What is going on?
He looked over at the Counsellor who was running beside him. They were fleeing the Tower of London. For some reason they were being followed by a very sparse few: Martha and two men, one dark-skinned and intensely brooding and the other taller, fair-skinned, and wearing a coat as military as Sherlock's was fashionable.
Daleks.
Plural?
She nodded and cast her eyes skyward.
"This is you, isn't it?" Martha shouted from behind them. "Astrid or whatever your name is. Counsellor. This has to do with you, doesn't it?"
Yes, the Counsellor's voice reverberated in his head.
"That makes no sense," the dark-skinned man said as they ran. "Why would the Daleks obey a Time Lord?"
"Daleks?" Sherlock asked, hoping somebody would start filling in some information and soon.
"Maybe she's working with them," Martha said. "Maybe she's sold us all to them like slaves."
"They have no use for slaves," the other man shouted. "Focus. Let's try to get her to a safe place."
"Why would we do that?" Martha asked.
"Because we have to find out what's going on!" he answered. "Don't forget your training. Don't make this personal."
"How do you all know she's a Time Lord?" Sherlock asked them. The time for being discreet was done. It was time for answers – for all of them.
The other man let out a merry laugh. "By her TARDIS, of course."
"How –"
"Later," the man said. He picked up the pace of his run, pressing into an all-out sprint and rounding a corner.
"Where are we going?" Sherlock asked.
Sherlock.
What?
Do you trust these people?
No.
Why are we following them?
We weren't at first.
Then we shouldn't now.
He pulled up short. He agreed. He turned –
And was face-to-face with the dark-skinned man. A gun was leveled at him. The man was smiling. "Mickey Smith, Mr. Holmes. Big fan of the blog."
"Not my blog," Sherlock said drily.
"Doesn't matter. Keep going."
"No." The Counsellor pointed her own weapon at Mickey Smith. She didn't flinch and she didn't release Sherlock's hand.
"Do you know what that thing is?" Mickey asked as he stared down the barrel of the alien weapon. Sherlock noticed immediately that his hands were steady.
He's done this before, he advised the Counsellor. Careful.
"Sontaran antimatter blaster," she said coolly, answering Mickey's question. "I know what it is and I know how to use it, probably better than you do. I was trained at the Academy, after all."
Sherlock saw another weapon enter his field of vision, this one a standard Earth weapon: a 9 millimeter handgun. He shifted his vision to find that Martha Jones was gazing down the sights at his client. "Fancy your chances to get a shot off before I do?" the beautiful doctor asked the Counsellor. Her hand also was steady. Stupidly his mind belched a thought: UNIT is real. Torchwood is real. They're training warriors.
That might have been useful to me before, the Counsellor advised him as she relaxed and let the alien weapon drop to her side.
"Where did you guys go?" They all turned to find the other man, the ridiculously handsome American, standing further away down the alley. "We have to get to the safehouse."
The Counsellor winced; Sherlock could feel the stress in her. "Too late," she whispered as a series of explosions rattled the deepening evening in the direction from which they'd come. A steady droning chant started to fill the sky.
EX-TER-MIN-ATE. EX-TER-MIN-ATE. EX-TER-MIN-ATE.
What.
His client released his hand and dropped to one knee. She braced the alien weapon against her shoulder and pointed the muzzle skyward. She was grumbling a steady stream of insults: "You damn idiot. You eradicated your own people to save the universe from the Kaleds, and yet here we are, waging the same old war. Moron! You thoroughgoing moron! So much for protecting your precious humans . . ."
"Kaleds?" Sherlock asked. He was the least informed person present, and he hated it. Is this how normal people feel around me? He asked himself again. He didn't like the answer.
Nobody answered him. They were all staring at the sky, waiting. Sherlock found that was all he could do, too.
Then it started. He saw wave after wave of those rubbish bins (Daleks, they're called Daleks, maybe Kaleds, no idea) appear overhead.
"This is your doing, Counsellor!" Martha Jones shouted over the increasing drone (EX-TER-MIN-ATE, EX-TER-MIN-ATE, EX-TER-MIN-ATE). "You brought them here!"
"I know," his client said softly. "I am sorry for that. I truly am. I just . . .I had to find him."
"Who?" Mickey asked.
"You know who," she answered. "I can read it in your thoughts. You know I've come to find the Doctor."
"You aren't supposed to even be alive!" Martha shouted. "He said he was the last!"
"And yet it seems you've met the Master, too. Do you want to tell me how you can hold to anything he's told you?"
"Come now, girls," the other man said. He'd dropped to one knee, too, and he was wielding a massive weapon that seemed to be made of chrome. "No time for a catfight. Bigger issues."
The Counsellor shot him a scalding look but held her place. "Sherlock, get behind me," she said calmly.
"I –"
"I have to protect you. I promised I would."
"Time Lords and their promises," Martha grumbled.
The sky began to pulse with incoming fire. "Hold . . ." the other man cried. "Hold fire until they're close enough!"
"I know!" the Counsellor answered.
Sherlock was standing behind these four, watching as the floating legions of Daleks drew closer, ever closer. Their fire was starting to impact the buildings around the alley in which they were hiding. He blinked, trying to reset his sense of sight. This . . .this can't be happening. How is this happening? Perhaps this is only and elaborate dream. Must wake now, Sherlock. Wake in Baker Street. Rise and tell John what you dreamed for once. Share with him, before it's too late.
It wasn't a dream. A sizzling pulse of electricity passed him not two feet to his left.
"Fire!" the other man shouted, and all present weapons – alien and human alike – unleashed. The human weapons did next to no good, but the alien weapons were horrifying in their scope. The other man's massive weapon emitted a brilliant blue pulse of fiery energy that tore through the space between them and knocked the first wave of Daleks from the sky. They dropped, useless deadweight with no purpose but to prove the theory of gravity was still an irrevocable rule of the universe.
The Counsellor's weapon, however, was far more massive. She ran three fingers over the stationary trigger and a reverberating whoomp filled the air around them all. He could see the air ripple around the invisible field's trajectory. The force slammed into the incoming Dalek forces, but instead of simply dropping them like debris, the pulse completely undid them. They evaporated in a flash and sizzle, screaming as they were unmade.
Sherlock stood stock still, gazing up into the sky as more Daleks came streaming in to replace the ones that had fallen. He blinked repeatedly, trying to clear whatever illusion was grounding him to this ridiculous reality. His maddening client and the other three people – Torchwood, surely, even though before today he would have scoffed anyone who had insisted that Torchwood was real – still knelt in front of him, their weapons pointed up into the sky.
"Get down if you don't want to get dead," the other man said as he prepared his weapon to release another pulse of blue energy.
"Who are you?"
"Captain Jack Harkness, Torchwood," he said and laid claim to another facet of this thing that threatened to drive Sherlock mad.
Sherlock dove for the pavement. "How many are there?" he asked.
"Millions."
"Millions."
"Yes."
"And you think you might win, do you?"
"Not trying to win. Just trying to buy some time."
"For what?"
A percussive sound reverberated in the close alley behind them. It was a low grinding noise under a higher, more ethereal sound, a trembling vibration that seemed to clear space, hollowing out an area void of even the elementals of oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon.
"For that," Jack Harkness said. Sherlock could hear a smile in the man's voice, but he didn't turn back to verify it – because the space that had been cleared by the strange noise was being filled with something that he found eerily familiar. It was a blue police box.
Sherlock heard his client let out a strangled sob as the form solidified and came firmly into this dimension. The advancing hordes of Daleks slowed to a stop. Everything in the universe had ground to a halt; even his breath had stopped as the air became heavy with the pregnant pause of a galaxy.
The door of the Doctor's TARDIS rattled slightly and finally opened. An odd young man with a messy flop of brown hair and, of all things, a bow tie securely fastened at his neck stepped out. He looked directly at the Counsellor and flashed a brilliant smile. He gestured up at the waiting Daleks. "A gift? Honey, you shouldn't have."