Monday, April 7, 2008

Bad World Chaptor 4

Bad World Chaptor 4
There was… not darkness… the world through her eyes existed and she could feel the continuous pulsations of life it generated, but she couldn’t see anything beyond a deep, hazy grey. But there was something there… maybe she couldn’t see the light, but she could feel it radiating off her like steam.
And she could feel other things too… swift, powerful things which were so far beyond her comprehension, that it took her breath away. In fact, they were so sudden and shocking that it took a few moments before she realized what it was she was actually feeling…
In the sullen, swirling gloom, Rose blinked and clutched at her heart, drawing in shuddering gasps as she tried to hold back the tears.
She was so… lost… so far away from anything that she knew, and it hurt so badly. It throbbed through her whole being like a giant, cavernous wound. Rose tried to smother her racking sobs. Never before had she been so forcibly wrenched away from her home, so isolated against it. Never before had she felt so alone.
And then the world of grey around her began to stir. Billowing and twisting shapes flitted across her vision, so fast and strong that they stung her senses. A deafening roar suddenly echoed in her ears, like the sound of ancient planets collapsing. And there were screams… cries of agony, loss and anger buried amongst the torrent of sound.
Rose strained her ears, trying to pick something comprehendible out of the shouting. And there it was.
A female voice speaking over and over, whispering words of despair and loss that somehow carried easily over the roars of others. Rose swallowed hard, she’d lost something, or maybe someone…it was ripping her apart inside and she could feel it.
But it was the sound that carried over all this, which filtered through the twisting world around her that made her ache. A sound which wrenched at her heart with such force, she thought she was going to pass out… it carried over the woman’s words, engulfing them and engulfing Rose. And perhaps the most frightening thing of all was that it sounded so familiar to her.
Sudden forks of bright, blue light thundered down from the impossible emptiness above and buried themselves in to her senses. They seared white-hot, and left painful smoldering scars across her vision. Blinking rapidly in the smoggy haze that surrounded her, Rose raised a trembling hand and tried to shield her face.
But these were not her sights and sounds to extinguish. This was not her pain. It belonged to someone else, someone far away and forgotten, and there was nothing she could do to stop herself from witnessing it. She was so far from home, so far from all that she loved and cared about, and all she could do was stand there. All she could do was try to numb her senses and smother her ears from the screams, and moaning… and the heart wrenching cries of a faintly familiar man…
All that Rose Tyler could do was stand there, isolated and alone, and listen to the screams of the long forgotten…
And then she blinked.
And everything that had passed in front of her eyes, everything that had passed through her, inside of her in that fraction of a second, was forgotten in an instant.
‘All right,’ said Mickey, raising his hands in mock surrender, ‘I was gonna give it back to you anyway!’
He bent down and picked up the leather wallet from the floor where it had fallen, offering it to Rose with an apologetic look on his face. Rose glowered at Mickey and made a snatch for the wallet, but he suddenly pulled it out of her reach again. ‘Mickey!’ Rose said exasperatedly.
She looked into his eyes, sparkling with mischief, and suddenly burst out laughing. ‘Hey! Now there’s the Rose Tyler I remember!’ Mickey quipped. Grinning like a loon, he let Rose take the wallet from him and then suddenly enveloped her in a giant bear hug.
Rose made a small huffing noise as she was lifted off the ground and all the air was crushed out of her. She grinned sheepishly, her face smothered by his jacket. She’d missed this. It had been a long time since she had just let go… but what with constant raids for food and her recent obsession with unknown artifacts, she’d hardly had any times for sleep, let alone simply laughing with her friends.
From behind the hugging pair, Jake smiled quietly to himself, and watched the show of affection in silence. Rose’s arms, now wrapped tightly around Mickey, gave him a perfect view of the little leather wallet and clean white paper inside. Hardly sure of why he was doing it, he deftly slipped the wallet out of her hand and examined it again.
‘Mickey!’ Rose gasped gleefully, ‘put me down!’
‘Nah! You love it!’
‘Put me down!’
Staring at the little rectangle of white, Jake’s face slowly molded into a deep frown. Very carefully, he rubbed his thumb over the paper, as though trying to remove a smudge or piece of dirt.
Rose’s feet hit the floor as Mickey finally let her down, and she laughed breathlessly, bending down to pick up the strange book that she had brought with her.
‘So, where’s the book come in all this?’ asked Mickey peering over her shoulder. ‘Don’t tell me that said your name as well.’
‘No,’ said Rose, regarding the faded, battered front cover. ‘I just brought it along ‘coz I thought I’d seem really silly coming back with just a little wallet thing.’
‘You seemed really silly coming back with just the book,’ said Mickey.
‘Yeah…’ said Rose. ‘But I bet I didn’t seem as silly, right?’
She subjected Mickey to a particularly evil little grin, and then turned to Jake expecting to be offered the wallet. But Jake did no such thing. Instead he just stared at it, and then looked blandly up at Rose.
‘It’s talking to yeh again,’ he said warily.
Rose’s smile faltered on her face.
‘What?’
Jake shook his head in disbelief and finally offered the wallet to Rose. When she took it, she almost could swear that she felt a strange tingling sensation traveling up her arm. Mickey leaned over her shoulder and, like Jake, his brow furrowed in complete confusion. ‘How’s it doin’ that then?’ he breathed.
Rose said nothing, but stared down at the little black letters that kept re-writing themselves across the gleaming white paper.
“Rose Tyler…”
**********************
Somewhere that was almost an infinite number of miles away from the nearest human life, and almost a billion years before anything even resembling monkeys beginning to evolve, a small, rather shabby looking police box hung in the air.
Without ever quite doing anything, it began to slowly disappear. Of course, that’s what it looked like to the naked eye, but for the TARDIS it was much more complex as it refigured its entire molecular structure and plunged itself, and its Time Lord, into the crackling, spinning time vortex.
Inside the box, with only the constant lulling noise of the ship as company, the Doctor stood with his hands buried deep in his pockets. The piece of floor directly under his gaze wasn’t particularly interesting, but that didn’t really matter to him as it wasn’t really the floor he was looking at.
If someone had been with him, they would have been watching the stationary Time Lord with a mixture of concern and apprehension. If they’d have watched his face for long enough, they would have sworn that there was something moving behind his petrified eyes. If they had asked him what was wrong, they would have been completely ignored. And it didn't even bare thinking about what he would have done if they had tried to move him.
But there was no one with him. He was alone in the TARDIS.
There was something... dark and unsettling that was stirring in the back of his mind, something unfamiliar that he had never experienced before. Or... he had, but it was so long ago, so lost and forgotten... And it was wrong.
It was very, very wrong.
The Doctor stared at the metal grating under his feet as the thoughts and sensations prowled over his mind. They were so distant he couldn't even make them out. It was like trying to count needles in a haystack... a haystack without any needles. In a fog.
After three hours, the TARDIS let out a low growl. Or maybe it didn't, the Doctor couldn't really tell anymore. Without moving his body, he slowly raised his head and let his dark eyes travel across the control room.
I can feel it. I can feel -
'Shhh,' he murmured to the space around him.Somehow his voice, barely audible, echoed around the room. And this time the TARDIS definitely growled back at him, which, if the Doctor had been in a stable state of mind, he would have been seriously worried about. TARDISes do not growl.
The Doctor frowned, pinching his eyes together to try and block out unnecessary senses. Hidden inside his trouser pocket, his hand was gripping so hard onto his psychic paper that his knuckles had turned white.
Why now? The Doctor slowly shook his head, as though trying to clear smoke from his vision. He didn’t want to feel this, didn’t want to see this. He’d spent so long trying to banish it from his mind why would it come back now?
Hardly daring to breathe, he slowly brought his hand out of his pocket and lifted it to his face. The leather wallet was griped in between his fingers and he knew, he knew, that it was the link. So, now all had to do was…Taking a deep breath, the Doctor snapped open his eyes and stared down at the blank paper…
Someone was there.
And without warning, a name popped into his subconscious. He wasn’t aware of it, but it was there, and it was calling out. But the thing the Doctor was focused on more was the sensation that he was looking into a television screen as he stared down at the paper. 'Oh... very bad...' he said.
And then his world turned white.
A hollow, bellowing noise suddenly erupted from the depths of the TARDIS, and was only matched by the heart-wrenching cry of the Doctor. The Time Lord reeled backwards, and dropped the psychic paper, his head suddenly burning and spinning. The console right above the heart of the TARDIS suddenly exploded into a flower of sharp sparks and the ship lurched sideways.
The Doctor, with his hands pressed into his eyes to try and stop the pain, was flung sideways and landed heavily on the floor, all the breath knocked out of him.
The things he seen, the echoes of the memories, were still flashing across his vision. The burning, the fire, the swirling smoke and reels of light… the cries, no, the screams of the long forgotten, and his own voice carrying over the top.
I could feel it, and it was burning. The fog lifted, and the haystack was a pile of needles all along… The recollections still stung, even now, but since the psychic paper was no longer in his clutches, they were already beginning to fade. Taking a gasping breath, the Doctor staggered upright and clung onto the console… It was still shaking violently. There was something else wrong. ‘It’s never one thing,’ the Doctor hissed.
And, just as rapidly, everything became deadly still.
Still breathing raggedly, the Doctor straightened up and backed away from the console, looking at it doubtfully. His gaze briefly flickered to the innocent looking leather wallet that lay on the floor where it had fallen.
Yes, it could pick up psychic messages sometimes… you had to be good, and that was good by the Doctor’s standards. In the sudden stillness of the room, he walked towards the paper and bent down to pick it up.
His fingers stopped an inch from the wallet.
It shouldn’t have been showing him his own memories. That was ridiculous. It was ludicrous, impossible! Something was happening to affect the paper… the Doctor frowned and straightened up, rubbing his temple. It was prickling uncomfortably but he put it to the back of his mind and focused on the TARDIS.
‘What’s going on, ey?’ he murmured to the ship. ‘What was all that about?’
The TARDIS cloister bell gave a loud, unmitigated clang and the doors of the ship suddenly flung themselves open. The shuddering, swirling lights of the vortex rushed in to the console room… The Doctor stared at it, eyes growing wider and the prickling of his head intensifying. He felt a strange cold chill traveling down his spine and nestling somewhere deep in his gut.
He must have seen the vortex a hundred times, a million, maybe more than that. It was as normal to him as his own shoes. He knew the patterning of it, the electric blue and ruby red coloring… he could almost read it like a book he’d traveled in it so often.
The Doctor’s head suddenly exploded again in a fresh wave of nauseating pain. The Time Lord almost fell backwards onto the console, slapping a hand to his temple. Why did he feel so… confused? It was like someone had suddenly taken every moment of his life and thrown them into a blender.
Blinking through watering eyes, the Doctor lurched over to the open door of the TARDIS. What was going on? Leaning heavily on the door frame and gritting his teeth, he stared out at the time vortex.
It definitely shouldn’t be moving like that, the Doctor thought desperately, or making that hideous noise… And it definitely shouldn’t be that fizzing, sickly, utterly wrong yellow/green color.
For a few moments, the Doctor gazed at it, lost in the unfamiliar, churning eddies… and then the TARDIS let out a whining shriek and began to shake uncontrollably again. The Doctor gasped as the pain and confusion built once more, and slammed the wooden doors shut. Trying desperately to keep his balance, he staggered to the consol pounded his fist onto it.
‘Take me to Cardiff!’ The Ship moaned pitifully and the Doctor gritted his teeth again. ‘Now!’
*************************
There were some things in life that were irritating, and Martha had decided very early on that the constant hum of the neon lights above her were very irritating. Maybe it was the stone floor, or the sheer size of the room, but the neon lights were somehow hugely exaggerated in the Cardiff hub cloakroom.
Trying to push it to the back of her mind, she sighed and fumbled in her locker for her phone, Tish was supposed to be calling her soon.
‘I get a nice view from here,’ said a voice behind her.
With her head still buried in her locker, Martha groaned. The voice was very smooth, very familiar, and very American.
‘Where have you been?’ she said coolly, turning round and straightening up. Jack was sat on one of the cloakroom benches, leaning back and regarding Martha with a coy smile on his face. It was almost impossible to not feel fond of him but she kept her vigilance. He was supposed to have met her at least two hours ago.
‘Following Owen about,’ he said, his bright blue eyes trailing puppy-like after Martha as she went to get her coat. ‘Y’know he tried to drown himself?’
Martha paused, her hand hovering by her locker. ‘Is he all right?’ she asked eventually. Jack studied her and then gave a half hearted shrug.
‘He’s already dead, Martha,’ he said firmly.
She stared at him, frowning, and bit her lip thoughtfully. Give him time, Jack had said and Jack knew Owen much more than she did, she’d only been there a few days.
‘Come on,’ Jack said, standing up and stretching, ‘lets get food if that’s what you want.’ ‘It’s normal,’ said Martha, pulling on her coat. ‘Sometimes it’s nice to do normal things. It reminds you there’s a normal world out there.’
‘Hey, as long as there’s Weevils crawling around and I can still wake up after being shot in the head, things’ll never be normal.’
They made their way up the dark passages to the giant circular door that lead outside the hub. Why they bothered to get annoying sounding lights in the cloakroom and hardly any lights anywhere else, Martha didn’t even think about. It was just one of those things. She was so preoccupied with her thoughts, that she didn’t notice that Jack had stopped dead in his tracks. ‘Jack?’
He turned his face to look at her. ‘Hear it?’
Martha looked around, confused. ‘Hear what-’ and then she paused, and her gaze slowly traveled up to the ceiling.
‘The TARDIS…’ she said slowly, her face molding into a picture of disbelief.
Jack nodded. ‘My office,’ he said, following Martha’s gaze and glancing upwards. ‘Right above us.’ ‘What’s he doing here?’ she said incredulously.
Jack tore his gaze away from the ceiling and studied Martha. After a moments pause he gave an exaggerated shrug and set off down the corridor.‘Let’s go!’

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