I am only too delighted to grovel (verbally, of course) at the feet of anyone gracious enough to read this, and to employ the full range of adjectives in my appraisal and gratitude for your kindness.
When I start a story I never forget it, and anyone reading this will be pleased to know I have finished the entire story now, and will post a chapter every week or so - you have my word. The plot veered entirely off the rails - it perpetually does - but all loose ends have been tidied up and it is now complete. So, you may understandably wish to familiarise yourself before reading on.
Reviews are gratefully received, as they always are.
Rose awoke, perhaps unsurprisingly, in a cell. It was a bare metal affair, built according to primitive Dalek design, with no windows and a bed in the corner - despite this, Rose woke up lying on the floor. She sat up groggily and looked around her, taking in her surroundings with an eye now quite used to such situations, thanks to her adventures with the Doctor.
What she managed to deduce in the following minute was:
1) that she had been captured, evidently by the Daleks
2) that she had been taken across some sort of portal
3) that in a matter of seconds, her pregnancy appeared to have fast forwarded, leaving her with what looked ominously like a nine-month gestation
4) Apparently, she, or at least the child in her womb, did not have awfully long to live.
The situation was desperate. She looked down at her stomach and resisted the urge to go completely mad, which was exactly what her instincts were telling her to do. A thousand questions were whirling through her head – had Theta even realised what had happened? Was he still furious at her? She had absolutely no doubt that if he realised she was missing fast enough, something was going to happen. And knowing her husband, it was going to be something big... whether or not it actually worked. As far as that was concerned, she lived in hope.
But she wasn't about to sit around like a damsel in distress waiting for the Doctor - of course, there was no guarantee that he was coming, just a hunch. She walked around her cell, observing it from all angles. After a few minutes of examination it appeared that the door to her cell was very firmly locked and magnetically bolted. She raised a fist, almost certain it would do no good, and banged hard on the door.
Then, she heard a grating voice from the guard on the other side of the door.
"The hostage is awake. Bring more sedation!"
"Confirm continued activity of the hostage..." A nearby intercom blasted out.
"NO!" Rose yelled suddenly, realising what was going on. They were going to keep her asleep until they were ready to... operate. She yelled to the guard.
"Don't do that! Don't you want... someone to talk to?"
Quite unknowingly, Rose had sparked off an idea in the Dalek guard's head, and his voice yelled back uncertainly down the corridor.
"Negative. The hostage was physically reacting to the sedation."
Rose let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. A new voice sounded over the intercom. "Removal device will be ready in five Earth minutes. Prepare hostage for removal."
Silence fell as the intercom clicked off... and then, the guard spoke. "You're right, Rose Tyler. We do have things to talk about."
The Doctor stepped on the accelerator as the car zoomed down Westminster streets, while the old man thought about what they were going to do.
"The thing is, we're in a really tricky situation..." The old man announced to no-one in particular.
"Tell me something I don't know..."
"If we're going to rescue your wife we'll need to make a portal, somehow. A tunnel in between both of the worlds. And you're going to have to go through and back again."
"We're going to have to go through the Void! We'll never make it out alive!"
"Who said anything about we?" The old man looked wryly at him.
He continued, staring fixedly at the road in front of him. "How long will it take to reach your... Tardis?"
"It took us thirty minutes to get here," The Doctor muttered. "With the entirety of London trying to get out it'll take longer to get back."
Suddenly, a grey object similar in size and shape to a snowflake floated down to brush Theta's cheek. Looking up, he saw several others about to join them. The old man's face turned white.
"What's happening?"
"The army's getting close – the ash is from their engines. Once they've found London's exact location, they'll start bombing it. We've got seconds!"
The snowflakes turned into a torrent, turning the sky grey and blackening the rain
"Alright... Plan B. What's the best place in his city to create a portal?"
"I... I'm not sure..." the old man stuttered.
"Come on! Think!"
"Well... you have to be somewhere high up... the atmosphere's that bit thinner up there... What's the highest building reasonably close by?"
"Canary Wharf..." Theta breathed, turning on the ignition and stepping on the accelerator.
As he did this the first bomb fell, startling them both. Several kerbstones were blasted to smithereens on the kerbside in a small, compacted explosion, along with the breaking of several windows in the vicinity. Seconds later, one fell on an abandoned car, which promptly burst into flames as the bomb released a load of fumes smelling like sulphur, to add to the flames.
"Intelligent Bombs..." the old man muttered guiltily. "They're designed to maximise damage – they release chemicals, burst into flames or do anything to cause more disaster... depending on their target."
"I take it you designed them, then? What happens when they come into contact with humans?"
"They let off a small shower of industrial strength battery acid..." The Doctor glared at him.
Meanwhile, in the back of the car, the Prime Minister groggily opened her eyes, the sedation the Doctor had administered just beginning to wear off. She looked around her at the limo driver soundly sedated next to her, the Doctor driving and the old man in the front of the car, and panicked. In fact, she would have been about to scream anyway, when another bomb went off nearby.
She really did scream then.
The Doctor turned round in alarm and realised what had happened. Quickly, he scrambled into the back of the car and re-applied the sonic screwdriver to the driver's neck.
"One panicking person at a time, thank you very much..." he muttered.
"Okay... Prime Minister, I know this is really unexpected, but..."
"It's them, isn't it Doctor? The alien threat..." The Doctor nodded.
"Listen to me. When we get to Canary Wharf I can get out – you can drive away from here then, you'll be safe."
The Prime Minister looked about to remonstrate, so he continued. "You were right. I've got to do this on your own."
"Oh no you don't! I'm not leaving you now! My life is in danger, Doctor. Until help arrives, I get the distinct impression that the safest place I can be right now is with you. And you never know... I may be of help." The look in her eyes made it clear she was not to be argued with.
The Doctor turned back to the wheel, with almost no change in his facial expression except a slight curve around the corners of his mouth. They kept driving through the rain of bombs, which started with a trickle but soon got progressively heavier.
The car ground to a squeaky halt exactly twenty nine seconds later – the last terrified stragglers were still fleeing the city as the old man got out of the car and stared at him.
"We've got to get higher!" He ran inside, Theta and the Prime Minister on his heels.
"Go up the fire escape..." Theta opened a small side door to reveal concrete steps, which they took at a run all the way up to the top floor, and from there onto a large concrete expanse that overlooked the entire city. He was about to go up onto the expanse when a bomb exploded in the middle of the expanse, creating a shallow crater and sending concrete chips flying. The Doctor got out of the way.
"Excuse me?" The Prime Minister looked on the verge of breakdown.
"What are we doing here? We're just going to get hit by more bombs if we go up there!"
Stuck on the flight of stone steps, Theta briefly explained the portal principle. The Prime Minister's mouth dropped open.
"Oh my God..."
The Doctor began talking very, very fast. "If we're going to open a hole in the universe we're going to need two things. One – a power source. That's going to have to be something big, something huge in fact. How big is the hole going to have to be?"
"Smallest you can get away with might be... circular, half a metre diameter. It's not difficult to form a tunnel across the Void – it's mostly empty space, and dark matter. Breaking the hole open's the big part – and breaking a hole on the other side."
"What's that, in energy terms? Several trillion mega tonnes?"
The old man shook his head. "I don't think you can quantity it. I've never had to deal with energy amounts this big before."
The Doctor resumed. "Two - we need an energy converter..."
"What d'you need for that? You're not going to be able to make anything complicated, there's not enough time..."
"Just something for the power to flow through... come on, think!"
The Prime Minister suddenly pointed to bundle of high electrical cables above them. "How about something for the power to flow down?"
The Doctor looked up out of the fire escape. Sure enough, there they were, thin black lines that cut across the tops of the buildings, at waist height from the top of the building. Electricity pylons! He gave the startled Prime Minister a sudden, impulsive hug.
"That is... genius! The National Grid! Only the biggest power source in the country. And we're in the city centre – with any luck, there's going to be one hell of a charge in those pylons! If we can get something to focus all that energy around one wire..."
Sparks of white-hot frustration shot from his fingers at that precise moment, and... he had a brainwave. Or rather, Bad Wolf did.
He looked at the other two, ideas zooming through his brain. "You realise what we're going to have to do? There's only one force on this planet big enough to release and focus that amount of energy. There's only one thing to do... I'm the power source."