Author's Note (19th May 2015): It's been a long time. Too long in fact. If I had a choice I'd have posted these two chapters a while ago, probably last Monday. But my school's wifi has been on the fritz. So here are two chapters, late but still fresh off the pan. Enjoy!

P.S. SuOmAlAiNeN92, these are the last two recruiting chapters, after which the story truly starts (two chapters only because it seemed too large to me to leave as one chapter).


"All of us?" Amy asked. "All the Doctor's companions?"

George looked up from the console, puzzling out something. "Soon, all of you. All of you whom he has met after the Time War anyway. Except that one guy. Whatsisname?"

Amy shivered. "Adam. Yeah. We don't talk about Adam. " She frowned. "Post Time War companions only? Why?"

George shrugged. "Don't know. Hate not knowing. Anyway, doesn't matter. We're here."

"Where?"

"The Library. To rescue your daughter."


They nearly walked onto a star.

"Back! Back! Everyone back!" George shouted.

He immediately set his TARDIS in motion, albeit not through the Vortex. It drifted slowly towards the planets that were in motion around the star.

Everyone inside was clearly shaken. "Solar flares?" John asked, finally breaking the silence.

George nodded. "Screwed up navigation. And thank goodness for that." He stopped the TARDIS mid-flight, switching on the screens. "These are the scans that turned up a while ago, now updated."

The viewing screens showed the star system outside. Nothing seemed wrong. "Now once we switch on an infrared sweep…" The scan immediately lit up with a dozen or so shapes reminiscent of spaceships they'd encountered before.

"Daleks? Aren't they getting about a bit too much?" Donna asked.

"Dalek spaceships" George corrected. "With probably relatively few Daleks on them."

John came up with a more worrying question. "Why not just blow the Library up? Dalek gunships could easily destroy it."

George smiled. "The last gift of the Doctor. He might not be able to change his timeline in this case, but he left River a last gift. He recreated the TARDIS shields around the Library. A lot harder for Dalek gunships to blow through that."

His smile seemed almost reminiscent of…John dismissed the thought as quickly as it appeared.


The TARDIS, now invisible, slowly drifted—nothing more—towards the planet that held the Library.

"The shields will allow us in?" John asked.

George nodded. "It's just there to prevent any attacks on the Library. Any ship can come in, but every ship is scanned. That is why…" He flipped a switch, restoring the outer shell he used a while ago. "…my TARDIS now looks like the Doctor's. Hopefully the defence systems don't shoot us down."

Their arrival on the planet a minute later erased any doubt.

George walked onto the planet leading the others out. "This is where everything starts to get dangerous…"


He ushered Donna to take the lead, surprising her.

"Me?!"

"Yes, you. You're the only one of us who's been here before sightseeing. Amy was here too but she was too busy being chased by books. You know more about the place than any of us."

Hard to argue with sense.

Surprisingly, she remembered the path well enough. She took them through the main entrance and into the long hallway where she'd first learnt about…She stopped dead as a light far along the hallway seemed to switch off on its own.

George was smiling at her realization. "Now you know why the Daleks don't just land and annihilate us."

No one else knew, so Amy voiced their question. "Why?"

"The Vashta Nerada…" Donna answered, her voice nothing more than a whisper.

"The What?"

George, who was apparently fiddling with his Sonic Screwdriver, looked up. "The Vashta Nerada. Probably one of the deadliest races in the universe. Every other one of your enemies have weaknesses. Daleks, shoot them in the eyestalk. Sontarans, the vent in the neck. Cybermen, their weakness to logic, gold, and well…a lot of other stuff. But Vashta Nerada? All you can do is run. They're micro-parasites that will strip you the bone. No matter what you're wearing. Be it nothing, or a Dalekenium casing, you're dead as a dodo."

"So what do we do?"

"Stay out of the dark, most importantly, stay out of the shadows. Once you have two shadows, I can't help you unless they willingly give you up. If all goes well, nothing should happen."

That was when the lights started flickering.

"Run!" George shouted. "Run!"


Running seemed to do them little good. The darkness seemed to be following them around. They used the gravity platform to move to different floors, but that didn't seem to help them much either. The Vashta Nerada followed them there too. It's like they knew exactly where the group would be going.

"This is useless!" Martha gasped, exhausted. "They'll keep following us. It's like they've been without food for a few years!"

"They probably have…" replied George.

They ran on for another five minutes when they noticed something ahead. There was no light. They were back exactly in the same spot they had started from, cornered.

"Now what?" asked a panicking Donna.

"Ummm…I don't know" came the rather unhelpful reply from George.

"I could let them eat me…" Jack suggested.

"No, they won't fall for that, Jack. They'll devour us all."

"Then what do we do?"

"I DON'T KNOW! No, wait. All of you, think. When we came in, was there a computer anywhere immediately next to us."

"Yeah!" Donna said immediately. "There was one right behind us, in fact, and another one somewhere in the shop nearby."

George turned around to face the Vashta Nerada. "Ok, I have to do this on a hunch. If I can access the mainframe, I might just be able to do this."

He pointed his sonic screwdriver into the dark. All of a sudden, a light blipped on and the room went dark, except for the parts the Vashta Nerada had been in.

"George, what are you doing? They're coming."

"Wait for it. Jack hand me your Vortex Manipulator."

"I don't have it."

"Yes, you do. I saw you swipe it from me."

"Fine."

"Good. Now everyone, hold hands."

"What?"

"JUST DO IT!"

George sonicked the Vortex Manipulator, just as the Vashta Nerada leapt on to them.


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