Chapter One
My name is Rose Tyler and I am a survivor.
Twenty years ago, I was separated from a remarkable man. A man, who grabbed my hand when I was a naïve girl of nineteen, took me away in his magical ship and showed me countless stars and planets. A man who showed me things I had only read about in history books. A man who became my whole universe, who became everything to me. Who I thought I couldn't live without.
That was then and this is now.
Now, I have no time to dwell on the life I might have had with that remarkable man. No time to imagine what might have happened if I held on to that lever a little longer. No time to dream of magical tear-filled reunions that only exist in romance books and fairy tales. I have no time to remember the travels I had with him, the laughter we shared, the chips we ate. I have no time to think of those things because only one thought dominates my mind now.
Winning the war.
It has been almost eleven years now since the Kajorans came. I had just been made head of Torchwood and was selected to welcome what we though was a peaceful race of aliens.
How wrong we were.
Oh, they had us fooled in the beginning, telling us that they only wanted peaceful relations with the Earth and in return would give us technology that would allow our civilization to advance. I had my doubts about their offer of friendship, after all I had been in space and had encountered many different alien races, some of which used the same sort of tactic to gain the trust of planets before conquering them. I was invited to an emergency meeting at the UN and I tried to tell them this, warn them that the Kajorans were not to be trusted, but I was shouted down by the ambassadors who wanted to welcome the aliens so they could get their greedy fingers on their technology.
The fools.
In the end, I was proven right. The abductions started slowly at first, very subtly. People just suddenly disappeared never to be seen again. One, maybe two, at first, not enough to draw attention. Oh, there were the rumors that the Kajorans were taking them and using them as forced labor in mines deep under the ground or as a food supply, but no one took them seriously. After all, the Kajorans were nice people, extremely helpful and eager to assist the scientists in any way they could. They had everyone fooled…except me. I knew something was up from the way they acted. Whenever they went on the telly to give some new announcement or other, I could see the forced smiles and the evil glint in their eyes. But when I tried to voice this to the ambassadors at the UN, they called me a reactionary and dismissed me as a hysterical female. I couldn't believe these people, some of whom I had worked with closely, would accuse me of being hysterical and making things up. And then I realized the truth. The Kajorans had been asking for personal meetings with the ambassadors and then putting mind control implants into their brains and through them had gotten access to the leaders of the various countries and put them under their control as well. Once that was accomplished, then they went after various organizations that could stop them. The CIA, FBI, MI6, INTERPOL, and others of that vein and last, but not least, Torchwood.
That is when they took me and my nightmare began.
They did not put an implant in me. They did not deem me important enough. I was not a president or a prime minister or a dictator or queen. I was just the head of an organization that was interfering in their plans to conquer the world. So, instead of becoming a puppet like so many others, I was sent to one of those rumored mines the Kajorans had, which turned out to be in Antarctica…no wonder no one could say for sure if they had them or not.
For ten years, I toiled in a gold mine on the coast of Antarctica. You might think I was freezing my ass off, but quite the contrary. I was nice and warm thanks to the fact that the mine was deep below the ground. There was constant heat from the furnaces that were used to smelt the gold and mold it into small bricks that could be used by the Kajorans for their elaborate palaces and also for trade with other planets. The heat was stifling and the mines were dark and claustrophobic. It was hard to breathe and hard to see and the human mind slaves walked among us whipping and torturing us if we didn't work fast enough or hard enough. All of us worked without any clothes on, save a cotton loincloth that was wrapped around our crotches. Our heads were shaved and a prisoner identification number was tattooed on the back of it so our masters could know who we were if they needed to.
I was one of the lucky ones, I was a digger. I toiled fourteen hours a day with a pickaxe and shovel digging out the tunnels and finding the gold nuggets that were sent to the furnaces. The ones who were forced to smelt the gold were the ones who were in Hell. The furnace heat was intense and many died of heat exhaustion from working near them. Most had burn injuries from the liquid gold that splattered onto their bodies. Many died in the furnaces themselves. Some accidentally fell into them, some were thrown into them as a punishment, and many threw themselves in to escape the horror of enslavement. The agonized screams and cries of mercy were almost nonstop, but I soon learned to tune it out. I had to so I wouldn't go insane.
For the first few years, I still held onto the hope that the man I loved would return to free me and the other slaves from this torment and save the Earth from the cruelty of the Kajorans. I kept my ears open for any whispered rumor of him, any sign that perhaps he had found a way back to "Pete's World" and was starting a revolt to save us. As the years went by, the hope dwindled until there was nothing left and slowly I began to think less and less of that remarkable man until he was only a dim flicker in my mind. The torments of the mine toughened me up mentally and physically and I became an emotionless shell as a defense mechanism against the cruelties I was subjected to on a daily basis. Love no longer had any place in my life. What use was love when you were fighting for your very existence? I saw only darkness and despair around me and my life no longer held any happiness or any hope, there was nothing now except work, torment, and death. The girl that traveled with that remarkable man was no more. In her place was a hard, cynical woman who had forgotten how to laugh, how to have fun and how to love.
For ten years, I lived this hollow existence, digging day in and day out until I no longer knew what day, month, or year it was. Many of the slaves who worked around me slowly died out or were killed off, but I managed to hang on. Not for that remarkable man, I no longer thought of him now or even cared if he was alive or dead. No, I held on because I wanted revenge for what had been done to my fellow humans and me. I wanted to see the Kajorans suffer. So, I toiled away biding my time until the opportunity arose for escape.
And then one day it came. I happened to overhear a conversation between two of the mine slaves that a Kajoran commander was making an inspection of the mine and that he was ordered to keep an eye on the slaves to make sure they behaved themselves. I knew it was now or never, if I didn't act this time, I might not live long enough to try again. So, I waited and watched, trying to keep a low profile so the mind slaves wouldn't notice me and figure out what I was doing. I waited until they weren't looking before I managed to hide a pickaxe in the shadows near the elevator shaft. I don't know how long it was until the commander came, a day, two days, time has no meaning for me anymore since there is no natural light or clocks to mark the passing of time. I just bided my time, working near the spot where I had hidden my weapon, waiting for the commander to show.
Just before he was about to make the inspection, the mind slaves began to round up the workers and collect their pickaxes and shovels. I surrendered the pickaxe I was holding so they would leave me alone, but when I was sure they weren't looking, I backed away into the shadows and slowly made my way back to the other pickaxe. It took awhile and for a moment or two, I thought someone had spotted me, but I managed to elude them. The ten years I had spent being a slave had not only taught me the layout of the mines, it had also given me the skills to elude my tormentors when I needed to. I made my way back to the place I had chosen and settled down to wait.
Then, I finally saw him. He was tall and reptilian with a lavender hue to his skin, just like the rest of his race. But he had an air of authority about him that said this was not someone to be messed with. That wasn't about to stop me though. I knew that his ship was nearby and there were at the max three mind slaves aboard it acting as the crew. Once I dispatched him, I had only minutes to make my escape up to the surface before I would be apprehended and put to death. It was a huge risk, but after ten years of suffering, it was a risk I was willing to take.
I crouched in the shadows like a lion stalking its prey inching ever closer to the commander as I clutched the pickaxe in my hands. He was speaking with a couple of the mind slaves and for a moment, I felt a flicker of anger at these betrayers of our kind, but it quickly passed. It wasn't their fault. The implant in their minds rendered them helpless to act against their Kajoran masters. As human beings, they were pretty much dead, just living, mindless hunks of flesh. They lived only to serve just like all the other mind slaves so I couldn't stay angry at them for something they couldn't help.
The mind slaves turned to lead the commander deeper into the mines and he turned with them. That was my chance to strike. Silently, I ran from the shadows and before the commander could defend himself planted the pickaxe in his skull. The mind slaves barely had a chance to react before I hit one in the face, knocking him out. The other grabbed me from behind intending to choke me. I rammed my foot down onto his. He let out a pained yell and let go. Without any compassion, I rammed the pickaxe into his head, rationalizing to myself that I was freeing him from a life of servitude and protecting myself by killing him. Then I grabbed the pickaxe out of his head and ran towards the elevator shaft. I pushed the button, turned, and held the pickaxe close to my body, taking a fighting stance in case anyone tried to stop me. The elevator arrived a moment later. I ran onto it and went up for the first time in ten years.
The elevator stopped and I saw three more mind slaves and two Kajoran foremen staring at me in shock. Mindlessly, I hacked my way through them, determined only to escape so I could eventually free others from the invaders. The mind slaves fell without much of a fight. The two foremen were better fighters and managed to hold their own for a couple of minutes, but my fighting skills had been honed long before when I traveled through time and space in the other universe, not to mention I was fighting for my own existence which made me even more determined to win. I finally bested both of them and once the last foreman fell dead at my feet, I hurried down the long shaft and out onto the surface of Antarctica.
The first few minutes outside of the mine was excruciating. The frigid air was a shock to my system and it nearly took my breath away. I was shivering violently, but the commander's ship was just outside the entrance, so I was able to run into it before I froze to death. Once inside, I found only two mind slaves instead of the three I was planning on and I quickly dispatched them with the pickaxe. After that, I started pushing buttons trying to start the ship. Luckily, I found it after only a couple of tries and was able to get the ship airborne. I managed to fly it back to England and after that, I ditched it and went into hiding.
I've been on the run since then, a wanted woman. I know that if I'm captured, I will be shown no mercy so whenever I run across anyone who wishes to harm or capture me, I show them no mercy in return. Slowly I have been able to rally others to my cause and put together a small resistance force who is dedicated to exterminating the Kajorans and reclaiming out world.
For the past year, that is what I have been doing. Leading the small band of rebels and killing any Kajorans we come across. The remarkable man I once knew is now a part of my distant past and I don't expect to see him ever again.
But, as he once told me so very long ago, never say never ever.