Doctor Who

~ The Necrocite Plan ~

by Ghost Scribe

~ Chapter One ~

Light in Darkness

The Tardis hit the ground with all the grace of a grand piano pushed out of a second storey window. The Doctor was ready for this. After all, he'd spent most of the past nine hundred years becoming accustomed to her little foibles. Unfortunately, Donna hadn't quite mastered the art of surviving landings unscathed.

'There,' the Doctor said, grinning from ear to ear in that slightly maniacal way, 'that wasn't so bad, was it?'

Donna scowled up at him as she sat in a heap on the floor, massaging a fresh bruise on her right buttock that, within hours, would neatly match the one on the left cheek.

'Could you not fit this thing with suspension?' She spat each word out as she checked to ensure there were no serious injuries.

'Oh, where's the fun in that?' He reached out a hand and dragged her to her feet. The Doctor was surprisingly strong considering he made the average rake look in need of liposuction.

'Where are we?' she asked.

'You want to see a dragon?'

'A dragon?' she said, suddenly forgetting how tender her backside felt. 'No. You're kidding me! Where are we?'

'Your mum's house,' he replied, turning back to the console.

Donna should have expected something like this. The Doctor's relationship with her mother was ... fractious. At best. She didn't realise it, but she wasn't the first of his companions to have a mother who held him in pretty low regard.

'How long have we been gone?' she asked.

'About a week. Go on, I'll catch up with you later. I need to recalibrate the image targeting resolution scanner.'

'And what does that mean for those of us who don't speak Martian?'

'I... I don't speak Martian. Never got the hang of all those vowels.' The Doctor, last of the Time Lords, slayer of the Daleks, who had witnessed civilisations rise and fall, suddenly looked sheepish. 'I press this button.'

Donna shook her head, feeling this was one of those little victories that she occasionally won with him. 'Come on, spaceman. Time to face that dragon.'

She walked to the door, with the Doctor reluctantly following in her wake, dragging his feet like a child on the way to a maths test. But when she opened the door she stopped.

'It's a bit dark. Are you sure this is my mum's house?'

He brushed past her, walking out into the gloom. She hesitated a moment before following. Anything could be out there. Literally anything, but she followed anyway. She always did. The Doctor had that effect on people. They trusted him. And most lived not to regret it. Most.

'Ah,' he said at length. 'I knew that image targeting resolution scanner needed recalibrating. We might not quite be at your mum's house.'

As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Donna became aware of shapes around her. They were in a tunnel, a long curving cylinder, cream coloured tiles lining the walls, and each end swathed in darkness. To her side, the floor disappeared, but she could just about make out the iron girder of a railway line.

'This is an underground station,' she said quietly. 'But which one?' She felt a rising trepidation, as if some awful truth were about to be revealed. What if this was the near future and London was a dead city. What if all the people she knew and loved were dead?

Figures were moving in the shadows, their faces hidden in the near darkness giving them a sinister appearance.

The Doctor reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved his sonic screwdriver, flicking it swiftly through a hundred and eighty degrees. The accompanying clickety-click noise it emitted as he reset the device was comforting to her, a sound of familiarity in this strange and unnerving place. It began to emit that oscillating buzz, and the area was immediately bathed in a soft blue glow.

Suddenly, the railway platform looked less threatening. The people were just people, not looking in any way out of the ordinary. Except in the way they were dressed. Closest to them was a girl, possibly in her late teens, her hair pulled tightly back to form a neatly plaited braid. She wore a cream patterned dress and black, stub-nosed shoes with white socks. To Donna, she looked for all the world like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.

A little further down the platform were three soldiers, their berets tucked neatly into their epaulets and kit bags slung casually over their shoulders.

There were what looked like businessmen on the platform, wearing heavy-looking suits and trilby hats. She saw a mother shepherding two unruly children away from the platform's edge.

'Okay,' Donna said, 'forget about where are we. When are we?'

The Doctor ignored her question, and walked over to the curved wall of the tunnel, to a metal box mounted on its side. A quick sonic buzz had it open, and an instant later the lights in the tunnel began to glow into life.

'There we are,' he said happily. He looked around, taking in their surroundings as anybody would. But most people wouldn't make a show of sniffing the air, or licking it to see how it tasted. He smacked his lips, presumably finding the taste unpleasant. 'Carbon monoxide, sulphur and ... just a dash of cordite. I'd say it's-'

'9th May 1941,' Donna added for him, scanning the front page of the newspaper she'd just retrieved from the floor. '"TERROR RAINS FROM THE SKY". You've brought me to the bloody Blitz!'

'Oh, the Blitz. Not your mum's house then.' But his face suddenly changed, eyes shifting from left to right. 'May 9th you say?'

'That's what it says here. Why, is that important?'

'Nah, probably not. Although...' He stared at the sign on the opposite wall, written in ornate lettering: York Road.

Donna followed his gaze. 'York Road? There isn't a York Road.'

'Not in your time there wasn't. Not in this time, either. This station was closed in 1932.'

It was easy to believe that it had been disused for close to a decade. The scent of decay filled the stagnant air, dust clinging precariously to the walls. But there were some obvious new additions: posters reflecting the paranoid fears of the age with headlines like "Loose Lips Might Sink Ships!" and "Tittle Tattle Lost the Battle!" with pictures of sinister looking characters concealing swastikas and housewives gossiping over garden fences.

From above came the dull rumble of a distant explosion, followed by a string of further impacts, each louder than the first. Dust was dislodged from the walls, swirling in small eddies as flakes of plaster fell from the ceiling.

The Doctor looked slowly upwards toward the sound, blinking away the dust. 'We shouldn't be here,' he said, his demeanour suddenly deadly serious. 'We have to go.' He turned on his heel, heading back to the Tardis.

'Why?' she called after him. 'We're safe down here aren't we. People used to shelter from the bombs in underground stations.'

He stopped and turned abruptly, his hands closing around her shoulders, eyes burning with intensity. 'No, no one's safe as long as I'm here. The whole world is in danger the longer I stay. We need to leave now.'

The Doctor glanced around, as if he was expecting something to appear at any moment before fumbling in his pocket for the Tardis key, juggling it until it landed in his hand the right way up and slid it into the lock, pushing the door open...

Donna stared into the empty blue wooden box.