A/N: As always, thank you for reading and reviewing!

Chapter 24: New World

The kidnappers dragged Rose off the mattress onto her feet. They guided her down the stairs carefully and opened the front door. The cool night air greeted Rose. There were more than a few men or women with them. They pulled her into what Rose was certain was an unmarked van. Rose could hear the slide of the door before the van tore down the street.

One of Rose's kidnappers pulled off the tape from her mouth. It stung. "Rose Tyler?" the man asked again.

"Depends on who's asking," Rose retorted.

"Are you Rose Tyler?" he repeated again.

"My name is Hermione Granger." Rose replied irritably. "Now mind telling me why I've been kidnapped."

"If you're Hermione Granger, tell us how you happen to share Rose Tyler's DNA?" the man asked her, his voice triumphant as though he was throwing down his trump card.

Rose was about to make a witty comeback but she stopped herself. The voice was familiar, like someone on her old team. "David?" she asked cautiously.

There was a pause before the blindfolds went off and the ropes were cut away from her wrists. In front of her was her old team mate from Torchwood, which seemed so long ago. He had a stubble and there were bags under his eyes He looked much worse for wear from the last time she had seen him. Next to him were one other man and a woman. They both eyed her suspiciously, the lack of trust apparent.

Not for the first time since she had returned here, Rose wondered what had happened to the world since she had left. What had the Master put the world through. Rose felt a little guilty for somehow fast-forwarding through the entire experience.

"Rose?" he asked gingerly.

"Depends on who's asking," she replied, gentler this time with a little humour. David reached out to her and hugged her.

"We thought," he began, his voice trembling with emotion. "- that you were dead. There were rumours that you survived. Mickey said you would."

"Oh, God. Mickey, how is he?"

David released Rose from their embrace. His smile was forced and a little sad. "The Master still has him and Jake," David said. "There's very few of us, trying to make our way around. Underground movement."

Rose felt a hint of pride within. Her team was still her team; despite the Master, they would continue fighting.

David ran a hand through his shaggy, greasy hair. "We thought…" David started. He paused and took a deep breath. "We thought you died. There were rumours about the Tardis exploding and you with it."

Rose could not respond. Instead she turned to him and said, "Thank you for rescuing me."

David shrugged. "Don't mention it. It should be Stuart Brown, your placement officer who you should be thanking. He alerted us to it when the DNA results matched yours."

"I didn't think…and I was suspicious of him. Thought he was going to turn me in or something," said Rose.

David gave Rose a wry smile."He would have eventually turned you in to Torchwood. But he gave us a big enough heads up."

***

The drive was long and bumpy, Rose assumed that she was going back into the countryside, away from the Tardis. She wondered if this was going to be a trend in this new life of hers. Near the Tardis, away from the Tardis, near the Tardis again and even further away from the Tardis.

There was not much conversation in the van. Rose was introduced to the rest of David's team. Jo was their electronics engineer. Alex, the team's muscle, a man who Rose thought was unpleasant, kept eyeing her warily.

David mostly stole glances at Rose and looked away. He was a teammate of hers back in the Torchwood days. She wasn't that close to him then. Funny how things had to be referred to as the old Torchwood days. It was only yesterday for her.

Rose sighed. It had been three years since the Doctor and now she had to get back to the swing of time travel but just without the Doctor. The thought of traveling through space and time without the Doctor made her feel unbearably lonely. She hoped he was alright, wherever he was and that he was not alone.

"So where are we going?" Rose asked finally.

"Hiding," David answered succinctly.

"Hiding?" Rose asked, a little stricken.

David gave her a sharp look. "They're looking for you. I'm not about to lose you just as we've found you."

Rose bit her tongue, withholding a sharp retort that was forming. But before she could compose herself and speak her mind, David interrupted her with a wistful and sad "Where were you?"

Jo pretended not to be interested in the answer but Rose could see she was listening in.

"In the Tardis," she answered simply.

"For three months?" David asked incredulously. "We needed you," he muttered quietly.

Rose almost missed his words over the rattling of the van and the bumpy roads. Rose wondered how to answer him, to explain that the all powerful Time Lord ship could travel back and forwards in time. She couldn't. She pretended not to hear him instead.

***

Rose woke up when the cold had crept into her bones and it became impossible to sleep anymore. In her tent, Jo was snoring away softly, oblivious to the cold. Rose tried to make herself as comfortable as possible in her sleeping bag, pulling her winter coat on top of her to keep warm, but the cold was in her bones and her muscles ached from it.

Rose sat up and rubbed her arms, trying to warm herself up but it was not of much use. She could see her breath frosting in the air despite the darkness. She envied Jo who continued to sleep.

Rose pulled herself out of the sleeping bag, as quietly as possible and made her way out of the tent. They had set up camp in some bleak park, far away from human activity for their own safety. If Rose closed her eyes, and pretended this was another time, another day, she could have been on any standard mission for Torchwood. Nothing of the sort of trouble she was in.

Slightly further from the tent, Rose could see a small fire going and a man sitting by the fire. She pulled her ratty coat on tighter and trudged her way towards the fire. Hopefully it would warm her bones.

As she came closer to the fire, she recognized the man as David, who sat down on a tree stump, staring forlornly at the fire. He was far from the David she knew a few months ago, thin, his clothes a few sizes too big from all the weight he had lost.

David's ears must have picked up the sound of Rose walking to him: in a split second he was up and his gun was pointed at Rose. She put up her hands. 'David, it's me.'

It took a few seconds before David relaxed. 'Sorry,' he mumbled. 'Bit jumpy lately. The Master's reign does that to you.'

Rose nodded. 'It's fine.' She patted her jacket. 'Thanks for the gun.'

He tilted his head. 'Huh,' he grunted before sitting back down.

'Coffee by any chance?' Rose joked as looked at the dented kettle that David propped on the fire.

'It's been ages since that time in the Antarctic,' David said with a smile. 'No, no coffee.'

'Pity.'

He reached the inside of his coat pocket and pulled out a teabag. 'I was saving this one. Do you want it?'

'No!' Rose protested. 'Save it for later. Or you could buy me a cup of tea when this is all over.'

David's smile was sardonic. 'Do you ever feel that this is going to end though? That we could return things to the way things were? Christmas and tea — no one would be able to forget the Master taking over the world,' David leaned back.

The kettle whistled that water was ready.

'What I would do for coffee,' David said. He picked up two mugs and poured the hot water into both before handing one. Rose sipped her hot water and realized that David, despite her objections had given her his sole tea bag.

'David…, ' she said.

'Sometime in the three months that you disappeared, you became our hero of sorts. Rumours were you were trying to find a way to bring the Master down. To hear you've been abducted by an alien spacecraft, well, it's just a bit disappointing. But I cannot say that I'm not glad to see you alive' David said with a shrug.

'I was not abducted,' she muttered. 'Well not quite.' She thought it was best to change the topic. 'So he's been looking for me?'

'Yeah, don't know why. Reports from the inside say he's got a bit of an obsession with you.'

Her first thought was Harry which she squashed as quickly as it rose unbidden. 'Probably because of the Tardis,' said Rose thoughtfully.

David looked at her quizzically. 'The blue box that we found in the Tundra? What's that got to do with anything that's going on right now?'

Rose brought her knees close to her chest as she sipped the tea. 'What do you know of the Master?'

'Only that he's some sort of alien. Time Person, or something like that.'

'Time Lord,' Rose corrected. 'The blue box, well that's a Time Lord's ship.'

'It's a bit of a peculiar shape for a spaceship,' David said a little incredulously. At Rose's look, he shrugged. 'I know, I know, you're the expert. Doesn't mean I have to like what you say.'

'It's not actually meant to look like a blue box. This Tardis had its chameleon circuit broken.'

'You sound like you know quite a bit about these aliens,' David said, although it was not mentioned in admiration. More akin to weariness.

'Knew one of them. A long time ago.' Rose shivered, unintentionally. Despite sitting as close as possible to the fire, she still felt very cold inside, no matter how hard she rubbed her arms.

'Can you ask them to stop this crazy one? Ring them up or something?' David asked, his eyes on his mug. But there was no denying the hope in his voice.

'There was a war. They're all dead now. The Master is the last of the Time Lords,' Rose answered.

'Oh?' David said. He took a deep breath and cracked a smile. 'We're fucked,' he said cheerfully.

'We are indeed,' Rose nodded. They sat in silence. Rose held onto the mug tightly, hoping the hot liquid would warm her freezing hands. David seemed to have degenerated into moping, perhaps what she had said was not the best thing to say. He must still look at her as team leader, and hoped for some direction from her.

'What can we do? What is everyone's plan forward?' Rose said, careful to keep her tone upbeat.

'Honestly, we have pockets of dissention everywhere, but nothing near to worldwide domination. It really is a bit like everyone being under a spell. Some scientist reckons it might be the Archangel network, sending signals out, keeping the human race docile,' David said. 'But that's just a theory anyway. Doctor Jones seems to believe it though.'

'Doctor Jones? As in Doctor Martha Jones from UNIT?'

'Yeah. You know her?'

'Seems like a lifetime ago now, though,' Rose admitted.

David held onto his own mug so tightly, Rose thought it might break. 'But the plan as of right now is, we hide.'

'So, your plan is to hide and fight off random Cybermen we come across, and hope for the best?' Rose asked with a frown.

'Hey, it's not like we're not trying,' David replied irritably. 'Doctor Jones feels that our only hope is to bring the Archangel network down,' he sighed as he looked at the sky. The stars were no longer visible, daylight was coming. 'Short of strapping ourselves to rockets and blowing up every single satellite, it's just a fantastic idea with no way of solving it.'

***

'You're crazy. You're absolutely mental,' Jo said.

It was morning and the entire team was up around the fire, or what remained of the fire. Rose wished David would not let the fire die out, she was still very cold but he was so distracted by Rose's suggestion that he stopped feeding the fire.

'We need a telepathic machine for that to work,' Jo said.

'Which we have. If the Archangel network works on telepathy, we have an alien machine that does exactly that,' Rose pointed out.

Alex grunted rudely, utterly unimpressed by her suggestion.

This was difficult for Rose. It had never occurred to her how much she had gotten used to being listened to. From Vitex heiress to team leader in Torchwood, no one questioned her judgment or her orders. They had accepted and executed.

On the other hand, she had literally appeared from nowhere, Jo thought she was abducted by aliens, Alex generally associated her with the same bimbo they wrote about in the magazines whilst only David stood by her side loyally.

'Look,' she tried again. 'All it takes is rounding up the best brains who could hack into the Archangel network. That, or busting Mickey out of Torchwood because I'm quite sure he could do it,' Rose said as confidently as possible.

Having said that, it sounded more ridiculous aloud then it did in her head.

'And then plugging it into some alien hardware that our Lord and Master is hell bent on getting to,' Alex muttered. He folded his big bulky arms; the beef in this operation was not buying it.

'Can you please not call him our Lord and Master, it's a little bit creepy,' Rose snapped. The hero-worship of the Master was starting to bother her; even David had a certain amount of deference when he spoke about the Master. David was right, everyone was under a certain spell.

Alex turned a little pink but did not reply.

'So we broadcast tonight on the underground channels, asking for any brilliant scientists,' David said confidently. 'We gather whatever help we can and get the Tardis out of the city and to a safe place.'

'Getting Mickey out, rounding the rest of these scientists. No one has been able to break into Torchwood and we're talking like it's a walk in the park.' Alex growled. He kicked a bit of dirt from the ground, the spray of dirt almost killing off the flickering fire. Rose was irritated, she was still freezing despite the rising sun. 'Your idea is absolute bollocks. It's fucking impossible.'

'Torchwood has always been about the impossible,' Rose challenged back, standing up to Alex. He was much taller than she was, he stared down at her but she returned the glare with an equally haughty look.

It was moments like these, moments where the Doctor had inspired and taught her beyond just being his companion. What it meant to fight and continue fighting and face opposition without any fear.

It was Alex who backed down. He looked away, took a step back, the universal act of giving in. Rose had won this round.

'Alright. We break the team in two, we broadcast tomorrow about what we need and we'll try and get the Tardis out,' David said sensibly, not caring about the show of bravado between the two.

'I'll do what I can,' Alex growled. He tossed the remainder of his water to the dying fire, effectively dousing it completely.

Years of work in Torchwood had honed her instinct — her judgment of character, hopefully was much better than her teenage years. Rose decided, without any rational reason that she did not like Alex. There was just something about him — and if she were running her team, she would not have picked Alex. Although beggars can't be choosers at this point, she could only hope that David knew what he was doing.

***

They were back in the same van, making their way to the city. The group was silent, their nerves were mostly shot. Alex was a local, having played double agent since the rise of the Master. He was the one who had most of the contacts with the underground factions in the area and he was the one who would handle getting the Tardis removed from the Piazza. Rose was not sure if she could actually fly the Tardis, God knows she wanted to avoid asking for help from that giggly phantom in her head that made her feel like she was going crazy. A physical removal made most sense at this point.

He had left the group in the morning to get things sorted, and in the quiet, while Rose and David continued with the planning, she confessed her fears to him.

'Huh? Think he's alright,' replied David a little crossly to her concerns. 'Half the things we do and that can happen are due to him.'

'Are you sure?' Rose asked.

'If you're suggesting he's up to no good, I'm not listening,' David said, his voice hard. He shrugged. 'There's only that many Cybermen in the city. There aren't that many conversions, the Master has them under control.'

Rose could have easily continued the argument but any more dissent would put the team in danger. It was irrational to just distrust someone based on gut instinct — and if David trusted Alex, she ought to as well. She acquiesced but thought it best to be on her toes just in case.

Alex was at the wheel, while the rest hid in the back of the van. They passed through a few checkpoints, at each checkpoint, Rose unconsciously held her breath under the blanket. She could see how Alex was important to the team; at each security checkpoint they were let through easily. The Cybermen guards did not question Alex's credentials nor did they search through the van.

As soon as they got to the outskirts of the city, the van rolled to a gentle stop.

'This is as far as it goes. Everyone on foot,' said Alex. Jo, Rose and David crawled from under the sheets that hid them in the van and got out. Rose stretched, her body ached from the cold floor. She checked her gun, more from habit than need whilst David helped Jo with the equipment from the van.

Alex on the other hand, had his back on the side of the van, humming a tune instead of helping Jo. Jo grunted as David helped her lift the broadcasting equipment onto her back.

'Alright gang,' Alex said finally turning to face the team. 'we split up. Rose you said the Tardis is at the piazza?'

She nodded.

'Well, when you're all done with your little radio gig, meet me at the Piazza. God knows how I'm going to do it but that beastly thing should be strapped to a truck to pull it out,' he said with a sardonic grin. Without a word, he walked off from the three with a slight jaunty tune.

Rose watched him leave a distance before saying aloud, 'I don't trust him.'

She could see the flickering of doubt in David's face. Jo looked at David, with trepidation, as though hoping that he would say something to dissuade Rose's suspicions.

'He's helped us, countless times. Come on,' he reasoned instead. 'We don't have much time.'

The number of Cyberman patrolling were sparse. They moved wordlessly, through the shadows, hidden. For some reason, it just felt too easy for Rose - almost although it was intentionally left empty for them. Jo had identified a building that still had electricity running, an apartment that usually housed the upper echelons of Torchwood, or the new Torchwood that the Master ran.

'Strange,' said Jo as they arrived, hiding in one of the alleyways facing the building.

'What?' Rose asked.

'There's usually more Cybermen standing guard. It's empty here.'

David was about to continue forward when Rose grabbed his arm. 'No,' she said. She had been in this situation far too many times, with Torchwood and the Doctor. Her own instinct was screaming to get out of there, that there was something wrong.

'This is a trap,' Rose announced.

'Rose, don't be ridiculous. The Cybermen could be just lax for one evening,' David argued.

'Cybermen are never lax are they? They're about perfection and being thorough,' Rose said, the gears in her mind clicking away. Where were the Cybermen? Were they waiting for them up on the roof, the team moving like lambs to slaughter? What were the Cybermen really looking for — to lull them into a false sense of security?

'The Tardis,' Rose whispered.

Without thought, with the impulsiveness that should have left her as a teenager, Rose got up from that alleyway and started running towards where she left the Tardis.

'Rose!' David shouted, as she started running. He started after her, and Jo struggled to catch up.

'I can stop him,' the Bad Wolf's voice whispered in Rose's ears. 'I can save the Tardis.'

Rose pushed every muscle to work harder, willed her legs to move faster. It did not matter if any of the Cybermen found her, she had to get to the Tardis. She could hear her heart beating loudly in her ears, the sound of the wind beating against her and her breath as she pounded the streets.

As she reached the Tardis, she could see Alex leaning by the side of the Tardis, having a fag. He grinned appreciatively when he saw her.

'To think, Rose Tyler, that I've walked a million times through this piazza and was not able to see, a huge box like this, just standing here.'

'What have you done?' Rose demanded, her voice rising. As the emotions in her grew more confused, fear mixing with fury, the singing began. Rose felt that she was starting to lose control of herself, the same feeling of going under that she felt what was only a few days ago at Torchwood HQ.

Rose could hear the sounds of Cybermen marching towards them. She had no idea how many of them, all she could think of was the Tardis.

Both David and Jo caught up to the two of them soon after. The regret and the betrayal flashed on David's face as he looked at Alex casually smoking the cigarette. 'Why?' he asked, his voice gritty.

'I am tired of sleeping on the ground. Tired of fighting a war that we cannot win. The Master wants Rose Tyler, I give her Rose Tyler,' he said with a shrug.

'I can make this all disappear,' the voice said louder. There was a song, a song in her mind. Rose brought her hands to her ears, she could not handle the sound of singing, Alex's voice, the marching of the Cybermen, the fury that she could feel from David, which she should not be feeling, the movement of the earth and every atom and —

David made the choice for her. Wordlessly, he pulled out his gun and shot Alex a few times, one of the times right through the heart. Alex crumpled to the ground.

It was enough to shake her out of whatever funk she was in. She couldn't find the words to describe the horror she felt at David's cold actions.

'You're either with us or against us, there's no two ways about it,' David said, impassively.

Rose heard it again, that laughter, in a voice that was hers and yet not quite hers.

'He could have told the Master what we were planning,' Jo whispered, horrified.

The sound of the Cybermen's mechanical footsteps drew nearer. They did not have much time. And then the still of the night was punctuated by a voice that Rose had hoped never having to hear again. A voice that cause the blood in her veins to chill instantly.

'Ro-ooose! Roooo-se Tyler,' he sing-songed.

The Master was here.

Both Jo and David paled and froze in their place. Rose saw it and it was a matter of time before he captured the three of them and the Tardis. Without thinking, she yanked the key from around her neck, pressed it into David's hand. 'Run,' she said.

It was enough to shake David out of his own stupor. 'I'm not leaving you, God knows what he'll do to you,' he said fiercely.

'Go. If he wants me that badly, he can't hurt me. Go. Without the key, he can't get into the Tardis,' Rose said.

'Rose…'

'You know how we're going to solve this, don't you? Then rescue me from the Master,' she said harshly. 'Now go! Get out!'

They could see the Cybermen, marching in rows towards the three of them. David and Jo cast one last look at her before running away again.

Rose stood in front of the Tardis as defiantly as she could make herself to be as the Cybermen made their way towards the Tardis. They stood in a line surrounding her on all sides, menacingly surrounding her.

'Halt, or you will be deleted!' said one of the Cybermen in front.

'I surrender,' Rose said, reminiscent of so many years ago. 'I surrender.'

'Although we don't want that to happen. No deletion necessary,' interrupted the Master loudly, his voice echoing on the walls. Through the spaces in between the Cybermen, Rose could see a man, walking up to them, his gait was jaunty as though taking a stroll in the park.

As he approached them, the Cybermen parted, akin to Moses parting the Red Sea.

'Ah, Rose Tyler,' the Master said with open arms. He was all in black, down to a black tie and a black coat. His face was still peasant, and to a certain extent, kind. 'Welcome home.'