Author's note: So here is the next chapter! It is a bit shorter than all the others, and you'll probably hate me for it, considering it raises more questions than it answers, but it is an essential scene to set up the rest of the series. Mwahaha.
Haha, just to let you know, FYI and all, so far the story is up to like seven thousand words, which was generally an entire full episode in my last series and we are only up to the forth chapter! So, hopefully you guys are enjoying the length so far, cause it's going to be a long one!
Enjoy!
Chapter Four: Ransacked!
Jack followed the Doctor into the TARDIS, closing the doors behind him before walking up to the centre console while the Doctor moodily read the computer screen. Jack glanced around him, noting that the usual hum of the TARDIS sounded very different; it sounded to him almost as though it were sick.
"Before you ask," said the Doctor shortly, avoiding Jack's gaze. "I don't know what is wrong with the TARDIS. Everything is all happening at once."
"It sounds like she isn't firing on all cylinders," Jack said.
The Doctor frowned at Jack's poor attempt to lighten the mood. "She sounds like she's strained, like she is diverting most of her power to something else other than running, and I just don't know what. Maybe I pushed her to hard whilst trying to find Bella…"
"How long have you been separated?" asked Jack, a gentler edge to his voice than he would normally use with the Doctor.
"Six days," he answered quietly, sounding quite glum. "We were in the Violetron Galaxy in the fifty-third century."
"The Violet Snow?" enquired Jack. He had taken another time agent to see the violet snow once, long ago before he had the two years of his life stolen from his memories. It had been a young girl from another planet that he'd been trying to impress at the time.
The Doctor nodded. "We'd only been there twenty minutes before the Trickster showed up."
"The same Trickster that Sarah Jane has been having troubles with?"
"I hope not," the Doctor said sharply. "But there is only one of him in the universe, and in my opinion, that is one too many."
"So what did he do, exactly?"
"He used the snow to trap us both." The Doctor told him slowly. "Then, while we were both stuck, he wiped Bella's memory of everything that she's ever done with me and all her time on the TARDIS. I still haven't figured out how he appeared though, it was meant to be impossible, so it must have been a very weak point in time to actually manifest himself."
The Doctor pulled a lever and the klaxon began to rise and fall loudly, yet not in the familiar tones that they were both used to. Cringing, the Doctor flew the TARDIS until the ship became still and quiet again, the sick hum still making them both feel uneasy.
"You might want to have a look at that," Jack said and the Doctor rolled his eyes and headed out the doors.
Jack followed, stepping back out into the cold February night air, realising that they had landed in Bella's front yard. Jack looked to the massive, stone house that was dark, silent and falling into serious disrepair, the once well-trimmed gardens that he remembered from the last time he was there now looking unkempt and overgrown and the whole place now had an eerie feeling about it.
The Doctor had looked up at what could be considered to some to be a small 'stately home' before him and retrieved his sonic screwdriver and his torch from his overcoat's pockets and began walking slowly towards the house. He didn't know what he would find in there, but he had a hunch that something was awaiting discovery.
Unlocking the front door with his sonic, the Doctor entered Bella's house as he switched his torch on, a deep, disturbed frown forming on his face. The entrance hallway to Bella's home was not the same as he remembered, even with the seven Slitheen running around. The floor was covered in muddy, booted footprints as well as papers, broken glass objects and paintings that once hung on the walls. A delicate coffee table that once stood beside the front door had been overturned in front of the door that led into the dining room.
He walked forward, peaking into the dining room, finding all the chairs on their sides (one or two of them were even broken in half), the doors and drawers on the mantelpiece were all open and their contents spilled out everywhere. As Jack walked past him pulling out his own torch and descended the stairs into the cellar, the Doctor climbed up the stairs and went into the room on his right.
Like all the other rooms downstairs, this room's belongings had been strewn across the place too; the wardrobe's doors were hanging off the hooks at strange angles and the clothes spilled out of it, Bella's white suede reading chair was upside down and torn and the mattress hung halfway off the wooden bedframe.
As he heard Jack jog up the stairs and check all the other rooms, the Doctor finally realised what was missing now.
"You know, if I didn't know any better, which I don't, I would say that this place has been ransacked." Jack said darkly, entering the room and glancing around him with a displeased expression on his face. "I think someone was looking for something."
"And they found it." The Doctor said an odd edge to his voice. Anger perhaps?
Jack looked to him sharply. "What do you mean?"
"I have been in this house before," the Doctor said quietly with a look that Jack thought could kill his deadliest enemies. "My memories are well preserved and I know what has been taken."
"The computer has gone," Jack suggested.
"Oh, it's far more serious than computers, Jack. When I first entered this room, the walls were covered in photographs of Bella and the people and the things that she liked; Bella with Sally and Dylan, Bella with her horses, Bella in her first school uniform, and all the sentimental stuff that humans like. Now tell me what you see?"
Jack glanced around the room again, his eyes taking in more detail this time; the torn papers and books on the floor, the empty photo frames on the desk. He couldn't even recall any photographs in the rest of the house either, none in the sitting room or even in any other bedroom.
"Why would anyone steal photographs of Bella?" asked Jack with a hint of worry in his voice.
"We need to have a very long chat to Sally and Dylan," the Doctor said dangerously before he moved out the door. Jack glanced around what he assumed to be Bella's old bedroom; he was feeling far more worried now than he had been that morning when he had received the call from Sally on Bella's phone. Slowly, he followed the Doctor back out of the old, abandoned house.