Defender of the Earth

By Lumendea

Chapter Fourteen: Empty Earth: The Pendant

Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who or any of the spinoff material and I gain no income off of this story, just the satisfaction of playing with the characters.

…

Running was something Rose was getting better at every time she encountered aliens. She had run from Spellman holding the Doctor's hand when she was eleven. Rose had run from the Mona Lisa's Rider in the International Gallery with Sharon and Shareen. Running hadn't been needed with Eve, but there had been a lot of hiking involved in fixing her friends ship. Needless to say, putting some distance between them and the robots wasn't difficult. Of course running from oversized human shaped toy looking robots didn't make her feel much better about things.

Rose finally stopped in front of the electronics shop and said to Gavin, "Thanks for that."

"I'm surprised chucking a bin at it worked," Gavin admitted with a laugh.

"Well you got both of them," Rose said. "They didn't see you coming." Rose took a deep breath and looked back the way they had come, "Okay so now there are robots in the mix. Big robots that look way too much like children's toys."

"I never had toys like that," Gavin replied with a forced laugh. Nodding, he pointed into the shop window, "Look at the telly. It's the same thing."

Rose nodded at the television in the shop window and pulled out her phone to compare them. "Yeah, it's still picking up the same thing. No changes on that front." Rose sighed, "I wish I knew what it meant. It reminds me of math equations more than sentences."

"It might be their programming," Gavin suggested as he leaned against the window. "They are robots. At least I think they are."

"I think so," Rose said. "They move very slowly like all their part are trying to work out how to react, but I doubt they would be transmitting their program code," Rose muttered more to herself than Gavin. "Thing is why transmit a signal when there is just us." Rose frowned and glanced back at the screen, "Maybe it is for us."

"But we don't understand it," Gavin reminded her.

"They may not know that," Rose said. "Those robots may think that we know exactly what this says. They have two legs, walk upright and have two arms with hands and a head. They may be operating on the assumption that we're similar to them." Looking back up the road, Rose sighed and started moving back towards the robots.

"Where are you going?" Gavin asked, grabbing her hand.

"I'm going to follow them," Rose said. "Those robots are the first thing that has changed in six hours. They are the first real clue that we've had. We've got to track them, if they landed nearby they might be going back to base."

"We need to get away from them Rose," Gavin said. "It looked like that thing was pointing a gun at you."

"I know," Rose said gently. "But the more I know about them, the more I can learn about them, the better chance we've got," Rose told him. "You don't have to come with me. Wait at HQ for me," Rose added.

"No," Gavin said. Then he smiled slightly, "What if you need saving again?"

Rose smiled slightly in return and they started jogging back up the road towards where the robots had been. They came to a three-way intersection with no sign of the machines nearby. Gavin joined Rose in looking down each street, but nothing gave either of them a clue. Turning back to Rose, Gavin asked, "Back to HQ or split up and search."

"We search the surrounding area together," Rose said. "We don't split up."

Gavin nodded and calmly followed Rose through the twisting streets of London. They had both become used to the silence around them and the sight of the empty streets. Everything was still and they encountered only one dog running around. It was hard to be sure if anything had been disturbed by the robots or one of the dogs running loose in the city. Rose had pulled out the snacks from her bag to share with Gavin as they searched. After four hours of wandering in hopes of finding the strange robots, Rose finally sighed.

"I don't think we're going to find anything right now. For all we know those robots teleported somewhere else and we won't find them. At this point it will take hours to get back to HQ," she told Gavin.

"We don't have to go back there," Gavin reminded her. "The whole of London is open to us right now."

"I think we're better off with a familiar location," Rose told him. "You live in that area and I've at least been there before. I don't want to get stuck out in a strange area in the dark. This day has been creepy enough. Those robots arrived after the first six hours and we don't know what the second six hours will bring."

Gavin nodded in agreement and they started navigating their way back towards where they had begun when the odd signal had started hours ago. They walked back towards the small diner they had made their base of operations. Gavin remained very quiet, glancing down each alley and street that they passed to make sure that the robots weren't nearby. Rose played with her pendant and kept trying to figure out what small detail she had overlooked. It must be something small and ordinary if she didn't see it as unusual. When they arrived, Rose sat down at the table they had eaten at and glared up at the telly that had the signal flashing across it. Gavin went into the kitchen and returned with two glasses of water. Nodding her thanks, Rose began to sip at the water thoughtfully.

"Okay," she said after a long moment. "There are alien robots, one yellow and one red on Earth. This whole thing now makes even less sense than it did before."

"It never made sense," Gavin told her, but Rose ignored him.

"These robots can clear everyone else off of the planet in a millisecond and prevent any damage to the surrounding in the process except for the two of us. Now they have come looking for us and yet with that kind of amazing technology they can't find us." Rose leaned back in her chair, "They must have sensors and right now we should be showing up bright as beacons as the only humans left in the whole of London."

Rose stood up and started pacing while Gavin remained seated and watched her. "I need to calm down and try to think about this logically. There must be an explanation as to why they couldn't take us. The robots wouldn't be here if we were still supposed to be here. I've travelled in space, but you haven't so that can't be it. I've met aliens before, but you haven't. What applies to just us?"

Rose fingered her pendant and froze. Gavin leaned forward in concern as Rose suddenly looked down at her necklace and groaned. "Rose," he asked softly.

"Give me the blonde award," Rose sighed. "There was an energy signal yesterday that UNIT picked up and my pendant has been flashing on and off for the last month. If it caught that first transmission, it would have protected me from any technology using that same energy signature. If it turned on at six this morning, I wouldn't have been affected by the teleport!" Rose shouted, "That's why I'm still here! The pendant protected me from their technology so they couldn't take me! And doing something on this scale must consume a lot of power, so they could only do it once hence now sending in the robots."

Rose paused and turned to Gavin as she held up her necklace, "Do you have anything like this?"

"No," Gavin shouted. "Why do you keep asking me stuff like that? I'm a regular university student. I'm nineteen years old. I go to school, I do my papers, I work at a shop and I watch football with my mates. I've never met aliens or seen aliens before today. I'm not important and I'm not special. I'm not like you," Gavin finished with a sigh, "I'm normal."

"Yet you're still here," Rose reminded him as she crossed her arms. She sighed a moment later and added, "Fine, we'll operate on your insistence that you're still here by accident."

"We've been out here trying to figure it out for hours," Gavin said gently. "We had breakfast, but it is five and we haven't eaten anything else. We should think about getting something to eat and figuring out a place to sleep tonight."

"I hate just giving up," Rose said.

"It has been almost twelve hours," Gavin reminded her. "We don't know what might happen at six tonight. It is getting late and I don't think staying here would be a good idea."

"Yeah," Rose admitted with a glance down at her watch. "Do you have any thoughts?"

"My place isn't too far from here," Gavin said. "It will take us about half an hour to get there and it isn't a luxury flat or anything, but we can sleep there. I've got food and electricity is still working."

"Fine," Rose agreed. "I just… it has never taken this long before to find out what is happening. Normally when I deal with aliens it is over within a few hours."

Gavin smiled at her and shrugged, "I'm still hoping that Doctor of yours shows up."

"I am too," Rose admitted as she followed Gavin down the road towards his flat.

Gavin's flat was very basic, but clean and tidy which mildly surprised Rose given what she knew of Mickey's habits. He quickly offered her the bed in his room, but Rose assured him that the comfortable sofa in the common area would be just fine. On a whim, Rose turned on the telly and started drawing several of the characters in one of Gavin's notebooks. She listened to Gavin working in his kitchen on something to eat as she drew the characters. There were roughly thirteen characters that she could identify, but Rose didn't know enough about languages to determine if they were numbers or letters. Groaning, she set the notebook in front of her and stared at the screen.

"Rose," Gavin said to get her attention. Looking up, Rose smiled as Gavin handed her a cup of tea. Gavin looked down at the paper and back at the screen. "They are flashing so fast, how could you tell them apart?"

"Artist remember," Rose teased. "Details are my bread and butter. Of course, that is true in science as well so they really matter to me."

When Gavin went into the kitchen to start making food, Rose decided to get more comfortable. Removing her shoulder bag, she set in next to her on the sofa and toed out of her shoes, but kept the laces tied in case she needed to get move fast. Pulling out her special journal, Rose stared down at it for a moment thinking about the Doctor and White and Black. The two strange beings seemed to hint that it was up to her to figure out. She had managed to stop Horath without the Doctor's help and the whole universe had been at stake then. Now she just felt overwhelmed by how long it was taking, the clues were few and far between and she regretted running so far from the robots when they may have been her only chance.

Hoping that it might help her think, Rose used a pen to start recording the details of the day and included her meeting with the two strange men. She glanced back over her shoulder at Gavin and started drawing him as well and recording the various details he had told her. Rose believed Gavin when he said that he did not know what was going on, but out of the millions of people in London, he was the only other person left. There had to be a reason why he was still on Earth, and maybe he just didn't know it yet.

Gavin produced a simple meal and they ate in relative silence, both thinking about the other events of the day. Pausing, they both listened when Rose's mobile phone alarm sounded the twelve-hour mark. They heard nothing, no signal and no strange noises. Gavin relaxed and went back to his dinner while Rose went to the window and looked out. Since Gavin lived on the fifth floor Rose had a decent view of the city. Sunset wasn't for another two hours, but in the shadows of the buildings, Rose could see street lights turning on. Lights were visible to her in the building across the street that had been left on by people that morning, but much of the city stretched out before her was dark.

Glancing back at the telly, Rose sighed at the odd symbol patterns and rubbed her forehead. She went back to the sofa and examined her drawings of the symbols in the notebook. Tearing out the page, Rose placed it in her journal and leaned back to stare at the symbols. Somehow, she nodded off and fell asleep, stretched out on the sofa.