Yeah, she's back with Sam in the corridor where you left her..." Jack replied vacantly.
"Good. Come on then!" The Doctor replied and darted through the doorway. Jack's mouth quirked up as he stared after him in wonder and he looked back at Maria.
"Did you have anything to do with this?" He asked and she nodded blankly, really not sure what to think right now.
"You're a godsend/Thank you!" He enthused with a grin and nodded to the door the Doctor had gone through. Seeing as they didn't have any choice they started running after him.
Clara looked up eagerly as the Doctor came through and was about to call his name, then she saw his face.
"Clara!" He said enthusiastically when he saw her. "You alright?" He asked, even though he saw that she clearly was.
"Doctor?" She said uncertainly, echoing the thoughts of the Captain and Sam. "Is that you?" The blue suit and crisp white shirt were exactly the same, but an entirely different man was inside them. The Doctor's mouth open and closed as he searched for an answer, but was saved from making an explanation to his perplexed friend however as Maria ran in at exactly that point, with Jack not far behind.
"Yeah it is," She burst out a little breathlessly. "I'm sorry, it's my fault - I turned him back into one of his past regenerations - sorry." She explained awkwardly and Clara looked back at the Doctor with a frown as she tried to get it through her head.
"But..." Clara said.
"I still remember everything if that's what you're worried about, everything we did." He said with an attempt at a reassuring half-smile. "Clara Oswin Oswald." He said and she let out a disbelieving laugh, and went in for a hug.
"Couldn't you have turned him back just once?" Clara joked as they pulled apart, but Sam intervened before anyone could respond.
"Maria?" Sam asked as his attention turned from the Doctor to her. "How come he's changed and you haven't?" He asked apprehensively, not even noticing the stern look the Doctor was about to give him for kidnapping Clara.
Maria looked between him and the curious faces of the others in conflict. She opened her mouth to say something but then thought better of it and lead him to the other side of the corridor instead, where they couldn't be overheard.
"He doesn't know how." She whispered to him dejectedly and he looked at her incredulously.
"What?" He said in disbelief.
"He doesn't know how to change me back, at all!" She hissed back and it hit him.
"Well what the hell are we/you going to do?" He asked frantically like it was him that was going to die, not her.
"I don't know, but this is bigger than just me." She said and looked over her shoulder, not noticing the deep emotion in his face. "Maybe we'll just..I don't know. Maybe we can think of something else...or just pray." She said and abruptly crossed the room to where the others were locked in conversation, leaving Sam to take it in on his own.
"Doctor," Clara caught his attention quietly when she was sure Maria and Sam weren't looking. He looked down at her openly and she pulled out the yellow post-it note Maria had given her.
"Maria gave me this before Sam, ah, took me." She said and the Doctor looked at it gravely. "But it's just these weird circular doodles." She said and the Doctor took it from her even more gravely, reaching into his jacket pocket to get his glasses then groaning as he remembered it wasn't his old suit.
"It's not just doodles, it's a message." The Doctor sighed and gave up on exploring his pockets. "She was just telling you not to struggle and that they didn't mean any harm."
"So it is a language then?" Clara asked. "Why didn't the TARDIS translate it then?"
"Because it's the one language I told it never to translate, mine." He admitted and put the note into his pocket.
"So she's like you then? A Time Lord?" Clara asked in surprise and peered over at the innocent-looking Maria who was still whispering to Sam in hushed tones.
"No. Well, kind of." The Doctor contradicted himself and he groaned. "She was once but that part of her was locked away and she became a human, being reborn as a human over and over again, not knowing who she really was, until a Time Lord unlocked her." He explained and turned back to the subject of the note. "She probably didn't even realise she was writing in it, a billion memories are trying to get into her head, and they're getting stronger every second. Ohh this is bad." He said worriedly and looked over at her sadly over Clara's shoulder.
"But isn't that good, that she's like you?" Clara asked upliftingly.
"Clara, if we can't turn her back into her original self, those memories will kill her. And I don't know how. I was her last hope and I'm clueless." He revealed sadly.
"So it was Maria who brought us here?" Clara asked, trying to change the subject.
He nodded. "That energy reading we got, it was an echo of what might have been if she'd regenerated. She killed herself to get another chance." He said.
"And everyone else on the ship." Clara pointed out and the Doctor frowned at her thoughtfully.
"Did I just hear you say Maria's a Time Lord?" Jack suddenly butted in, unable to contain himself as he'd been listening in the entire time.
"Not exactly, she's the same species as me but she never trained." The Doctor explained.
"So what would she call herself?" Jack/Clara asked curiously and Maria took the opportunity to slide into the conversation.
"Gallifreyan?" She suggested, popping up behind Jack's shoulder and almost scaring him to death, if that were possible.
"Hm, yeah. Bit simplistic, but yeah." The Doctor reasoned lightly with a pout and went to stick his hands in his pockets, then moaned again as he realised he didn't have any. "Who has suits without pockets?" He complained and looked down at his clothes. "I mean at least I had the decency to choose a suit, but these shoes..." He said and turned his nose up as he waggled his shiny, black Oxford-shoe-clad foot around. "God, give me converse any day. This shirt's a bit tight too," He said and undid the top button of his collar, revealing his neck nicely. "There, much better." He smiled and Jack looked at him with an appraising eyebrow. The Doctor looked at him and cleared his throat for no apparent reason, then strode up to a door at the top of the junction, also for no apparent reason other than to distance himself from Jack.
"Right, so, change of plan." He announced and made them all gather around him, Maria and Clara exchanging amused looks.
"Maria and I found this biomorphic energy back there that had leaked through and penetrated the electrical interface, suggesting a [technical garble here] coming from the floor below, namely the cargo." He said rapidly and paused to wait for a reaction. They blinked. "So we're going to find it." He said patronisingly slowly and they all "ahh"d as they understood him.
"You think this could be the thing I was told to look for?" Jack asked.
"Could be." The Doctor considered and turned to the Captain. "Which way is the cargo hold?" He asked.
"Further up, but you turn left instead of going straight on." She replied and was about to say something else but he continued on before she could.
"Right," He said and looked at everyone. "Allons-y!" He grinned and ran off in the direction the Captain specified.
"I love it when he does that." Jack smiled to Clara as they ran after him. She nodded back, but not entirely convincingly.
Sam caught Maria's arm as they ran along. "I thought we were supposed to be stopping him from finding the cargo?" He muttered into her ear so the others didn't hear.
"What's the point?" She answered back glumly and her expression put off all further attempts of conversation.
"But don't you want to send that message to the Hriekel, in the control room?" The Captain asked the Doctor desperately as they ran up the corridor and the décor suddenly turned yet again from messy and exposed metal grating and wires to sleek, cream white walls and shiny flooring.
"Yes but whatever the Hriekel want is in the cargo hold, and I'd say they would be more willing to talk if we got it before them." He replied and raised a wise eyebrow at her.
"Blackmail, you mean." She said cynically.
"Well, if it comes to it..." The Doctor considered. "Got to give them a chance first though." He replied and the Captain groaned as her persuasion attempts had failed.
"But my crew are holed up in there!" She protested, reverting to the raw truth of it.
"Good," The Doctor said and her eyebrows raised in disbelief. "Tell them to stay up there and they'll be safe. It's the cargo the Hriekel want, not the control room." He reminded her and happily jogged up to the end of the junction they'd come to. "So, where next Captain, down here?" He asked and tilted his head sideways to indicate the left passage.
The Captain nodded and gave in trying to shake him with a heavy sigh. As the others went to follow the Doctor she ran forwards to the staircase in the centre of the junction's wall and held the button down on a com interface on the inside of it.
"Control? This is the Captain. Stay up there until I say otherwise, but keep your arms at the ready." She said into it and pulled away as the Doctor looked back at her suspiciously.
"Watch it down here," The Doctor said quietly to Jack and the others behind him as the Captain caught up. "The Hriekel could be anywhere."
"I hope so," Jack grinned in anticipation and the Doctor looked back at him exasperatedly. "What are we going to do when we get down there anyway?" He asked more seriously and the Doctor wagged his finger in the air animatedly.
"Ah," He said and looked around to include the Captain in the conversation. "Well Captain, my good friend Clara here posed a very interesting/good question about you and your crew before..." He hinted and the Captain dryly played along.
"Oh?" She said, not as confidently as she intended.
"Why does a simple cargo ship crew have so many guns?" He delivered and waited patiently for her response with raised eyebrows.
"Well we have to defend ourselves-" The Captain reasoned uneasily but the Doctor cut her off.
"Against what? Flour-fiends?" He asked mockingly and continued on with his speech. "No no, I think it's more than that. You don't just use guns, you're used to using them. I mean no way is a cargo ship that organized!" He ridiculed as he walked backwards to face her, seemingly not noticing that the passage was widening and curving sideways in a downward slope. "Y'see, I saw that look on your face when I mentioned the TARDIS. It probably seemed rubbish to you at first, just a rugged blue box that wouldn't open." He said and curled his lip. "And I bet you tried. But then I mentioned that it was a time-travel machine and your entire face lit up. Then it didn't matter that it wouldn't open, just imagine the fortune a time-machine could bring at the next black market, by the time the new owner found out it wouldn't open you'd be long gone. Because that glint in your eye, it wasn't excitement - it was evaluation. Greed." He said in disgust and the Captain involuntarily gulped. "Because you don't ship flour at all do you? You scavenge and threaten the first weak ship you come across, disguising yourself as a cargo ship. You do very thing the Hriekel are doing to you know, and you can't stand it." He said, seemingly revelling in her discomfort. "You're pirates!" He enthused and the Captain gave in.
"Fine, we're not shipping flour." She admitted and sighed. "We just took this one job from UNIT so we could get repairs for our engines-" She said and Maria let out a small groan.
"Sorry, did you say UNIT?" The Doctor repeated and looked sideways at Maria. "Something else you weren't telling us Maria?" He asked and she shrugged helplessly now that it was out in the open, not knowing what to say.
"Yeah," The Captain confirmed. "It was a simple job, take this and deliver it there, big pay, no questions asked, our kind of job. It's not her fault, the orders came from higher up I expect. We just weren't expecting all this." She said helplessly and awaited the Doctor's harsh anecdote.
"Well," He said and took a deep breath. "Gotta say, I love pirates right now." He said and everyone looked at him in puzzlement.
"What?" The Captain said incredulously.
"What were you saying about doing something Jack?" The Doctor asked and started going around he last corner of the slope. "Well, what do you do when you find something with a whopping potential value to keep it safe?" He asked and they entered the cargo hold to be greeted with the sight of piled crates, dull wooden boxes lined up against the walls almost to the ceiling; piles of junk, thick black wires, discarded metal and futuristic oddments were scattered over the floor and right against the right wall between two stacks of crates: a rugged, big blue box. "You put it in the cargo hold!" He grinned and went over to hug the TARDIS.
Jack laughed and Clara grinned just as enthusiastically, they weren't stuck after all.
Sam and Maria's attention however went immediately to the unnoticed square white box in the middle of the room. It was as high as Maria's thigh and exactly the same in width.
"Sam," Maria whispered frantically and caught his arm. "It hasn't been activated, we still have a chance!" She enthused and went to mingle with the others so as not to be caught out.
"You seriously can't have known that the entire time!" Jack said incredulously and the Doctor smiled.
"Well, most of the time." He grinned cheekily.
Sam went up to it in wonder but Maria gazed at it more in fond relief, like you would an old friend during a battle with impossible odds.
"This is a time machine?" Sam asked dubiously.
"Hey don't knock it!" The Doctor warned and patted it. "This might just save your life." He said and raised his eyebrows at the odds.
"There's no Hriekel in here, looks like we beat them to it." Jack announced as he scanned the room.
"Yeah..." The Doctor said distractedly as his attention latched onto the big, white box in the centre of the room. "And there it is." He said, drawing everyone else's attention to it, and walked towards it cautiously.
"What is it?" Jack asked, keeping his hand close to his gun, just in case something came bursting out of it. Which wouldn't be the first time.
"I don't know," The Doctor replied and crouched down in front of it, resisting the urge to reach for his glasses again. "Any thoughts Maria? You're delivering it after all."
"I don't know." She lied. "I was only told to make sure it got back to the base in one piece, nothing else." She shrugged and the Doctor let out a groan of disappointment.
"Looks like we'll have to figure it out for ourselves then." He said and they all gathered round curiously, except for Sam and Maria who just watched silently.
"Doctor," The Captain called as she slowly edged back out of the cargo hold and up the slope they came down. "I don't like how all those doors we came past were wide open, I'll just... go and shut them." She said edgily and was already halfway up the slope.
"Ok, but be careful!" The Doctor called without looking back, too busy examining the edges of the box, and she was gone.
"It is alien, right?" Clara asked.
"Seems like it." The Doctor squinted and pulled out his sonic screwdriver.
"These ridges, looks like it's supposed to open." Jack said as he pointed out the indents that framed the angles and corners of the box.
"Yeah." The Doctor said disappointedly as his sonic failed to open it, though Maria let out a small sigh of relief. "Thought it'd be too simple anyway, it must need some kind of key." The Doctor mused as he observed the lack of any knick or catch in its flawless design. He soniced it again and took a surprised, second look at the screwdriver and started sonicing it over again more thoroughly. "The energy readings this thing is giving off though, it's like a... gigantic, biomorphic energy generator!" He remarked and frowned at the readings coming from it. "Ninety [something], [something bigger], this could power a planet!" He said and tried to sonic it even more. "Still can't get it open though..."
At this point Maria just got tired of their fumbling around and, to Jack's surprise, impatiently made her way over the wires and pushed past him to press a barely visible button on the edge of the box. A blue holographic screen zapped up from it. Complex diagrams took up one third of it and the rest was filled with complex code in foreign symbols, both going past and scrolling almost too quickly for any of them to focus on.
"What have you done?" Jack asked ominously and moved back slightly like he was expecting it to explode. The Doctor, however, leant in eagerly, his nose almost touching the display.
"I pressed the button that says 'display'." Maria said satirically and pointed to the button she just pressed. It was faint, barely different from the colour of the box itself, but it did have circular writing on it.
The Doctor peered over at it over the screen and nodded to Jack. "It does." He confirmed with a glint of laughter in his eyes and Jack rolled his.
"So what is it then? And what's 'biomorphic' energy?" Clara asked and Maria silently slinked back to Sam's side.
"What are you doing?" Sam whispered to Maria and she gave him an innocent shrug and a smile.
"What? It's not like they're going to find out how to activate it." She said and watched them discover it with anticipation.
"Well it's clever, whatever it is." The Doctor said, totally absorbed in it.
"I'll say, even I haven't seen anything like this before." Jack concurred and the Doctor mmm'd in agreement.
"Very clever... Genius even," He said with surprise as more code scrolled past and he had to take a step back. "No no no no no. Surely not." He said and moved back in for a closer look. "But yes, oh yes. Oh this is beautiful!" He said with fascination and grinned. "It isn't just enough to power a planet, it's enough to create one!" He enthused and looked up at Jack and Clara. "I've seen something like this before, a ball of energy waiting to be released to vitalise the planet, but this is so much more advanced. It's generating biomorphic energy - that's what changes a Time Lord when we regenerate - but that energy's been taken and tweaked just enough so that its own nature has been turned on itself - instead of changing one particular thing it creates itself and multiplies over and over, from just a hundred particles to a million in a heartbeat, until the right amount has been reached and they can do their work."
"A self-generating planet." Jack realised in wonder and the Doctor nodded.
"Just put in the right specifications and voila, you don't even need to wait a few million years for it to complete. No wonder the Hriekel want it so badly. Ohh whoever made this, it's just beyond genius. Even I couldn't've come up with his, I could kiss them!" He grinned like a fanboy meeting his biggest idol and Maria smiled gleefully from the wall behind him.
"Did your people make it then?" Clara asked, clearing her head of all the scientific stuff and focusing on his answer about the biomorphic energy.
"I'd like to think so but I doubt it, they would never have kept something like this so quiet. We're not the only ones to have biomorphic energy." The Doctor sighed and absently watched the code scroll past. "The thing is, how did UNIT find it, of all people?" He pondered.
"Speaking of that, the Captain, don't you think she's taking a bit too long to be closing the doors?" Jack asked and the Doctor looked up at him with a frown.
"Yeah... we should go and find her." He sighed and stood up. "Come on." He said in Maria and Sam's direction and lead the way back up the slope out.
"Sam, you stay behind." Maria said to him as they walked over to join them.
"What? Why?!" He asked and stopped dead in his tracks.
"Someone needs to stay back and watch over the box, and you're the only one who knows what happens if the Hriekel activate it."
"And you don't all of a sudden?" He asked.
Maria smiled. "I need to stay with them, come on please? We won't be long." She persuaded him and he groaned.
"Fine," He gave in. "But you'd better." He said and she grinned at him brightly.
"Promise!" She replied and practically skipped over to Jack's side behind the Doctor. He watched her go almost longingly, and sighed as they went around the corner. He wandered over to a crate and slumped down on it, scowling at the white box that was the cause of all his problems.
"Where's Sam?" Jack asked and the Doctor looked back at them curiously.
"He's staying behind to watch for the Hriekel while we're gone." Maria replied.
"Good of him." The Doctor replied and she nodded indifferently/uncommittedly.
They walked through to the junction they'd passed and stopped as they were presented with three different passages: one leading back down the ship, one straight ahead towards the left side of the ship and another up the stairs.
"Not exactly all closed up is it?" Clara asked as they looked at the gaping doors before them.
"No..." The Doctor said warily and Jack instinctively took out his gun. "Jack, you go with Clara. I want Maria with me." The Doctor said and walked towards the left door, raising an inviting eyebrow to Maria.
"Yes, sir." Jack replied wryly and smiled warmly at Clara who returned the smile.
"Oh and Jack," The Doctor called as he followed Clara up the stairs. He looked back questioningly. "Watch it with the gun." He said reproachingly and sighed as Jack gave him a mini salute with two fingers and jogged up the remaining stairs.
"Come on." He said to Maria and they went through the doorway.
The white walls vanished as they emerged on the other side and became the typical grey metal walls and flooring again. As they went along the corridor various small windows showed the endless night outside. They must be crossing a bridge between parts of the ship, Maria thought.
"How are you doing?" The Doctor asked and she looked at him. "With the..." He said and waved to the side of his head to indicate her memories.
"Oh." Maria said and thought of how to respond. "It's always there, like a constant pressure in my head. But it keeps getting stronger." She said and the Doctor nodded.
"How many lives have you had?/Do you know how many lives you've had?" He asked.
"I'm not sure, maybe nine? It's hard to tell." She shrugged and the Doctor smiled wryly.
"So this would be your tenth?" He asked and she nodded.
"How about you, how many have you had since..." She said and indicated his current tenth-incarnation body.
"Two," The Doctor replied and she nodded again, trying to estimate in her head how long it would have been for him since they last met. It wasn't exactly a pleasant result no matter how she looked at it so she let it go.
"And altogether that would be...?" She urged and he hesitated. It wasn't something he'd normally tell someone, but she wasn't exactly a normal someone either.
"Twelve." He revealed heavily and she ahh'd politely. "What?" He asked as it wasn't entirely the response he'd expected.
"Well, it's just that when you hear so many stories about you, the legends, all of your different faces...it just seems a bit... tame when you actually put a number to it." Maria admitted and the Doctor smiled at her incredulously.
"I am over a thousand years old you know." He said.
"Ok it does sound better when you put it that way." Maria amended and they both laughed.
"One thousand and two hundred by my last count I think..." He pondered and she suddenly looked at him sadly.
"One/A thousand years...you told me you were 903 the last time we met." She said vacantly and he frowned at her thoughtfully. "I can't believe I'm saying this but 903 is young in comparison." She laughed and then fell silent again. "Sorry, just a memory..." She said, trying to brush it off, but the sadness lingered inside her.
"We'll think of something, just, try not to concentrate on them." The Doctor said kindly and Maria nodded but she knew it was only that, he still had no idea what to do.
They walked on in silence. None of the subjects they came up with to break the ice seemed reasonable so they kept their mouths shut.
Maria was still muling over the numbers that just come up so she didn't notice the big, flashing button on the wall beside the closed door they came up to. She was automatically going to turn right around the bend, but the Doctor had other ideas.
"Now what's this? All of the doors we've come across have been open, so why's this shut?" He wondered and drifted over to the button. Maria roused from her thoughts and gazed over, but before she could react he slapped it and the door slid open in a matter of seconds.
An entire regiment of Hriekel in a crowded corridor stared back at them.
The Doctor jerked up. "Oh! So that's why it's shut..." He realised and smiled at the Hriekel weakly.
Maria stood deadly still, trying to figure out what to do. If they ran they'd be gunned down in the blink of an eye, not to mention the Hriekel were faster. The Doctor had figured this out too and was going through the same process in his own mind. If she could reach the button first then they could lock the door. The Hriekel hadn't seen her yet so, not wanting to spur any sudden movements from the Hriekel, she tried to slowly inch around the Doctor. Seeing her plan he compliantly stayed in place and tried not to unnerve the Hriekel either, but they recovered on their own.
She was almost directly behind the Doctor when the Hriekel nearest to them shook his head, muttered to his friends and hoisted his chunky gun up to his hip, aimed at them.
"In the name of the Restoration Endeavour of the Carsan Kilmotta, we proclaim you a hindrance of Wardain Division 3 Delta 2, guilty of intended interference of his work, and so will be exterminated." The soldier announced unenthusiastically and fired up his gun.
"Ah. Well-" The Doctor laughed like they'd caught the wrong end of the stick and tried to think of a quick-fire way to get out of this, but the Hriekel ignored him and pulled the trigger.
Exactly as the deadly, blue-rimmed bolt of white energy came out of the gun's nozzle Maria straightened up and put her full weight into grabbing the Doctor's arm and spinning him out of the way. The force of it parted them like a V and the energy bolt zapped safely between them, hitting the wall on the other end of the corridor instead. Maria fell backwards onto the switch and as the door closed the Doctor dived forward from his position on the floor and locked it with his sonic screwdriver.
"'Exterinated'?" The Doctor repeated as they picked themselves up, slightly breathless. "Who else says 'exterminate', really?" He asked bewilderedly and Maria shushed him as she slid up the wall and put her ear on the door.
"Damn pirates." The Hriekel who'd almost executed them said from the other side.
"They won't be a problem soon. Come on." Another Hriekel said to him and they heard nothing more except the marching of boots.
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "Sounds like they're moving out/in." He mused and Maria wandered back over from the door to the wall in front of him. He let out a shaky breath. "That was close," he grinned to her as she passed him. "I suppose that makes us even now?" He suggested and she suddenly spun around to face/turned on him.
"Is this what you're going to do for the rest of your life?" She snapped, her voice taught with emotion. "Run and run and run, always jumping to next thing and never/without ever looking back? You're on your twelfth regeneration, your last regeneration. Once I might have been able to hack into your DNA and change that limit, but that type of technology doesn't even exist anymore. The next time someone isn't there to pull you out of the way, it'll be the last time." She ranted at his carelessness and stopped abruptly, her voice almost breaking on the last words.
"I know." The Doctor replied quietly and simply. Maria squinted her eyes at him. She tried to make it look like she was scowling but really she was trying to stop the tears.
"Maria-"
"I'm going to find Jack and Clara, if the Hriekel are moving in they need to know." She said abruptly and ran around the corner before he could say otherwise. He didn't follow.
"Clara? Jack?" Maria called as she made her way through the thin, white corridors of the ship's upper levels. She was close to the control room by now but she hadn't seen a window in so long she couldn't tell. Her recent outburst with the Doctor was the last thing on her mind as she turned another tight corner and began to wonder if she was lost. She was about to turn back and hunt for a security computer that could show her where she was, but the sound of a gunshot from a laser gun came from the direction she'd been heading in and she pelted down the corridor as fast as she could. She turned into a wider path and saw Clara who was simply standing in front of a gap in the walls where the corridor branched out into another.
"Clara! Are you alright? I heard-" Maria started and cut herself off as she followed the line of Clara's gaze.
"Yeah, so did I." Clara replied and they stared silently at the dead body of Captain Cassie Reynolds.
"Oh no." Maria murmured quietly and stepped towards the body but Clara suddenly pulled her back.
"Look." She said and Maria looked up to see the form of a Hriekel looking back at them further up the corridor, his gun still held limply at his side.
They both took a hesitant step back but Maria boldly asked: "You, did you do this?"
"Yes, my lady." The Hriekel replied evenly in a familiar voice and Maria's eyes widened as she recognised him.
"Why?" She asked, appalled that he would do such a thing.
"I had no choice. If you haven't already noticed, it was either me or her." He replied and pointed to the Captain's gun that lay right next to her left hand, with his. "If it's any condolence, she moved first." He said slightly bashfully like it was his attempt at an apology. Maria wasn't swayed, however.
"So is that what you're going to do to us now? Shoot us stone dead?" Maria asked defiantly, rooted to the spot as they had no escape from this alien. She intended to sound condescending but it came out more like a fearful statement.
"No, no." Ristoff replied as if he'd never consider doing such a thing. "Unlike the Captain here you don't mean any harm/pose a threat." He said and the girls' shoulders dropped in relief. "But then again, I can't have you following me." He considered and they tensed up again. He looked at the com interface on the wall the Captain was sprawled next to. "She was alerting her crew to take up arms and advance on us you know. That's why I found her. I disrupted the message but I'd be careful who you trust from now on, not everyone wants a peaceful solution." He said hintingly and quickly raised his gun. Maria and Clara flinched and moved to shield themselves but he instead shot the fire alarm that was next to the com, releasing the deluge of the ship's sprinklers on them. He quickly disappeared in the blinding downpour and no matter how much they squinted, they couldn't follow him.
Gasping and trying to shield their eyes they ran back out into the thankfully sprinkler-less corridor and shook themselves down, trying to wipe the water from their faces in vain, just in time to run into Captain Jack Harkness.
"Are you two alright?" He asked and came to a halt in front of them. "I heard the gunshot and came running-"
"We're fine," Maria assured him and nodded over to the body of the late Captain. "Can't say the same for the Captain though."
"What happened?" Jack asked as he registered their soaked condition and the deluge of sprinklers still going in the adjoining corridor.
"Hriekel got her, Clara arrived before me though." Maria replied and Jack winced in sympathy.
"Only just, I didn't see anything else." Clara said. "But how come you didn't hear the first gunshot?" She asked Jack.
"The dead don't tend to hear much." Jack replied tightly. "I ran straight into a regiment of Hriekel, I don't think they were to pleased to see me, odd as it may sound." He said and Clara smiled.
"We did too, down in the south-west wing." Maria said and Jack shook his head.
"They're gathering for something. Come on, last I saw they were headed this way." He said urgently and started to go down the corridor.
"What about the Captain? We can't just leave her!" Clara protested and Jack looked back at them.
"Her crew will find her soon enough." Clara still didn't move and he sighed impatiently. "She's not going to come to any more harm out here, but we will if we don't move!" He said and seeing the logic in it they ran after him with only a little reluctance and one glance back at the small and bolshy Captain with a mane of wild curls.
"How did you get all wet?" Jack asked in confusion as they turned a corner and headed for the flight of stairs leading back down to the junction.
"The Hriekel set off the sprinklers so we couldn't follow him, he spared us." Clara realised and Jack frowned puzzledly. Then he turned to Maria. "So what happened to the Doctor?" He asked and she cringed slightly.
"Oh, we decided it was best if we split up. Cover more ground sorta thing." She replied and quickly went down the stairs first. Jack nodded but looked as though he suspected otherwise, but kept quiet about it.
The Doctor was waiting for them at the bottom and restlessly pacing around, but he looked up as soon as he heard them coming down.
"Ah there you are," He said and looked puzzledly behind them as Jack came down last. "Where's the Captain?" He asked.
"She's dead." Maria announced and his face fell. "She was telling her crew to attack the Hriekel - that's how they found her." She said and the Doctor groaned.
"I told her to leave them up there and they'd be fine, now look what's happened!" He said angrily.
"Doctor, the Hriekel are moving in all around us. I saw some big General guy rounding them all up. We're surrounded." Jack interrupted and the Doctor looked back at him.
"General...my dad was a general. No my dad was a farmer, I mean a grocer - no he died. Then a lawyer and a shopkeeper and-" Maria rambled on and stopped herself as she gasped in pain and clutched her head. They were about to ask if she was ok when she suddenly straightened up. "Sam!" She exclaimed and ran for the passage leading to the cargo hold, regardless of the others. After exchanging looks they sped after her and for once the Doctor didn't protest to Jack getting his gun out.
"Did you see any of them while you were waiting?" Jack asked the Doctor frantically and he shook his head. "They could already be there." He said and they ran even faster. They caught up with Maria and skidded around the corner of the slope only to be met with the same lifeless cargo hold as before.
"Or not..." The Doctor suggested as they slowed to a halt and looked around the room.
Maria immediately noted with relief that the box was still unactivated and turned her attention to peering around crevices in the storage boxes around the room.
"It's exactly the same as we left it." Jack stated as his search for any hidden Hriekel resulted in nothing and he made his way back over the wires to the centre of the room.
"He's not here," Maria said worriedly as she too gave up her search.
"Maybe he just went to check the perimeter?" Jack suggested and the Doctor nodded.
"Clara, can you take Maria into the TARDIS and get something dry?" He asked. "We'll...keep watch." He said and nodded to Jack.
Clara nodded. "Sure." She smiled and held a wet hand out to the dubious Maria. "Come on, this place has one of the biggest cloak rooms I've ever seen." She grinned and led her into the TARDIS.
Jack smiled as he watched them go in and Clara leant against the open door as she waited for Maria's reaction.
"Well, what do you think?" She asked and Maria took a step forward, putting her hand on the smooth metal rail and slowly went down the two steps to the TARDIS console. She looked around at the cold steel theme, blue lighting and Gallifreyan markings and felt her stomach fall.
"It's a bit cold." She said unexpectedly, dashing Clara's hopes of getting her first 'it's bigger on the inside' and she laughed as she shut the TARDIS door behind her.
"Cold?! It's usually just right, it's probably just the damp getting to you." She said and nodded at their wet clothes. It wasn't what she'd meant but Maria nodded anyway. "I would come with you but I've got clothes in my room," Clara said apologetically and took a step backwards to the small set of stairs in the corner of the room. "The cloak room's through there. First left, second right, third on the right, go straight ahead, under the stairs and straight up. Can't miss it." She smiled and looked at Maria's vacant expression.
"Past the bins, fifth door on your left." Maria muttered and Clara looked at her in concern.
"Unless you want me to show you?" She asked and Maria suddenly jerked her head up.
"No, I'm fine. Sorry, just a memory." She smiled assuringly and Clara smiled in sympathy.
"Well if you're sure, just give me a call if you get lost." She said and headed up the steps. "Take what you want, he'll never notice!" She called and Maria nodded back at her with a smile as she disappeared through the passage at the top of the stairs.
She looked at the other set of stairs Clara had pointed to and leant back on the console for a moment. She was in the TARDIS at last. She closed her eyes and smiled as she stroked her hand over the console and the blue light from the time rotor column filtered through her eyelids. She was about to go but then a memory washed through her mind like a gentle wave, and she knew exactly where to go. She leapt up the stairs Clara had pointed to and turned left at the first junction she came to, but after that she stayed left.
She crossed into the corridor of rooms Clara had gone into and passed the door which she could hear her rummaging around behind, but continued on. The corridors were a steely grey and so unfamiliar with hexagonal openings at regular intervals holding up the ceiling and leading to other corridors. She passed many pill-shaped doors, some built into rounded walls, but despite the unfamiliar surroundings she continued on until she came to the exact door she wanted.
How she was sure she couldn't tell, but it just felt right. It was at the end of a small corridor that seemed to be as far left as you could go in the TARDIS, at least on this level. The corridor swung left after it and three other doors, and it looked the same as the others. She went over to it and expected it to be locked as the TARDIS was a picky ship, but the door clicked open as soon as she laid her hand on the handle. She smiled to herself despite the nerves fluttering around in her stomach and with a deep breath swung the door open.
The cold steely theme seemingly hadn't touched this room as it was almost rounded in feel and its walls were a light gold colour, with a darker rusty-gold-brown lining certain sections of the walls and curving up to meet in a circle on the ceiling. A dresser in the same warm brown colour was situated against the wall next to the door and had typical oddments and clutter of a young woman scattered on top of it. A lipstick with a missing top was still there, the marks of where the end had touched the dresser still stained. Maria smiled as she bent down and saw the lid had rolled right under the dresser.
A low, semi-circular window was on the right wall furthest from her, a comfy brown leather chair sat next to it and two pink and blue beanbags were plopped in front of that. The window displayed a view of the galaxy and thousands of stars shining in the pitch black of space, but she knew that it could show her any view she wanted by pressing any one of the five, round, light-gold buttons on the panel next to it.
All the other features of a warm and cosy bedroom were there, a fluffy white rug and even a worn old teddy bear laid abandoned between the beanbags, but every single thing was covered in a thin layer of dust like it hadn't been touched in centuries. Even the floor was covered in a flawless dust and Maria's heart sank. She was about to leave the forgotten room in peace but then her eyes latched onto the double bed in the middle of the room. Two hexagonal lights were built into the wall on either side of it and a tall, circular headboard reached up between them. The white, fluffy pillows and deep purple quilt were made up but messily arranged, like whoever did it was in a hurry and didn't think anyone would ever see it. It was untidy like the rest of the room.
However right in the centre of the bed, on its edge, lay a perfectly-folded buttoned purple t-shirt, its main body was a pleasant lilac while the sides, collar and trim were a shade of pinky-purple and the sleeves a bluer violet. Every crease was smoothed out and the wonky collar was arranged just-so. It was totally unlike the rest of the room so whoever had put it there must have cared for it, and it certainly wasn't the room's owner.
Maria walked over and stroked one of the buttons, and smiled. The layer of dust on it was noticeably thinner than everywhere else and her heart took a tentative leap back up, maybe he hadn't/this room wasn't forgotten after all.
"Doctor I don't like this," Jack said as they stood around the TARDIS and looked around.
"Yeah me neither." The Doctor replied and Jack frowned.
"It just doesn't feel right. Did you notice as we came down that all those doors were still open? Anyone could get through." He said and the Doctor frowned too.
"You're right," He said and Jack wandered up a smaller slope on their right to look out of the window in the door at the top. His eyes widened as he saw out of it and quickly made his way back down to the Doctor. "Maybe if we just get it in the TARDIS-" The Doctor continued unknowingly and started as Jack suddenly put his hand over his mouth and pulled him into a shadowed space between two tall rows of crates. The Hriekel marched in from both ends of the cargo hold almost immediately.
"Jack!" He mumbled into the hand in protest and Jack let his hand drop.
"Sorry!" He whispered and they eyed the Hriekel marching past them while trying to shrink into the shadows as much as possible.
"What are they doing?" The Doctor whispered and tried unsuccessfully to look around the corner of the crates without being seen.
"I don't know!" Jack whispered back as he tried to do the same.
Unable to see what was happening they strained their ears to try and hear it. They froze as the Hriekel suddenly stopped and silence fell, with only a few minuscule beeps coming from the box.
"Entering code specification 3259-4785-X-Delta-2," a Hriekel said from what they estimated was the centre of the room.
The Doctor frowned as he tried to figure out what it was but even he came up with nothing. Then the beeps stopped.
"It is done. The woman's defences were complex, but the key worked." The Hriekel announced heavily and he was clapped on the back by another.
"Well done soldier," Said a deeper authorative voice. "The Carsan will be proud. What you have done for your people and the Restoration Effort is unparalleled." He said and Jack looked at the Doctor in confusion.
"'Carsan'?" He whispered.
"It's what they call their leader." The Doctor hissed back as quietly as possible.
"Now, we will move out and let your code do its work!" The deep-voiced Hriekel ordered and they began marching out. The Doctor and Jack pressed against the wall again but they were unnoticed and the Hriekel had vanished within seconds.
They stepped out tentatively and Jack immediately swung his gun in both directions to check if any guards had stayed behind, but they were alone.
"What did they do?" Jack asked but the Doctor had already found out. The lights began to flicker but one light remained along with a steady hum coming from the box.
"Should they be doing that?" Jack asked as he squinted at the flashing lights but fell silent as he turned around and saw the Doctor moving towards the box.
"On a ship with two quadrel engines? No." The Doctor said gravely and hesitantly moved towards the TARDIS without taking his eyes off the box. He rapped his fist on the side of the TARDIS twice. "Maria? Clara? You'd better get out here." He called and stared at the box.
The knocks accompanied with his voice echoed all through the TARDIS to its very depths, and even found their way to Maria in the abandoned room.
She looked up suddenly as she heard them like a child who'd wandered into the forbidden area of a building. She had no time to go to the cloak room and change now. She looked down and found her trousers weren't so bad, her top and jacket were absolutely drenched though. She looked back at the neatly folded purple t-shirt.
"Maria! Clara!" The Doctor called again and she suddenly decided to grab it and ran out of the room without a single look back. She changed while she ran.
"OI!" The Doctor called again and was about to bang on the doors again when Clara opened them.
"Alright, alright, we're here!" She said agitatedly and stepped out. She'd changed into a floral-printed short blue dress and black tights. "What's the problem?" She asked and stepped out.
"The Hriekel paid us a visit while you were busy touching up your make-up." Jack said and she stuck her tongue out at him.
"What is it? Did I miss anything?" Maria asked as she jogged up to the doors.
"Hriekel, looks like they found what they wanted-" The Doctor said without looking around and then as she stepped out next to him he froze as she saw her t-shirt.
"Where did you-" He started to ask.
"What? Is this alright?" She asked, cutting him off and he swallowed whatever emotions he was feeling.
"Yeah, yeah it's fine." He said swiftly and went over to the box.
Maria's eyes followed him and as soon as they latched onto the box she stumbled back in horror and braced herself on the TARDIS.
"Oh no. No no no, oh God no!" She whispered to herself.
The corners and main squares of it had extended out so it showed the globe of blue energy sparks, technical wiring and graphs inside it. The blue display had expanded to its full size above it and was displaying code almost as twice as fast as before. The glow from it almost became the only source of light as the lights began to weaken and dim as well as constantly flicker.
The Doctor stared into the display and began to frown.
"What does this mean?" Jack asked and pointed to a circular symbol engraved onto one of the extended corner panels of the box.
The Doctor leant over and pulled a puzzled face at it. "It says 'Borosi'." He said.
"And what does that mean?" Jack asked.
"I don't know, it's a name, a very common name, but it could be anything. Company hallmark, signature, dedication to a favourite pet..." He shrugged and went back to the display.
"What did they do to it?" Clara asked and looked at it warily as the orb of energy inside it began to whir.
"They activated it." The Doctor said simply and stared at the readings some more, trying to use his sonic on it in vain again. "They put their specifications in and it's starting to create the order, but this shouldn't be happening." He said in concern and the others became even more twitchy, but Maria just watched in abject dread.
"What shouldn't be happening exactly?" Clara asked.
"It's starting to punch holes in the universe...all universes." He answered quietly in horror. "You don't need that to create a world..." He said and the others fell silent.
"Can't you stop it?" Clara asked desperately and he shook his head.
"The sonic can't even get through the display, forget the mainframe." He replied and they looked up as Jack suddenly stepped forward with an idea.
"If that thing's already punching holes in the universe anyway, doesn't that mean we could go through them in the TARDIS?" He asked and the Doctor nodded hesitantly.
"Theoretically...but why?" He asked.
"We could find Rose." Jack smiled eagerly and the Doctor fell silent. Clara looked puzzled but Maria began to pay attention to him. "The last time we met on the Dalek Crucible, Doctor, she was telling me about how they'd created a machine to not only monitor rifts in time and space, but to heal them. We could use that to fix everything up, you'd get to see Rose again and Voilà! Universe saved in an hour." He announced with a grin as it was the perfect plan. The Doctor was almost convinced but Maria roused from her state of shock and answered before him.
"You can't," She announced and everyone suddenly looked up at her like they had forgotten she was there.
"And why not?" Jack asked and laughed at the ridiculousness of not doing it.
"It sounds like a good plan to me." Clara added but the Doctor just watched.
She paused. "Rose Tyler is dead." She announced coldly and watched painfully as the Doctor's expression didn't change, but all hope Jack's suggestion had put in his eyes began to die. "I, uh, looked into her when I was trying to find you," she said to the Doctor. "We, UNIT, had found this thing kind of like a universal stapler gun. It could punch holes in the fabric between universes small enough to not do any harm but just the right size to get a text-based message through. I used it to contact their Torchwood but they told me she and her husband died in a factory explosion, but in doing so they saved the world." She gave him a small smile in the hopes that would soften the blow,
"Well yeah she's dead by now," Jack retorted, still refusing to be swayed. "I don't know if you've noticed Missy but that is a time machine." He said and pointed impertinently to the TARDIS.
"You can't go back." Maria replied sadly, almost apologetically as she saw the Doctor's despondent expression. He already knew what she was going to say next. "That TARDIS you gave them worked. He, John Smith, that's what the other Doctor called himself, time locked the event so their son couldn't ever go back and change what happened."
"What's a time lock?" Clara asked, completely baffled by the conversation.
"It's a lock put over a particular place or time," Jack replied solemnly. "It means that nothing can ever get in or out via time travel. It can never be changed." He said.
"It's funny," Maria said to the Doctor. "They died in eachothers arms and yet her last thought was of you, the real Doctor." She said and he looked up at her. In the low lighting she could see the tears reflected in his eyes, but he was frowning at her. Not menacingly, but in a puzzled and concerned way.
"And how would you know that?" He asked.
She started to worry if she'd said too much, and then the lights went out completely.
"We have to get out of here." Maria realised gravely as the orb in the box began to rotate and the lighting in it flashed. The only lights remaining was those coming from the box and the TARDIS' beacon on the roof, but it was just enough for the others to spot her running towards the door at the top of the smaller slope at the left side of the room.
"Why? Some more light would be nice yeah but what's the rush?" Jack asked as they all sprung up and followed her. She didn't answer until they'd gotten through the door and she slammed it shut behind them. It locked automatically.
"This wasn't supposed to happen." She said in despair and put her head in her hands.
"What's going on Maria?" The Doctor asked deadly seriously and she looked up at him. There was no laughter or tears in his eyes now, just a deadly warning for her to tell the truth. There was no way she could get out of it now, so she did.
"Well I suppose I owe you a thank you Doctor," She said with a wry laugh and they looked at her in confusion. "I'm the genius, I'm the one who created the box." She revealed and the Doctor and Jack frowned.
"But that's not possible, no human could-" The Doctor started but she cut him off.
"No, not in this life. You were wrong Jack, it isn't something from the future, it's from the past. I made it on Gallifrey." She revealed. "It was my dream project, the best thing I'd ever created. A simple, self-generating technology that could create any world you could imagine, so long as you had the right data. The Time Lords and the council never knew about it because I never told them, I was going to when I finished it but I was turned into a human before I could..." She trailed off and snapped back to attention as she noticed they were still waiting for her to finish.
"So what's the big problem?" Jack asked and Maria smiled painfully to herself.
"You see that was the big idea, a self-generating particle capable of creating a planet by itself, ingenuously taken from the very heart of the Time Lords. Biomorphic energy altered to create itself to the right specification, then vanish once its work was done. But with that power in the wrong hands it could be used to destroy all of creation, so naturally I put a lock on it. Without the key it reverts to its natural form, the particle remains unused and it gathers the required energy to create the world by absorbing everything around it."
"What about the whole thing about punching holes in every universe?" Clara asked.
"Ah, that was the other big idea." Maria replied. "It doesn't just create a world, it places it in every single universe like it was never not there at all. But back in those days the gaps between universes and parallels were still open for the Time Lords, they closed when the Time War ended so all the technology can try to do now is break down those barriers. They will close up when the world is finished though."
"Ok, that's not so bad then." Clara said in attempt at lightening up the situation, but Jack noticed Maria was still holding back.
"This absorbing thing, how far does it go?" He asked.
"It depends on the size of the planet, but in this case I'd estimate about 200 million miles?" Maria said tentatively but only the Doctor realised the gravity of what she just said.
"Earth's out of range then at least." Jack said in relief but Maria just looked at him.
"Jack, the engines are hardly working. Two hours until arrival means a lot less distance than if we were at full speed. Earth is very much in range."
"Then if the planet is being placed in every universe that means..." Clara started.
"The human race will be removed from all of creation." Maria finished.
"You knew this the entire time, and you didn't think to tell anyone?!" The Doctor asked angrily.
"No!" Maria replied defensively. "That's why I brought you here, it was never about me at all. I was going to hack into UNIT's database and simply contact you that way, but when I was sent a mission by UNIT to recover this alien technology, I remembered everything about it and me being a Gallifreyan as soon as I saw it. I wouldn't be able to last the trip back to Earth, and then the Hriekel came for it... I couldn't tell you about it because you couldn't stop it, no one can, not even me. The only thing that can stop it when it's activated is my handprint, but seeing as you can't turn me back... When we got to it before the Hriekel I thought we still had a chance, but I was too late, too slow, they activated it." She said sadly and hung her head. Jack and Clara couldn't find a reason to say anything, they were doomed from every angle. But the Doctor wasn't so convinced.
"Well, we're not completely without hope." He said brightly and they looked up at him.
"We're...not?" Maria asked uncertainly.
"No, never!" He assured. "We can just get them to move it!" He grinned and started striding up the hall. "Now, where's that monitor we passed?" He asked and the others started to brighten up as they realised his idea and ran after him.
"Ah here it is!" He said as they ended up in the junction again and he stood in front of a blank monitor attached to the wall between the stairs and the doorway to the slope down to the cargo hold.
"I thought you said you couldn't fix them?" Clara asked as he started sonicing it.
"Yeah, but you didn't have me then." He grinned and bent his arm awkwardly as he tried to find the right area to sonic. "That's the thing with being old and wise, it's great but you're not quite so quick to break the rules. Me? I love it." He said and even Maria broke into a smile.
"Uhh why don't you lot wait further down back at the door? Don't want want the Hriekel pulling a disappearing act on us with the box." He said and they went without a question.
"Good luck." Maria said to him before she left and he smiled at her.
"Now then," He said to the monitor as they were finally alone and reached his hand behind the screen. "Let's see about bypassing your binary power systems hm? The nasty Hriekel fried them all up- aha!" He suddenly said as he flicked the switch of a small back-up power box on the back of it and the screen came to life.
"Oh, hello!" He said awkwardly and stumbled back as the huge face of a helmeted Hriekel suddenly appeared on the screen. The Hriekel just stared. "Would I be talking to the Carsan Kilmotta?" He asked and the Hriekel suddenly barked with laughter.
"That's the Great Carsan Kilmotta to you human, and no, the Great Carsan would never even consider placing a foot on this wreck you call a ship. I am General Arkashi/Aknashi/Akashi" He replied harshly.
"Ah right, the Great Carsan of course. Always great aren't they? These Carsans and Kings and Lords...never 'brilliant' or 'fantastic' or 'superb', just 'great'..." The Doctor trailed off and suddenly snapped back to the conversation as the Hriekel was about to turn the screen off on his side. "Wait wait wait I'm not done yet!" The Doctor protested. "I, uh, met one of your soldiers before, oh what was his name...Ristoff! Yes Ristoff! Of Wardain Division 3 Delta 2, and as neither a human or a member of this crew I think you'd be very interested in what I have to say." The Doctor said and waggled his eyebrows temptingly.
The Hriekel stood there for a moment in conflict and the Doctor grinned as he could almost sense him gritting his teeth. Then the Hriekel sighed and called to one of the soldiers behind him and he ran off. They didn't have to wait for long until he came back with another and the General pulled him up to the screen.
"Sergeant Ristoff do you recognise this man?" He asked the soldier. Ristoff was about to start shaking his head but the Doctor quickly butted in.
"It's me, I may look different but yeah, I'm the Doctor, now-" He said but the General suddenly spluttered.
"The Doctor?" He repeated with a heavy frown. "I thought I recognised that face..."
"Yeah, but anyway," The Doctor said hurriedly. "Now you came uninvited on this ship and, unannounced, began killing the crew off without warning. BUT I can forgive that if you just move the planetry-creating device you've got in the cargo hold. Because if you don't, it'll destroy Earth and everything around it for 200 million miles, it's how it works." He said apologetically. "I'm sure you didn't know but I-"
"No." General Akashi replied bluntly and the Doctor had to take a step back.
"Oh, ok well listen," He said desperately as the General began to reach for the off button again. "We've already figured out the bit about 'The Architect', AKA big planet-creating ball of disaster ready to absorb every version of Earth and the human race from creation, but one thing I haven't been able to work out is this 'Restoration Effort'. What is it?" He asked and the Hriekel General laughed to himself disconcertedly.
"The Restoration Effort is The Architect, The Architect is the legend." He replied.
"The legend? What's that?" The Doctor asked unabashedly.
"The legend that goes back to the dawn of our time; our saviour. My people are scattered across the universe in the millions Doctor, one of the greatest and most intelligent races ever to live and we're confined to our ships to twiddle our thumbs without a home. And now we have The Architect, the planet-creator!" He revelled and the Doctor frowned.
"But you already have your own planet, Riekon, I know it - it's beautiful." He said and the General's shoulders drooped slightly.
"Riekon was destroyed." He replied evenly. "It was a natural disaster, nobody's fault."
"Then why destroy Earth?" The Doctor asked suspiciously. "Because I think you've known all this time what your 'Architect' would do without its maker. It would take a genius to find out, but you've got plenty of 'em./If you know who I am you know I can take you to any world or empty space you want."
"Our planet was destroyed Doctor. By you."
"What?" The Doctor asked in clueless alarm.
"When Riekon collapsed we were going back to our home-planet, our first and what should have been our last home. Gallifrey. But when we got there it had been destroyed, time-locked by the very last of the insufferable Time Lords." He said in disgust to the Doctor.
"The Time Lords had gone insane. You wouldn't have been able to stop them. Not even I could!" The Doctor protested.
"No matter, we could have wiped them off the planet but you deprived us of even that." The Hriekel shrugged. "Now we will do the same to you, Time Lord. You destroyed our planet so we will destroy yours. That planet you insist on saving and have adopted it as your own/established yourself as its guardian."
"And when did the harmonious and esteemed Hriekel become so fond of warfare?" The Doctor seethed.
"Oh this isn't an act of war, Doctor. Simply one of balance, revenge if you will." The General replied and the Doctor had to try very hard not to let his temper snap.
"One more thing, you didn't tell me the rest of your legend." He said invitingly.
"It's very simple. The tale has been elongated and reinvented over the millennia but the heart of it remains the same. Our world will be destroyed, The Architect will be found, and we will be saved. By the Bad Wolf." He said and instantly every Hriekel around him and everywhere in the ship began to take up the chant: "The Bad Wolf will save us. The Bad Wolf will save us. The Bad Wolf will save us."
"But that's impossible-" The Doctor said in horror as he looked helplessly at the sources of chanting all around him. "Your 'prophecy' is outdated, she's dead!" He yelled to them all and they suddenly fell silent.
The General marched up to the screen so close that the Doctor could almost see the glint of his eyes beneath the black visor.
"The Bad Wolf will save us, and you'd better not stop her." He said and instantly switched off the screen.
"What happened? Did they agree?" Clara asked as she saw the Doctor approach and the others turned around from numbly admiring the walls.
"Not exactly, no." the Doctor said and quickly swallowed the dark expression on his face. "We'd better move, it's about to get very lively around here."
"And it hasn't already?!" Jack remarked but picked up his gun anyway in preparation to go. [Jack might have had a big gun with him all along but idk if I'll put it in]
"What do you mean?" Maria asked and stayed rooted to the spot.
The Doctor looked over at her and frowned as he noticed her t-shirt again. A sad/tired look came over his face but it was gone in an instant and replaced with a blasé/neutral one as he tried to ignore it.
"Yeah, well you know how you were saying, Maria, that I look a bit like I did on Gallifrey? They recognised that." He replied and started to head off but Maria refused to let the subject drop.
"What did they say to you Doctor? Anything about the box? Anything that could help us?" She asked desperately and he turned back to face her exasperatedly/tiredly. "We can't just go swanning off now when the box is right next to us-" She reasoned but as she accidentally dropped in the slang phrase commonly used in South London, it was the last straw for him. His expression darkened and he marched up to her, making her back up to the white wall as much as she could.
"Who are you really Maria?" He asked menacingly and Jack watched them warily, holding Clara back when she started to move towards them.
"I-I told you, I don't know." Maria stammered and began to understand why even the daleks quivered when he stared them down with a fierce glint in his eye and a dangerous tone in his voice.
"Because that programming was powerful. Extremely powerful, holding back all those memories across centuries of lives. A few touches from me here and there wouldn't have been enough to crack the surface - not by far." He said and Maria began to shuffle awkwardly under his unbreakable glare. "You said you knew me best with this face, but I don't remember meeting anyone like you, not for the time it would take to break your programming. Who are you?" He seethed frantically and leant forward slightly, straining his eyes so much like he was trying to see into her. And with that the last of Maria Blake's resolve faded away.
"I suppose if I changed your face into the one I knew best, it's only fair if I do the same for you." Maria said and stepped away from their puzzled faces and into the middle of the corridor. "I can do the same thing I did with the particles to you to myself, but in my head." She smiled and waggled his sonic screwdriver in the air, having taken it from his jacket pocket while he was puzzling over her. She twisted the head of it to alter the settings and then held the button down to summon all the particles in the area to her.
They watched in wonder as the blue sparks began to seep through minuscule cracks in the wall and under doors to attach themselves to her, but nothing prepared them for what was coming next. Maria threw the screwdriver back to the Doctor when she'd gathered all the particles she needed and he caught it aptly; then she began to change.
Her body swiftly morphed into other proportions, becoming more curvy rather than lean, with the particles fading as each area was finished. Her skin flushed more pink than pale olive, and then the particles focused on her face. Her jaw and teeth became more pronounced and heart-shaped, her lips larger and her nose shorter and rounder. Her eyebrows became more precisely plucked too and as the particles faded the Doctor's eyes widened from a frown of curiosity to a look of pure shock.
The change finished with her short, curly hair growing out to her shoulders and completely straightened, turning blonde but the roots were left dark.
She opened her new, dark hazel eyes and smiled tentatively up at the Doctor.
"Woah, I'd forgotten about the height difference." She said in a slightly deeper, South-London accented voice and frowned a little as he was now a head taller than her. "Hello." She said tentatively and smiled again as he still gaped at her in shock.
"Rose." He managed to stammer out weakly and Jack burst into an agape grin behind him. "Why didn't you say anything/tell me?" He asked.
"Oh, well, I thought that as I was going to change back to a Time Lady 'n' all that anyway it'd just be best if I didn't. And I heard you'd found someone else... But I only remembered when Jack kissed me/we met Jack." She explained and the Doctor still smiled at her vacantly like he was in a dream.
"Well at least I'm good for something!" Jack grinned and she smiled brightly at him, though Clara still kept alternating at looking between them comically.
"The man she loved is dead. And so's she." The Doctor said to Rose firmly.
"I'm sorry..." She replied sympathetically and he suddenly grinned and pulled her into a tight hug.
Clara edged up behind Jack. "Who's Rose?" She whispered and he smiled as he watched two of his best friends try to squeeze the life out of eachother in happiness.
"Former companion, just go with it." He smiled knowingly and stepped forward as they separated. [Note: This scene will be re-written after the 50th Anniversary as Clara and Rose will have met]
Rose beamed up at the Doctor as he set her down but they were broken up by Jack teasingly calling: "Hey, where's my turn?" Rose willingly ran up to him for another bear hug and he grinned.
"Is it just me or are you getting a strong sense of Deja-Vu here?" He asked, recalling to the last time they were reunited.
"Yeah, anytime now-" Rose said, about to play along with the joke but was cut off by Hriekel soldiers who'd surrounded them suddenly revealing themselves. They all raised their hands in surrender as they were outnumbered seven-to-one.
A single Hriekel strode out from the ring of soldiers with their guns aimed at them.
"So, the Doctor isn't the only one here who can change his face." Ristoff said with interest and the Doctor and Rose's faces fell serious as the attention was now on her.
He then removed his helmet; revealing a head of jagged black hair, blue-grey skin with a chiselled/handsome, square-jawed face with intelligent, almost purple deep blue eyes and a V of darker-toned dots across his brow. Rose wondered if they were the Hriekel equivalent of freckles.
"Do they all look like him?" Jack asked no one in particular under his breath. "Cause if they do, they should invent a helmet with no visor/keep their helmets off." He said and the Doctor looked sideways at him but Rose couldn't help but break into a small smile.
Ristoff raised his eyebrow at him slightly but showed no other emotion as he came to a stop in front of them and said: "Take them."
"Maria?" Sam asked as his attention turned from the Doctor to her. "How come he's changed and you haven't?" He asked apprehensively, not even noticing the stern look the Doctor was about to give him for kidnapping Clara.
Maria looked between him and the curious faces of the others in conflict. She opened her mouth to say something but then thought better of it and lead him to the other side of the corridor instead, where they couldn't be overheard.
"He doesn't know how." She whispered to him dejectedly and he looked at her incredulously.
"What?" He said in disbelief.
"He doesn't know how to change me back, at all!" She hissed back and it hit him.
"Well what the hell are we/you going to do?" He asked frantically like it was him that was going to die, not her.
"I don't know, but this is bigger than just me." She said and looked over her shoulder, not noticing the deep emotion in his face. "Maybe we'll just..I don't know. Maybe we can think of something else...or just pray." She said and abruptly crossed the room to where the others were locked in conversation, leaving Sam to take it in on his own.
"Doctor," Clara caught his attention quietly when she was sure Maria and Sam weren't looking. He looked down at her openly and she pulled out the yellow post-it note Maria had given her.
"It's not just doodles, it's a message." The Doctor sighed and gave up on exploring his pockets. "She was just telling you not to struggle and that they didn't mean any harm."
"So it is a language then?" Clara asked. "Why didn't the TARDIS translate it then?"
"Because it's the one language I told it never to translate, mine." He admitted and put the note into his pocket.
"So she's like you then? A Time Lord?" Clara asked in surprise and peered over at the innocent-looking Maria who was still whispering to Sam in hushed tones.
"No. Well, kind of." The Doctor contradicted himself and he groaned. "She was once but that part of her was locked away and she became a human, being reborn as a human over and over again, not knowing who she really was, until a Time Lord unlocked her." He explained and turned back to the subject of the note. "She probably didn't even realise she was writing in it, a billion memories are trying to get into her head, and they're getting stronger every second. Ohh this is bad." He said worriedly and looked over at her sadly over Clara's shoulder.
"But isn't that good, that she's like you?" Clara asked upliftingly.
"Clara, if we can't turn her back into her original self, those memories will kill her. And I don't know how. I was her last hope and I'm clueless." He revealed sadly.
"So it was Maria who brought us here?" Clara asked, trying to change the subject.
He nodded. "That energy reading we got, it was an echo of what might have been if she'd regenerated. She killed herself to get another chance." He said.
"And everyone else on the ship." Clara pointed out and the Doctor frowned at her thoughtfully.
"Did I just hear you say Maria's a Time Lord?" Jack suddenly butted in, unable to contain himself as he'd been listening in the entire time.
"Not exactly, she's the same species as me but she never trained." The Doctor explained.
"So what would she call herself?" Jack/Clara asked curiously and Maria took the opportunity to slide into the conversation.
"Gallifreyan?" She suggested, popping up behind Jack's shoulder and almost scaring him to death, if that were possible.
"Hm, yeah. Bit simplistic, but yeah." The Doctor reasoned lightly with a pout and went to stick his hands in his pockets, then moaned again as he realised he didn't have any. "Who has suits without pockets?" He complained and looked down at his clothes. "I mean at least I had the decency to choose a suit, but these shoes..." He said and turned his nose up as he waggled his shiny, black Oxford-shoe-clad foot around. "God, give me converse any day. This shirt's a bit tight too," He said and undid the top button of his collar, revealing his neck nicely. "There, much better." He smiled and Jack looked at him with an appraising eyebrow. The Doctor looked at him and cleared his throat for no apparent reason, then strode up to a door at the top of the junction, also for no apparent reason other than to distance himself from Jack.
"Right, so, change of plan." He announced and made them all gather around him, Maria and Clara exchanging amused looks.
"Maria and I found this biomorphic energy back there that had leaked through and penetrated the electrical interface, suggesting a [technical garble here] coming from the floor below, namely the cargo." He said rapidly and paused to wait for a reaction. They blinked. "So we're going to find it." He said patronisingly slowly and they all "ahh"d as they understood him.
"You think this could be the thing I was told to look for?" Jack asked.
"Could be." The Doctor considered and turned to the Captain. "Which way is the cargo hold?" He asked.
"Further up, but you turn left instead of going straight on." She replied and was about to say something else but he continued on before she could.
"Right," He said and looked at everyone. "Allons-y!" He grinned and ran off in the direction the Captain specified.
"I love it when he does that." Jack smiled to Clara as they ran after him. She nodded back, but not entirely convincingly.
Sam caught Maria's arm as they ran along. "I thought we were supposed to be stopping him from finding the cargo?" He muttered into her ear so the others didn't hear.
"What's the point?" She answered back glumly and her expression put off all further attempts of conversation.
"But don't you want to send that message to the Hriekel, in the control room?" The Captain asked the Doctor desperately as they ran up the corridor and the décor suddenly turned yet again from messy and exposed metal grating and wires to sleek, cream white walls and shiny flooring.
"Yes but whatever the Hriekel want is in the cargo hold, and I'd say they would be more willing to talk if we got it before them." He replied and raised a wise eyebrow at her.
"Blackmail, you mean." She said cynically.
"Well, if it comes to it..." The Doctor considered. "Got to give them a chance first though." He replied and the Captain groaned as her persuasion attempts had failed.
"But my crew are holed up in there!" She protested, reverting to the raw truth of it.
"Good," The Doctor said and her eyebrows raised in disbelief. "Tell them to stay up there and they'll be safe. It's the cargo the Hriekel want, not the control room." He reminded her and happily jogged up to the end of the junction they'd come to. "So, where next Captain, down here?" He asked and tilted his head sideways to indicate the left passage.
The Captain nodded and gave in trying to shake him with a heavy sigh. As the others went to follow the Doctor she ran forwards to the staircase in the centre of the junction's wall and held the button down on a com interface on the inside of it.
"Control? This is the Captain. Stay up there until I say otherwise, but keep your arms at the ready." She said into it and pulled away as the Doctor looked back at her suspiciously.
"Watch it down here," The Doctor said quietly to Jack and the others behind him as the Captain caught up. "The Hriekel could be anywhere."
"I hope so," Jack grinned in anticipation and the Doctor looked back at him exasperatedly. "What are we going to do when we get down there anyway?" He asked more seriously and the Doctor wagged his finger in the air animatedly.
"Ah," He said and looked around to include the Captain in the conversation. "Well Captain, my good friend Clara here posed a very interesting/good question about you and your crew before..." He hinted and the Captain dryly played along.
"Oh?" She said, not as confidently as she intended.
"Why does a simple cargo ship crew have so many guns?" He delivered and waited patiently for her response with raised eyebrows.
"Well we have to defend ourselves-" The Captain reasoned uneasily but the Doctor cut her off.
"Against what? Flour-fiends?" He asked mockingly and continued on with his speech. "No no, I think it's more than that. You don't just use guns, you're used to using them. I mean no way is a cargo ship that organized!" He ridiculed as he walked backwards to face her, seemingly not noticing that the passage was widening and curving sideways in a downward slope. "Y'see, I saw that look on your face when I mentioned the TARDIS. It probably seemed rubbish to you at first, just a rugged blue box that wouldn't open." He said and curled his lip. "And I bet you tried. But then I mentioned that it was a time-travel machine and your entire face lit up. Then it didn't matter that it wouldn't open, just imagine the fortune a time-machine could bring at the next black market, by the time the new owner found out it wouldn't open you'd be long gone. Because that glint in your eye, it wasn't excitement - it was evaluation. Greed." He said in disgust and the Captain involuntarily gulped. "Because you don't ship flour at all do you? You scavenge and threaten the first weak ship you come across, disguising yourself as a cargo ship. You do very thing the Hriekel are doing to you know, and you can't stand it." He said, seemingly revelling in her discomfort. "You're pirates!" He enthused and the Captain gave in.
"Fine, we're not shipping flour." She admitted and sighed. "We just took this one job from UNIT so we could get repairs for our engines-" She said and Maria let out a small groan.
"Sorry, did you say UNIT?" The Doctor repeated and looked sideways at Maria. "Something else you weren't telling us Maria?" He asked and she shrugged helplessly now that it was out in the open, not knowing what to say.
"Yeah," The Captain confirmed. "It was a simple job, take this and deliver it there, big pay, no questions asked, our kind of job. It's not her fault, the orders came from higher up I expect. We just weren't expecting all this." She said helplessly and awaited the Doctor's harsh anecdote.
"Well," He said and took a deep breath. "Gotta say, I love pirates right now." He said and everyone looked at him in puzzlement.
"What?" The Captain said incredulously.
"What were you saying about doing something Jack?" The Doctor asked and started going around he last corner of the slope. "Well, what do you do when you find something with a whopping potential value to keep it safe?" He asked and they entered the cargo hold to be greeted with the sight of piled crates, dull wooden boxes lined up against the walls almost to the ceiling; piles of junk, thick black wires, discarded metal and futuristic oddments were scattered over the floor and right against the right wall between two stacks of crates: a rugged, big blue box. "You put it in the cargo hold!" He grinned and went over to hug the TARDIS.
Jack laughed and Clara grinned just as enthusiastically, they weren't stuck after all.
Sam and Maria's attention however went immediately to the unnoticed square white box in the middle of the room. It was as high as Maria's thigh and exactly the same in width.
"Sam," Maria whispered frantically and caught his arm. "It hasn't been activated, we still have a chance!" She enthused and went to mingle with the others so as not to be caught out.
"You seriously can't have known that the entire time!" Jack said incredulously and the Doctor smiled.
"Well, most of the time." He grinned cheekily.
Sam went up to it in wonder but Maria gazed at it more in fond relief, like you would an old friend during a battle with impossible odds.
"This is a time machine?" Sam asked dubiously.
"Hey don't knock it!" The Doctor warned and patted it. "This might just save your life." He said and raised his eyebrows at the odds.
"There's no Hriekel in here, looks like we beat them to it." Jack announced as he scanned the room.
 |
| Rubbish edit, but you get the idea |
"What is it?" Jack asked, keeping his hand close to his gun, just in case something came bursting out of it. Which wouldn't be the first time.
"I don't know," The Doctor replied and crouched down in front of it, resisting the urge to reach for his glasses again. "Any thoughts Maria? You're delivering it after all."
"I don't know." She lied. "I was only told to make sure it got back to the base in one piece, nothing else." She shrugged and the Doctor let out a groan of disappointment.
"Looks like we'll have to figure it out for ourselves then." He said and they all gathered round curiously, except for Sam and Maria who just watched silently.
"Doctor," The Captain called as she slowly edged back out of the cargo hold and up the slope they came down. "I don't like how all those doors we came past were wide open, I'll just... go and shut them." She said edgily and was already halfway up the slope.
"Ok, but be careful!" The Doctor called without looking back, too busy examining the edges of the box, and she was gone.
"It is alien, right?" Clara asked.
"Seems like it." The Doctor squinted and pulled out his sonic screwdriver.
"These ridges, looks like it's supposed to open." Jack said as he pointed out the indents that framed the angles and corners of the box.
"Yeah." The Doctor said disappointedly as his sonic failed to open it, though Maria let out a small sigh of relief. "Thought it'd be too simple anyway, it must need some kind of key." The Doctor mused as he observed the lack of any knick or catch in its flawless design. He soniced it again and took a surprised, second look at the screwdriver and started sonicing it over again more thoroughly. "The energy readings this thing is giving off though, it's like a... gigantic, biomorphic energy generator!" He remarked and frowned at the readings coming from it. "Ninety [something], [something bigger], this could power a planet!" He said and tried to sonic it even more. "Still can't get it open though..."
At this point Maria just got tired of their fumbling around and, to Jack's surprise, impatiently made her way over the wires and pushed past him to press a barely visible button on the edge of the box. A blue holographic screen zapped up from it. Complex diagrams took up one third of it and the rest was filled with complex code in foreign symbols, both going past and scrolling almost too quickly for any of them to focus on.
"What have you done?" Jack asked ominously and moved back slightly like he was expecting it to explode. The Doctor, however, leant in eagerly, his nose almost touching the display.
"I pressed the button that says 'display'." Maria said satirically and pointed to the button she just pressed. It was faint, barely different from the colour of the box itself, but it did have circular writing on it.
The Doctor peered over at it over the screen and nodded to Jack. "It does." He confirmed with a glint of laughter in his eyes and Jack rolled his.
"So what is it then? And what's 'biomorphic' energy?" Clara asked and Maria silently slinked back to Sam's side.
"What are you doing?" Sam whispered to Maria and she gave him an innocent shrug and a smile.
"What? It's not like they're going to find out how to activate it." She said and watched them discover it with anticipation.
"Well it's clever, whatever it is." The Doctor said, totally absorbed in it.
"I'll say, even I haven't seen anything like this before." Jack concurred and the Doctor mmm'd in agreement.
"Very clever... Genius even," He said with surprise as more code scrolled past and he had to take a step back. "No no no no no. Surely not." He said and moved back in for a closer look. "But yes, oh yes. Oh this is beautiful!" He said with fascination and grinned. "It isn't just enough to power a planet, it's enough to create one!" He enthused and looked up at Jack and Clara. "I've seen something like this before, a ball of energy waiting to be released to vitalise the planet, but this is so much more advanced. It's generating biomorphic energy - that's what changes a Time Lord when we regenerate - but that energy's been taken and tweaked just enough so that its own nature has been turned on itself - instead of changing one particular thing it creates itself and multiplies over and over, from just a hundred particles to a million in a heartbeat, until the right amount has been reached and they can do their work."
"A self-generating planet." Jack realised in wonder and the Doctor nodded.
"Just put in the right specifications and voila, you don't even need to wait a few million years for it to complete. No wonder the Hriekel want it so badly. Ohh whoever made this, it's just beyond genius. Even I couldn't've come up with his, I could kiss them!" He grinned like a fanboy meeting his biggest idol and Maria smiled gleefully from the wall behind him.
"Did your people make it then?" Clara asked, clearing her head of all the scientific stuff and focusing on his answer about the biomorphic energy.
"I'd like to think so but I doubt it, they would never have kept something like this so quiet. We're not the only ones to have biomorphic energy." The Doctor sighed and absently watched the code scroll past. "The thing is, how did UNIT find it, of all people?" He pondered.
"Speaking of that, the Captain, don't you think she's taking a bit too long to be closing the doors?" Jack asked and the Doctor looked up at him with a frown.
"Yeah... we should go and find her." He sighed and stood up. "Come on." He said in Maria and Sam's direction and lead the way back up the slope out.
"Sam, you stay behind." Maria said to him as they walked over to join them.
"What? Why?!" He asked and stopped dead in his tracks.
"Someone needs to stay back and watch over the box, and you're the only one who knows what happens if the Hriekel activate it."
"And you don't all of a sudden?" He asked.
Maria smiled. "I need to stay with them, come on please? We won't be long." She persuaded him and he groaned.
"Fine," He gave in. "But you'd better." He said and she grinned at him brightly.
"Promise!" She replied and practically skipped over to Jack's side behind the Doctor. He watched her go almost longingly, and sighed as they went around the corner. He wandered over to a crate and slumped down on it, scowling at the white box that was the cause of all his problems.
"Where's Sam?" Jack asked and the Doctor looked back at them curiously.
"He's staying behind to watch for the Hriekel while we're gone." Maria replied.
"Good of him." The Doctor replied and she nodded indifferently/uncommittedly.
They walked through to the junction they'd passed and stopped as they were presented with three different passages: one leading back down the ship, one straight ahead towards the left side of the ship and another up the stairs.
"Not exactly all closed up is it?" Clara asked as they looked at the gaping doors before them.
"No..." The Doctor said warily and Jack instinctively took out his gun. "Jack, you go with Clara. I want Maria with me." The Doctor said and walked towards the left door, raising an inviting eyebrow to Maria.
"Yes, sir." Jack replied wryly and smiled warmly at Clara who returned the smile.
"Oh and Jack," The Doctor called as he followed Clara up the stairs. He looked back questioningly. "Watch it with the gun." He said reproachingly and sighed as Jack gave him a mini salute with two fingers and jogged up the remaining stairs.
"Come on." He said to Maria and they went through the doorway.
The white walls vanished as they emerged on the other side and became the typical grey metal walls and flooring again. As they went along the corridor various small windows showed the endless night outside. They must be crossing a bridge between parts of the ship, Maria thought.
"How are you doing?" The Doctor asked and she looked at him. "With the..." He said and waved to the side of his head to indicate her memories.
"Oh." Maria said and thought of how to respond. "It's always there, like a constant pressure in my head. But it keeps getting stronger." She said and the Doctor nodded.
"How many lives have you had?/Do you know how many lives you've had?" He asked.
"I'm not sure, maybe nine? It's hard to tell." She shrugged and the Doctor smiled wryly.
"So this would be your tenth?" He asked and she nodded.
"How about you, how many have you had since..." She said and indicated his current tenth-incarnation body.
"Two," The Doctor replied and she nodded again, trying to estimate in her head how long it would have been for him since they last met. It wasn't exactly a pleasant result no matter how she looked at it so she let it go.
"And altogether that would be...?" She urged and he hesitated. It wasn't something he'd normally tell someone, but she wasn't exactly a normal someone either.
"Twelve." He revealed heavily and she ahh'd politely. "What?" He asked as it wasn't entirely the response he'd expected.
"Well, it's just that when you hear so many stories about you, the legends, all of your different faces...it just seems a bit... tame when you actually put a number to it." Maria admitted and the Doctor smiled at her incredulously.
"I am over a thousand years old you know." He said.
"Ok it does sound better when you put it that way." Maria amended and they both laughed.
"One thousand and two hundred by my last count I think..." He pondered and she suddenly looked at him sadly.
"One/A thousand years...you told me you were 903 the last time we met." She said vacantly and he frowned at her thoughtfully. "I can't believe I'm saying this but 903 is young in comparison." She laughed and then fell silent again. "Sorry, just a memory..." She said, trying to brush it off, but the sadness lingered inside her.
"We'll think of something, just, try not to concentrate on them." The Doctor said kindly and Maria nodded but she knew it was only that, he still had no idea what to do.
They walked on in silence. None of the subjects they came up with to break the ice seemed reasonable so they kept their mouths shut.
Maria was still muling over the numbers that just come up so she didn't notice the big, flashing button on the wall beside the closed door they came up to. She was automatically going to turn right around the bend, but the Doctor had other ideas.
"Now what's this? All of the doors we've come across have been open, so why's this shut?" He wondered and drifted over to the button. Maria roused from her thoughts and gazed over, but before she could react he slapped it and the door slid open in a matter of seconds.
An entire regiment of Hriekel in a crowded corridor stared back at them.
The Doctor jerked up. "Oh! So that's why it's shut..." He realised and smiled at the Hriekel weakly.
Maria stood deadly still, trying to figure out what to do. If they ran they'd be gunned down in the blink of an eye, not to mention the Hriekel were faster. The Doctor had figured this out too and was going through the same process in his own mind. If she could reach the button first then they could lock the door. The Hriekel hadn't seen her yet so, not wanting to spur any sudden movements from the Hriekel, she tried to slowly inch around the Doctor. Seeing her plan he compliantly stayed in place and tried not to unnerve the Hriekel either, but they recovered on their own.
She was almost directly behind the Doctor when the Hriekel nearest to them shook his head, muttered to his friends and hoisted his chunky gun up to his hip, aimed at them.
"In the name of the Restoration Endeavour of the Carsan Kilmotta, we proclaim you a hindrance of Wardain Division 3 Delta 2, guilty of intended interference of his work, and so will be exterminated." The soldier announced unenthusiastically and fired up his gun.
"Ah. Well-" The Doctor laughed like they'd caught the wrong end of the stick and tried to think of a quick-fire way to get out of this, but the Hriekel ignored him and pulled the trigger.
Exactly as the deadly, blue-rimmed bolt of white energy came out of the gun's nozzle Maria straightened up and put her full weight into grabbing the Doctor's arm and spinning him out of the way. The force of it parted them like a V and the energy bolt zapped safely between them, hitting the wall on the other end of the corridor instead. Maria fell backwards onto the switch and as the door closed the Doctor dived forward from his position on the floor and locked it with his sonic screwdriver.
"'Exterinated'?" The Doctor repeated as they picked themselves up, slightly breathless. "Who else says 'exterminate', really?" He asked bewilderedly and Maria shushed him as she slid up the wall and put her ear on the door.
"Damn pirates." The Hriekel who'd almost executed them said from the other side.
"They won't be a problem soon. Come on." Another Hriekel said to him and they heard nothing more except the marching of boots.
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "Sounds like they're moving out/in." He mused and Maria wandered back over from the door to the wall in front of him. He let out a shaky breath. "That was close," he grinned to her as she passed him. "I suppose that makes us even now?" He suggested and she suddenly spun around to face/turned on him.
"Is this what you're going to do for the rest of your life?" She snapped, her voice taught with emotion. "Run and run and run, always jumping to next thing and never/without ever looking back? You're on your twelfth regeneration, your last regeneration. Once I might have been able to hack into your DNA and change that limit, but that type of technology doesn't even exist anymore. The next time someone isn't there to pull you out of the way, it'll be the last time." She ranted at his carelessness and stopped abruptly, her voice almost breaking on the last words.
"I know." The Doctor replied quietly and simply. Maria squinted her eyes at him. She tried to make it look like she was scowling but really she was trying to stop the tears.
"Maria-"
"I'm going to find Jack and Clara, if the Hriekel are moving in they need to know." She said abruptly and ran around the corner before he could say otherwise. He didn't follow.
"Clara? Jack?" Maria called as she made her way through the thin, white corridors of the ship's upper levels. She was close to the control room by now but she hadn't seen a window in so long she couldn't tell. Her recent outburst with the Doctor was the last thing on her mind as she turned another tight corner and began to wonder if she was lost. She was about to turn back and hunt for a security computer that could show her where she was, but the sound of a gunshot from a laser gun came from the direction she'd been heading in and she pelted down the corridor as fast as she could. She turned into a wider path and saw Clara who was simply standing in front of a gap in the walls where the corridor branched out into another.
"Clara! Are you alright? I heard-" Maria started and cut herself off as she followed the line of Clara's gaze.
"Yeah, so did I." Clara replied and they stared silently at the dead body of Captain Cassie Reynolds.
"Oh no." Maria murmured quietly and stepped towards the body but Clara suddenly pulled her back.
"Look." She said and Maria looked up to see the form of a Hriekel looking back at them further up the corridor, his gun still held limply at his side.
They both took a hesitant step back but Maria boldly asked: "You, did you do this?"
"Yes, my lady." The Hriekel replied evenly in a familiar voice and Maria's eyes widened as she recognised him.
"Why?" She asked, appalled that he would do such a thing.
"I had no choice. If you haven't already noticed, it was either me or her." He replied and pointed to the Captain's gun that lay right next to her left hand, with his. "If it's any condolence, she moved first." He said slightly bashfully like it was his attempt at an apology. Maria wasn't swayed, however.
"So is that what you're going to do to us now? Shoot us stone dead?" Maria asked defiantly, rooted to the spot as they had no escape from this alien. She intended to sound condescending but it came out more like a fearful statement.
"No, no." Ristoff replied as if he'd never consider doing such a thing. "Unlike the Captain here you don't mean any harm/pose a threat." He said and the girls' shoulders dropped in relief. "But then again, I can't have you following me." He considered and they tensed up again. He looked at the com interface on the wall the Captain was sprawled next to. "She was alerting her crew to take up arms and advance on us you know. That's why I found her. I disrupted the message but I'd be careful who you trust from now on, not everyone wants a peaceful solution." He said hintingly and quickly raised his gun. Maria and Clara flinched and moved to shield themselves but he instead shot the fire alarm that was next to the com, releasing the deluge of the ship's sprinklers on them. He quickly disappeared in the blinding downpour and no matter how much they squinted, they couldn't follow him.
Gasping and trying to shield their eyes they ran back out into the thankfully sprinkler-less corridor and shook themselves down, trying to wipe the water from their faces in vain, just in time to run into Captain Jack Harkness.
"Are you two alright?" He asked and came to a halt in front of them. "I heard the gunshot and came running-"
"We're fine," Maria assured him and nodded over to the body of the late Captain. "Can't say the same for the Captain though."
"What happened?" Jack asked as he registered their soaked condition and the deluge of sprinklers still going in the adjoining corridor.
"Hriekel got her, Clara arrived before me though." Maria replied and Jack winced in sympathy.
"Only just, I didn't see anything else." Clara said. "But how come you didn't hear the first gunshot?" She asked Jack.
"The dead don't tend to hear much." Jack replied tightly. "I ran straight into a regiment of Hriekel, I don't think they were to pleased to see me, odd as it may sound." He said and Clara smiled.
"We did too, down in the south-west wing." Maria said and Jack shook his head.
"They're gathering for something. Come on, last I saw they were headed this way." He said urgently and started to go down the corridor.
"What about the Captain? We can't just leave her!" Clara protested and Jack looked back at them.
"Her crew will find her soon enough." Clara still didn't move and he sighed impatiently. "She's not going to come to any more harm out here, but we will if we don't move!" He said and seeing the logic in it they ran after him with only a little reluctance and one glance back at the small and bolshy Captain with a mane of wild curls.
"How did you get all wet?" Jack asked in confusion as they turned a corner and headed for the flight of stairs leading back down to the junction.
"The Hriekel set off the sprinklers so we couldn't follow him, he spared us." Clara realised and Jack frowned puzzledly. Then he turned to Maria. "So what happened to the Doctor?" He asked and she cringed slightly.
"Oh, we decided it was best if we split up. Cover more ground sorta thing." She replied and quickly went down the stairs first. Jack nodded but looked as though he suspected otherwise, but kept quiet about it.
The Doctor was waiting for them at the bottom and restlessly pacing around, but he looked up as soon as he heard them coming down.
"Ah there you are," He said and looked puzzledly behind them as Jack came down last. "Where's the Captain?" He asked.
"She's dead." Maria announced and his face fell. "She was telling her crew to attack the Hriekel - that's how they found her." She said and the Doctor groaned.
"I told her to leave them up there and they'd be fine, now look what's happened!" He said angrily.
"Doctor, the Hriekel are moving in all around us. I saw some big General guy rounding them all up. We're surrounded." Jack interrupted and the Doctor looked back at him.
"General...my dad was a general. No my dad was a farmer, I mean a grocer - no he died. Then a lawyer and a shopkeeper and-" Maria rambled on and stopped herself as she gasped in pain and clutched her head. They were about to ask if she was ok when she suddenly straightened up. "Sam!" She exclaimed and ran for the passage leading to the cargo hold, regardless of the others. After exchanging looks they sped after her and for once the Doctor didn't protest to Jack getting his gun out.
"Did you see any of them while you were waiting?" Jack asked the Doctor frantically and he shook his head. "They could already be there." He said and they ran even faster. They caught up with Maria and skidded around the corner of the slope only to be met with the same lifeless cargo hold as before.
"Or not..." The Doctor suggested as they slowed to a halt and looked around the room.
Maria immediately noted with relief that the box was still unactivated and turned her attention to peering around crevices in the storage boxes around the room.
"It's exactly the same as we left it." Jack stated as his search for any hidden Hriekel resulted in nothing and he made his way back over the wires to the centre of the room.
"He's not here," Maria said worriedly as she too gave up her search.
"Maybe he just went to check the perimeter?" Jack suggested and the Doctor nodded.
"Clara, can you take Maria into the TARDIS and get something dry?" He asked. "We'll...keep watch." He said and nodded to Jack.
Clara nodded. "Sure." She smiled and held a wet hand out to the dubious Maria. "Come on, this place has one of the biggest cloak rooms I've ever seen." She grinned and led her into the TARDIS.
Jack smiled as he watched them go in and Clara leant against the open door as she waited for Maria's reaction.
"It's a bit cold." She said unexpectedly, dashing Clara's hopes of getting her first 'it's bigger on the inside' and she laughed as she shut the TARDIS door behind her.
"Cold?! It's usually just right, it's probably just the damp getting to you." She said and nodded at their wet clothes. It wasn't what she'd meant but Maria nodded anyway. "I would come with you but I've got clothes in my room," Clara said apologetically and took a step backwards to the small set of stairs in the corner of the room. "The cloak room's through there. First left, second right, third on the right, go straight ahead, under the stairs and straight up. Can't miss it." She smiled and looked at Maria's vacant expression.
"Past the bins, fifth door on your left." Maria muttered and Clara looked at her in concern.
"Unless you want me to show you?" She asked and Maria suddenly jerked her head up.
"No, I'm fine. Sorry, just a memory." She smiled assuringly and Clara smiled in sympathy.
"Well if you're sure, just give me a call if you get lost." She said and headed up the steps. "Take what you want, he'll never notice!" She called and Maria nodded back at her with a smile as she disappeared through the passage at the top of the stairs.
She looked at the other set of stairs Clara had pointed to and leant back on the console for a moment. She was in the TARDIS at last. She closed her eyes and smiled as she stroked her hand over the console and the blue light from the time rotor column filtered through her eyelids. She was about to go but then a memory washed through her mind like a gentle wave, and she knew exactly where to go. She leapt up the stairs Clara had pointed to and turned left at the first junction she came to, but after that she stayed left.
She crossed into the corridor of rooms Clara had gone into and passed the door which she could hear her rummaging around behind, but continued on. The corridors were a steely grey and so unfamiliar with hexagonal openings at regular intervals holding up the ceiling and leading to other corridors. She passed many pill-shaped doors, some built into rounded walls, but despite the unfamiliar surroundings she continued on until she came to the exact door she wanted.
How she was sure she couldn't tell, but it just felt right. It was at the end of a small corridor that seemed to be as far left as you could go in the TARDIS, at least on this level. The corridor swung left after it and three other doors, and it looked the same as the others. She went over to it and expected it to be locked as the TARDIS was a picky ship, but the door clicked open as soon as she laid her hand on the handle. She smiled to herself despite the nerves fluttering around in her stomach and with a deep breath swung the door open.
The cold steely theme seemingly hadn't touched this room as it was almost rounded in feel and its walls were a light gold colour, with a darker rusty-gold-brown lining certain sections of the walls and curving up to meet in a circle on the ceiling. A dresser in the same warm brown colour was situated against the wall next to the door and had typical oddments and clutter of a young woman scattered on top of it. A lipstick with a missing top was still there, the marks of where the end had touched the dresser still stained. Maria smiled as she bent down and saw the lid had rolled right under the dresser.
A low, semi-circular window was on the right wall furthest from her, a comfy brown leather chair sat next to it and two pink and blue beanbags were plopped in front of that. The window displayed a view of the galaxy and thousands of stars shining in the pitch black of space, but she knew that it could show her any view she wanted by pressing any one of the five, round, light-gold buttons on the panel next to it.
All the other features of a warm and cosy bedroom were there, a fluffy white rug and even a worn old teddy bear laid abandoned between the beanbags, but every single thing was covered in a thin layer of dust like it hadn't been touched in centuries. Even the floor was covered in a flawless dust and Maria's heart sank. She was about to leave the forgotten room in peace but then her eyes latched onto the double bed in the middle of the room. Two hexagonal lights were built into the wall on either side of it and a tall, circular headboard reached up between them. The white, fluffy pillows and deep purple quilt were made up but messily arranged, like whoever did it was in a hurry and didn't think anyone would ever see it. It was untidy like the rest of the room.
Maria walked over and stroked one of the buttons, and smiled. The layer of dust on it was noticeably thinner than everywhere else and her heart took a tentative leap back up, maybe he hadn't/this room wasn't forgotten after all.
"Doctor I don't like this," Jack said as they stood around the TARDIS and looked around.
"Yeah me neither." The Doctor replied and Jack frowned.
"It just doesn't feel right. Did you notice as we came down that all those doors were still open? Anyone could get through." He said and the Doctor frowned too.
"You're right," He said and Jack wandered up a smaller slope on their right to look out of the window in the door at the top. His eyes widened as he saw out of it and quickly made his way back down to the Doctor. "Maybe if we just get it in the TARDIS-" The Doctor continued unknowingly and started as Jack suddenly put his hand over his mouth and pulled him into a shadowed space between two tall rows of crates. The Hriekel marched in from both ends of the cargo hold almost immediately.
"Jack!" He mumbled into the hand in protest and Jack let his hand drop.
"Sorry!" He whispered and they eyed the Hriekel marching past them while trying to shrink into the shadows as much as possible.
"What are they doing?" The Doctor whispered and tried unsuccessfully to look around the corner of the crates without being seen.
"I don't know!" Jack whispered back as he tried to do the same.
Unable to see what was happening they strained their ears to try and hear it. They froze as the Hriekel suddenly stopped and silence fell, with only a few minuscule beeps coming from the box.
"Entering code specification 3259-4785-X-Delta-2," a Hriekel said from what they estimated was the centre of the room.
The Doctor frowned as he tried to figure out what it was but even he came up with nothing. Then the beeps stopped.
"It is done. The woman's defences were complex, but the key worked." The Hriekel announced heavily and he was clapped on the back by another.
"Well done soldier," Said a deeper authorative voice. "The Carsan will be proud. What you have done for your people and the Restoration Effort is unparalleled." He said and Jack looked at the Doctor in confusion.
"'Carsan'?" He whispered.
"It's what they call their leader." The Doctor hissed back as quietly as possible.
"Now, we will move out and let your code do its work!" The deep-voiced Hriekel ordered and they began marching out. The Doctor and Jack pressed against the wall again but they were unnoticed and the Hriekel had vanished within seconds.
They stepped out tentatively and Jack immediately swung his gun in both directions to check if any guards had stayed behind, but they were alone.
"What did they do?" Jack asked but the Doctor had already found out. The lights began to flicker but one light remained along with a steady hum coming from the box.
"Should they be doing that?" Jack asked as he squinted at the flashing lights but fell silent as he turned around and saw the Doctor moving towards the box.
"On a ship with two quadrel engines? No." The Doctor said gravely and hesitantly moved towards the TARDIS without taking his eyes off the box. He rapped his fist on the side of the TARDIS twice. "Maria? Clara? You'd better get out here." He called and stared at the box.
The knocks accompanied with his voice echoed all through the TARDIS to its very depths, and even found their way to Maria in the abandoned room.
She looked up suddenly as she heard them like a child who'd wandered into the forbidden area of a building. She had no time to go to the cloak room and change now. She looked down and found her trousers weren't so bad, her top and jacket were absolutely drenched though. She looked back at the neatly folded purple t-shirt.
"Maria! Clara!" The Doctor called again and she suddenly decided to grab it and ran out of the room without a single look back. She changed while she ran.
"OI!" The Doctor called again and was about to bang on the doors again when Clara opened them.
"Alright, alright, we're here!" She said agitatedly and stepped out. She'd changed into a floral-printed short blue dress and black tights. "What's the problem?" She asked and stepped out.
"The Hriekel paid us a visit while you were busy touching up your make-up." Jack said and she stuck her tongue out at him.
"What is it? Did I miss anything?" Maria asked as she jogged up to the doors.
"Hriekel, looks like they found what they wanted-" The Doctor said without looking around and then as she stepped out next to him he froze as she saw her t-shirt.
"Where did you-" He started to ask.
"What? Is this alright?" She asked, cutting him off and he swallowed whatever emotions he was feeling.
"Yeah, yeah it's fine." He said swiftly and went over to the box.
Maria's eyes followed him and as soon as they latched onto the box she stumbled back in horror and braced herself on the TARDIS.
"Oh no. No no no, oh God no!" She whispered to herself.
The corners and main squares of it had extended out so it showed the globe of blue energy sparks, technical wiring and graphs inside it. The blue display had expanded to its full size above it and was displaying code almost as twice as fast as before. The glow from it almost became the only source of light as the lights began to weaken and dim as well as constantly flicker.
The Doctor stared into the display and began to frown.
"What does this mean?" Jack asked and pointed to a circular symbol engraved onto one of the extended corner panels of the box.
The Doctor leant over and pulled a puzzled face at it. "It says 'Borosi'." He said.
"And what does that mean?" Jack asked.
"I don't know, it's a name, a very common name, but it could be anything. Company hallmark, signature, dedication to a favourite pet..." He shrugged and went back to the display.
"What did they do to it?" Clara asked and looked at it warily as the orb of energy inside it began to whir.
"They activated it." The Doctor said simply and stared at the readings some more, trying to use his sonic on it in vain again. "They put their specifications in and it's starting to create the order, but this shouldn't be happening." He said in concern and the others became even more twitchy, but Maria just watched in abject dread.
"What shouldn't be happening exactly?" Clara asked.
"It's starting to punch holes in the universe...all universes." He answered quietly in horror. "You don't need that to create a world..." He said and the others fell silent.
"Can't you stop it?" Clara asked desperately and he shook his head.
"The sonic can't even get through the display, forget the mainframe." He replied and they looked up as Jack suddenly stepped forward with an idea.
"If that thing's already punching holes in the universe anyway, doesn't that mean we could go through them in the TARDIS?" He asked and the Doctor nodded hesitantly.
"Theoretically...but why?" He asked.
"We could find Rose." Jack smiled eagerly and the Doctor fell silent. Clara looked puzzled but Maria began to pay attention to him. "The last time we met on the Dalek Crucible, Doctor, she was telling me about how they'd created a machine to not only monitor rifts in time and space, but to heal them. We could use that to fix everything up, you'd get to see Rose again and Voilà! Universe saved in an hour." He announced with a grin as it was the perfect plan. The Doctor was almost convinced but Maria roused from her state of shock and answered before him.
"You can't," She announced and everyone suddenly looked up at her like they had forgotten she was there.
"And why not?" Jack asked and laughed at the ridiculousness of not doing it.
"It sounds like a good plan to me." Clara added but the Doctor just watched.
She paused. "Rose Tyler is dead." She announced coldly and watched painfully as the Doctor's expression didn't change, but all hope Jack's suggestion had put in his eyes began to die. "I, uh, looked into her when I was trying to find you," she said to the Doctor. "We, UNIT, had found this thing kind of like a universal stapler gun. It could punch holes in the fabric between universes small enough to not do any harm but just the right size to get a text-based message through. I used it to contact their Torchwood but they told me she and her husband died in a factory explosion, but in doing so they saved the world." She gave him a small smile in the hopes that would soften the blow,
"Well yeah she's dead by now," Jack retorted, still refusing to be swayed. "I don't know if you've noticed Missy but that is a time machine." He said and pointed impertinently to the TARDIS.
"You can't go back." Maria replied sadly, almost apologetically as she saw the Doctor's despondent expression. He already knew what she was going to say next. "That TARDIS you gave them worked. He, John Smith, that's what the other Doctor called himself, time locked the event so their son couldn't ever go back and change what happened."
"What's a time lock?" Clara asked, completely baffled by the conversation.
"It's a lock put over a particular place or time," Jack replied solemnly. "It means that nothing can ever get in or out via time travel. It can never be changed." He said.
"It's funny," Maria said to the Doctor. "They died in eachothers arms and yet her last thought was of you, the real Doctor." She said and he looked up at her. In the low lighting she could see the tears reflected in his eyes, but he was frowning at her. Not menacingly, but in a puzzled and concerned way.
"And how would you know that?" He asked.
She started to worry if she'd said too much, and then the lights went out completely.
"We have to get out of here." Maria realised gravely as the orb in the box began to rotate and the lighting in it flashed. The only lights remaining was those coming from the box and the TARDIS' beacon on the roof, but it was just enough for the others to spot her running towards the door at the top of the smaller slope at the left side of the room.
"Why? Some more light would be nice yeah but what's the rush?" Jack asked as they all sprung up and followed her. She didn't answer until they'd gotten through the door and she slammed it shut behind them. It locked automatically.
"This wasn't supposed to happen." She said in despair and put her head in her hands.
"What's going on Maria?" The Doctor asked deadly seriously and she looked up at him. There was no laughter or tears in his eyes now, just a deadly warning for her to tell the truth. There was no way she could get out of it now, so she did.
"Well I suppose I owe you a thank you Doctor," She said with a wry laugh and they looked at her in confusion. "I'm the genius, I'm the one who created the box." She revealed and the Doctor and Jack frowned.
"But that's not possible, no human could-" The Doctor started but she cut him off.
"No, not in this life. You were wrong Jack, it isn't something from the future, it's from the past. I made it on Gallifrey." She revealed. "It was my dream project, the best thing I'd ever created. A simple, self-generating technology that could create any world you could imagine, so long as you had the right data. The Time Lords and the council never knew about it because I never told them, I was going to when I finished it but I was turned into a human before I could..." She trailed off and snapped back to attention as she noticed they were still waiting for her to finish.
"So what's the big problem?" Jack asked and Maria smiled painfully to herself.
"You see that was the big idea, a self-generating particle capable of creating a planet by itself, ingenuously taken from the very heart of the Time Lords. Biomorphic energy altered to create itself to the right specification, then vanish once its work was done. But with that power in the wrong hands it could be used to destroy all of creation, so naturally I put a lock on it. Without the key it reverts to its natural form, the particle remains unused and it gathers the required energy to create the world by absorbing everything around it."
"What about the whole thing about punching holes in every universe?" Clara asked.
"Ah, that was the other big idea." Maria replied. "It doesn't just create a world, it places it in every single universe like it was never not there at all. But back in those days the gaps between universes and parallels were still open for the Time Lords, they closed when the Time War ended so all the technology can try to do now is break down those barriers. They will close up when the world is finished though."
"Ok, that's not so bad then." Clara said in attempt at lightening up the situation, but Jack noticed Maria was still holding back.
"This absorbing thing, how far does it go?" He asked.
"It depends on the size of the planet, but in this case I'd estimate about 200 million miles?" Maria said tentatively but only the Doctor realised the gravity of what she just said.
"Earth's out of range then at least." Jack said in relief but Maria just looked at him.
"Jack, the engines are hardly working. Two hours until arrival means a lot less distance than if we were at full speed. Earth is very much in range."
"Then if the planet is being placed in every universe that means..." Clara started.
"The human race will be removed from all of creation." Maria finished.
"You knew this the entire time, and you didn't think to tell anyone?!" The Doctor asked angrily.
"No!" Maria replied defensively. "That's why I brought you here, it was never about me at all. I was going to hack into UNIT's database and simply contact you that way, but when I was sent a mission by UNIT to recover this alien technology, I remembered everything about it and me being a Gallifreyan as soon as I saw it. I wouldn't be able to last the trip back to Earth, and then the Hriekel came for it... I couldn't tell you about it because you couldn't stop it, no one can, not even me. The only thing that can stop it when it's activated is my handprint, but seeing as you can't turn me back... When we got to it before the Hriekel I thought we still had a chance, but I was too late, too slow, they activated it." She said sadly and hung her head. Jack and Clara couldn't find a reason to say anything, they were doomed from every angle. But the Doctor wasn't so convinced.
"Well, we're not completely without hope." He said brightly and they looked up at him.
"We're...not?" Maria asked uncertainly.
"No, never!" He assured. "We can just get them to move it!" He grinned and started striding up the hall. "Now, where's that monitor we passed?" He asked and the others started to brighten up as they realised his idea and ran after him.
"Ah here it is!" He said as they ended up in the junction again and he stood in front of a blank monitor attached to the wall between the stairs and the doorway to the slope down to the cargo hold.
"I thought you said you couldn't fix them?" Clara asked as he started sonicing it.
"Yeah, but you didn't have me then." He grinned and bent his arm awkwardly as he tried to find the right area to sonic. "That's the thing with being old and wise, it's great but you're not quite so quick to break the rules. Me? I love it." He said and even Maria broke into a smile.
"Uhh why don't you lot wait further down back at the door? Don't want want the Hriekel pulling a disappearing act on us with the box." He said and they went without a question.
"Good luck." Maria said to him before she left and he smiled at her.
"Oh, hello!" He said awkwardly and stumbled back as the huge face of a helmeted Hriekel suddenly appeared on the screen. The Hriekel just stared. "Would I be talking to the Carsan Kilmotta?" He asked and the Hriekel suddenly barked with laughter.
"That's the Great Carsan Kilmotta to you human, and no, the Great Carsan would never even consider placing a foot on this wreck you call a ship. I am General Arkashi/Aknashi/Akashi" He replied harshly.
"Ah right, the Great Carsan of course. Always great aren't they? These Carsans and Kings and Lords...never 'brilliant' or 'fantastic' or 'superb', just 'great'..." The Doctor trailed off and suddenly snapped back to the conversation as the Hriekel was about to turn the screen off on his side. "Wait wait wait I'm not done yet!" The Doctor protested. "I, uh, met one of your soldiers before, oh what was his name...Ristoff! Yes Ristoff! Of Wardain Division 3 Delta 2, and as neither a human or a member of this crew I think you'd be very interested in what I have to say." The Doctor said and waggled his eyebrows temptingly.
The Hriekel stood there for a moment in conflict and the Doctor grinned as he could almost sense him gritting his teeth. Then the Hriekel sighed and called to one of the soldiers behind him and he ran off. They didn't have to wait for long until he came back with another and the General pulled him up to the screen.
"Sergeant Ristoff do you recognise this man?" He asked the soldier. Ristoff was about to start shaking his head but the Doctor quickly butted in.
"It's me, I may look different but yeah, I'm the Doctor, now-" He said but the General suddenly spluttered.
"The Doctor?" He repeated with a heavy frown. "I thought I recognised that face..."
"Yeah, but anyway," The Doctor said hurriedly. "Now you came uninvited on this ship and, unannounced, began killing the crew off without warning. BUT I can forgive that if you just move the planetry-creating device you've got in the cargo hold. Because if you don't, it'll destroy Earth and everything around it for 200 million miles, it's how it works." He said apologetically. "I'm sure you didn't know but I-"
"No." General Akashi replied bluntly and the Doctor had to take a step back.
"Oh, ok well listen," He said desperately as the General began to reach for the off button again. "We've already figured out the bit about 'The Architect', AKA big planet-creating ball of disaster ready to absorb every version of Earth and the human race from creation, but one thing I haven't been able to work out is this 'Restoration Effort'. What is it?" He asked and the Hriekel General laughed to himself disconcertedly.
"The Restoration Effort is The Architect, The Architect is the legend." He replied.
"The legend? What's that?" The Doctor asked unabashedly.
"The legend that goes back to the dawn of our time; our saviour. My people are scattered across the universe in the millions Doctor, one of the greatest and most intelligent races ever to live and we're confined to our ships to twiddle our thumbs without a home. And now we have The Architect, the planet-creator!" He revelled and the Doctor frowned.
"But you already have your own planet, Riekon, I know it - it's beautiful." He said and the General's shoulders drooped slightly.
"Riekon was destroyed." He replied evenly. "It was a natural disaster, nobody's fault."
"Then why destroy Earth?" The Doctor asked suspiciously. "Because I think you've known all this time what your 'Architect' would do without its maker. It would take a genius to find out, but you've got plenty of 'em./If you know who I am you know I can take you to any world or empty space you want."
"Our planet was destroyed Doctor. By you."
"What?" The Doctor asked in clueless alarm.
"When Riekon collapsed we were going back to our home-planet, our first and what should have been our last home. Gallifrey. But when we got there it had been destroyed, time-locked by the very last of the insufferable Time Lords." He said in disgust to the Doctor.
"The Time Lords had gone insane. You wouldn't have been able to stop them. Not even I could!" The Doctor protested.
"No matter, we could have wiped them off the planet but you deprived us of even that." The Hriekel shrugged. "Now we will do the same to you, Time Lord. You destroyed our planet so we will destroy yours. That planet you insist on saving and have adopted it as your own/established yourself as its guardian."
"And when did the harmonious and esteemed Hriekel become so fond of warfare?" The Doctor seethed.
"Oh this isn't an act of war, Doctor. Simply one of balance, revenge if you will." The General replied and the Doctor had to try very hard not to let his temper snap.
"One more thing, you didn't tell me the rest of your legend." He said invitingly.
"It's very simple. The tale has been elongated and reinvented over the millennia but the heart of it remains the same. Our world will be destroyed, The Architect will be found, and we will be saved. By the Bad Wolf." He said and instantly every Hriekel around him and everywhere in the ship began to take up the chant: "The Bad Wolf will save us. The Bad Wolf will save us. The Bad Wolf will save us."
"But that's impossible-" The Doctor said in horror as he looked helplessly at the sources of chanting all around him. "Your 'prophecy' is outdated, she's dead!" He yelled to them all and they suddenly fell silent.
The General marched up to the screen so close that the Doctor could almost see the glint of his eyes beneath the black visor.
"The Bad Wolf will save us, and you'd better not stop her." He said and instantly switched off the screen.
"What happened? Did they agree?" Clara asked as she saw the Doctor approach and the others turned around from numbly admiring the walls.
"Not exactly, no." the Doctor said and quickly swallowed the dark expression on his face. "We'd better move, it's about to get very lively around here."
"And it hasn't already?!" Jack remarked but picked up his gun anyway in preparation to go. [Jack might have had a big gun with him all along but idk if I'll put it in]
"What do you mean?" Maria asked and stayed rooted to the spot.
The Doctor looked over at her and frowned as he noticed her t-shirt again. A sad/tired look came over his face but it was gone in an instant and replaced with a blasé/neutral one as he tried to ignore it.
"Yeah, well you know how you were saying, Maria, that I look a bit like I did on Gallifrey? They recognised that." He replied and started to head off but Maria refused to let the subject drop.
"What did they say to you Doctor? Anything about the box? Anything that could help us?" She asked desperately and he turned back to face her exasperatedly/tiredly. "We can't just go swanning off now when the box is right next to us-" She reasoned but as she accidentally dropped in the slang phrase commonly used in South London, it was the last straw for him. His expression darkened and he marched up to her, making her back up to the white wall as much as she could.
"Who are you really Maria?" He asked menacingly and Jack watched them warily, holding Clara back when she started to move towards them.
"I-I told you, I don't know." Maria stammered and began to understand why even the daleks quivered when he stared them down with a fierce glint in his eye and a dangerous tone in his voice.
"Because that programming was powerful. Extremely powerful, holding back all those memories across centuries of lives. A few touches from me here and there wouldn't have been enough to crack the surface - not by far." He said and Maria began to shuffle awkwardly under his unbreakable glare. "You said you knew me best with this face, but I don't remember meeting anyone like you, not for the time it would take to break your programming. Who are you?" He seethed frantically and leant forward slightly, straining his eyes so much like he was trying to see into her. And with that the last of Maria Blake's resolve faded away.
"I suppose if I changed your face into the one I knew best, it's only fair if I do the same for you." Maria said and stepped away from their puzzled faces and into the middle of the corridor. "I can do the same thing I did with the particles to you to myself, but in my head." She smiled and waggled his sonic screwdriver in the air, having taken it from his jacket pocket while he was puzzling over her. She twisted the head of it to alter the settings and then held the button down to summon all the particles in the area to her.
They watched in wonder as the blue sparks began to seep through minuscule cracks in the wall and under doors to attach themselves to her, but nothing prepared them for what was coming next. Maria threw the screwdriver back to the Doctor when she'd gathered all the particles she needed and he caught it aptly; then she began to change.
Her body swiftly morphed into other proportions, becoming more curvy rather than lean, with the particles fading as each area was finished. Her skin flushed more pink than pale olive, and then the particles focused on her face. Her jaw and teeth became more pronounced and heart-shaped, her lips larger and her nose shorter and rounder. Her eyebrows became more precisely plucked too and as the particles faded the Doctor's eyes widened from a frown of curiosity to a look of pure shock.
The change finished with her short, curly hair growing out to her shoulders and completely straightened, turning blonde but the roots were left dark.
She opened her new, dark hazel eyes and smiled tentatively up at the Doctor.
"Woah, I'd forgotten about the height difference." She said in a slightly deeper, South-London accented voice and frowned a little as he was now a head taller than her. "Hello." She said tentatively and smiled again as he still gaped at her in shock.
"Rose." He managed to stammer out weakly and Jack burst into an agape grin behind him. "Why didn't you say anything/tell me?" He asked.
"Oh, well, I thought that as I was going to change back to a Time Lady 'n' all that anyway it'd just be best if I didn't. And I heard you'd found someone else... But I only remembered when Jack kissed me/we met Jack." She explained and the Doctor still smiled at her vacantly like he was in a dream.
"Well at least I'm good for something!" Jack grinned and she smiled brightly at him, though Clara still kept alternating at looking between them comically.
"The man she loved is dead. And so's she." The Doctor said to Rose firmly.
"I'm sorry..." She replied sympathetically and he suddenly grinned and pulled her into a tight hug.
Clara edged up behind Jack. "Who's Rose?" She whispered and he smiled as he watched two of his best friends try to squeeze the life out of eachother in happiness.
"Former companion, just go with it." He smiled knowingly and stepped forward as they separated. [Note: This scene will be re-written after the 50th Anniversary as Clara and Rose will have met]
Rose beamed up at the Doctor as he set her down but they were broken up by Jack teasingly calling: "Hey, where's my turn?" Rose willingly ran up to him for another bear hug and he grinned.
"Is it just me or are you getting a strong sense of Deja-Vu here?" He asked, recalling to the last time they were reunited.
"Yeah, anytime now-" Rose said, about to play along with the joke but was cut off by Hriekel soldiers who'd surrounded them suddenly revealing themselves. They all raised their hands in surrender as they were outnumbered seven-to-one.
A single Hriekel strode out from the ring of soldiers with their guns aimed at them.
"So, the Doctor isn't the only one here who can change his face." Ristoff said with interest and the Doctor and Rose's faces fell serious as the attention was now on her.
He then removed his helmet; revealing a head of jagged black hair, blue-grey skin with a chiselled/handsome, square-jawed face with intelligent, almost purple deep blue eyes and a V of darker-toned dots across his brow. Rose wondered if they were the Hriekel equivalent of freckles.
"Do they all look like him?" Jack asked no one in particular under his breath. "Cause if they do, they should invent a helmet with no visor/keep their helmets off." He said and the Doctor looked sideways at him but Rose couldn't help but break into a small smile.
Ristoff raised his eyebrow at him slightly but showed no other emotion as he came to a stop in front of them and said: "Take them."
End of Chapter 2.
No comments:
Post a Comment