I do not own the rights to Doctor Who.
Trick...
Deciding to leave town was easier said than done.
I didn't even know where to go. My whole life had been spent in one modest-size town. I was born here, lived here, went to the university here, and got a job here. I had visited other places over the years, but I had never lived somewhere else and I didn't even know where to start.
It was also 1995, so my traditional source of information, the Internet, was just starting out. Not only was Google not around, but using dial-up sucked. The tones it made when connecting to the Internet was a nice trip down nostalgia lane for one time, but I wasn't heartbroken when the fire destroyed the computer Dinah had bought. Those tones got annoying to listen to after the third time.
I spent several hours trying to think of what other resources to use, and once I came up with an answer, I felt like an idiot.
The library.
I suppose the reason why it hadn't occurred to me sooner was because I hadn't gone to one in years, and it wasn't like I could get a library card since I didn't have an ID. That didn't mean I couldn't look at the books though.
After looking through several, I eventually decided on a town in the neighboring state that was roughly the same size and same kind of small town feel as my own. What really clinched the town as being my new home, was the fact Dinah had a cousin there with a spare place above the garage where I could live, and who had gotten me a phone interview for a job as a receptionist at a dentist's office. Still not what I went to school for, but was a step up from being a waitress. No more long days on my feet in the humid Midwest heat for me.
Everything was starting to look up. The diner threw me a little going away party—though that was more of Dinah's doing than anybody else's. She knew I didn't have any family and wasn't that outgoing, so she was always trying to make up for it seeing as she came from a large one and couldn't fathom being alone.
I think out of everybody I had met in 1995, she was the one who had come closest to seeing through my façade. It wasn't that much of a surprise since we lived together, it was inevitable that she would see the cracks forming in my carefully created mask. Even Meryl Streep couldn't play the same role for twenty-four hours for the amount of days I had spent here (I stopped counting after seeing the Doctor for a second time) though she'd probably get an award for trying.
There was one other goodbye I did, but on my own. It was on a weekday when I knew my parents would be at work and the alternate version of myself would be at school. With a Kodak camera in hand, I found the spare key hidden in a fake rock next to the drainpipe outside the back door—the same spot my father had hid ours.
The kitchen looked just as it had from my childhood—old linoleum that had yet to be replaced, dated wallpaper that had seen better days, dark cabinets that were probably the original ones— and I wasn't surprised.
What did surprise me was the reaction from Abby. I had honestly forgotten she would have been there, seeing as she had died my sophomore year of college. The golden retriever had been the first pet I had ever known and loved, so seeing her again was a punch in the gut. Even more so when she growled at me.
Abby had never growled at me, and once I figured out why, I felt like an even bigger idiot than I did over the library thing. The only me she knew was the little girl me, not the adult version so of course she saw me as a stranger and was wary. It was her job after all.
I hadn't come that far only to turn back, so I spent several minutes simply standing by the back wooden door in as a non-threatening way as I could manage. Which, given my petite stature wasn't that hard. I held out my hand for her to sniff, and she did so. As much as I wanted to embrace her one last time and my fingers through her soft golden fur, I didn't think she'd let me.
Instead, I focused on what I had went there to do—take a few photos with my camera. I had also planned to take a few knick-knacks that wouldn't be missed or noticed, but Abby followed me into each room, and growled whenever I dared to touch something. Apparently her tolerance of me only went so far, and I left the house with nothing more than what I had went in with.
That was okay though. I had had gotten to walk through my family home one last time before saying goodbye, after months of walking down the block outside of it, longing to be welcomed in.
There were even a few times where I had tried to work up the nerve to simply knock on the door and pretend that I was lost, just to see my parents again. Or to call my parents up and pretend it was a wrong number. Each time, my nerve failed me and I chickened out. If this was the closest I would ever get to some sort of closure, then so be it.
Quickly my last day in town came, Halloween as it turned out. The next day Dinah would be driving me to my new life. I had actually gotten off work after five, just as the sun was starting to set and giving off a weird golden color, setting the perfect mood for the day. I had never been much of a fan of Halloween—my mother had always made me bundle up so many layers to protect me from the cold, it ruined the fun of dressing up.
In college, Halloween was an excuse to party, and as an adult, it was an excuse to buy candy and eat whatever was left over. Seeing as how I was still living at the hotel with Dinah—she planned on moving in with her boyfriend once I was gone—there wouldn't be any trick or treaters so I was looking forward to a quiet night.
Once my bus came of course. It still had a few minutes, but I was getting antsy. Tomorrow I would be getting up early to move and I wanted to do nothing but relax tonight. I could have walked—the hotel was a few blocks away, but ever since I had arrived here, I had always taken the bus.
It was how I arrived here after all.
Before, I normally drove everywhere and seldom took the bus. The only reason why I had that day was because of a 'Drive Green' initiative my work had come up. For a week, you were encouraged to be more eco-friendly with how you got to and from work—carpool, bike, walk, and take the bus of course. The office with the highest number of participants would get a little bonus in their paychecks and each person would be entered into a drawing for some sort of grand prize. I did it for the former reason, my supervisor even offered to take those of us who participated out for lunch one day. It seemed like a no-brainer, especially when you factored in the few blocks I would have to walk to and from the bus stop which gave me some exercise that I kept putting off doing.
It was on the final day, a Friday in March, that I ended up in this world. There was nothing to clue me in that my life was about to go sideways. No flashing lights, strange noises, unexplained occurrences, cracks in the wall, or any other warnings—at least not that I can remember. I was just tired from a long week at work, having completed several hours of overtime. I climbed on the bus swiping my bus pass through the little box at the entrance and plopped down in the first empty seat, not paying much attention to my surroundings. Leaning my head on the cold glass window I was lulled to sleep by the motion of the bus.
That was it. I fell asleep on a bus in my world, and woke up on a bus in another world. Of course, originally I thought I had just time traveled, but the truth didn't make much of a difference—I was still stuck here.
There was a small part of me that hoped all it would take for me to get home was to fall asleep on a bus again. It was stupid and highly unlikely, but that didn't stop me from riding the bus as much as possible. Something that was made easier since I didn't have a valid license and couldn't drive Dinah's car no matter how many times she offered. The last thing I needed was to get caught driving without a license.
But it hadn't happened so far and there was no reason to think it would happen tonight.
The bus pulled up as expected and I stepped on doing a double take at the driver who was wearing a rhino mask, but didn't think much of it since it was Halloween. As long as the driver could see well enough out of it so he could drive safe, I didn't care.
I went to sit down in my usual spot right above the right wheel well—the same spot I had sat in when I fell asleep and ended up here. However it was already taken by somebody else who had their back to me, forcing me to sit across the aisle above the left wheel well. If going home hadn't happened before, I doubted this trip would be any different, so why bother?
Besides the person sitting in my usual spot, there were a few other people on the bus as well. Some were seated with their backs turned away from the aisle like the person in my spot, and others were wearing Halloween masks that looked rather familiar.
It took me a minute to realize why—they were the same rhino masks as the driver was wearing.
A chill went down my spine as the thought that they weren't just masks occurred to me. I turned my head to the window hoping that they hadn't caught me starring at them, or the horror in my eyes as I slowly realized that I was the only human on the bus.
If the Doctor could show up in a small town diner in the Midwest, then how stupid was I to think that just because it was America, other aliens wouldn't show up as well?
There was the sound of movement to my left, followed by a clicking noise. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that whatever it was would go away and leave me alone.
It didn't.
"Tell us what you know of the Doctor, or face immediate execution."
I slowly turned my head to the left, towards the sound of the voice and opened my eyes, looking right up into the face of a rhino who had some sort of weapon directed at my head.
I had thought I was used to weirdness. Time travel, alternate dimensions, fictional characters, so alien rhinos really shouldn't have been that big of a deal.
But they were. Having one breathing heavily in front of you with a gun aimed to kill you with a face that up close clearly wasn't a mask was terrifying and unbelievable at the same time.
Was this really what my life had become?
"Answer the question human!" he snarled, and waved the gun around in my face.
My mouth went dry. "Um, Doc-Doctor who?"
Any other time I would have giggled at the clicheness of the question, it was something that was always repeated on the show. Now I was simply trying to buy time to figure out how much information the rhino thought I knew, and how information I could tell him without revealing how much information I really knew about the Doctor. One of the things I had started to dread most about living here, was coming true.
Another rhino came over, and pulled out a spherical metallic device. He pressed a button on the side, and an image of the Doctor with the scarf flashed above it, followed by the one with the leather coat, and the one with sticky-up hair and jacket.
"We have been hired to capture the Doctor outside of the human country known as England. In the past seven of your Earth months, the alien known as the Doctor has frequented this town four times, which is an anomaly for him. You have been identified as the common factor between these visits. We wish to know of your involvement with him, and when he'll show up next. Now speak human, and know this machine will emit a high pitched sound if it senses you lying. Lying will result in immediate execution."
That was a lot of information to absorb, but I still nodded my head in understanding. I had been a rather successful actress these past few months, I could do it now. All I had to do was pretend to be a waitress named Emma Wells who was most definitely not from another dimension and had no idea that the three British men who came into the diner where she worked were all secretly the same person who just so happened to be a time traveling alien.
Easy.
"You mean them? They never said anything about being a Doctor."
Which was true, they had never told me to call them the Doctor, and neither of their companions had called them that. The device agreed with me, not uttering a peep and the rhino looked like it was disappointed for not having an excuse to shoot me.
The two rhinos were joined by a third and the three started speaking in an alien language. I didn't bother paying attention to it, it sounded like gibberish anyway and I was more focused on answering their questions as well as I could while keeping my answers to a minimum.
Finally, the one with the space gun spoke to me again in English.
"You will tell us everything you can about your encounters with the Doctor—and be warned you will be executed for not being truthful."
I hadn't expected any less.
So I told them about the man with the scarf who came in with a girl, neither of which were dressed for the August heat and both who ordered milkshakes. I told them of the night the man with the leather jacket and sad look on his face who asked for coffee, but got a banana milkshake instead. I told them of the man who came with the blonde, both laughing and smiling all the while as if he hadn't a care in the world.
All of the information that was one hundred percent truthful, but wasn't anything new that his enemies probably didn't already know and really couldn't use against him. The best part was that the sphere didn't beep once.
"The human has told us all that it knows. Now it's time to exterminate her," said the one on my righ.t who was still holding the sphere.
"Agreed," said the one on my left, and the one in the middle raised his weapon.
"Exterminate me?! But I didn't lie!" I exclaimed. My heart started to beep frantically, I wasn't ready to die, I finally gotten my life back on track and I couldn't die on my last night in town just when I was about to leave it for this very reason.
The three exchanged looks of confusion before the one in the middle spoke. "That is true, and we will not be exterminating you for lying."
"You won't?" I asked, unconvinced. This was too good to be true.
It was.
"Of course not. You will be executed for admitting to being an associate of the Doctor. We were told to only bring him in alive, any associates or companions were to be found guilty and executed."
"But, that's murder! I mean, you can't just kill me for giving a guy a milkshake!" I insisted.
No amount of insistence on my part looked like it was going to sway their opinion of me. "It is not murder. You have been accused of being an associate of the Doctor's and have admitted your guilt. You have been found guilty by the Judoon and your sentence is execution."
I wish I could say I was brave in the next few moments. That I overpowered them and escaped, or came up with a way to outwit them. The truth was neither of those things. I was absolutely horrified that after everything I had been through, this was going to be how I died—on a bus at the end of a space gun being controlled by an animal that belonged in the zoo, simply for the crime of doing my job.
I squeezed my eyes shut once more, not wanting to see the killing shot come my way. Just before it did, a high pitched whistle filled the air. Seeing as how I wasn't dead yet, I guessed this wasn't part of the plan. I tentatively opened my right eye and saw that the rhino with the gun had put his weapon down, and was busy looking from me to the sphere.
"What is the meaning of this? Who are you?" asked the rhino with the sphere.
What? Had the sphere finally alerted them to the fact that I knew more than I let on? That I was really from an alternate dimension? How was I going to explain that? Then again, what incentive did I have when their plan was to kill me anyway?
I didn't have much longer to dwell on the meaning of their words, for something completely unexpected happened. With a violent jolt, the world turned upside down.
**Author's Note**
First I'd like to thank affable, notwritten, and Idris for their nice reviews. It's always nice to see that there are some people enjoying this story.
So the beginning of this chapter was longer than expected, but the Judoon finally showed up there at the end. Hopefully I got them in character.
Next update is next Friday, and the chapter is '...Or Treat'. I have the rest of the story pretty well plotted out, and the next chapter will be the last of the first part of this story. After that, it'll be original adventures with the Eleventh Doctor, before the conclusion.
That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and if possible please leave a review.