The Other Side
By TwinEnigma
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who or make profit from writing this.
Warnings: Pete's World, futurefic, OCs, mentions of MetacrisisTenth/Rose, spoilers for season 4; you may want to read Amarantos first, as this is a sequel to it. I promise, though, that if you can get through the horrors of having to see a few, gasp, OCs and past any pairingwank, you'll get a very nice little adventure, chock full of referential goodies.
01.
"Oi, Jimmy!"
A young man raises his head from his clipboard and lowers his glasses a bit as a man with close-cropped dark hair runs up to him, dodging the officers passing through the upper Hub.
"New orders came in," the other says, grinning ear-to-ear. His face is awash with honest mischief and delight. "Got the Galactic Core run!"
"The brass must be going soft in the head, putting you out there, Sam Tyler," the first, Jimmy, says, rolling the last syllables of the name. But the corners of his lips twitch in the start of a smile and his eyes are just as mischievous.
"Oi, they're the fools who gave me a ship!" the other man, Sam, feigns annoyance. "Least I can do is oblige them, right?"
Jimmy snorts, absently shaking his head as he looks back down at his clipboard, checking off another box.
"So, got your assignment yet?" Sam asks, practically rocking on his heels.
"Me and Noble picked up the rookie run today," Jimmy says, nodding towards the window and the tarmac beyond, TARDIS after TARDIS lined up in neat rows, refueling on the old Cardiff rift.
"Sucks to be you, mate," the other man says, clapping him on the arm as he starts to move past him. "I gotta run! Convoy's leaving!"
"Watch your ass out there," he shouts after him. "Galactic Core's no place to fool around!"
"Don't worry," Sam calls over his shoulder, "Lucy's never let me down!"
Jimmy shakes his head and goes back to his checklist, turning away.
Something, somewhere in time clicks into place.
He stiffens, his eyes widening, and his fingers clench the pencil hard enough that he snaps it. Just as quickly as it had come, the sensation is gone. Slowly, he turns back, looking at the door his friend had disappeared through.
He has a bad feeling.
Sam drums out a rhythm with his fingers on the console, humming away to an old pop song as he pretends it's a drum set. In his head, his ship, Lucy, follows along with the music even as she tracks the convoy's progress. It's been a surprisingly pleasant journey so far for them with little trouble. Not that his Lucy couldn't handle any trouble that came along – she is a TARDIS, after all, and built of pretty stern stuff – but it's a pleasant change, considering Lucy and he have got this horrible habit of attracting trouble. It finds them, even when they're not looking for it, and twice as often when they are.
Lucy giggles, her telepathic field an affectionate caress on his mind.
"Agatha to Lucy," the speakers squawk with the voice of the pilot of the convoy's lead ship. "We're preparing to pass the Dead Zone, over."
Sam frowns, leaning forward and flipping switches. "Roger that, Agatha," he says, "Coming up on your starboard side now, over."
Lucy hums as she moves, her engines pulsing out the steady beat of her heart, but he can feel her shiver as they get closer to the edge of the Dead Zone. He doesn't need to tell her that he feels it, too: she feels his anxiety keenly through their link. The inky blackness beyond the warning buoys on their starboard is unsettling, a perfect sphere of nothingness, and there is a palpable aura of lingering menace that interferes with both of their senses. Something bad happened there, long, long ago and the echoes of that evil still linger, like billions on billions of screams frozen in time.
He hates this place. It's wrong in ways he can't even begin to describe.
In the back of his head, something pulls taut, like a dozen threads of time are converging, and his veins flood with ice.
Something is wrong.
"Agatha to Lucy, we sense a disturbance. Please advise, over," the speakers squawk again.
"Lucy to Agatha, we have some interference - recommending you correct course to the port side, over," Sam replies, his hands practically flying along the console as he tries to get a reading. He can feel it. There's something out there, definitely. He's not completely certain, but it's like a splinter in his mind. Between the interference from the Dead Zone and the nagging feeling in the back of his mind that something big and terrible is about to happen, it's hard to pinpoint the anomaly with his senses.
Sam closes his eyes, lowering his mental shields for Lucy, and then as one they're able to see through the interference.
It's a tear in the fabric of space and time. It sits dangerously close to one of the warning buoys. If it's left to grow, it'll consume the warning buoy and eventually impact the eerie darkness of the Dead Zone.
They can't allow that. Too many convoys, human and alien, use the Galactic Core run, and more than a few rely on those buoys to keep them from the consuming darkness of the Dead Zone.
"Lucy to Agatha, we're moving in to conduct repairs. Maintain distance, over," Sam says, Lucy echoing in ever syllable as they move towards the tear. They dare not disengage the link. The interference is too great for them to pinpoint it individually and neither of them is exactly comfortable being so close to the barrier of the Zone, so they work as fast as they can on patching it up.
Something snaps.
The edge of the Zone ripples, growing, and they have only a fraction of a second to register something is wrong before they're tugged into the darkness.
Sirens blast through the base in an angry staccato and Jimmy is on his feet in a heartbeat, his meal forgotten. As he bolts for the tarmac, he can feel it in the back of his head, a twisting and winding convergence of impossibilities leading to something he doesn't understand but it scares him so much, and he runs faster, ducking past the instructors and officers.
Time is ticking away and he's never been more aware of its importance.
He bursts through the doors, other pilots on his heels, and looks up to see a crackling, crimson ball of fire descending through the sky, straight for the rift at the heart of the base.
The blue glow of an in-progress transmat crackles into existence on the tarmac, leaving behind a familiar, screaming form, and the ball of fire rises into the air, trailing ashes and smoke.
"Sam!" Jimmy yells, running to catch his friend, dimly realizing that the burning thing must have been Lucy, Sam's TARDIS.
"It burns, it burns, it burns!" he's screaming, dark eyes wild and unfocused as he clutches his head. "It burns!"
"There you go, I've got you," Jimmy says as he eases him down. He shouts back over his shoulder, "Someone get a doctor!"
Sam stills a little, staring at him like he's a stranger, and then his face shifts, a strange unholy delight on it. Above them, there's an explosion, and then Sam is screaming and crying, clawing at his head in agony.
Centuries earlier, the Doctor wakes with a startled cry.
"What's wrong?" Rose slurs sleepily. She drapes across his back in a hug, her cheek pressed soothingly against his shoulder and arms slipping under his.
He takes several deep, shuddering breaths and closes his eyes, willing his single heart to slow to normal. "Nothing," he says at last, "Just a nightmare."
And yet, it is a long time before he can get back to sleep.
He has a very, very bad feeling.
AN: So, I'm very very obvious and enjoy a good casual reference or two.
The idea for this came when I was about halfway through writing Amarantos and I had it figured out by the time I wrote chapter 8 (Waiting Game). I'm sure you can guess what's going on, but the ride promises to be a bit entertaining. Pete's World is an open box of fun to be had.
As a warning, I'll say this - if you want fluffy romance or cute children running around, you'll have a hard time finding it beyond hints. Some things I'm not going to expand on in detail (like how Rose and MetaTen hooked up and resolved the identity issue). This story isn't focused on them.