Chapter One
"This is the road to ruin and we started at the end."
Vicious waves tossed the ragged piece of drift wood over the sea for hours. The Doctor had come to with his mouth filling with salt water as he whirled beneath the water struggling to establish some sense of up and down. Even though he was relatively safe now he would still break into fits of coughing and wheezing.
The Doctor wondered how long he had been unconscious. His people didn't require as much oxygen as a Human so it could have been a considerable amount of time. But unlike most conventional things drowning would render him just as dead as any other man.
And he had thought himself to be a goner. His last memories were of the melancholy drone of the Cloister Bell as the TARDIS was ripped free of the Time Vortex and sent spiraling toward what he now knew to be Earth. He could have sworn that he felt Amy there, the warmth of her hug holding him tight and the beating of the single heart in her chest. The next thing he knew he was under the water. His ship was nowhere in sight now. Amy and Rory were as gone as they had been since Manhattan.
Occasionally he searched the darkness with the Sonic, but it proved fruitless. The first sign of any change came as the sun crested over the water and began to splash purplish hues into the clouds. An ominous dark shape appeared on the horizon. The Doctor swam for it at a brisk pace.
Through the sun's diffused light the sentinel of a lighthouse grew closer. There was no hint of the coastline that it should have guarded. By the time that he could make out the finer details of the structure it became clear that there wasn't a coast near it, not in this fog.
The lighthouse was a solitary structure on a rock that jutted up from the expanse of misty ocean around it. The Doctor pulled himself onto the dock that jutted out of the nearest side of the rocks. He rolled over onto his back and lay there trying to catch his breath and get the feeling back in his legs.
Times when he let his mind wander were the most dangerous. Amy crept into his head. Six months hadn't changed that and for all his centuries he didn't know if it was going to get any better.
A task. Just need something to keep my mind occupied. "The TARDIS." It was more than likely alright, just missing. And it was bound to be nearby, but still…
The Doctor pulled the Sonic out and shook the water free of the small contraption. He aimed it up at the tip of the lighthouse for a brief second, extended it to its full length and brought it back down to examine the side. "A peculiar thing; someone went through a great deal of trouble to put you out here."
He walked down the rickety dock toward the mall shack that stood at the latter half of it. There was a boat tied up in against the wall, though on closer inspection with it he figured that he'd fair better with the drift wood he'd piloted thus far. Something sparkled against creaking floorboards near the door and the Doctor bent over to retrieve it.
A silver coin with the word Columbia embellished on one side. Above that was an eagle encircled with a half wreath. On the reverse side of the coin there were twelve stars; six on either side of an embellished key, scroll and sword. He hit the coin with the Sonic, but not finding the desired result pocketed them and continued the trek up the dock and the rocks to the stairs that led into the lighthouse.
Another boat was dashed to bits on the rocks as he made his way up to the doors. There were no signs of whether its occupants. There was a sign nailed to the door, a yellow piece of paper pocked with blood and damp from the fog:
"DeWitt—bring us the girl and wipe away the debt. This is your last chance."
"DeWitt…" the Doctor paused before opening the door. The lower level of the interior lit with a pair of candles that sat on either side of a small wash basin atop a table. Above the table was a framed piece of aged paper with words stippled into it:
Of thy sins
Shall I wash thee
"Well that's going to take a much more substantial amount of water." The Doctor checked his reflection in the water and took the time to push his floppy brown hair back into place and straighten his bowtie. He checked the water with the Sonic. "Not more than a few hours old. Someone's expecting someone."
The Doctor rounded a flight of stairs to a second floor that was scattered with bits of food and broken glass on the floor. Signs of a struggle. He made his way through making note of the map on the wall that had pins shoved into several major areas. Something caught his eye as he was passing.
The year at the bottom of the map: 1911. So that's where he was, or somewhere there about. More those strange silver coins dotted the desk, but he left these put. He made his way up to the third floor to find a freshly killed body in blood spattered overalls and with a bag over its head. A sign hung from its neck: Don't disappoint us!
He ran the last set of stairs, taking them two at a time until he emerged into the pale morning sunlight to find a door guarded by three bells. It looked to be some sort of a complex lock or, rather, a lock that was meant to be complex. He hit it with the Sonic Screwdriver once and the bells chimed a tune.
A signal noise escaped the lighthouse. The sky erupted in a chorus of mournful tones with red beams of light jutting down from the sky in time. The sound and light fell silent and then there was a second signal from the lighthouse. As the sky replied with another burst of sound and rosy light, the Doctor gazed skyward to trying to catch the source of the noise with the Sonic Screwdriver. It was gone too soon and no sign of it seemed to be left by the time the device decided to cooperate.
The cylinder that contained the light inside of the lighthouse lifted up into the ceiling and the vacant spot where it had been whirred with a mechanical sound before the floor flipped over to reveal a plush red leather chair with chrome trim and upholstery nails embedded in it.
"Bit posh for a lighthouse—and this time, for that matter," he muttered the last part. The Doctor thought about rethinking the decision he had already made to sit in the chair, but he was too curious to talk himself out of it.
He dropped into the chair and thick metal cylinders folded up to close around his wrists. Walls locked into place around him forming a pod. The sound of rocket engines whirred beneath the chair him. A mechanical, feminine voice spoke. "Make yourself ready, pilgrim; the bindings are there as a safeguard."
"Wait," he tried to struggle free, but the cuffs on the chair were sturdily built. As the chair tipped forward and aimed him toward the huge rocket engines below he felt as if he would have fallen had it not been for the restraints in the chair.
"Ascension in the count of five…count of four…three…two…"
The chair tilted upright and locked into place leaving him with just a small porthole directly in front of him to see out of. The small craft rocketed through up into the sky pushing him back into the chair. He managed to bend down so that he could reach his coat with one hand and pull it part of the way open. With his mouth he extracted the Screwdriver from his pocket and bit down on it to open the cuffs around his hands.
"Ascension. Ascension. Five thousand feet. Ten thousand feet."
The pod broke through the cloud layer and the window was shrouded with mist. Water began to bead on the glass. The cuffs snapped free from around his wrists after some prodding.
"Fifteen thousand feet."
The clouds parted and the most magnificent view came into sight through the small window. The Doctor unlocked the restraints around his ankles so that he could press himself against the window of the craft. Suspended among the clouds was a city the stretched off into the distance until it was hidden in mist.
"Hallelujah," the mechanical voice said finally.
Children played in a grassy square far below his pod. A man garbed in a white robe was leading some people through a small grotto at the side of a church with a set of bells chimed. A man and woman were having a meal in a plaza while children chased a puppy around them erratic circles.
Bridges with interlocking teeth connected the smaller floating platforms that acted as the blocks and districts of the city. Other sections were held near each other using huge lengths of chain. The Doctor found himself so in awe of the view that he almost forgot his predicament.
He didn't like being directed in this manner and would rather land someone where randomly chosen than somewhere that someone else predetermined for him. He flashed the Screwdriver around searching for something that had to be there. "There you are. Let's take a look, shall we?"
He popped the panel off of the wall just behind where his head had been as the ship coasted toward something. "Look at you, all beautiful and primitive!" he rearranged the wires that jutted out of the panel in what might have seemed like a haphazard fashion to an outside observer and then slammed the panel back into place. "That should do—"
His sentence was cut short by a sharp jerk from the vessel. Before he could peel the panel back away from the wall the small ship went into an uncontrolled spin, jerking and pitching back and forth as the cabin filled with smoke. The ship whipped and whirled in every direction as the Doctor bounced from wall and wall trying to fight his way back to the panel.
The blue box from her head. Elizabeth had always felt like the tears were a kind of wish fulfillment. She had dreamed of the strange blue box before and today she saw it through a tear and with a little concentration she was able to drag it into her tower. The act of pulling things seem to be getting more strenuous these days; she could feel herself weakening.
Her depleted power wasn't a substantial loss and she didn't really need to worry about opening too many tears. It wasn't like she could leave through them; they were one way doors. Still the blue box had been in her presence for long enough that she had a fair bit of it painted. She had started with a rough sketch, but now her subject stood partially painted lush garden. The likeness of the garden she had taken from a book; would she have loved to actually have had the chance to pull a garden into being here in the tower!
She dropped her brush into the glass of water and crossed to the other side of the library to touch the box again. It was cool under her hands. She studied the sign that sat above the sturdy double doors. "Police Public Call Box," she read it out loud. "What's it mean?"
Elizabeth walked around the outside of the box examining it before she came to a stop in front of the doors. "You say public. How are people supposed to make use of you if you keep yourself shut like that?" her lips curled into a light hearted smile as she gave the box a sideways glance.
Talking to inanimate objects got to be easy when you were alone all of the time. Only one creature came to visit her and it was both a curse and a blessing…
She walked back to her easel and grabbed the brush from the water. Elizabeth knocked most of the water free using the edge of the glass before touching the tip of the brush with green paint. She worked the brush back and forth over the canvas filling in the outer edges of the picture with the patterns that would make up her grass and the foliage of her trees.
This tower was all that she had ever known and she only knew what the exterior looked like because she had seen its picture in books. Elizabeth's earliest memories were of these same library shelves, only then they had been scarcely filled. At first a few people would be with her daily. Later they only checked in occasionally. After that only Songbird came; he was needed to supply her with food and more books.
The Songbird. She thought back to the first time she had seen the massive form of the creature streaking through the clouds. The thing defied reason. Its huge circular glass eyes had searched for her with beams of light through the window. Elizabeth had hidden at first, but after so long of it just leaving her books and food she decided to go out to meet it.
The loneliness seemed imagined now. The characters in books were her friends. Her imagination and the voice in her head were her constant companions, though that voice sounded much like her own putting on phony accent of some unknown origin. And the Songbird was—her caretaker. It was hard to put into words.
Elizabeth grimaced at one of the fern plant in her picture. Something was wrong with the leaves, but she couldn't put her finger on it. She walked down the library shelf and to where the ladder stood. One of her coats was slung over the lower rungs of the ladder with her bow and quiver propped up next to it.
Her first bow had been something she had made from wood she broke off a shelf and it was barely pliable. Songbird had brought her a real bow from within Columbia, which she knew that she probably shouldn't have. It was one of her most prized possessions and hours of her day were sometimes spent shooting at makeshift targets that she would set up around the tower.
Elizabeth grabbed the ladder to move it down along the stacks for the place where she had filed the books with beautiful pictures of plants. The police box was just out of the way and she had to squeeze between it with the ladder to avoid going around.
"I've got to stop keeping these up so high if I'm going to keep using them."
She smoothed her skirt down and stepped up onto the bottom rung of the ladder. As she was lifting her foot to begin the rest of her climb and explosion rocked the entire library and books and debris were thrown across the room. Elizabeth tumbled to the floor so that her back was resting against the blue box.
Her vision was hazy and the room was filled with smoke, but she could just make out a tulip shaped metal container resting atop a mound of debris. As her sight righted itself the finer details of the thing came into being.
It was a short crawl to the debris and she pulled herself up onto the pile to sit next to the strange object. There was a window in the front and when she pressed her face close to the glass she could see a man inside seemingly unconscious. Her heart thudded against her rib cage. It had been so long since she had seen a real live person that she didn't remember that she had missed it.
Elizabeth pried at the door eagerly until it grave, cutting her hand slightly. In the rush of adrenaline the blood pooling on her palm didn't matter. The man inside of was smartly dressed with a tweed coat of a deep green color and a pristine bowtie nestled in the neckline of his maroon shirt.
His face seemed too long, too much chin she'd say. She could see his facial shape in her art books being listed as the wrong way to do things with a corrected example next to it. Beads of sweat dotted his skin. He was too pale.
"Mister," her own voice suddenly sounded improper. She cleared her throat. "Sir, are you alright?" He was breathing, but it seemed labored. She wasn't used to the breathing of others. How was it supposed to look?
She hooked her arms under his and dragged him out into the open room near the huge blue box. Elizabeth closed her eyes and pressed her index fingers to her temples. Think. Think. Think. The Silvester Method. Elizabeth had read about unconscious people and what to do to aid them in a book before.
"Patient on their back. Arms above the head to aid in inhalation and then pressed against the chest to aid in exhalation," she muttered the instructions as she performed the steps. "Sometimes it's customary to…stimulate artificial respiration."
A flash of the illustration in her book popped into her head; two bald figures locked their mouths and one blew into the other one. Elizabeth's cheeks reddened and she was suddenly aware of how nude she was without her overcoat.
He was already breathing, though. She pressed his hand to her cheek and gasped. "He feels cold. But—I don't know what feels normal. Christ, what do I do?"
She reached down and brushed the flop of brown hair out of the man's face. "Please be okay." As if in response the man's eyes opened slowly and his green irises darted back in forth in small motions searching her face.
When he spoke his accent was one she had never heard before, though she had heard very few people speak in her twenty years. The offense of what he said overrode the excitement she was feeling for having met another person. "Look at you, you sexy girl, you."
One moment the Doctor was staring up past a beautiful woman at his TARDIS and the next thing he knew a book hit him in the face. He shielded his face with one hand and beamed the woman in the face with the Sonic Screwdriver. "Ow, what kind of nutter goes around attacking people with literature?"
The woman had retreated away from him and the TARDIS and had her arms folded over a part of her chest that was still visible over the top of the dress. The Doctor made note. The clothing, the sensibilities, definitely early twentieth century.
"Your perverted comment deserves nothing less," the woman said. Even with her brow furrowed in anger the young woman looked about as kind as they come. She had chestnut hair pulled into a thick braid that stopped between her shoulders. A pink bow was fixed to the end of it. There was a lacey choker encircling her neck and her shoulders were exposed. The Doctor noticed the faded lines of scars on her upper arms and shoulders.
The corset-dress she wore was form fitting and deep blue, TARDIS blue. It tapered down into an ankle length skirt with a frilly bit extending out past the bottom. She wore knee high socks and Mary-Janes.
His eyes were drawn to her right pinky finger where in place of a tip there was a thimble. The Doctor quickly turned his attentions back to her face. Her blue eyes were regarding him with fury. "An apology would be nice."
He realized what she was referring to. "Oh I wasn't talking about you." He snapped his fingers and the doors of the TARDIS opened shedding golden light across the plush carpet. "I was talking about that."
"You'd call a…box sexy?"
"It's more than a box," the Doctor hopped to his feet and headed inside of the TARDIS.
"How did you do that thing with your fingers and…hey where are you going?"
From the way that the box was facing the woman couldn't see the interior unless she tried to follow him. He could tell by the sound of her voice she was making her way around to him. Good, I love this bit.
The Doctor cast his jacket onto the rail next to the door and retrieved a coat that was almost an exact duplicate of it from the rack. He made his way to the TARDIS console and worked the slider toward the center of the ship. There was no response from the ship.
He bent down over the typewriter that was set into the console, peering up from time to time at the view screen as he wrapped away on the keys. Still there was nothing from the TARDIS. The woman stood frozen in the doorway, her eyes wider than he thought possible. This is—this is," she stepped out and circled the TARDIS, he had a visual of her on several of the screens as she made her rounds. "This is exactly what Rosalind Lutece wrote about."
The Doctor's hearts sank. "Who?"
"The Principles of Quantum Mechanics by Rosalind Lutece. That's the book I…hit you with," she trailed off. She walked deeper into the control room turning in a circle to take in the sights. Her fingers drifted up one of the railings. "Lutece gave it to me herself. In it she talks about intra-dimensional-mobile-pocket-dimensions and how you could build such a place as this that encompasses a larger moveable space inside of a smaller container."
"I miss the days when people just made a quip about it being bigger on the inside," the Doctor muttered.
"This is fantastic. If only she were alive to see it!" said the woman. She buried her hands in her lap, positively buzzing with excitement.
The Doctor tried the controls again, though he had power the TARDIS was nonresponsive to any attempts to move it. The door had opened when he snapped which meant its soul was still there but something else was the matter. "Tell me, clever-girl, what is this place."
"This is Monument Island," she said. His nickname triggered the realization in her. "How rude of me! I didn't introduce myself, I'm Elizabeth."
"Well, Hello Elizabeth. It's nice to meet you. Why is my ship here?"
"The Intra-Dimensional-Mobile-Pocket-Dimension?"
"It's a TARDIS and yes."
Elizabeth shrugged. "I saw it and brought it here. It's not hard."
Something had anchored the TARDIS in place. A readout on the gauges on one side of the console revealed something even more disturbing. "Was it your game to lure my TARDIS here so that you could drain it of power?" he rounded on her.
"No."
The Doctor left the console and headed back out into the library where he found the book he had been hit with. He flipped through the pages. In just skimming he could see that the book was written late last century and yet it had concepts that only the Time Lords and a few other races even imposed in their building of things. The entire city that he had seen earlier, referred to here as Columbia, was apparently just one that didn't as much fly as it 'refused to fall'.
He closed the book and pocketed it, turning back to see Elizabeth peeking out of the door. In the distance a four note song sounded and terror griped Elizabeth's features.
"I swear to you that I didn't intend to trap you here. I swear to God," she said and he could tell right away that she was telling the truth. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "We have to leave here though…he's coming."
"Who's coming?"
A mournful cry broke the air. Impossibly large leather wings beat at the sky somewhere in the distance. Elizabeth scrambled to grab her things up from around the room in a panic and shove them into a small bag that she usually kept her art supplies in. "The Songbird."
The Doctor could hardly contain his delight. The whole idea just seemed magical. "Songbird, eh?"
"He'll kill you and he'll—he'll make sure that I'm never able to leave this place again. Sir, now that you've presented me with a choice, I am choosing freedom."
The sounds were growing closer. "How long have you been in here?" he asked stepping closer to her so that he was looking right down his nose into her eyes.
"You have to let me come with you, at least until we reach the city," she dodged the question.
"I would take you anywhere you wanted to go, but the TARDIS isn't budging."
"Leave it. Come on!" Elizabeth ran toward the hole he had created and bounded out of it down to a set of steps. When he reached the spot where she had jumped he could see that this wasn't just a little gap, but there had actually been danger of her falling.
The Doctor examined the sky with some curiosity, wishing that he could see this Songbird. The panic in Elizabeth's words were enough to convince him, though. He closed the TARDIS doors with care. "We'll be back, Old Girl. Looks like we're running for now."
He made the same jump that Elizabeth had to land rolling on the next part of the side of the head of a giant statue. His crash had damaged the structure badly, but it should hold while they find a way to rescue the TARDIS. When he glanced back just before they headed inside of the lower part of the statue he could see the face more clearly. It looked like Elizabeth.
Another massive cry filled the air and the Doctor dashed inside. The tower was rumbling and shaking around them, the Doctor found Elizabeth with her back to a door looking through a huge plate glass window. "The library…someone was watching me," she said.
"I didn't come in that way. But it looks—we have to go," he tried to pull her along. They passed through other rooms overlooking her dressing room and her bedroom. As they took the elevator down the tower rumbled once.
Elizabeth gasped, but when nothing else happened she regained her composure. "What were they doing to me here? Why did they—why were they keeping me?"
"I don't know," the Doctor said.
"What do they say about me out there?"
When the elevator opened recoiled back at the sight of the machine that filled this lower part of the building. He struck out into the room with the Sonic Screwdriver scanning different bits of the machine. Electricity arced from different parts of the room and visible waves of energy displaced the air around gargantuan pieces of machinery. "This is a primitive power gathering station. It's actually siphoning off space and time energy from somewhere, but…"
"What is it?" Elizabeth asked.
"The TARDIS," the Doctor said before the building rocked again.
Before she could ask another question they were headed for the door, but Elizabeth turned back to see something on the back side of the machine that made her freeze. "Lancelot," she said as she approached a stuffed bear that was behind several layers of glass with a lever in front of it. "And this poetry book is mine, too."
There were two other things like the stuffed bear; a book of poetry and a red smear on a piece of cloth. Above each was a label: Companion, Poetry book and…
"Menarche," Elizabeth dropped back in disgust. "They collected my menses?"
Unsure of how to answer, the Doctor said nothing. He stepped forward and pulled the lever over the soiled cloth and a bolt of energy hit the piece of fabric rendering it clean. "Alterations of dimensional energy. This is beginning to look a lot less like the boring 1912 I know." He checked his watch. "And on a Sunday too!"
When he turned back Elizabeth had run off. He found her a short distance away in another room where another smaller machine like the one they had seen before stood. There was a table filled with charts and graphs and signs warning of quarantine and the specimen.
The Doctor approached slowly as the tower shuddered with the sound of the gargantuan creature outside. There was a sketch of some women showing the progression of age and on that same chart it hypothesized power level growth.
"Subject's hair samples. Subject's finger nail samples. That menstrual blood sample. What were they doing here?" Elizabeth was holding the set of sample containers up in disbelief.
"Studying you," the Doctor said.
Elizabeth managed to bump the table and a crackling recorded voice echoed from a device half-buried under papers. "What makes the girl different? I suspect it has less to do with what she is, and rather more with what she is not. A small part of her remains from where she came. It would seem the universe does not like its peas mixed with its porridge."
"That voice," she said. "I can't believe this. I want nothing to do with this place." She ran for the door.
"Elizabeth!"
The tower shook with the sound of wings. The Doctor was right behind her as she ran out into the small plaza-like area in front of the building. A massive beak slammed into the pavement behind them and the Doctor turned back just in time to catch side of the huge, green-glass eye regarding him. The Songbird was as he had guessed, unnatural. Its body composed of leather and stitching with some manner of frame underneath, he couldn't be certain what that was composed of.
It blinked, its eyes turning yellow. "Look at you, you beautiful thing you," he edged closer to the creature, drawing the Sonic Screwdriver. "You are just amazing. When I broke in here…a proximity alarm, I must have triggered it. That's what called him here."
"We have to go!"
"I don't think he knows what to do about me just yet," the Doctor aimed the Screwdriver at the thing.
"I won't let you hurt him!" Elizabeth tackled the Doctor against the railing. In the instant before they both fell to the ground the Doctor could see the creature's eyes shift again; this time from yellow to red.
It dragged its beak down through the cement shattering it and in a fit of rage unseated their piece of the ground from the support structure. The Doctor snatched Elizabeth along as he headed for a rail car.
"The Gondola Railway system is currently closed, please…" the mechanical voice on the rail car was speaking as the Doctor used the Screwdriver on the console and halted it.
"Oh, shut up," the car moved forward, but was too slow. Songbird took to the air racing past them, seemingly trying to gauge what they were doing. Elizabeth clung to the railing watching for the creature's next move as the Doctor searched the small vessel.
A tool box in the back control room had a claw like implement that seemed to fit over the arm and had a place for a person to grip it. A rotating, fan like blade protruded out past the hand. The Doctor walked out into the open wearing it and Elizabeth glanced back to see the instrument around his arm.
"A Skyhook! I've read about those—we might be able to use it."
Songbird passed close over their heads and his speed sent a gust of wind billowing over the deck of the small gondola. The railway hooked and curved through the city and their vessel bit into the rails as it took these turns. The Doctor had put some pep in its engine and now he wondered if it was too much.
Elizabeth ducked. "You can use it to ride the rails without a car or gondola!" she yelled over the howl of the wind.
This time Songbird passed in front of them and the rail was cleaved in out for a large section. The Doctor dashed for the control room, grabbing at the emergency break. When he pulled it the ship was already approaching the gap and it wouldn't have time to stop. The back brakes caught hold of the rail and the front it bucked wildly. The Doctor grabbed for Elizabeth, but they were pitched up into the air and tumbling end over end.
They were headed for water, but the distance seemed wrong. Behind them Songbird climbed only to flip over and got into a steep attack dive. An ear piercing screech drowned out the howl of the wind just before the Doctor saw Elizabeth crash into the water. He hit a millisecond later to sink down several feet. The impact took its toll on him and he could feel his sense dulling. Darkness clouded the edges of his vision and the last thing he saw was the creature's face and beak poke into the water snapping and clawing.