Disclaimer: This story takes place within the Doctor Who universe. This story is a way of re-interpreting concepts and ideas already present in Doctor Who. All Doctor Who characters within belong to the BBC. All other characters are fictitious. This story is for fun and for sharing, but not for profit.

Chapter 4: The Red Line

'No, no, no,' yelped Ten and he almost danced around the console pulling apart couplings that fizzed and crackled under his fingers.

Eleven's hands were a blur over the controls, and even River was busily, frantically doing something on the other side of the console.

Rose straightened from her spot at the railings and stepped forward. Then she paused, sat down on the jump seat and twisted her fingers into knots. She knew that any offer of help would be more of a distraction than an aide. The three Time Lords wove complicated paths around each other in an unplanned but elegant rescue mission. She, however, had no idea what to do or even where to start. She scuffed her trainer on the floor.

Finally, Eleven twisted a knob with a flourish. 'There! That ought to hold her for a while.'

'But for how long,' asked River. Her voice was heavy. 'You know we can't take off with her in this condition. Not until those fractures mend.'

'Right,' said Eleven. 'Which is why you lot need to get to work. If we can't mend the fractures, we might have a chance at dematerializing, but it's dicey. I've landed her as close as I dare to where the fractures cluster.' He looked at Ten. 'Go! Get out there. I've established the shell, but I won't be able to hold it for long. Back in 6 hours, all of you, finished or not. Before then, even, if you can manage it.'

'Yeah,' said Ten. 'But if I need more time, you get Rose and River out of here.'

'Wait!' said Rose, but such a sharp look passed between Ten and Eleven that Rose fell silent. It seemed as if there were a challenge between the two Doctors.

Finally, Eleven turned away grudgingly. 'All right,' he muttered. 'Get going, all of you. We don't have much time. Or, rather, more than we can handle.'

'Come on!' said River. She ran down to the door, opened it and looked out. 'Ugh.' She looked back. 'Brace yourselves. It isn't pretty out here.'

Rose picked up her holster and strapped it securely around her hips, checking that the gun was secure and still on the stun setting. She came up beside River. She could feel Ten standing just behind her and knew that he was carefully not touching her-giving her space. She winced, but resolutely looked forward.

They exited the Tardis. The first thing Rose noticed was the smell; acrid smoke wafted on the breeze, with something indefinable, but sinister, underlying it.

The edges of a city lay several miles away to the north. Towers rose beyond. Isolated fires burned. The muted sounds of sirens came across the distance. Where they were standing, however, was verdant land not unlike the hills and fields of England, though the green seemed a little brighter. More saturated. A few scattered dark stone dwellings, lay close to them but all seemed deserted.

'Where is everyone?' Rose asked.

'Scared away,' River answered somberly. She pointed to the right.

Rose realized, with a start, that bodies lay on the ground. Ten ran towards them. She followed.

'Were they killed by aliens?' She was halfway to the bodies.

Ten knelt by the nearest one, but still a few feet away. A line on the ground separated him from the body. 'I'm sorry,' he whispered. 'I'm so sorry.' He looked back. 'Don't come any closer!' he said urgently.

'Why?' asked Rose. 'What's wrong? What killed them?'

'Time,' said Ten tersely. 'Look at the ground. See that line?'

'Yeah.' Rose inched closer and peered at it. 'Everything's redder on the other side.' She looked up. A blood-red sun hung in the sky. 'Even the sky. The air...'

'Time-shifted. Infrared.' Ten stood up. 'This is one of the fractures. Everything's slower on the other side of that line. Don't touch it. Don't even get close to it, or what happened to these people will happen to you.'

Rose looked down at the humanoid body. One arm still lay across the time fracture. The colour of the skin didn't seem very unlike a human's. On the other side, however, it and the rest of the body was mottled an angry red.

'Time is energy,' said Ten softly. 'Well, it isn't, but if it helps, think of it like that. Crossing into a slower time unprotected... Suddenly a lot more energy in his cells compared to the new slower time around him? He boiled alive.'

Rose gasped and shuddered. Ten moved swiftly to her and held her close. She buried her face in his shoulder, their earlier quarrel forgotten.

'It would have been instant,' he said, stroking her hair. 'He wouldn't have felt it, or at least not long enough for him to think about it.'

'Oh, man, I hate this already,' muttered River. 'If someone did this on purpose, I'm going to make him pay.'

'Someone did.' Ten's voice was hard. 'This isn't natural. Couldn't have happened on its own. Someone created this.'

Rose raised her head. 'How are you going to cross the fractures? Won't they... boil you...? Can you... Because you're a Time Lord...?'

'No,' said Ten. 'The same thing would happen to me. But,' he said more cheerfully, and he held her at arms length, gazing at her both worried and comforting. 'I won't cross here. The fractures are fluctuating. I saw it on the scanner and I can feel it even here. The differentials are shifting through time and even aligning in places. I'll know when it's safe to cross.'

'Then we can go with you, yeah?'

'No,' he said softly. 'I need to move as fast as I can, and even when the boundaries align, there's a risk that they'll move out of phase quickly. I can react quickly, instinctively, but even the time it would take to tell you when to cross... and the closer I get to the epicenter, the closer the fractures will be. I can't risk you. I need to know you're safe.'

'Then go,' said Rose decisively. 'Go and save the day.' She kissed him on his lips, gave him a little push away from her and smiled softly. 'Go do what you do best.'

He nodded and scanned the fracture. 'There,' he pointed. A gap in the differential boundary several hundred yards closer to the city seemed to clear. No redness lay beyond. He began walking rapidly. 'Remember,' he said to both Rose and River as they followed beside him. 'Don't cross any of the fractures. Even when the colour looks the same on either side, you won't know when it'll shift again, and even the smallest shift will hurt you and you won't see the colour changing until it's too late. Don't cross, and don't let anyone else cross. Use those stun guns of yours if you have to.' He looked at River. 'You especially. You may be a Time Lord, but I can tell. You don't have the same time sense that even Eleven has. You don't have even the presence of a Time Lord. Just don't risk it. Stay safe.'

River nodded. 'I know. I won't. I promise.'

At that moment, the ground beneath their feet shuddered. Rose stumbled, pinwheeled her arms and regained her balance. She saw River rapidly adjusting her own stance. Ten merely shuffled his feet, swaying slightly.

'Earthquake!' she exclaimed. Then she frowned. 'No, not on Earth. What...?'

'Tremor,' said Ten. 'Don't worry. Eleven will keep the sections of the planet together for a day. But that's all he can promise. The planet is still trying to tear itself apart. You'll see damage from before we got here. Just don't do anything that a tremor can't interrupt!'

Both Rose and River nodded.

'Right then!' exclaimed Ten. 'Good luck.' He sprinted for the gap. 'Whoops! You've got company!'

Two inhabitants had come over the rise of a small hill. 'Stop!' they shouted, but Ten didn't slow down. 'You'll kill yourself!'

He reached the gap, hesitated and then swiftly stepped through. Already the fracture was fluctuating and soon the redness spread through and the dividing line was solid and sharply defined once more.

Rose and River approached the line cautiously. On the other side, like everything around him, Ten seemed darker, tinged in red. He moved as if swimming through treacle.

'Don't cross the line!' he repeated. His voice was odd, slower and much deeper. Tensing, he pivoting on one foot to begin to run, but it seemed to Rose as if she were watching him in some recording that had been slowed down. As he turned, the corners of his jacket flapped but something was off. They moved slowly. His hair bounced almost languidly from his sudden movement, and his gangly limbs stretched out into a slow sprint.

'Factor of two, maybe. One point six at the very least,' murmured River, but she turned around to face the newcomers.

'He's not dead!' gasped the taller of the inhabitants.

Rose turned around. Two beings stood a few yards from them. They were humanoid with roughly the same proportions and colouring, but their skin held a very slight sheen of luminescence. Both of them had short, tufty, light brown hair.

'He knows what he's doing,' she said. 'He's safe.'

'But no-one can cross the lines!' cried the other, distressed.

'He knows Time,' said River. 'He can tell when it's safe to cross.'

'Then get him back!' shouted the first. 'We need him to lead us to the Prime Council. They are trapped in the slower places.'

'That's where he's going,' Rose told them. 'He's going to fix the problem.' She turned back to watch Ten. The inhabitants and River also paused and looked.

Ten still ran, but he had only covered part of the ground Rose would have expected. His long legs were fully outstretched in each pace, but it seemed as if his body hovered briefly each time before a foot touched the ground. Far off through the reddish air, Rose could see what looked like an almost impenetrable wall of dark, murky red. Ten was running straight for it.

'Is that another fracture?' she asked River.

River nodded. 'Yes. We won't be able to see him once he crosses that, or barely. Like a shadow. We can't see through another layer of red-shift.'

'But if it's slower again, it's gonna take forever,' objected Rose. 'He's already moving slowly and he has to cross a lot of those lines.'

'Exactly,' said River. 'Which is,' and here she turned to look at the inhabitants, 'why he couldn't stay to talk to you. He had to get in there as fast as he could.'

'But he won't know where to go,' said the shorter of the inhabitants. 'The Prime Council-'

'Doesn't matter,' interrupted Rose. 'He's going to fix the problem, not talk to your government.'

'But... but...how will he know where to go?'

'He'll know,' said Rose. 'He senses time. He'll just... know.' She smiled gently at the worried being. 'My name is Rose. We've come to help you. This is River.'

'Hi,' said River.

'I am called Velki,' the being responded. She nervously looked at Ten in the distance and tugged on her bushy hair.

The other inhabitant had both hands wound in her hair, clutching fitfully. 'I am Vant.'

'Velki and Vant. Got it,' said River. 'So, why is your planet chopped up into time-bits?'

'We don't know,' wailed Vant. She was shivering, and Rose wondered if she was in some state of shock.

'The Prime Council is trapped in the slower areas,' said Velki. She had stopped tugging on her hair, but now her hands were making complicated movements together which Rose rather thought of as wringing. 'We have not heard anything from them. Nobody can get in or out. Not alive, at any rate. Communications are useless. Nothing crosses the lines that we can understand. Some people have held up handwritten signs, or talked too slow or too fast, but it's all slow and nobody knows what's going on.'

'Did these... lines kill a lot of people?' asked Rose gently.

Vant clutched her hair even tighter. 'So many. And others tried to cross and were frozen.'

'Frozen?' Rose looked at River. 'I thought he said "boiled".'

'The other direction,' said River. 'Slower to faster. Energy is heat. Suddenly half the energy inside your body? Opposite effect.'

Rose shivered. 'I'm sorry,' she said to the two. 'I hope no-one is trying anymore.'

'No,' said Velki. 'Except your friend.'

'The Doc...Ten,' said Rose, catching herself. 'His name is Ten.'

River scanned the area around them, hands shading her eyes. 'Where is everyone?'

'They have left,' said Velki. 'They do not want to be near the lines, and they dare not approach the bodies in case the lines move and catch them.'

'Have they moved?' Rose looked at the fracture in both directions. Bodies seemed to lie consistently on either side of the divide.

'No,' admitted Vant. 'But they change. Someone tried to cross when the colour looked normal, but he was too slow. He... he...'

'It's okay,' Rose said quickly. 'I understand.'

'Most of them have gone to the city,' said Velki. 'They hope people will know what is going on.'

'Then that's where we need to be,' River said. 'Have you been there since the time fractures began?'

'When did they begin?' asked Rose.

Velki looked back and forth between the two and settled on Rose first. 'An hour ago.' She looked at River. 'No, we have not. For a short time, there was still communications with the city but that has disappeared.'

'Satellites,' mused River. 'They will have moved across the fractures. The metal would lose integrity. They'd disintegrate.'

'Satellites?' Rose instinctively looked up and then shook her head. 'The fractures go that high?'

'Hard to tell.' River too peered up at the sky. 'Probably. But even if they haven't disintegrated yet, the signal would still have to go through the differentials at angles like a prism. Any data would be scrambled and difficult to reconstruct.'

'All right,' said Rose. 'Let's go. Vant and Velki, can you help us? We don't know your planet and any information would help us.'

Vant hesitated but Velki shook her head. 'Yes. I'll come.'

Rose nodded, but caught herself and shook her head instead. 'Thanks. You're teaching us your culture already. Does this mean "No"?' She nodded.

Velki shook her head. 'Yes.' She reached up a hand and tugged at her hair as she nodded her head. 'This is stronger. Each way.'

'Thank you,' said Rose. Shaking her head meant 'no', and nodding meant 'yes', she thought. And tugging her hair meant emphasis. 'Let's go,' she said and she tugged her hair.

Vant giggled. Velki nodded her head in negation. 'Only do that when you're not speaking. If you are speaking, it means something else...'

'Oh.' Face aflame, Rose set out resolutely towards the city and the others followed her in silence.

~ o ~ O ~ o ~

They walked part of the way and then found a vehicle, not unlike a jeep from Earth, with keys still in it. A body lay next to a time-fracture not far from the road. They got into the jeep and Velki drove them the rest of the way to the city in silence. Occasionally, tremors shook the road, but they were not strong enough to pose any problems to Velki. She continued to drive, hands firmly gripping the wheel.

At one point, they saw a great scar in the ground and scattered, twisted pieces of scorched metal, occasional less-scorched pieces gleaming silver in the sun. Air above the mess rippled with radiated heat.

'That answers the question about the satellites,' murmured River

'Where is everyone?' asked Rose, looking through the windows on the left side. 'It's deserted.'

'They all ran away from the lines and tall buildings that might fall,' said Vant. 'Far away.'

'And a lot are over here,' muttered River. She jerked her thumb towards her window, on the right side of the jeep.

Rose craned her neck and saw, through River's window, an increasing line of bodies by the time fracture the jeep was travelling alongside. The time fracture lead straight to the city. She shuddered. 'Yeah. I'd want to get away from here too.'

~ o ~ O ~ o ~

They reached the city. The transition from countryside to tall buildings came almost immediately. Rose looked around as they drove further in. There was a scattering of debris from signs and overhangs, but the effect of the red line itself that made her gasp. Buildings stood bisected by the red line, the portions shifted as if sliced through by a hot knife through butter. The sharpness of the edges looked wrong. There was no crumbling or tearing. Had any humans been sliced through like that, she wondered. Her stomach clenched.

The buildings themselves were mostly intact, although some decorative facings had crumbled under the stresses of the planet's tremors. It was not bad, but it was enough to make the roads difficult to navigate. They hid the jeep as best they could in a back alley behind a fence.

'Right,' said Rose, as they cautiously made their way out onto a street. The Tardis had stabilized the planet. Already she had sensed the tremors lessening in frequency and intensity. She looked up at the buildings uneasily, wondering if any more debris would come raining down on them. However, River seemed to move confidently into the street, and Rose already knew that River would have assessed the risk for herself with far more scientific understanding than Rose herself.

Reassured, she moved into the centre of the street. The roads were all laid out in a grid pattern aligned with the compass points. Velki had driven the jeep northward into the city, so Rose oriented herself so she faced northward herself, looking further in amongst the skyscrapers. The buildings were mostly rounded at the top, and entrances at ground level protruded slightly from the face of their structures. Colourful mosaics lined the sides of the buildings and over the rounded tops. An edifice opposite the alley had a particularly elaborate mural on its side with swirls of green, orange and red. Rose memorized the art as a landmark to find the jeep. 'Where to now?'

'I know someone who always has much information,' said Velki. 'We can go to him. I hope he is still alive!'

'But that is further into the city,' objected Vant. She looked around nervously. 'There is violence there. We will be in danger.'

'You're in danger anywhere,' said River.

Vant gripped her hair with both hands. 'Yes, but maybe the buildings will fall on us. We are too close. We-'

Her next words were lost, for at that moment, several sounds of pounding footsteps came to them. Around the corner appeared more inhabitants, running at a speed that surprised Rose. As soon as they caught sight of her and River, they swerved and headed straight for them.

'We're here to help,' yelled Rose.

The runners did not slow down and within seconds the two groups collided. Arms grasped at Rose and the others, and she fought to free herself. 'We want to help,' she shouted as she struggled to free herself.

But suddenly two of the assailants fell to the ground stunned, and the others retreated, staring at them. River stood with her gun raised.

'We're here to help,' River said loudly. 'But any one of you attacks us again and I will stun you. Got it?'

'You are not Allack!' shouted one of them. 'You must leave! They said any other aliens are dangerous.'

Rose noticed many of the assailants were wringing their hands much like Vant had done, or were pulling at their short, thick hair.

'What is Allack?' she shouted back. 'Does that mean "alien"?'

'"The Alien Helpers with white hair",' responded another inhabitant. 'They are giving us help. Many of them are appearing. They promise to save everyone.'

Rose looked at River, puzzled. At her feet, the stunned people began to stir. She stepped back a few paces.

'We are not "Allack",' said River, 'but we want to help. We know the trouble that your planet is in.'

'No,' shouted the first inhabitant to speak. 'We need the Allack. They are in charge and helping all over the city. If you are not with the Allack, you must leave! This is what they say.'

Another person shouted, 'Vant! You are alive! Come with us. It is safer together. Let's go!'

'Virro!' Vant ran over to the speaker. 'Come!' she shouted over her shoulder. 'We must join them. These Allack are the people we need.'

The stunned inhabitants climbed to their feet, eyeing River warily. They backed up to join their fellows.

Velki hesitated. 'But we know nothing about these Allack. It is safer to find out more, first.'

'Yes,' agreed Rose. 'Who are they? What are their motives?'

'I am going with them,' declared Vant, and almost as if her words were a starter's pistol, the group of inhabitants took off, Vant among them.

'Vant, no!' cried Velki. 'Stay with us!'

'Too late,' said River. 'She's panicking. They all are. They won't listen to reason.'

Rose shrugged. 'It sounds like these "Allack" are organized and are offering help. No wonder these people want to find them.' She turned to Velki. 'Can you help us find this friend of yours?'

Velki shook her head rapidly and strode off, continuing towards the north. Rise and River followed her, all the while scanning the streets they passed. The ground shuddered occasionally under their feet, but no falling debris reached them. The city seemed empty of cars and they hardly saw a living soul. But down the side streets to the right, mist was gathering. It softened the lines of vehicles small and large which littered the tarmac in various states of damage. Inside were bodies. Rose did not want to look too closely. Not far behind lay a dull red line...

To be continued