Chapter 1 - Very Bad Things
The White Guardian stared at the board with a frown. He didn't like the way things were going just then, but he wasn't dismayed. This was all the usual sorts of things that his opponent got up to, after all. There were a few surprises, but nothing that was out of character for him.
This trick was to find something in his own repertoire that he hadn't used yet. He thought of several things, discarding each idea, one after the other, and then hit upon the thing he needed just then.
He moved his pieces and then leaned back.
Sitting on the board was a strange mishmash of figures, all moving in different directions, but seeming to converge upon one point.
"Interesting, you are being clever," the Black Guardian hissed and the White paused, wondering if he was being complimented or insulted and not being quite sure which it was. The whole exchange made him a bit uneasy.
Aboard Susan's TARDIS, the Doctor, Koschei, Guinn, and Adie were still trying to repair the damage done by the effort to move the weaponized Entropy away from inhabited areas.
"Despite my extreme brilliance, along with Rose's equally genius efforts, for some reason Susan is being most unreasonable about the repairs," the Doctor complained and Guinn and Koschei exchanged amused glances.
"Maybe its not the brilliance, or the damage, but the frequency of the occurrences that is bothering her," Koschei began, only to be interrupted by a 'ping' noise as the intercom system in the workshop came into unexpected life. A nearby screen lit up, showing the cartoonish face of Tomoko Construct.
"Emergency Contact, Doctor, The," Tomoko construct complained. "The Dead Man's Timer has expired. Tomoko is considered to be dead or captured. Assistance is required."
"Wait, what?" Adie asked, looking alarmed.
"Oh, I should have remembered. Tomoko has a dead man's timer set up," soothed the Doctor. "Remember back on the Central Command station, that's how we knew she was heating up," he reminded her. "I guess, since she's undergoing conversion, she hasn't entered her sequence into the computer and the timer has expired. I'm not sure how she has it set up, but it's perfectly fine.."
"Tomoko is considered to be dead or captured," Tomoko Construct continued to insist. "Assistance is required."
"Er," Koschei said, "How do we shut it off then? Can we hack it?"
Guinn scowled at the screen, leaning over and tapping at the image.
"You're a clever AI, you ought to know why she hasn't called in," he informed it, but the screen image shifted slightly, panning back to show her from the waist up, with an angry face, as she crossed her arms and gave him a very Tomoko-like glower. For being a cartoon face, the AI conveyed human emotions rather well.
"Assistance is required," Tomoko Construct responded stubbornly.
"Adie," said the Doctor, "Why don't you go to Medi-bay and activate the camera feed for Tomoko Construct? We never turned it back on… perhaps if she can see Tomoko, that will handle the alert, eh?" He smiled at the screen. "Go with Adie, now, that's a good little AI!"
Tomoko-Construct did not look amused by this, but did vanish from the screens.
"All right, Doctor," Adie said, and headed down the hallway.
Dar looked up at the screen on the wall in surprise, as it beeped at him and the painted face of the AI Tomoko had created glared at him.
"What's wrong?" he asked the interface.
"The Dead Man's Timer has expired. Tomoko is considered to be dead or captured. Assistance is required."
Without a second thought, Dar walked over to the coffin and checked the tells.
"It says she's in here, has it been messed with?" he asked, not questioning the AI's assessment.
"Tomoko is considered to be dead or captured. Assistance is required at once," Tomoko Construct insisted.
"Where is she?" he asked patiently.
"Tomoko Prime present location: unknown."
"When did you last see her?" he tried again.
"Tomoko Prime Last Sighting: twenty-seven minutes ago."
"Bugger," he snarled as Adie walked in. Without a word he smacked at the coffin, opening it up and staring down at the empty interior. "Twenty-seven minutes ago. Gives her a hell of a head start."
"Will you assist?" Tomoko Construct insisted.
"Damn straight I will assist!" he rapped out. "Adie! Tell the Doctor! She's gone! We need to move!" He slammed down the lid angrily and headed for the console room, leaving Adie open-mouthed behind him.
The central TARDIS pillar stopped moving, as the TARDIS came to a momentary stop in deep space. The view on the screens was of starfields spangling the black, no sign of worlds or other ships. Tomoko turned to study her guests, eyeing them with a considering air.
The two children were stood in a corner, like toys she had done playing with, and they were as rigid and frozen as wood, though their eyes betrayed the awareness inside of them, the full knowledge that they were helpless was crystal clear in their gazes.
Tomoko knelt down, scowling at the little boy, tilting his head back and forth, studying his bone structure and the shapes of his features with great interest.
"Hold out your arms," she instructed and he obeyed, pupils dilated in fear. "Now, turn around and stand up straight." He turned in place as requested. "Rather young," she pronounced with a scowl, "But, if need be, you can be speed grown. The real problem is that you haven't gone before the Schism. That will be awkward. Step aside."
He did so, and Tomoko spent a long moment looking at the blonde girl.
"You are going to be useful, I think," she murmured. "In the back storeroom, you will find a small red box, and there should be a spare sonic about. Fetch them at once." Freeya shuddered into motion, moving down the corridor in jerky steps.
The girl returned with the box and the sonic. Tomoko rummaged around in it, and then drew forth a metal collar.
"Your job," she told the child, while working with collar and sonic, "Will be to keep your… cousin from doing anything foolish. There will come a time when I will want him to stay out of my way. Your job will be to convince him. Should you fail to do so, this device will act to correct you."
She handed it back to Freeya, who put it on and turned around obediently. It fit her child-sized neck perfectly. Tomoko knelt down, using the sonic to weld the collar so that it couldn't be removed.
"Now, come along both of you, so much to do," she told them and they followed after her jerkily, Freeya's eyes filling up with tears that fell silently down her cheeks.
Rose stepped into the console room and looked up. The TARDIS was upset and unhappy and she moved immediately to lay her hand on the console surface and try to soothe her.
A jumble of sensations ran through her and she closed her eyes trying to listen more closely.
The others all thought that she was somehow able to speak directly to the corals, but that wasn't strictly true. She could feel them, as they fluttered in and out of her own limited vision, she could catch glimpses of their thoughts, but it required a concentrated effort on both sides for real communication.
Alarm, fear, unhappiness, these were clear to her, but the cause for it was not.
Something had happened though that had made the TARDIS extremely upset.
They had hardly begun working again, when all of their screens cut out, at the exact same instant. Instead of their previous images, each screen displayed the same phrase. "Emergency Interrupt," in bright red letters that blinked insistently.
The one screen that did not display the words "Emergency Interrupt," cleared to show the image of Tomoko Construct, still visible from the waist up, still with her arms crossed, and looking much angrier. Her background had shifted from its usual neutral grey to a reddish-yellow colour reminiscent of flames.
"Alert confirmed," she announced. "Assistance is required at once. Failure to provide assistance within sixty seconds will be interpreted as authorization for independent action. Respond immediately."
"That doesn't sound good at all," the Doctor commented and Koschei and Guinn both stood up, staring at the screen in alarm.
Just then, the intercom beeped.
"Doctor? Doctor!" It was Adie's voice. "Doctor, it's empty, she's not here, Tomoko is gone!"
"Gone?" The Doctor stared at Guinn and Koschei.
"I'll check the sensors," Koschei told them, heading out of the room.
"I'll start an analysis on the cryo unit, find out why the alarms weren't sounded," Guinn told them and ran out as well, while the Doctor turned to look at Tomoko Construct.
"I apologize for not believing you," he told her. "Do you have any further data on what happened?"
"Tomoko failed to renew the Dead Man's Timer upon exiting this TARDIS. The timer was not renewed upon entering TARDIS designated, 'Adie's TARDIS.' Communication with TARDIS designated 'Adie's TARDIS' has been unavailable for the last twenty minutes. Contact with Tomoko Construct 2 has been lost. Definitions dictate that Tomoko Construct 2 will be acting independently until communication can be re-established."
"My dear girl, I really need to upgrade you significantly," the Doctor muttered, his mind racing. "Thank you for the information."
"Tomoko Prime has delayed upgrade plans, pending research on self-awareness," Tomoko Construct told him.
"Really? She should have asked me, I could have given her an Asimov Circuit... but, that's neither here nor there. We have to find out what happened!" he told her and Guinn and Adie walked back into the room. He was holding a panel in his hand, his face grim.
"The sensor was disabled," he told the Doctor. "By someone with an intimate knowledge of the device."
"Could Tomoko have hacked it?" he asked hopefully.
"Not in the state she was in, no," Guinn assured him.
"What's going on?" Adie asked. "Where's Tomoko?"
"According to the lovely T-C, she is on your TARDIS, I'm afraid," the Doctor told her and Guinn's frown grew deeper.
"Wait… where is my TARDIS?" Adie asked.
"Not here," Koschei told her as he, Dar, and Rose walked into the room. "According to one of the sentries, it left about thirty minutes ago," he continued and Adie's shoulders slumped.
"I guess sometimes you are the Grand-Theft-or, and sometimes you are the Grand-Theft-ee."
"Recall switch?" Guinn suggested and the Doctor looked at him and nodded.
"Well, it's worth a try," he sighed and they all trooped into the Console room, their expressions a mixture, of shock, dismay and worry.
"Not that she was likely to overlook something like that," Dar pointed out grimly and the Doctor nodded.
"No, not very likely," he agreed and the they exchanged looks of deep disquiet.
Pete shook his head and looked around in confusion. He'd been doing something...
His wife's scream jolted him into action and he ran into the hallway to where she was standing over the crumpled form of the dog, Rose. The little animal was lying quite still, her body at an unnatural angle and he froze in horror. Something awful had happened, but his mind was blurry and unfocused.
The children came charging down the stairs in a panic, Davian leaning heavily on Toby. They all looked terrified, pale, and with appeal in their eyes, as though they were waiting for him to make it all go away.
"She took them!" Toby shouted and suddenly Pete's blurry brain spit out a warning. They were not safe here and there were Torchwood agents outside that could protect them.
"Get out of the house! All of you! Run!" he shouted and began grabbing up the littler ones to carry.
The orphans didn't hesitate, they were survivors of the Time War, they recognized when it was time to simply obey, and they all took off running, feet pelting across the floor. Jenny and Jamie trusted their Gramps and just clung to him.
Pete held his grandchildren against him and ran for the front door. Behind him, Jackie paused to scoop up Leela and Andred's youngest child, moving more slowly than he liked, but he was fully occupied with getting the children out of the house.
They almost made it.
"Doctor, incoming message from Gallifrey," Rose told him. They'd been working on tracing Adie's TARDIS, but when Tomoko had taken it, she had managed to disable the recall circuit, as well as the engines of Susan's TARDIS, which circumstance made the Doctor feel very grim indeed.
"What the hell is she thinking?" Dar growled and the Doctor shook his head.
Susan had come back at Koschei's call and her face was etched with lines of worry as she reran the security footage.
"Hard to say, she looks... odd," she murmured. The communication panel beeped at her.
"We're a bit busy just now," The Doctor grumbled and Rose shook her head at him and opened the channel.
"This is Rose," she answered and Kate Stewart's grave face appeared on the screen. The Doctor glanced at the screen and then went still, as the drawn, pale, red-eyed image caught his attention and made him realize that something terrible had happened.
"Rose, I'm so sorry, but there is no easy way to say this," Kate began and the Doctor steeled himself. "There was an explosion at your parent's home," she began and Rose's hand went to her mouth to stifle a scream of denial.
"Jenny and Jamie? My Parents? Toby? The children?" she demanded and Kate's face went stony. The Doctor froze and it felt like a vise was closing around his hearts.
"I... they're in hospital, Rose, it's... not good," Kate told them, her voice sounding strained and miserable. "Davian was killed instantly, as were two of the Torchwood Agents on duty. The others are in ICU right now. The doctors don't know if any of them will make it."
"We'll be there soon," Susan replied, briskly competent. She got the hospital information from Kate and then she, Koschei and Guinn took over repairing the TARDIS, as Rose turned to bury her face in the Doctor's lapels, sobbing. He held her tightly against him, fear hammering at him, panic threatening to overwhelm him.
Dar stood motionless, staring at the console, his face a mask of ice and then he began typing queries into the computer, searching for answers, the Doctor guessed.
"Why?" Rose cried out. "Was it the terrorists?" she asked and he shook his head.
"I don't know, love," he choked out, even though his throat felt like sandpaper. "We'll find out through and when we do..." his hearts were filling up with fire and anger, a terrible dark rage that seemed to eat at him.
"Let's get to the hospital first," Susan warned. "I would rather that the children were not under human care!"
He nodded, but he barely heard her, his mind filled with thoughts of vengeance and bloody death for those that had dared to threaten his family.
Aislynn awoke stiff and sore, got dressed in the nearest midnight-blue robes that came to hand, and headed outside to see the status of the world. Taydin was in the console room, dressed and working on recalibrating the entropy shunts. He looked up as she came in and then followed her outside without a word.
She frowned when she saw that one of the TARDIS had left, wondering if something had happened. She had been so exhausted that they might have tried to contact her and she could have failed to respond, which worried her.
The other TARDIS had its door partially open and so she knocked politely.
Guinn answered her knock, pulling open the door for her, his face strained and eyes a bit wide.
"Lady Aislynn, commander Taydin," he greeted her, looking at them as though he'd forgotten about their very existence.
"What's happened?" They had a history, but now was not the time to get into it, from the look on his face.
"There's been... an attack. The children...," he trailed off and then took a deep breath. "They're in hospital, we need to get there, but the TARDIS has been disabled."
"Hello, Aislynn, Taydin, can we beg a lift?" Susan interrupted smoothly.
Aislynn already had her mouth open to respond the moment she had heard the word, 'disabled,' and closed it again.
"Lock it up, come along, we leave at once."
"Yes, we're coming," Susan replied. "Thank you." She ushered a panicked-looking Rose and a thunderous Doctor out of the TARDIS. Koschei paused and glanced at them.
"I'm going to get the TARDIS back on line and then pick up the medical personnel here, if that's okay," Koschei murmured.
"Would you please be so good as to see to Owen and Katie if you do? I haven't had the chance to speak with them," Aislynn suggested.
"I will see to it that they are safe and returned home to you," he assured her with a nod.
"Do you need help?" Dar asked, but Koschei shook his head.
"Stay with them, keep them safe and... watch out for the Doctor," Koschei murmured and Dar nodded, his eyes like chips of ice.
"My thanks, Koschei," Aislynn inclined her head graciously, pretending not to have heard the last part, then turned to the Elysium, pulling out her key and unlocking the door.
In grim silence, the Time Lords went aboard, faces strained and worried.
"Coordinates?" Aislynn moved to the console, nodding at Taydin.
Susan tapped them in for her, her face pale. Taydin patted her shoulder gently and Susan gave him a small smile, that looked rather forced.
Aislynn simply thumbed the de-materialization controls, her face grave.