Crossed Wires
by ErtheChilde


'You're trying to say that everything you do is reasonable, and everything I do is inhuman. Well, I'm afraid your judgement's at fault.'


General AN: I decided I didn't like the formatting and chapter lengths of Crossed Wires, so I spent the day fixing that. As of Chapter Three, I've added a little to certain chapters, and moved others to their own chapters. The only completely new material today is introduced in the last part of Chapter Eleven, but I highly suggest going back and rereading from the beginning because I have made certain chapters longer and added a few things in others.


NINE

Bugger it, Rose thought irreverently as she looked around the containment unit once more. The Doctor wouldn't just sit here waiting for someone else to save the world. He'd be doing it.

Facing them all, she raised her voice and demanded, 'So are you lot just gonna sit here and let them take your freedom away? All cos you ended up here on accident?'

'What are you doing?!' Eugene hissed.

'Sitting on your arses ain't gonna get anything done,' Rose went on, ignoring them. 'You've got to stand up and fight. If we do that, they'll know they can't just treat us this way!'

'Do we look like fighters to you?' a middle aged woman answered crossly. 'I'm a spice farmer. At least I know that manual labor, I've a chance of surviving.'

'So just cos freedom isn't being handed to you, you won't even try for it?' Rose demanded. 'They've got no right to do this to us, I don't care how many intergalactic statutes let them. This is wrong!' There were shared glances, and rueful whispers. 'Come on, haven't you ever heard of the Shadow Proclamation? They've got to have something to say about this!'

Well, she wasn't completely sure on that front, but it was something the Doctor had thrown about once, and she needed to convince these people to do something.

She got the unpleasant sense she wasn't the first one to try to rally the captives, but as a group they had just resigned themselves to the worst. After all, with a changeover of twenty-four hours, no one was here long enough to be able to get support to try something. Perhaps that was the brilliance of the Quiisojeanan operation.

'What's the point of talking to you?' she sighed. 'You've all given up already.'

She was met with silence.

There was a sudden sense of anticipation in the air that didn't come from her words, and she realized that two of the guards had come over to the containment space and were unlocking it. They had long batons with them that emitted some kind of static sound, and Rose decided they must be electrified.

From the way the captives moved to give them a wide berth, she must have been right.

While one guard stayed put, the other strode forward to one of the little families in the back corner. He gave them an order in his warbling language, and the woman let out a wordless moan and tightened her grip on her child.

'Have they been ransomed?' Rose asked quietly as the scene unfolded.

'Unlikely,' Eugene said. 'I heard they lost everything on their home planet and came out this way looking for a better life. They're probably bound for the mines, so I guess that's sort of better than starving to death in space.'

'Can't we do anything?'

'Not unless you feel like volunteering your time for theirs.'

Rose looked over at the plainly terrified little boy, how was now clinging to his father's leg as the bear creature began to prod them toward the door, and her heart hurt.

She stepped forward, but Eugene grabbed hold of her shoulder and hissed, 'That wasn't a suggestion, you know!'

'Someone's got to do something!' Rose shot back, shrugging his hand off.

'It's pointless! You can't even save all three of them – the Quiisojeanans are here for three bodies, they'll still take the parents. All you're doing is separating a family and delaying the inevitable.'

'Then get over here with me.'

'Are you crazy?'

'You said yourself there's nothing else for you to do. Might as well get it done now. Sooner you can escape, right?' Rose argued. 'I dunno about you, but if I'm about to lose my tongue, I'd like to know I gave a family another day being able to talk to each other instead of losing it just cos some ruler doesn't like aliens.'

And she moved through the crowd of aliens that had gathered away from the weapon-wielding Quiisojeanan and headed for the family. As her fellow English-speakers realized what she was doing, whispers broke out and some shook their heads, while others tried to talk her out of it.

To her surprise, as she reached the family, she heard a grunt from behind her, 'Vort damn it, woman, you owe me for this.'

The Quiisojeanan noticed them now, and whirled around to bark something at them – probably to get back or some other threat.

'No, you take me,' Rose ordered, pointing to herself and then the terrified looking boy. 'Take me instead of him.'

'I'll go for the woman,' Eugene rumbled, pointing at the mother who looked like she wasn't quite sure what was happening.

The guard cocked his head to one side, like he was considering it but not completely sold.

'I will go instead of the man,' a deep voice from behind Rose said, and she saw the biggest and meanest looking convict-type bloke in the room step forward. He gestured to the father of the family and then to himself.

Possibly because of his size, the guard looked intrigued, and then finally gave a nod of agreement. He said something to his guard companion, who called out and summoned a third guard with a shock baton.

Rose let them lead the three of them out of their prison, holding her head high and trying to show the people in the cell that the smallest bit of forethought could make a difference. She wasn't like the Doctor, she couldn't instill confidence in people within minutes of meeting them, but she hoped what she had done left an impression. Maybe they would tell others, and someone would do something in the future.

Stepping back into the surgically clean hallway, she knew she couldn't think any more on the fate of the people who were still locked up, because she had to figure out a way to escape before she had her tongue cut out.

If she could just get free and find the Doctor, he would be able to fix this. She just…needed to find him. Which was easier said than done.

'Any other bright ideas?' Eugene muttered to her under his breath as they were led past other containment units, these ones holding alien-looking types. Some were only in pairs, like the two tentacle-looking creatures she passed, while others were almost as numerous as the humans and other English speakers had been.

Rose tried to see if the Doctor was in any of the cages – he'd likely be in one by himself, she figured – but not luck there.

'Not yet,' she answered back, forcing her mind back on the matter at hand. If she couldn't find the Doctor, she was going to have to use her environment to get her out. That was what he did, right?

To her consternation, she and the two men were split up and brought into different rooms. Eugene shot her a filthy look as they did so, while the nameless brute that had offered himself so silently remained resigned.

She felt guilty for not asking his name.

The guilt only increased when she saw the room they had brought her to. While the outer hallways were nothing but white stone walls, giving a feeling of sterility, this room was anything but. It looked like the cross between her dentist's workspace and some sort of medieval torture room.

It was lit with gas light, the way everything else was, which cast shadows across the sinister looking metal chair with leather straps. It was also covered in bloodstains, and when she looked at the tools nearby, she knew why.

Instead of clean instruments, or anything sterile and futuristic like she had come to expect when travelling away from home, it looked like the knives and clamps in here had never touched water.

Suddenly Mickey's dirty mugs didn't seem as horrible to her.

Her captor seemed to think that because she had volunteered for this that she wouldn't give him any trouble, and she intended to make him regret that misjudgement.

'To hell with this,' she decided, and kicked back hard with the heel of her foot. She didn't aim for his feet – hooves probably weren't as sensitive as toes – but for the joint above it, hoping that a broken ankle was as serious for one of the Quiisojeanans as she'd heard it was for horses.

Her captor let out a gravelly scream, and Rose wasted no time jerking away from him and as far from the door as she could manage.

As though waiting for her signal, both Eugene and the other man shouldered away from their guards, managing to follow after Rose. She had no idea where she was going, but she knew that that little room was lowest on her list right now.

'That way!' Eugene yelled, nodding at the door at the end of the hall. It could hide either salvation or more prison cells, but Rose didn't care at this point.

The guards were yelling in their unintelligible language, and the nameless man who had helped them was hurrying far ahead, slipping through the door and out of sight. From the lack of noise beyond that point, Rose took it to mean they had been lucky – no guards on the other side.

'Hurry –' Eugene started to yell, but it ended up a garbled moan of pain. She didn't dare look back to see what had happened, knowing what that sort of time might cost. She had to get out, had to find the Doctor, put all this right –

She managed to make it almost to the door, before a excruciating burst of static coursed through her and she found herself once more face down on the floor. Pain zipped through her from her back, and she struggled to breathe.

One of the guards had managed to lob his shock baton at her, catching her in the shoulder with a charge.

She was still trying to make herself able to breathe – already painful given the implant in her nose – when she was hauled into a kneeling position in front of one of the guards. He glared down at her with beady black eyes, and said something more than a bit threatening in his language.

Eugene was dragged over to kneel beside her, looking a paler hue of periwinkle.

'If it makes you feel any better?' he told her, voice still wry despite the effort to talk, 'they're probably not going to take your tongue now.'

Depends how pissed off they are, Rose thought grimly, trying to meet the angry glance of her captor. This one might just take it out with his claws, by the look of him.

He was already reaching for her chin with one paw, the other tightening around his shock baton.

If he doesn't just ram that down my throat, she thought, panicked. Fear swelled in her stomach, and she tried to think of some way, any way that she could make it out of this predicament.

Maybe she should have just let them take her tongue to begin with – Eugene had said there were places where she could have it replaced, and suddenly waiting for a better opportunity to escape sounded really good and really, since landing here she'd made a series of bad decisions, why had the Doctor even bothered bringing someone as stupid as her along –

There was an explosion of sound, and Rose saw a wave of something blue flash across the hallway above her head. When it came in contact with the Quiisojeanan guards, they flew backwards, hitting the wall before slumping to the ground.

They didn't move again.

Rose didn't have time to dwell on this before hands – human ones – grabbed her from behind and she found herself being pulled along the corridor.

Her stunned mind flashed automatically to the Doctor, but this hope was shattered when someone barked in ear, 'Move, move!'

'Move, move!' someone yelled in English.

There were many people in the hallways now – countless bodies, both human-looking and not, all making a run for it. Somehow, she'd lucked into some sort of prison break.

Her head whipped around as she ran, trying to make the Doctor out in the crowd, but he didn't seem to be anywhere.

'Stop, I need to find my friend!' she tried to yell at whoever was pushing her forward, making her run, but her words were lost in the din. Guards were pouring out of other rooms now, going after the escaping prisoners and whoever it was that was helping her, and she found herself maneuvered away from the fighting and out into the open, smoggy air.

The next thing she knew, she was being shoved into some kind of vehicle – not a litter like she had come there in, but an old-fashioned looking van – and it was taking off, away from the compound.

The assortment of people in the car were looking confused and apprehensive. She saw that Eugene and her other fellow volunteer had made it out, as well as the little family they had stepped in for. The latter were talking excitedly to the oafish man, probably thanking him.

Rose picked her way through the huddled figures to her blue friend.

'What the hell just happened?' she demanded.

He gave her an excited, slightly disbelieving look and say, 'Welcome to the Resistance, I think.'