Rose Tyler was doing what she did best.
She was running for her life.
An agile youngster, the nineteen year old had always managed to keep herself fit despite the wealth of less-than-healthy food her home environment had to offer. While she had never pursued a career in gymnastics, she could still do the splits, cartwheel and run three blocks without breaking a sweat.
Of course, it was only relatively recently that running for her life had become really running for her life.
Because if she slowed down, if she let what was chasing her catch up, she would be dead.
Yes, dead.
It was as simple as that. Terrifyingly simple, in a way.
She was actually running for her life. Not running as she would if her life were, heaven forbid, in danger, but running to keep her heart beating, her lungs breathing and her brain sparking. All things that would end once and for all if her pursuer caught up.
It was fight or fly. And Rose was flying.
She was in the early stages of the chase. Her limbs weighed nothing and the landscape effortlessly hurtled past her, an endless vista of tall skeletal trees emerging from a carpet of dead foliage. The sky underneath was a foggy grey, not so much threatening rain as promising no direct sunlight. The forest around her was as silent as the grave. The only noise to be heard was the faint creak of branches as they swayed stiffly in the cool breeze.
And the noise of Rose Tyler running for her life, of course.
And it goes without saying that there was also the rough trampling of the thing that would end Rose Tyler's life the moment it had a chance to do so.
Rose's sneakers crushed the dead leaves to pulp with the occasional sickening crunch as something more fauna than flora was caught beneath her tread. Rose winced anyway, but didn't slow down – whatever she had stamped over was already dead before it had contacted with her foot.
It was dead.
They were all dead.
The trees around her were dead, having shed their leaves and now the leaves were rotting away and the trees were drying and cracking. The birds who had lived in those trees were sprawled randomly throughout the forests, their corpses untouched because any worms or insects were dead as well, unable to take advantage of this free meal. Even the soil beneath the carnage was now completely sterile.
The only living things in the forest were Rose and her pursuer.
And that particular status quo wasn't going to last much longer.
Rose continued to run for her life, leaping over a treacherous clump of roots and back onto the winding path that she was certain would lead out of the woods and into something even remotely safe. She flatly refused to turn around as she heard branches snapping and leaves shuffling.
She ran even faster.
Finally, she was out of the forest.
Beyond her was a small valley carpeted in short grass that was now looking pale and yellow. It was bordered by more dead forests and some of them still had the occasional leaf clinging to a branch. But Rose's brown eyes were locked straight onto the collection of smooth grey domes in the middle of the valley. Lined with windows and plazas and linked by staircases, it looked like some campus or holiday resort. Except, of course, there was no one in sight.
No one at all.
The silent construct sat in the silent valley on this dead and dying planet.
Rose could feel her momentum slow and her body finally beginning to inquire about the brief marathon it had just endured. She injured it and hurled herself down the hill towards the buildings. There must be people inside. She was sure there would be. Because there had to be.
Because, if there wasn't, she was dead.
The grass was stiff and seemed to be conspiring to trip her over. She stumbled and kicked out her legs, somehow managing to reach the bottom of the hill without spraining every bone in her body. At last her feet was standing on the grey stone pavement on the outskirts of the colony.
She ran straight for the nearest glass-fronted plaza, which vaguely resembled an open-air café. Tables and chairs were set out in the open air in front of the glass-fronted entrance to the building. But the entrance was closed. The chairs were empty. The place was deserted.
Rose didn't dwell on that. She couldn't.
Obviously the colonists were elsewhere. That's all. In the meantime she had this building to hide in, set traps, make plans and recover from this breakneck chase. Her pursuer may know what hit it, but wouldn't be able to do a thing about it. All it would know was that attacking Rose Tyler had been a tiring, long-winded and ultimately fatal mistake.
One problem.
The glass door was locked.
Rose pressed her hands to the sides of the door, certain that it should have opened at her presence. Had one of the colonists locked it? Maybe she could call for them to unlock it – if they could hear her through the glass, if they were able to unlock it or if they were in shouting distance at all. But her pursuer would hear her cries and her desperate hope for secrecy would be gone.
That was a lot of ifs.
And also one very big but.
Rose decided there was only one option for her.
She sprinted across the plaza to the winding staircase leading to another level, making sure her eyes didn't hit the reflection on the glass doors. She didn't need to see how close the enemy was – her paranoia was doing that for her. All she could see was the dark view of the foyer.
Completely and utterly deserted.
If Rose didn't know better, she'd say no one had ever been there. There was absolutely no trace of the dozens of human colonists she had encountered earlier. And they couldn't have just vanished. They simply couldn't have. Even if the enemy had somehow got here first.
The enemy, her pursuers, left the bodies.
Rose found herself heading through a covered walkway, giving for a moment the heartbreaking illusion she had somehow got inside the colony, got away from the cold decaying world outside. But she hadn't. She was still outside with it and the pursuer was closing in on her.
She put on a burst of speed, ignoring the faint jabbing pains in her upper legs.
The clatter of her sneakers on the concrete (or whatever substance made the colony) echoed loud and sharp in her ears. She realized now that the colony was as silent as the world it sat on – noise meant life and Rose was the only life here. The colonists were either hiding far beyond her reach or they too had finally died.
After all, why should some colonists be special? Why should they survive?
The Doctor didn't.
Captain Jack Harkness didn't.
Rose tried to tear her thoughts away, to focus on the present. Her eyes were sore and stinging and she simply hadn't had a chance to grieve for them. As much as she wanted to.
But sobbing for her dead friends wouldn't help her at the moment.
She had to run and keep running.
Rose reached the other end of the walkway and in another mini plaza. Deserted, of course, but this time with a fantastic view of the countryside. Of dead soil, dead trees and dead wildlife. As though the planet itself had committed suicide – or maybe been murdered by whatever was murdering everyone else.
Everyone except Rose Tyler.
She threw herself towards a staircase leading upwards, the pains in her legs growing sharper as she bounced up the steps. Moments later she was on another plaza, leading straight onto the grass of the hillside and another patch of dead forests.
Rose stopped.
Over the slamming of her heart in her chest, the pulse in her ears, there was silence.
Total silence.
A ringing began in her ears, as if her brain was struggling to fill the gap.
But that was the point.
Silence.
No sounds of pursuit.
She'd lost them! Tyler one, mysterious death wraiths zilch!
The thought suddenly wasn't as cheering as it should have been. Because now she was alone. Truly alone. Even the enemy had been claimed. The only noise was her heartbeat and she began to get the impression even that was not allowed.
Fear gripped her as her mind suddenly seemed to realize what the situation was.
She wasn't wanted here. No one was. Nothing was. Not humans, not colonies, not even plants and animals. Something very powerful didn't want them here and was removing them one by one. And now there was only her left.
Rose broke into a run up the hill.
She had to get away, from this dead colony and disappearing corpses. She had to get somewhere safe. Somewhere normal. She had to see Mickey, her mother, her friends. She had to leave!
A few moments later she was running into the forest.
She was more terrified than she could ever remember feeling before in nineteen years of life. It was like she was ill, her internal organs boiling and jerking inside her. Her legs felt like they had knifes jammed into them and her throat was suddenly dry.
It was the noise she was making! That's what made her dangerous! That's what threatened... whatever it was that was purging this planet clean of life.
A tiny part of her brain told her to use this information. To do something. To stop the enemy.
The rest of her kept running through the trees.
Passing a noose dangling from a broken tree stump, Rose turned a hillock and saw, sitting just over the rise... nothing. A certain blue police telephone box wasn't there. It was gone. The force had got there ahead of her and made the TARDIS vanish, just like it had made everything else disappear.
She stopped dead, staring at the place her escape had been. Inside the TARDIS she would have been safe, been able to do something. While the TARDIS was there, nothing could really touch her, she was just a visitor – it didn't matter what happened because it could get her out of here.
But now she was stuck here.
At the mercy of something she just couldn't understand.
A rustle in the bushes behind her. The noise of something charging through the undergrowth straight towards her. Was it working for this thing that wanted this planet dead? Or was it just determined to kill her before it too died? Maybe it was trying to buy its survival with her death?
Rose didn't move.
There was nowhere left for her to run.
If she would die, she would face it head on.
She remembered her earlier thought. If sound threatened her attacker, then she would make damned sure she didn't die silent. She was going out the same way she came in – kicking and screaming and deafening.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, hearing her assailant rushing towards her.
She opened her mouth and screamed as long and as loud and as shrill as she could.
If she died screaming, it wouldn't be with fear or pain. It would be screaming defiance against the things that had murdered everything she knew and cared about. It would be screaming that she was alive, and it was better to die noisily that live silent.
Something smashed into Rose Tyler with truly incredible force, flooring her and smashing her head against the muddy ground. She felt sharp, knife-like claws against her body, digging into her clothes through her flesh and hot, fetid breath against her face.
She kept on screaming even something pressed against her face.
Rose Tyler's screams were muffled, then interrupted.
And then was finally silenced.