This is Alternate Universe so it has the main points of the game set differently.
Wake jogged with the man to keep up with his long legs as he climbed the steps to the ranger station. He was confused by the strangers sudden appearance. "The Doctor? Is that it?"
The Doctor glanced around, looking at the trees and lumber equipment. He wrinkled his nose. "Yup, that's me. The Doctor. Say, what year is this? I've sort of been out of the loop." The Doctor gestured to himself. "A hermit really." He opened the door to the ranger station and poked his head in before waving Wake inside.
"A hermit." Wake said with disbelief. "A British hermit wearing a two piece suit and Converse. Living out there?" He pointed out the window, referring to the Taken infested woods.
"Weeeell," The Doctor stretched out the word and sat himself in a chair, propping his feet up on a table casually. "I also had a trench coat but that's not the point. The alternative to hermit is Time Lord."
"Sorry, what?" Wake narrowed his eyes and walked towards him. The Doctor just grinned. "Time- what?"
"Time Lord. I could spell it out if you want." The Doctor picked at a sandwich that had been left on the table, nibbling only on the crust. "Never liked bologna." He mumbled to himself and dropped the meat in a waste basket.
"What's a Time Lord?" Wake found himself asking, hoping this man wasn't a funny farm escapee.
"Time Lord's," The Doctor said pausing to drop another slice of bologna into the trash. " are an ancient extraterrestrial race and civilization of humanoids; the last time I checked Google. Which was about 2032. Time traveler, that just sums it up." He popped a piece of bread in his mouth and chewed slowly, watching Wake's reaction.
"So you're an alien. You're messing with me." Wake shook his head.
"Oi! Haven't you heard of the Battle of Canary Wharf? No? The great big space ship hovering over London?" The Doctor stared at him in disbelief and raised an eyebrow. "Blimey, you Americans."
"Okay, let's say I believe you. Stranger things have happened. Where's your space ship?" Wake headed to a few storage cupboards and began rooting through them, looking for any thing useful and pocket sized.
The Doctor leaned back in his chair. "Somewhere in there." He gestured to the patch of forestry they had came out of. "My TARDIS was acting up, poor girl, and sent me here. I stepped out just for a look but then this black goo, nasty stuff, covered my TARDIS. Of course I examined it, didn't know what to make of the readings. Seeing as I couldn't go back in I decided to go for stroll."
"You keep mentioning 'TARDIS'. Who- What is it?" Wake held up a shot gun and decided it would come in handy.
"Time and Relative Dimension in Space." The Doctor recited. "TARDIS. It's my 'spaceship' as you humans always call it. I like to think of her as a time machine."
It was farfetched, time travel, aliens, this man. But if his story could write itself and come to life, Wake was willing to believe the Doctor.
"Then tell me, what's it like in the future? Does this end?" Wake cast a glance across the room.
The Doctor tilted his head back to look at Wake. "I don't know. Haven't been in America since..." He furrowed his brow as he pondered. "Not for a while actually. And if I did know, I couldn't have told you. Interfering with someone's time stream is a big no no. Especially if I'm involved."
Wake just nodded, he had seen movies of time travel and what could go wrong. He had located several boxes of ammunition for his hand gun and had made his way to the chair set opposed to the Doctor. He listened to the man speak, trying to make sense of it all.
"No gun?" Wake asked, interrupting him from his speech on temporal paradoxes and the Blinovitch Limitation Effect.
The Doctor's cheery face fell and he stared at Wake in all seriousness. "No gun." He said. "I tend to go by warnings and verbal solutions."
"Those things are already dead and they won't listen to you." Wake retorted. "The only thing we can do is to kill them."
"Enough about me." The Doctor said changing the subject. He removed his feet from the table and folded his hands over his lap. "Who exactly are you?"
Wake sighed knowing what was going to happen next. "My name is Alan Wake." He waited for the look of recognition in the other mans eyes but to his surprise couldn't find it. "The best selling author? The Sudden Stop?"
The Doctor rubbed his mouth in thought. "Sorry, no. I don't usually have time for books. But I may have a copy, I'm a horder, really. What year is it again? You didn't answer me before." He looked at Wake.
"2010."
The man in the suit clapped his hands and grinned. "A time I'm quite familiar with, very good. Saves the trouble of figuring out new knick knacks. Anyway, what are those things? Wait, let me rephrase that. What do you think they are?"
The Doctor said it as if he knew what the Taken were already.
"The Taken. They are-were ordinary humans before the Dark Presence killed them and possessed their bodies. So now they're just puppets set to kill me. And they'll take down anything in their way." Wake trailed off as he thought of Rusty and Stucky.
"Mmhm." The Doctor was deep in thought, rubbing his neck. He glanced at Wake. "Sorry, go on."
"And this is all my fault. Technically. It's complicated." Wake rubbed his forehead and set down his hand gun.
"I've heard worse." The Doctor said. "Continue."
"This is my book coming to life. Well, the book I haven't written yet is writing itself, or someone else is writing it. I'm not sure yet but I keep finding this manuscript pages of a book titled 'Departured' supposedly written by me. I try not to think of the logic because none of it makes sense. It's not practical. All I want is my wife back. Nothing else."
"Oh?" The Doctor seemed much more interested now. He leaned forwards. "What does your wife have to do with this?"
So Wake told him. From the moment he and Alice stepped into the town to the moment he exited Rose's trailer with an unconscious Barry.
"Interesting." Was all the strange man said.
"Which is how I met you last night. I was running from the cops, something I wouldn't usually do but this was way out of their depth."
"And it's not out of yours?"
Wake's expression hardened. "I'm the one that wrote the story, I can write myself out of it. And this is my wife. I'm supposed to meet the kidnapper tonight at Mirror's Peak and I know for a fact the deputies wouldn't have let me out with just a warning."
He sighed as he thought of the situation he was in. He hadn't written the manuscript for the kidnapper so he would have to wing it tonight.
"I've told you everything I know, now it's your turn. I have a feeling you know what's going on around here, Doctor." Wake said.
"My theory is, is that these things, this Dark Presence of yours, is a evolved form of the Vashta Nerada." The Doctor said after a few moments of thinking.
"What's the 'Vashta Nerada'?"
"Shadows really. They're microscopic spores that once lived in trees. Now they reside in shadows. Well, 'now' as being 'then' which was in the future... Never mind that." The Doctor waved it off with his hand. "In small bunches they aren't actually harmful, but in large groups they are deadly. If you step in their shadow they can melt skin to the bone."
"Back to my theory; evolution. Let's start with trees. Glorious things they are. They provide oxygen, shelter, and very large shadows. The Vashta Nerada used to live in them. Which is why these Taken are forced to hang around them. Next; The Vashta Nerada possess bodies, not before killing the host of course. Just like the Taken. Literally. Vocabulary has increased from last words to memories. Movement has also improved. Maybe that's because they've controlled their hunger for the flesh and haven't left the body as a skeleton."
The Doctor looked directly into Wakes eyes.
"Now the kicker. They only live in the darkness. When day comes along, they compress into shadows. Now this evolved form is forced to stay in the darkness, just a toll evolution took. Nothing can be perfect. Just a minor set back. Back in their day, light was the only way to stay safe. You said that the Taken dislike light of any source? Obvious signs of the Vashta Nerada right there!" He slammed his fist against the table as if to prove a point.
The room was silent for a moment before Wake spoke. "So this a theory?"
"Yes. The Vashta Nerada had time to develop while it was locked up under Kettle La-"
"Cauldron."
"Cauldron Lake."
"But how can something from the future have been locked away in the past? And why would anyone put it on Earth?" Wake asked, two questions that were bothering him.
The Doctor leaned back again. "The procedure itself was very complicated. Time wimey stuff." He fell silent for a moment and sighed. "And I kinda put them there."
Wake slammed his palms on the table and stood up angrily. The Doctor didn't even flinch. He just looked up and listened. "So if you haven't buried the Vashta Nerada underground on Earth for how many years they wouldn't have evolved and this wouldn't have happened? Who are you? Who are you really, Doctor? For all I know you could be leading me into a trap like everyone else!"
The Doctor stood up as well, not quite shouting, but speaking in a calm yet rushed voice. "I'm just the Doctor. I travel through time and space, exploring and saving the universe many times and in many times from everything you could possibly imagine. Every nightmare you can imagine. This is just one of them. I could have lied to you. Shown you fake credentials. Said my name was John Smith." He whipped out a wallet bearing a drivers license with the name John Smith imprinted on it. "Or say I was from England to investigate strange happenings." He whipped out another wallet. "Or even say I was from Torchwood!" The Doctor paused and frowned. "No, wait, that's rubbish. They hate me. No one would believe that."
Wake could only stare.
"Now do you want my help or not?" The Doctor asked simply.
"Yes, I do." Wake replied.
The Doctor grinned cheekily at him. "Good, because I would've helped you anyway. That's who I am. The Doctor. I mend things that have gone wrong. And seeing how this may have been my fault originally." He winked. "But you lot. You lot are the ones that let it loose."
Wake couldn't help but laugh. "The Vashta Nerada evolved under the earth into the Dark Presence."
"In a nut shell, yeah. You can still call it the Dark Presence. New species need a new name." The Doctor shrugged and smiled. "Alan Wake, best selling author and alien namer. Catchy."
"You sound like Barry. So what does it want with Alice? Or me?"
The Doctor shrugged. "Another guess of mine, just a hunch; is that over time it developed a mind of it's own. No longer is it a tiny speck, it managed to group up into one large, manipulative thing!" He sat in thought, rubbing his non existent stubble. "Sounds like an horror story, doesn't it."
"Something I would write." Wake agreed.
"Another clue to the mystery. Creativity." The Doctor said and stood up, stretching.
"Another question." Wake announced. "Why did you have to imprison it? And why on Earth?"
"Ah," The Doctor pointed at Wake. "It's a long story, and when I say long story it could be turned into a novel. So to sum it up, the Vashta Nerada were giving me some trouble on the Lost Moon of Poosh. Well now it's the Found Moon of Poosh. I happen to like Poosh. Fabulous swimming pools. So after that complicated procedure I told you about I managed to get all of the Vashta Nervadians, If that's what they're called, contained. Although Earth is the perfect place for the Vastha Nervada to grow in, it also contains some uninhabitable areas like underground where there is nothing for them to feed on. So my brilliant plan at the time was to bury them deep in the ground where they would wither away. Something must have happened. What? I wouldn't know."
"Some of the things you say hardly make any sense." Wake finally said after trying to comprehend everything from the word Poosh to Nervadians. "But I think I understand where you're going with this."
"Fantastic! First things first before we go save the world. Your wife. Good ol' wifey."
Wake looked out the window. "We have a whole day to kill."
"Yup." The Doctor said, his feet back on the table.
Wake turned to the door. "I'm going to find us a car so we can get to Mirror's Peak without too many Taken on our tail. There should be some abandon in the forest. Their owners won't be needing them any more." He opened the door to the ranger station. "Stay here, Doctor. I don't think the rangers will be back."
"Hold on, Alan." The Doctor got up and waltzed over to the older man. He reached into his brown pinstriped suit and pulled out a wrinkled paper and Wake's heart stopped for a second. "I think this belongs to you."
He had found moments after the TARDIS landed, lying there on a rock perfectly balanced. He had found it odd, a piece of paper in the middle of a dark forest, so he picked it up to find a sentence of what seemed like the end of a chapter in a fictional novel. Finding that even more odder he decided to keep it.
The Doctor nodded to him curtly and headed back to his spot at the table, rotating something he had pulled out of his pocket in his hands. Wake just stared at the manuscript page before shoving it into his pocket and shutting the door.
The explosion was close, too close for their comfort. The two glanced at each other, both thinking the same thoughts as they continued on their dark journey.
Yes, I know. Confusing. It confused me too. I ended up with a head ache after this. If you have any questions just ask.
And I'm sorry for all the OOCness!
