The Legend of Gallifrey Part Six: Shadows of Time
The TARDIS didn't want to materialize. The Doctor had to practically fight it, but it eventually caved in to his will and materialized, and allowed him to step out.
He was immediately out of place. This place was very dark and crowded, and the Doctor was standing there in his multicolored coat and blonde hair. People immediately looked at him.
The hallway was indeed very dark, filled with people from various races dressed in black rags and dark colored skins tied around their ankles with twine, to form makeshift shoes. This was what was usually referred to as a ghetto. The station, called Gamma Five, had once been a prosperous place of commerce and sanctuary, but the world which it once orbited had been attacked and the Daleks and wiped out completely. Now the station orbited a sun inside a field of asteroids, and it had been abandoned by the officials. It had since been populated by fugitives and dust dealers.
The Doctor walked down the hallway, attracting strange looks from the locals. He had come here with a goal in mind, he likely wouldn't have come here for any other reason. An old friend of his, an Akhatite, one of the guys with the three lines on their cheeks. He'd told the Doctor that a valuable artifact belonging to his people had been stolen by the gang that apparently ran this station. The Doctor had promised to return it.
A scream echoed from down the corridor and all the people stood up, grabbed as much stuff as they could carry, then rushed away from where the scream came from. Within seconds, the hallway was completely empty, and the Doctor stood alone.
Down the hallway, a light flickered and went out. Then the next light. Slowly, the darkness began making its way towards the Doctor, who turned and ran. He ran past the TARDIS, then realized he would be safe in there. He stopped for a moment and turned around, but the light right above it flickered. He didn't have enough time to get back in, so he turned around again and ran.
The light above the TARDIS flickered out, and the Doctor could hear the Hostile Action Displacement System kick into effect, causing the TARDIS to dematerialize. The darkness was getting closer to him, it was almost on the end of his coat, which trailed behind him as he ran.
He saw a door at the end of the corridor. The people who'd abandoned the hallway were on the other side. They were closing the door, but luckily they saw the Doctor and decided to help him through. He practically dove through the door and the locals slammed it quickly. Through the door's window, they could see the light in front of the door flicker and go out.
The Doctor lay on the floor with the locals staring down at him, panting. He grabbed the end of his coat and held it up, noticing the ragged edges, as if something had chewed it furiously.
"What," he panted, "was that?"
The locals looked at him funny for a moment, but instead of answering him they all went about spreading blankets and arranging their few possessions they'd saved from the murderous shadows.
"Hey, answer me!" the Doctor yelled, but it was pointless. None of the locals even acknowledged his brightly colored coat now, although with the ragged tails it did blend in a little more.
The Doctor refused to take no for an answer. He focused on the nearest local, a female human with long, wavy brown hair and a black tattered dress, and grabbed her shoulder. She tried to ignore him, but her eyes kept darting over to him and back to her arranging.
"Miss," said the Doctor, impatiently. "What was that that just attacked me and sent my TARDIS flying off to who knows where?"
Her eyes darted quickly over to a shadow in the corner. It seemed unusually dark, even for this station. The Doctor grabbed his sonic screwdriver and scanned the area.
The shadow hissed and everyone, including the Doctor, jumped backwards a foot. The shadow hissed again, then it seemed to lighten as the darkness seeped into the cracks in the walls.
The Doctor jiggled his sonic and held it up to his ear, pressing the button lightly and causing it to emit low level sonic waves. It told him that the shadows were made up of millions of tiny, carnivorous creatures. The sonic identified them as the Vashta Nerada.
The Doctor had heard of them before, but he'd never heard of an infestation on this scale. And the way they'd seeped into the cracks in the wall like that all at once wasn't normal, that was the actions of a swarm mind. Although the Vashta Nerada could communicate telepathically, they'd never be able to do this.
The Doctor looked over at the woman. "What is this about?" he asked.
She looked very scared, as did everyone in the hallway, but she slowly turned to him and spoke in a French accent.
"The leaders of the station, they send the shadows to do their bidding. They have an artifact that allows them to control the darkness," she said, in a quivering tone.
An artifact… what could that be? Maybe some physic circuits stolen from the Time Lords? That could be it, but it seemed too simple.
"These 'leaders' of yours," he said to the woman. "Where might I be able to find them?"
"They set up central base in the station bridge," she said. "I have heard of you before, I recognize the coat. You are the Doctor, yes?"
He nodded.
"I will be your guide to the bridge," she said. "I have heard stories of you, and they all say that you have the power to help us."
The Doctor nodded in thanks. The woman waved her hand down the hallway, and the Doctor followed her towards an elevator.
The elevator creaked and squeaked as it rose towards the top floor. The woman introduced herself as Isabelle, a human from Earth in the 28th century, after a Dalek virus had nearly wiped out all life. Humans had escaped from Earth with their tails between their legs (figuratively speaking) and done their best to repopulate. Isabelle and her family had ran to this station, and had arrived just in time to be there when the planet it orbited was destroyed.
The elevator made a little noise that might once have been a ding, but the sound file had seemingly been corroded over time, causing it to sound more like a static-filled growl. Then the door opened to a dark hallway, likely filled with Vashta Nerada, but the light in the elevator held them at bay, but for how long the Doctor didn't know, and neither did he want to find out.
He reached up to the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and slowly unscrewed it slowly, slowly turning up the intensity of the sonic as he did. As the light bulb fell out of the socket and into the Doctor's hand, it continued to glow, extracting electrical energy from the air. It continued to hold the Vashta Nerada back as the two walked out into the hallway.
Isabelle turned right, motioning for the Doctor to follow her. After a walk down the hallway for a few minutes, Isabelle stopped at a small door in the wall and opened it, showing a chute going forwards into the wall.
"This is a shortcut," she said. "You go first with the light and I will follow, and the Vashta Nerada will not have enough time to fill in the shadows behind you."
The Doctor hesitated. "Are you sure?" he asked. "Those guys, from what I gather, are very fast when it comes to shadows."
She nodded. The Doctor stood there for a second, doing calculations in his head, then he stepped into the chute and moved forward. His feet slid out from under him and his ragged, multicolored coat trailed behind him. Seconds after, he heard Isabelle jump in right on his heels.
A minute later, the Doctor tumbled out into a gigantic room with a large, glowing white column in the center. The column extended down underneath the grating that circled it and went out into space. The inside was protected by a force field that held the air in.
The Doctor rolled to the side as Isabelle fell out of the chute, then he stood up and helped her to her feet and looked around. There were holographic control panels around the edges of the grating aimed towards the cylinder, and there was a skeleton lying in front of each one.
"The Vashta Nerada," said the Doctor. "They seem to have eaten the gang that ran the station. This artifact must still be keeping them in touch, psychically."
The artifact was on its side, just sort of lying on the grating a few yards away. It looked like a jar, but the inside was solid and the Doctor could hear circuits whirring inside it. It did sound like a psychic relay of some sort, but not of Akhaten origin. The noises made it sound like it was of Time Lord origin, though how it had ended up in ancient Akhaten was anyone's guess.
The Doctor handed the artifact to Isabelle and walked over to one of the holographic control stations, pushing a Slitheen skeleton aside. He began typing symbols into the keyboard, and slowly the cylinder began to get brighter.
"What are you doing?" asked Isabelle.
"I'm using a trick someone from the Academy taught me once," he said. "I'm inputting a system of letters and numbers that will be able to give the power source a moment of infinite power, then I'm going to turn on the lights. If I'm right, the Vashta Nerada will be forced to retreat into the sun, and this station will be back under civilian control."
The keyboard turned red and began pulsing, then the lights began to brighten. A loud hiss was heard from all across the station as the Vashta Nerada ran for their lives. The Doctor turned just in time to see the shadows from the chute flying towards him and Isabelle. He felt the microscopic jaws of the Vashta Nerada tearing into his flesh, then everything went black.
The Doctor woke up to blackness, and he immediately patted himself down. He was perfectly fine, no missing flesh, no chewed-up bones. Even the edge of his coat, which had been shredded when he'd first arrived, had been fixed.
He stood up, already expecting to see what he saw. A few yards in front of him was a black-haired woman in a dark gray collared shirt, a dark blue sweatshirt, and green pants. And the red shoes.
"M," he said.
M nodded. Then she walked over to him and held out a small device shaped like a small silver ball with a red button on one end. The words 'BIG FRIENDLY BUTTON' were seared into the side.
"This is a temporal reset," she told him. "I set it to reset the station's timestream on a low level after you completed what you needed to complete. It was supposed to bring everyone back except the Vashta Nerada."
"Except…"
"Except I miscalculated. I didn't take your timestream and your connection to the paradox into effect. I trapped you here, in another temporal limbo."
The Doctor remembered this place from when M had saved his third form from his dying TARDIS. Last time, he'd been without any way to escape, but now he had a way out.
"I'm not trapped here," he said. "I have a way out, like you do."
He held up his sonic and activated it on the highest setting. Nothing happened for a moment, then he grinned as a blue box began to appear.
M smiled. "You've done it again, Doctor. There's only one problem."
"I know," he said. "The leftover temporal energy of the reset will only allow me to materialize inside the paradox. I'm ready for whatever it throws at me."
M nodded. "I guess you'd better be on your way, then."
The Doctor opened the door to the TARDIS, then stopped and turned back to M.
"I have two last questions," he said. "What happened to Isabelle?"
"She organized the civilians on the station, and they ended up electing her as their leader. What's the other question?"
"How did Time Lord technology end up in ancient Akhaten?"
She shrugged. "How does it end up anywhere? Through a Time Lord, of course. An old friend of yours called the Meddling Monk. Ring any bells?"
It did indeed. The Meddling Monk was a rogue Time Lord that the Doctor had last met in his second incarnation. His favorite pastime was fiddling around with history to see what happens.
"I think you ought to be getting on with it," said M. "Don't worry. I'll be seeing you very soon. All of you."
The Doctor nodded, then he turned around and entered the TARDIS, closing the door behind him.
M watched as the TARDIS dematerialized.