Hey there! It's closing in on Christmas. I'm so excited for this upcoming Doctor Who Christmas special and I hope it lives up to everyone's expectations. Now on with the author's note. This is my first attempt at a chapter fic and it is certainly more dark themed than anything I have written for Doctor Who before (which is very few but still). By the way this takes place during the episode Power of Three. It's after when the Doctor goes nuts after watching the cubes in the Ponds' lounge for four days (which I personally thought was hilarious, anyhow) and leaves the Ponds for a couple of months. Well, on with the story and I hope you enjoy!
Prologue
She creaked the door open slowly and with uncharacteristic caution, peeking into the meeting. She was noticed very easily by this council or whatever organization these members belonged to.
"Subject 18," a man at the head of the table, probably the leader, addressed her in a cool manner and announced her title to the board members, "this is our solution." Subject 18 had no name. If she had had one, she had long forgotten it. She had to ease her nerves when she was dealing with creeps like these as to not show weakness. Weakness was failure.
"Solution? To what problem? My superiors did not inform me directly on this issue." she inquired with curiosity. He stood from his chair as though ready to give a long lecture. She hated those.
"I'm sure that you and everyone else at this table are familiar with the man known as Doctor. The time lord who has accessibility to a multi-dimensional time traveling spaceship or known simply as a TARDIS. His antics have disrupted time streams and the flow of hundreds of civilizations. Societies are on the brink of collapse because of him! These actions have been noted by a religious order called the Silence and they have tried several times to eliminate him. They were the most successful group of aliens to match him yet fate was not kind on their part. Other notorious races and tribes have made efforts only to fail in the process. We observed him first when he tried to hack into our data core and delete all records on himself, to make him invisible. His efforts were pointless and we easily tracked his signal, but he got away in that blasted spaceship of his! We, the justice association known as the True Elite, have decided take a new approach to our target. By killing other targets."
Bewildered by this speech she questioned, "You hired me… to be the assassin who kills the Doctor? And what's this about other targets?" The man slid various files down the table and she grabbed them gazing at them in confusion. Inside was average, every day human beings who they were interested in her murdering. Some names she glanced at like Mickey Smith, Rory Williams, Martha Smith-Jones, Amelia Williams, and so forth.
The man then slid a binder. She picked it up and opened it to find eleven folders containing information she would rather not want to take the time to read, but she had to. Because contained inside was every Doctor, every one of his adventures accountable for, every one of the companions he traveled with, with each of his faces. Yes, Subject 18 had heard of the Doctor before and hadn't cared enough to look into him and research. Now she was interested.
"We have studied the Doctor thoroughly and found the one weakness that shall lead to his downfall. The Doctor has been known for all his life to be an emotional, sentimental old man especially with the people he cares about. He has never been able to recover when he losses someone. So with that in mind, we want you to kill his friends. If so many of his companions die we would like to think the Doctor will dig a bigger hole than he can climb out of. He would be in such a depressed state that he would stop his adventuring altogether and give up his futile methods of saving the worlds and the universe and stop getting involved in places and events that cannot be fixed."
"So, I break his spirit." she chuckled to herself and then asked, "What's my prize then? For killing the oh so powerful Doctor?"
"Since you are property to the government technically, you will receive no pay. However your facility will collect a generous payment from us." With this response she stood from her chair and made for the door.
The man halted and cried, "Wait!" She spun on heels to face him. She requested,
"Why? Why did you select me as your candidate? If you have read my file then you know that some call me a renegade rather than a proper assassin. And I deal with targets that are guilty. Criminals, mobs, war lords-" He then snapped,
"He is a war lord! His tiny actions of kindness toward alien races as some might say do not amount to the crimes he's committed! He's destroyed whole civilizations, planets because he believes that is the only solution to problems! The Doctor must be stopped. It has been far too long since anyone has done anything about the matter." his elevated temper seemed to at that point decrease and he continued onward, "Yes you are right about how we know you are more… defiant when at your work but that is the only way the Doctor will be stopped. We need someone as conniving as him who will think not even at but above his level of intelligence."
"So you want a duplicate. Someone who is the Doctor but controlled. Controlled I am but for me ferocity is its counterpart. Are you prepared to deal with that? "
The other board members exchanged apprehensive glances at one another but stayed silent. She observed the leader twitching his eye brows, probably having second guessing about his choice. But she still had a grin plastered on her face and within seconds she knew exactly what his decision was.
"Like I mentioned before, I am not cheap or easy to please. If I'm taking down the Doctor I'm going to need some more equipment and incentive."
"You are not killing the Doctor in any physical way though." One man at the table stated.
"No, but I assure you if his companions are so valuable to him, he will go looking for them. That's why I need to be undetectable. And about my payment?" she gave a sly smirk and the leader snapped his fingers and in came his servants. They brought many bags with them and other small pouches.
"In the large bags you should be able to find everything to great worth. In the smaller pouches are your rewards. Some contain diamonds, gold, silver, rubies, and other precious metals but we did not think that that would completely satisfy you." He picked up one of the pouches and extended his hand inside and pulled a shiny item out.
"A warp star." She breathed in amazement.
"We snagged it off a foolish time agent who was gallivanting with a vortex manipulator when he landed in the Dalek invasion of 2008 and grabbed this. We caught him red-handed with it and it has been in our possession ever since. I think this all meets your standards." He gestured to all the bags packed among the room.
"I believe so." She hid her surprise from everyone, for she hadn't expected a bounty such as this. Really she hadn't needed or wanted most of the objects except for a selected few but it always shocked her how she could manipulate other people to do her will. These people were desperate.
For the second time she tried to make her leave but was yet again interrupted in the process. She was getting a little aggravated and impatient. The leader came over and handed her an object for which she recognized as a vortex manipulator.
"You'll need it for transport. Do not fail your mission." With that she was dismissed from the debriefing and headed down the hall. She overheard a bit of the council's conversation as she left.
"Do you think we can trust her?"
"I'm not too sure. Should we keep surveillance?"
"Perhaps. Occasionally just to check in with her progress."
Her expression was replaced with a bitter frown and she searched the bags and every possible place they could have bugged her after she vacated the building. She glanced at the tip of the warp star she wore around her neck and sighed. There, with the help of a magnifying glass, was a tiny bug. She couldn't tear it off and it was too difficult to accomplish with the size of it.
"It's a shame. That could've made a damn good explosion." She typed in coordinates into her new vortex manipulator and set it to a barren wasteland abandoned for centuries. Before she activated the explosion from the warp star she gazed and spoke into the bug attached to the warp star.
"You're clever. I'll give you that. But being as polite as possible at my employers who rigged me, I do not require supervision or anymore assistance on your part. Have a nice day." she spoke the last part of her declaration through her clenched teeth.
She appeared in an another location, a common café on Earth to extensively study the files she was given. These people, generic people, were her targets of murder. Never had her assignments ever been so dull before. It was too easy.
Right now this task of hers was a tedious game of checkers when it had the potential to become so much more like an elaborate game of chess. With a wicked gleam in her eye and a mischievous smile she purred down to the picture of the Doctor,
"Catch me if you can."
I'll try and update this as frequently as possible, luckily my Christmas break just started. I'll reveal a lot more about Subject 18 and her plans the Doctor and his companions later though. Hope you guys can wait until then. Until then, happy holidays and please review!
