Chapter Ten : Fall Into Nothingness That Awaits You

"I'm gonna kill you first!" growled Wade into Jack's ear trying to bite it as they wrestled against the wall fiercely.

"Nuuh," said Jack, as he struggled to wrest control of Wade's other katana from his grasp. "Didn't anyone tell you, it's not polite to do it rough the first time!" shouted Jack as he twisted Wade's hands violently and as Wade's grip on his weapon eased, Jack pounded in with an almighty head butt he'd still feel in the morning. However Wade was far too resilient and jumped at the opening presented to him by way of a hefty punch to the face.

"That's not appropriate for this level. We might have to change the maturity rating!" said Wade before Jack jumped in hurriedly to put him in a chokehold.

"Keep on talking nutcase!" barked Jack angrily as he began to squeeze the life out of the mercenary between his hands.

"Speaking of nutcases!" exclaimed Wade before giving Jack a direct groin attack with his knee.

"That's just mean!" screamed Jack high-pitched.

"Pathetic," lauded the Rani disdainfully as she watched scornfully over Ivy's now unconscious body. The young girl had put on a stern and brave front. So when she charged her again full of electricity, she had expected and perhaps even hoped that she would remain conscious. It would have been an admirable effort. However it seemed the human was already teetering on the edges. "But now it's just you and me Doctor. We can talk much more freely."

However the Doctor didn't seem to be entirely interested. He was staring at Ivy, lying down on the floor, with her arms bent in an awkward angle. It was a well known fact among the Time Lords that the Doctor had a habit of travelling with an entourage and that he was particularly fond of them. The Rani remained silent. She willed for the Doctor to feel every ounce of pain possible. However the Doctor merely smiled with his eyes lit and turned to face her.

"How did you do it, then?" he asked her harshly as he leered and silenced her mouth in apprehension. "You wanted to talk! Come on! How did you survive? How did you do it? What was your genius plan? Oh, you've probably rehearsed the story in your head a million times, waiting gleefully to share it with. So tell me Rani, how did you...live?"

"I hid!" screamed the Rani, her voice high and resonant as she cut the Doctor off. Her face twisted with ferocious fury as she spat her words back at him. "When the war started, I fled. I hid myself from the Time Lords. I hid myself from the Daleks. I hid myself from everyone and everything."

"There was no way you could have stayed hidden from the war," said the Doctor dismissively with a less threatening tone. The Rani laughed. The Doctor. Time's Champion. For all his great achievements and knowledge, was always far too simple minded. He couldn't read subtext if it bounced off his skull in the form of a sledgehammer.

"I created a wound within the Time Vortex," answered the Rani haughtily. I was desperate. Destroyed a star just to do it. And then I sealed myself and my TARDIS inside. Out of time, out of space... out of danger."

"Impossible."

"I sought refuge in a temporal void. There in the darkness, where the Daleks and Time Lords couldn't find me, I thought I was safe. But I wasn't."

"That's suicide! You don't control voids!" cried the Doctor as he reiterated his disbelief.

"Precisely. I was trapped inside my own temporal void, in a loop, where time moved forwards and back, turned everything from matter to anti matter. "The Rani paused as the Doctor no longer faced her. His head bowed down again shaking. He didn't want to believe her. But she didn't need him to tell her if what she said was true or not. She had to endure it first hand. She waited to speak till he faced her again.

"Do you know how utterly boring it is to be aging and de-aging at the exact instant?" asked the Rani with a frosty smile. "I escaped the vortex in the end obviously, though at the large expense of virtually destroying my TARDIS." She stretched out her hands but the Doctor was finally beginning to understand.

"But when I returned, the war had already ended and Gallifrey was no more. Gone. And time-locked," paused the Rani as she looked into the Doctor's dark eyes. The Doctor was now getting it. Getting what happened. Believing what happened. "I knew you did it. I knew if there was anyone that'd still be alive, it'd be you, so with a near dead TARDIS... I tracked you down."

"Where? When?"

"Tracked you down to the Game station, just as you left, unfortunately. But I didn't mind. I needed to repair what I could of my TARDIS. Like what I've done with it? Turned it inside out just so I could fix it with whatever the Game station could provide."

The Doctor already understood. He remained silent, turned to re-appreciate again the space station with this fresh load of information. The ion trails in the vortex that could only have come from another TARDIS. The Game station corridors. New New York Hospital's clone capsules. All the work of the Rani to find him.

"However finding you again was always going to be easy. I remembered... Gallifrey wasn't your only home."

"That's the second time you've killed me today," said Jack conversationally despite just being both mortally stabbed through the heart and missing both arms from the shoulder region onwards. "You're good."

"Thanks. I've died twice today as well," replied Wade happily whilst on the floor in an extremely uncomfortable position. There are not a lot of positions for him to be in after having his thirty-five bones broken whilst being wrestled to the ground by two people and an extraordinarily annoying child.

"Three," Jack corrected him. "Just cos you're still talking right now even after I've broken your neck doesn't mean you're not dead. "

"Oh yeah, forgot about that. They broke our neck as well."

"A neck's a bone! Isn't it?"

"Hey, stop breaking the fourth wall. This isn't like Malcolm in the Middle you know! You can't just randomly talk to audience. Of course a neck's a bone."

"Yeah, yeah," snapped Wade sarcastically. "Says you. You're not a Doctor.""

"You can say that again," answered Jack as he kicked Wade's rolling head and remaining leg that had come off inside the launch bay. Jack retreated back into the hangar deck with the others before Gwen pressed a button on the control desk and the launch bay doors slammed tight shut, leaving the Mercenary - who was beginning to regenerate again - with no way to escape.

"Tell me, after you've killed me, what exactly are you going to do then?" cried Wade from inside...

"I dunno. Maybe get a hobby or something..." whispered Gwen as she hit the controls again. She never spaced anyone before but they had no choice. Wade was far too dangerous to be kept alive or kept anywhere else. Warning alarms blared loudly and lights flashed. The airlock doors tightened with loud hisses of decompression and then the launch bay doors swiftly slid open, expelling Wade into space in little regenerative-glowing chunks of body.

There was a collective sigh of relief shared among everyone as Wade vanished into cold space. Jack chuckled and slid down against the wall next to his arms as he bled profusely from laughing. Matt and Gwen joined him in the laughter as well as they stood over him.

"Thanks back there," said Jack appreciatively as the laughter died off.

"Can I say it?" asked Matt earnestly to Gwen.

"What?" asked Jack perplexed.

"Oh alright, go ahead," replied Gwen slightly disappointed.

"Thought you could use a hand!" said Matt as he picked up and waved around one of his arms.

"What are you planning Rani?" spat the Doctor suspiciously as he kept playing for time. The Rani unknowingly complied to his escape plan as the Doctor continued prodding her with questions. "This isn't you. Power? That's the Master. But you..."

"Of course not," replied the Rani unpleasantly. She smiled lopsidedly with teeth baring and utterly derisive with high ambition. "But I want Gallifrey back. You killed them. I'll bring them back. I'll save them."

"That's very noble," said the Doctor nodding. "But you can't bring them back. They're gone. And these people...they're not Time Lords"

"But they will be. I'll make them into Time Lords...," she trailed off. Her face now contorted with hidden dark thoughts the Doctor was not aware of. I just need a few key ingredients."

"That's why you brought me here," said the Doctor. A brief comfort came to him knowing the others were in no immediate danger. That is until the Rani brought these new breed of Time Lords the gift of life. The gears in the mind of the Time Lord turned as he formed the reason to why the Rani brought him here. "You need genetic material. That's what I'm meant for."

"You certainly know how to overcomplicate," said the Rani darkly. He shivered.

"No, you were never meant for genetic material extraction," elaborated the Rani as she hung a finger above a button on her small white device she laid in the palm of her hand. Then infinitesimally slowly, looked into the Doctor's eyes, pressed it and said quietly, "I already have that. Welcome, Subject J."

At the further end of the room, under the Rani's high balcony, the floor began to vanish as a large capsule unlike the rest rose up from underneath. Smoke billowed and curled around it as the Doctor strained to see who it was that was inside. Then, a sinking chilling feeling ran down the Doctor's body from his skull to his stomach as he began to make out the woman's identity.

"DAD!"

"No, that's impossible, no, Jenny, no, no, no, no, NO!"

"You, were just meant to watch and suffer," explained the Rani as arcs of electricity shot from every wall in the room and striking the Doctor's chest and enveloping him in tormenting waves of lightning.