Prologue
She shouldn't be here.
The young woman knew this instinctively, but something unbearable, a primal pull she was unable to ignore seemed to keep her there.
She had to keep telling herself that she wasn't crossing her own timeline; 'past her' had already left the scene by now, there was no danger in being here. But it still felt wrong.
Yet necessary.
The woman took two steps and gazed over the edge of the dusty precipice she had landed on, mercifully away from the heart of the destruction. Her bare feet left uneven footprints in the beige grit, and the warm particles slid between her toes. She curled them beneath her in grief as she saw what lay beneath her.
Far down, in a valley that she had once called home, lay a seemingly peaceful, unharmed settlement. Basic mud houses, simple structures, just how she remembered them, even after all this time. Limestone temples, each detail exactly as she recalled rose above the residential homes. But of course, she already knew her memory was perfect; a curse perhaps, when her history was taken into consideration.
She closed her eyes, and like a jukebox the sounds of the bustling Temple of Prophecies flooded into her ears: the serious intonations of the elders, sonorous music, the songs…
"My heart did you think I had forgotten you?
Deserted and forsaken you?
For I have been locked in this cold glass cage,
Watched in silence through every age,
Waiting for you."
She had spent so much time there as a child it was almost more of a home than her parent's humble dwelling. She had loved those days wandering through the aisles, admiring the reverent architecture, and most of all, she had adored the people she had shared that time with, her people.
But now the temple was empty, filled with only dust and dirt, deathly silence, and blood stains, nobody would ever walk those halls again. The woman did not believe in such a romantic notion as ghosts; she knew the truth was far more sinister.
She opened her eyes, and bent down slowly to grip a handful of gritty dirt into her hand and brought it to her face, letting the grains slip through her fingers and she breathed in her native ground. Maybe there was some trace of what was left in this meagre sample; a dusting of skin perhaps? Catching her own mood, she chided herself internally for her sentimentality – it wasn't going to help now; she had a mission and she was going to stick to it. Feelings didn't come into it.
She stood and slowly let the dirt in her hand fly off into the tailwind, and watched it twirl and dissipate off into the distance, like watching her past disappear before her. Her fists clenched angrily at the symbolism; how dare they? How dare they take everything from her? If only she knew who they were. She ground her teeth and stifled a scream of frustration. She had already told herself once about getting emotional.
Instead she looked stoically out over the settlement, and allowed her breathing to return to a slow and steady pace. Silently she repeated the promise in her head that she had made to her people, and above all, the one she had let down the most. Without warning the familiar emptiness she carried around with her made itself known, chilling her heart and causing a shudder to wrack her body before she quelled it.
But she must not meddle, must not fall into the fantasies of undoing all this that despair brought with it. Her people had put strict rules on those ideas and she must respect them, must uphold their memory by adhering to them.
Even if it meant destroying them.
Without another word, the girl turned her back on the scene, and was gone forever.
Chapter One
"What do you mean you haven't got control of it?! I thought that she was your ship?!"
"She doesn't belong to anybody Bill, not really."
Bill tried desperately to cling on to any free corner as the TARDIS pulled them down, hard. For the last few seconds the time-travelling machine had seemed determined to force them to land. The trouble was the Doctor could not work out why. Bill watched on in rising panic and sickness as the machine hurtled down and the Doctor appeared to be hitting buttons at random
"Don't you have an escape pod installed on this thing? No, never mind that – I'd settle for a seat belt!"
"Something isn't letting us leave the area of space we were passing through" the Doctor stated, ignoring Bill's usual indignant questions about the preposterous nature of his ship, or of anything he did for that matter; they hadn't been travelling together long, and yet he had still somehow managed to let the elegant student get under his skin, "Worse than that" he added, spinning around a screen and pressing a couple of windows, causing an alarm to sound throughout the cavernous room, "It's like a net" he breathed, "Waiting for certain fish" he pressed another couple of windows on the touch screen and the pitch of the alarm increased, "And we are the catch of the day it seems!"
"Wonderful!" she shot back sarcastically, "Well - if we can't stop it then can we at least slow down now please?" Bill growled at the babbling man, wondering how he had missed the most important part of their predicament (the impending crash), and struggling to keep up with his trail of thought.
"What? Oh well..." he pulled down on a lever and the TARDIS stopped suddenly, whining and throwing them both into the command console, "I figure if you can't beat them-"
Before he could finish his sentence, the TARDIS was plunged into pitch blackness, all power cut, the only faint light emanating from the windows of the Police Box.
"Join them" he whispered in the dark, running up to the window.
"Did you just land?" Bill asked, incredulous, "A bunch of people want to capture us, and you've just….let them?" she sighed, exasperated, "I swear-"
"They're not after us in particular, at least, I don't think they are" he breathed excitedly.
"Then, why have they grounded us and switched off the lights?" Bill laughed ruefully, sauntering up to the window.
"No, no, no – this doesn't make any sense!" the Doctor exclaimed, throwing the door open onto a lush and vibrant woodland.
"You don't say" Bill deadpanned, following the Time Lord out into the wilderness, still smarting from being ignored once more.
"Arceous." The Doctor stated, "The year 3500" he licked his lips, "Yes, I'm quite sure, it tastes right. A human colony, somewhere in the Suvin galaxy" his face struck with confusion and shock.
"So, another planet" Bill stated, less moved by that statement now than she should be and more concerned with why the Doctor was panicking, her wide eyes surveying the surrounding woods, looking for what had troubled the Doctor so much, "What's the big deal?"
"They're nomads, of a kind" the Doctor shouted back, running between trees to look out over at a clearing in the distance, "Didn't believe in advanced technology, dropped off and started again, farmers, hunter-gatherers, simple people" he trailed off, his mind ticking over.
"So?" Bill asked joining him to survey the view.
"So how do they have access to the sort of technology that can trap a Time Lord?" he queried, gesturing to the sight below.
Bill had to admit he had a point; rounded tens covered in animal pelts, thatch huts, wooden farming pens filled with livestock, and open fires dotted around the flat grassland – a little thriving community, but not a modern one.
"No electricity to start with" he pointed out, "Never mind that, no inclination to even try" he threw out his hands as his Scottish drawl became agitated, "Who am I missing?" he turned to Bill, his hands gripping his grey hair, "Who?"
"Don't you mean, "what"?" she asked, tilting her head in enquiry and looping an arm around his, partially to be companionable and partially for comfort.
"No, I mean who. I know what I mean" he grumbled, "Not senile yet" he added in an undertone.
"So where do we start?" Bill absentmindedly fingered the cuffs of her denim jacket and bit her lower lip, deliberately ignoring the Doctor's chiding tone and pushing him further, "That's how it works right? Land somewhere, find a disaster, fix and go?" she smirked knowingly, relishing the Doctor's uncomfortable silence.
"HELP!"
A woman's scream permeated from the clearing below, throaty and desperate.
"Right there" the Doctor smirked triumphantly at the almost prescient timing. He grabbed Bill's slender hand in his own and started to run down the slope that led to the settlement. Bill's only option was to resign herself to the chase and hope that her hair wasn't completely dishevelled by the time they got to the colony.
"It has struck again!" a sturdy woman cried out, leaving her thatch hut and brandishing her pitchfork into the air as the Doctor rounded the corner with Bill, "My own daughter" she sobbed to the gathering crowd that had drawn to the cry, falling to her knees in her traditional farming dress and dropping the pitchfork, burying her face into her strong hands, "The beast has taken her" she wailed.
"This looks more like it" the Doctor grimly noted to Bill, skirting on the outskirts of the crowd to avoid attention, "This planet was terraformed perfectly before settlement, no beasts, no other apex predators, no nasties, a perfect ecosystem for humanity" he spoke fast, grabbing Bill by the wrists urgently, "They've not been here long enough for anything else to evolve" he took a deep breath of air in to be sure, "No, definitely not been here long enough" he concluded, "So whatever they are taking about doesn't belong here. You – good sir!"
The Doctor picked on an onlooker slightly distanced from the rest, an older looking man with a long grey ponytail and a full beard, clad in a loose white vest and khaki trousers with bare feet, who looked on thoughtfully and silently. He turned his head, but left his arms crossed and did not move towards the two travellers.
"You're not from round here" he spoke, simply, "I guess you were that spaceship that landed just?" he inclined his head to the sky, "Folks didn't believe me, but I know what I saw – I was a historian once, one of the first to come here"
"Yes, and we're trapped, our power's cut" the Doctor replied candidly, "Probably by the same thing that's terrorising your community"
"We don't like visitors here" the man carried on, in an unfriendly drawl.
"Then let's do both of ourselves a favour" the Doctor bartered, "Tell me what's going on here, I sort it out – that's what I do, and we get off your planet. Minimum fuss"
The man surveyed them for a second, whilst Bill beamed encouragingly and nodded in assent of the Doctor.
"No harm I suppose – but it's your funeral" he turned to face him slightly, "There's been a series of violent deaths in the community. Now it's not like we have never seen a murder, or a fight gone wrong, but this was no human that did these. They happen so fast, it started with mauled animals, dead livestock, but then it escalated to our citizens" he swallowed back the nascent emotion threatening to overcome his voice, "Nobody from our settlement is ever seen going in or out of the places where they die, but people are dying" he looked around to see who was listening, but the crowd was still milling around the grieving farmer woman, he drew the two travellers in closer and whispered, "But we have seen a beast – not one of the native creatures but a big, black thing – like a giant cat" the man took another look around to make sure he hadn't alarmed anyone, and pulled back from the Doctor and Bill.
"But you haven't seen this beast clearly?" the Doctor pondered.
"Yeah, and how come you haven't seen it going in and out of the buildings?" Bill added.
"You don't understand!" the man angered at their doubt, "It moves so fast, so deadly, it's not a normal creature" he took a deep breath to calm his rising temper, "We have no idea how it got here, nobody ever reported seeing a spacecraft before I saw yours today" he frowned disapprovingly at this fact, "But I know it must be alien – there's no other explanation. Some of the newer citizens believe such notions are fanciful" he shook his head, "Which is why you will not be kindly received by them, so I suggest you-"
"It's there!" the farmer woman pointed; now up and just about standing with the support of her neighbours, "To the west! It's the monster!" her legs buckled beneath her as the other humans attempted to prop her up.
The Doctor turned in the direction she was pointing and saw a jet black figure, watching the scene from one side of the camp, partially camouflaged by the bushes. He was sure it rang a bell somewhere in his encyclopaedic knowledge – but he couldn't pinpoint where. It wasn't moving, but almost as if it could sense its discovery, began to run away as soon as the attention was turned its way.
"Bill, with me" the Doctor ordered, leaving the hostile community to grieve, and not wishing to outstay their welcome. "We need to follow that thing" he added, bringing up a futuristic looking scanner from his pocket and interpreting its beeps seemingly instantly, "It hasn't gone far"
"Why is it running?"
"Don't you want to know what this is?" the Doctor smiled proudly brandishing the technology at her, "This is an EnviroScanner 1990 – picks up anachronistic-"
"Space toys, whatever" Bill waved off the Doctor as they delved back into the surrounding forest in the direction of the creature, "You're missing the point; if that thing is as deadly as they say, why is it running away?"
The Doctor stopped, halfway through a small clearing, dwarfed by the huge conifer trees that surrounded them, looking offended by Bill's indifference.
"Why does anything run?" he asked patronisingly, "Because it's scared – aren't you impressed by how clever I am?"
"If I was that thing" Bill shrugged, "I don't think I would be scared of-"
A feral roar permeated through their reverie, seeming to engulf the air around them, making it impossible for them to tell what direction it was coming from.
"I bet you want that scanner now" the Doctor laughed, raising his eyebrows to form a mocking crease in his forehead, pulling it back out of his purple coat, "In fact it is right…."
"There!" Bill exclaimed as she swivelled on the spot to check behind herself, pointing to the great, anthropomorphic feline creature that was rushing up from behind them.
"Yes" the Doctor croaked, looking up from the scanner in fear, "Best get out of its way" he shouted, grabbing for Bill's arm to try to pull her away in the opposite direction without noticing that the younger woman was already several feet ahead of him.
"Charmed" he quipped, before following in her trail, barely getting off of his feet in time before the black furred, muscular creature burst into the clearing and certainly not pausing long enough to get a decent look at it.
It was fast though, and the head start they had was being closed in on rapidly as they sprinted blindly through the unfamiliar landscape, trying to follow the beaten path made by the settlers.
"Try to change direction!" the Doctor shouted up ahead, "Confuse it!"
Bill registered the command and turned sharply left, making the Doctor almost face plant the forest bed trying to alter his course.
"I said confuse it not confuse me!" he scolded, only just catching up with Bill as the creature made the same sharp, unexpected turn in their direction, its pace not relenting.
"What do you want, bloody indicators?!" Bill shrieked, taking another sharp left and catching her arm on a thorn bush.
"Don't keep turning left or we will just go round in a circle!" he demanded, keeping up but almost losing his balance when Bill stumbled in his path in pain. Pushing her forward her glanced back; the beast was still following their trail, the diversions having minimal effect.
"Turning left just seemed like the better option" she shouted over her shoulder.
"Right, now!" The Doctor grabbed Bill by the shoulders and steered her practically at a right angle, trying to make a desperate move to throw the creature off. The young woman made the movement but cascaded onto her knees. With a hand under her armpit, the Doctor pulled her up so she could keep going, only to be abruptly halted.
They stopped facing a huge rock face, not so sheer it would totally unclimbable, but they would never get far up enough to escape such a strong beast.
"No" the Doctor looked left and right, but the forest was too thick, the only way out was the way they had come in.
"Didn't I say left seemed like a-" Bill froze.
Their path was blocked by what looked almost like a werewolf, but with the features of a panther, rather than a wild dog, breath hot and angry. It stared at them, taking deep breaths with its forearms swinging loosely at its side. The funny thing was, now it was still, it was obvious it was not half as big as it has seemed when it was chasing them; in fact, it was only about the size of an average human female. Upon further inspection, the pair could see that it had vague curves and a bust under the rags that adorned its taut body.
The other glaring exception to what they had expected was that the monster was simple staring at them, blocking their path out but doing nothing to hurt them.
"Doctor" Bill trembled, physically cowering behind the Time Lord's confident stance, "Why isn't it attacking us?"
The creature cocked its head in confusion, and swished its full tail back and forth.
"Attacking you?!" it growled indignantly, but with an undeniably female lilt to its voice, "Aren't you running from the-forget it" she stopped mid-explanation, slapping her face with frustration, "We don't have time for this – you need to get up on one of those rocks, now" she gestured towards one of the smaller, more climbable parts of the rock face.
"Why?" Bill asked.
The Doctor was still staring, unmoving, his dark eyes squinting and his head turning as he tried to fathom the creature before him, unsure of the level of his miscalculation.
"Because if you don't, you will die, and I really don't want that to happen" the panther lady continued imploringly, "So please can you get out of the way?"
"You were chasing us" Bill remarked blithely, "Why should we-"
"Listen to her!" the Doctor turned dramatically, and pushed Bill towards the rock face sternly, having seemingly made up his mind in that instance, "Just get up and stop taking for once" he announced, "We've made a terrible error" he added gravely as he helped Bill ascend in an ungainly manner.
"Good choice, Time Lord" the panther added with gravity, throwing them a sidelong glance to watch the pair clamber up a small rock, before turning to face the new creature that interrupted the scene.
The second creature could only be descried as…odd. It was about four foot tall, potbellied, with stout hooves – it was bipedal, but awkward, with humanlike hands but a rounded head that rose to a single antenna. It didn't have eyes to speak of, but a sharp-toothed jaw with a long tongue, and it was carrying a short futuristic looking stick with a deathly blue light emanating from the end.
"Oh…" the Doctor whined, on his hands and knees at the edge of the tallest point they had managed to comfortably climb up to, with a flat plain that they could rest at, "Oh this is far worse than we thought" he scrambled as close to the scene as he could get without falling off.
Down below, he blind creature seemed to be sensing the panther lady somehow, as it determinedly began to swipe for her with the stick. The beast woman moved out of the way expertly; this clearly was not the first time she had been forced to do this.
Bill crawled beside the Doctor to watch, and was immediately horrified by what she saw; the stick seemed to instantly kill anything it came in contact with. Flowers and bushes withered and died the second the blue light passed through them. All the plants in the clearing that it came near to seemed to be, leaning away from the weapon.
The panther creature knew what she was doing though, because she had retreated back far enough to pick up a medium sized stone in her right hand. Her diminutive attacker made a foolhardy direct swipe at her, and she raised the rock directly in its path, causing the weapon to glace off sharply and fall to the floor.
"Of course - genius" the Doctor smiled approvingly, "It can't pass through non-living material". Bill could only watch in stupor as the fight continued.
The panther woman dived and picked up the stick herself, and as her pursuer make a lurch for it, rose up with remarkable agility and slashed a direct swipe through the creature's exposed body. It immediately fell lifeless below her. Without saying a further word, she dropped the stick on the floor, and stamped on the handle, causing the blue light to fade out. She turned and regarded the two newcomers perched upon the rock, and waited for them to talk.
"That should have caused you a lot more damage than that" the Doctor spoke softly, unbelievingly, "People don't just destroy a death stick and walk away like that, they usually release a huge amount of radiation as the trapped time line resolves"
"They're running them from a central processor" the creature replied nonchalantly, "They're kind of like diet death sticks, with limited signal" she shrugged, nonplussed, "They don't work very far away from the mothership; I was surprised too the first time, was expecting much more of a shock" she added, "I think destroying these ones just causes the energy to return to the ship, rather than dissipate"
"WOAH!" Bill interjected suddenly, "Woah! Woah! Can you please stop with the geek speak and explain to me what on Earth just happened"
The panther lady smiled, and perched herself on a nearby fallen tree log.
"Earth" she smiled wistfully, "It's been a while since I was there" taking a deep breath, she continued, "Your Time Lord friend has called it a death stick, but that's more of a fond nickname" she smirked, "The actual name is a MURDER device, or Moment Under Death Energy Re-simulator" she practically spat the name out as she spoke it, "It works similar to a Weeping Angel I suppose, expect it doesn't allow you to live – traps someone in a never ending loop of their own death, never allowing it to complete, and uses the resulting time energy to make fell energy for more killing machines. If it were a full-on device, destroying it would have freed the soul and allowed their timeline to complete, but as I said, it's not the real deal"
"Genocides were committed in the name of those things" the Doctor declared angrily, clambering down from the rock to face the panther woman, "Mass murder in the name of creating an energy source! It's reprehensible – I" he bent to finger through the remains in the dirt, "I didn't think many had survived the Judoon's manhunt" he hummed to himself, "I know Vastra mentioned one turned up in her time but…"
"What's a Vastra?" Bill quipped, who had now also, with some difficulty, dropped herself back to the floor, and was regarding the now silent beast with consternation.
"Did you have to kill it?" she murmured, looking towards the deceased alien that had been brandishing the weapon.
"Mindless slaves" the panther woman replied, with no feeling, "They are programmed to kill, and won't stop until forced" noticing the human's disapproving look, she elaborated, "Believe me, I did try, in the past"
Ignoring Bill's unconvinced frown, the panther stood and walked over to the Doctor and bent down to his level in front of the destroyed equipment.
"They trapped you too didn't they?" she mused, "Same as they have trapped me looking like this"
He looked over at her under his angry, bushy eyebrows and considered his response before continuing.
"Did you kill any of the settlers?"
"Not the humans" the panther continued, "I'll admit I ate a couple of farm animals out of desperation, but I tried to hunt in the wild after that, it caused too much negative attention"
"You have another form?" he wagered, accepting her answer.
"Let's say this is me on a bad day" she continued, "I usually look closer to you two than a zoo animal" satisfied with his reply, she rose back up to check they were still alone, "But the same signal that is blocking your TARDIS over there" she gestured in the general direction from where they had come from, "Is also stopping me from returning to my natural form, or from leaving" she growled in the back of her throat.
"Hold up!" Bill interjected once more, losing the plot in the dizzying pace of their conversation and skipping up to the Doctor's side, who now also rose to greet her. "Can you start from the beginning please? Perhaps with a name"
"Certainly" the panther bowed her head respectfully, "My name is Bolt"
"Bill" the human replied.
"Just call me Doctor" added the Time Lord, "And before you start, how about you tell me what you are?"
"The last Time Chaser" the panther woman replied.