The Legend of Gallifrey Part 10: The Ghost of Traken Palace
The TARDIS materialized in a dark cupboard, so when the Doctor stepped out, he immediately got smacked in the forehead by a shelf.
He rubbed the red spot on his forehead as he took out his sonic and activated it, sending a blue light across the cramped shelves and boxes stacked in the corners. Around the TARDIS's corner, a silver wall could be seen, indicating a futuristic door. Either the Doctor was in the future, or he was on another planet and/or in an advanced civilization.
He squeezed around the TARDIS towards the silver wall, which slid upwards and let in a wave of bright light from the silver-and-green curvy architecture that the Doctor recognized immediately. He'd been here before, many lifetimes ago. He was on Traken.
The hallway was very bright, like everywhere on Traken, since the Trakenites hated being left in the dark, but was dim for this planet. Someone somewhere wasn't keeping up with the generator.
The Doctor stepped out into the hallway and turned left, walking down the hallway towards where he believed to be the consultor room. The hallway was still a little dim, but the Doctor could still easily see every detail of the curved walls and elegant design, products of centuries of peace and goodness, the traits that the Trakenites were known for.
The Doctor walked past a hallway that was completely black, seemingly without power, which was common on Traken since they got so many solar flares. When an area of Traken lost power, they usually avoided it, but the Doctor was startled to see something shift in the shadows: a humanoid, maybe of Traken, maybe not. Whoever it was seemed to have long grey hair streaked with black, and a dark cloak with the hood down hung over his body. Under his cloak he had a tatty grey sweatshirt and black leather fingerless gloves. He had goggles hanging around his neck, and black jeans with tight grey sneakers. He seemed to take a quick look at the Doctor with his piercing blue eyes, then he vanished back into the darkness.
The Doctor stood there a moment, then he turned back towards the consultor room and entered, and was shocked to find what he did.
The chairs on the opposite side of the room were on their sides and stacked up in a sort of fort, and one was in the middle of the room. The tables that were lined up along the walls were all lying on their sides and strewn about the room. The consultors were all hidden behind the chair fort, quivering. They'd never experienced anything like this before, this planet was entirely peaceful. The Doctor began to wish he hadn't left Rose with her mum, he was going to need the help. He slowly stepped out into the room.
"Stay back!" one of the consultors yelled.
Something smacked the Doctor over the head, in the same place where he'd been hit by that shelf, and he fell to the floor. Something grabbed his leather jacket, and began to pull him across the room towards the fort, and his arms began to thrash instinctively.
The invisible thing threw the Doctor towards the chairs by his leather jacket, and he slammed against the wall just to the left, and fell to the floor. Then the thing grabbed a table from where it knocked one over and threw it at the Doctor, who narrowly dodged being squashed by rolling to the right, and the table smashed against the wall, breaking into pieces.
The Doctor jumped to his feet and watched the room carefully for any sign that the thing was going to attack again, like a scuffle on the floor or a piece of overturned furniture being knocked to the side. He held up his sonic and aimed it in front of him, pressing the button and causing the tip to light up.
Suddenly, in the middle of the room, a blurred creature appeared, writhing in its place. It seemed to have on a wrinkled suit, and had four large fingers, with a big white head that was twisted backwards and seemed to be screaming silently.
The Doctor shut off the sonic, and the creature disappeared. Scuffling footsteps were heard running out of the room and down the hallway, and all the consultors breathed out. The Doctor began to lift the chairs off the pile and threw them over to the other side of the room, digging the consultors out from their fort of chairs. They all stood up, shaking.
"Who… who are you?" one of them asked. "And what was that thing?"
"I'm the Doctor," the Doctor told him, "and that's all I have time to tell you. That thing? Some sort of alien that seemed to be caught in a temporal limbo. It probably doesn't even realize it's here, but what I just did likely confused it. It saw a moment of where it actually is."
The consultors were disorientated, so the Doctor steered them towards an escape hatch that led out to the city. When they were gone, he followed in the steps that he'd heard the alien take.
While chasing the alien, he noticed there were more hallways that had gone entirely dark, as if whatever it was was sucking the electricity out of the environment.
As the Doctor ran past one dark hallway, he heard a voice.
"Pssssst! This way!"
He turned to see who'd spoken. It was the mystery man with the long grey hair, and the cloak and goggles. He was gesturing for the Doctor to follow him into the dark hallway, so the Doctor thought for a moment, then held out his screwdriver and turned it on, forging ahead into the darkness behind the mysterious man.
The man reached out and lowered the Doctor's sonic, then pulled something out of his sweatshirt pocket and handed it to the Doctor. He held whatever it was up to his face so he could see it. It was a pair of sunglasses.
The Doctor put the sunglasses on, and immediately the Doctor could see everything. Night vision sunglasses. He liked that idea.
He looked over at the man. Since he was seeing everything in night vision, everything was tinted green, but he could still see that the man had pulled his goggle up over his eyes, likely so he could see as well.
The man gestured for the Doctor to follow him down the hallway, which he did. The man began to run, and his cloak billowed behind him. The Doctor ran to keep up.
"What are we running from?" the Doctor asked.
"Look behind you," the man said, in a rough, gravelly voice. The Doctor glanced behind him as he ran, and caught a glimpse of bolts of electricity arcing across the hallway, coming closer to the two as they ran away from it.
The man turned into a small alleyway and grabbed the Doctor's arm, pulling him after him. The electricity passed by them and kept going down the hallway. The Doctor turned towards the man.
"What was that about?" he asked the man.
"The Silent thinks it's in the war on Trenzalore, but the paradox trapped it in a temporal limbo," the man said. "It thinks we're all Daleks, and since it works for the Church of the Papal Mainframe it wants to kill us. To be honest, we're lucky the paradox is cancelling out its natural ability to be forgotten."
The Doctor blinked. "I'm sorry. Trenzalore? Silent? Papal Mainframe? Who are you, and what the heck are you talking about?"
"I'm from your future. I know quite a lot about you," the man said. "I also know a lot about the paradox. M is the voice of good, Rassilon is the voice of evil, you can call me X, the voice of the neutral."
"Right," mumbled the Doctor. "Like I needed another paradox-related mystery."
X made a huffing noise, with a smile tugging at the edge of his mouth. 'I know all about mysteries," he said.
He pulled a small device out of his pocket and pointed it at the Doctor's sunglasses, and pressed a button. Nothing seemed to happen, except the device made a little noise, but X put the device back into his pocket and stepped back into the hallway and looked down the hallway at the way they'd come. He gestured for the Doctor to do the same.
Down the hallway was a fuzzy image of the same creature that he'd seen briefly in the consultor room; the white-skinned creature with four large fingers, a gigantic head, and a wrinkled suit and tie. This time, instead of writhing where it stood, the creature stood there with its arms at its sides, staring ominously at the two of them.
"We can only see it because of our eyewear," X said. "It sees us as a pair of Daleks, but earlier your screwdriver managed to cut through the limbo that the paradox placed it in. I do believe it was because you accidentally found the perfect frequency. If you can get the sonic to remember that frequency, we might be able to release it."
"The sonic doesn't work like that yet," the Doctor said. "I've been trying to upgrade the sonic to do that, but I haven't succeeded yet."
"Then we're screwed," X said.
Almost on cue, the creature, a Silent, as X had called it, took a step forward and began to run towards the two of them. They both turned around, almost in sync, and began running away from it as fast as they could.
The hallway turned to the right, and the two of them followed, as did the Silent. A set of stairs appeared, going up, and the two men began running up them, three steps at a time. The Silent ran two steps at a time, yet still managed to keep up with them.
X zigzagged all through the complex with the Doctor close on his heels, and the Silent only a few feet behind him. X seemed to want to be as inconsistant as possible, taking three left turns, then four right, then one left, then ignoring the next two turns and going straight. The Silent kept up with them the whole time; it seemed to be very nimble.
The Silent seemed to be slowly gaining on them, reaching out for the Doctor's jacket which trailed behind him as he ran. X's cloak billowed behind him as well, but he was in front of the Doctor and out of the Silent's reach.
The tip of the Silent's finger touched the Doctor's jacket, and an electric spark travelled through it and into his body, and he tripped and fell to the ground, with his left eye twitching. X screeched to a halt and the Silent slowed down and stopped much farther down, turning its head and taking the opportunity to stare creepily at X and the Doctor.
X kneeled down and turned the Doctor onto his back. The Silent had frozen the Doctor's muscles, leaving him essentially a sitting duck. X was the Doctor's only hope right now, and the Doctor didn't even know who he was.
The Silent took a step forward and began to calmly walk towards the Doctor and X. X tried to hoist the Doctor over his shoulder, but he seemed to be avoiding skin contact as much as he could, and the whole time the Silent kept walking closer.
X finally managed to drape the Doctor's paralyzed body over his shoulder, then he began to slow-run away from the Silent, which wailed and turned away, running down the corridor. X put the Doctor down on the floor and pulled a hypodermic needle out of his pocket, injecting the light blue liquid into the Doctor's forearm, and the Doctor sat up with a burst of energy.
"What was that stuff?" he asked, rubbing the spot where the needle had entered his arm.
"A Metebolis concoction that hasn't been invented yet. It heals paralysis and can give whoever takes it a 12-hour burst of energy. You won't need to sleep until the 12 hours are over," X said, putting the needle back into his pocket.
"And where did the Silent go?" the Doctor asked.
"It sees us as Daleks, but it likely sees other Daleks as well. It likely went off to destroy one of them, but it will be back for us."
The Doctor got to his feet, which felt unusually full of energy after being paralyzed. That Metebolis stuff seemed to work pretty well, he'd have to look it up.
"The Silent likely went back to the consultor room," said X. "It sees to think that area is where the clock tower is, the spot where you're supposed to die."
"I'm supposed to die?"
"That's a mystery for you to solve in… about two regenerations, but it's nothing for you to worry about now. Right now, the Silent is our main problem."
The Doctor and X ran to the consultor room, where the Silent had stacked the chairs up into another fort and seemed to be shooting lightning everywhere, apparently at some invisible Daleks. It was spinning around, pointing at various places and shooting lightning at invisible Daleks.
It stopped for a moment and looked at the two of them, clearly recognizing them. Reality seemed to be bleeding into its subconscious, or else it wouldn't be able to tell two Daleks from sixteen hundred others.
The Silent pointed at them, and it's finger lit up with electricity. X and the Doctor both dove in opposite directions as the bolt of lightning flashed in between them. The Silent howled.
The Doctor grabbed his sonic out of his coat pocket and aimed it at the Silent. The air around it rippled, but the Silent continued to shoot its electricity wildly across the room. Not the correct frequency. Why couldn't the Doctor have figured out that memory device? It wasn't any use getting mad at himself now, but it would still have helped the situation a lot.
He adjusted the frequency, and for a moment the Silent vanished from the sunglasses completely. X looked around, worried for a minute, but the Doctor shut the sonic off quickly and the Silent reappeared. It shot X with a bolt of lightning and X dodged it, but it burnt a hole in his cloak. He looked a little angry, but held back from attacking the Silent straight-up.
The Doctor shook the sonic roughly and aimed it at the Silent, dodging another bolt. He activated the sonic, and the Silent reared its head, wailing, as the air around it shimmered. He'd found the right frequency, but the sonic didn't seem powerful enough to fully pull the Silent into this time and place.
"X!" he yelled. "The sonic doesn't have enough power!"
X was still fawning over his cloak, but when the Doctor yelled at him he looked up. He saw that the sonic was failing to pull the Silent out of the limbo it was in, and did something Doctor-level crazy.
He ran at the Silent and jumped on it.
The sonic in the Doctor's hand shorted out and he dropped it, and he watched through his sunglasses, helplessly, as the Silent and X slowly vanished from his view, and he was left in the Traken consultor room, alone, with some sunglasses and several piles of overturned furniture. He turned back towards the hallway and began walking back towards where he'd parked the TARDIS.
The dematerialization noise sounded throughout the control room as the TARDIS entered the Vortex once again. The Doctor ran around the console, searching the Vortex for a fading signal that lead forwards in time. It was fading quickly, but it was definitely there.
The Doctor rushed to the opposite side of the console and yanked hard on a lever and spin a dial. Slowly but surely, an extremely blurred form began to appear, wearing a black cloak with grey-and-black clothing and something around his neck.
Slowly but surely, X appeared in the TARDIS, with his long grey-and-black hair waving behind him like he had just come inside from a major windstorm. The hole in his cloak had vanished and his sweatshirt had become brand new, like he'd bought an entirely new one while in the Vortex.
He collapsed to his knees, breathing hard. His skin was slightly red, as if he'd gotten a mild sunburn, and a faint aura of steam rising from his body, all side effects of being in the Vortex for a few seconds. The Doctor ran over to him and helped him over to the chair, where he breathed out and slumped downwards, his face relaxing and returning to its original color.
"How did you survive that long?" the Doctor asked. "No normal humanoid can exist in the Time Vortex for any longer than a moment without burning up."
X breathed out. "I'd have thought it was obvious, Doctor. I'm a Time Lord, just like you, M, and Rassilon, but I'm neutral. While M wants what's best for the universe, and Rassilon wants what's best for him, I want what's best for you."
Now that the Doctor thought about it, it did make sense. The level of technology was too high for almost every point in human history, and now that he was paying attention, the regeneration energy was obvious in X's eyes. It was very faint, like he was on his last regeneration, but it was obviously there, and wouldn't have been noticed by anyone but another Time Lord.
"I take it you're from before the Time War?" he said.
X laughed. "Not exactly. I lived through the Time War, the same as you, you just… weren't aware of me."
He stood up slowly, his legs shaking, and put his hand on the console for support. He began shuffling around towards the door that led to the rest of the TARDIS, using the railings for support.
"I can summon my TARDIS with some of the instruments in the back," he said. "You need to stay here, I can't have you seeing my TARDIS yet until my identity is revealed."
He slowly made his way back into the TARDIS, and a few minutes later a TARDIS, likely a type-70, could be heard dematerializing.
The Doctor turned back towards the console and checked the monitor. He still had the signal from the Silent, he could follow it all the way back to its source: the paradox. He spun a dial, and the TARDIS latched onto the signal like a lifeline, pulling it towards the paradox. The Doctor began to wish he'd picked Rose up first.