Sassywriterchick no longer writes this story.
Rory ran inside the TARDIS and put the ring that Amy had given him back earlier into its red case. Then, he took a deep breath and stepped outside again, to find a woman and a young boy standing in front of him. "Well, that was quick," Ambrose said. "Was it?" replied Rory, not knowing what else to say. "It's great that you came," Ambrose said.
Elliot paced around the TARDIS. "Bit retro... What is it, your portable crime lab?" Rory, feeling a bit uncomfortable, said, "Oh, uh, sort of..."
Ambrose introduced herself, extending her hand. "I was the one who called. I run a Meals on Wheels for the whole valley. This is my son, Elliot." Rory waved briefly. "Where's your uniform?" Elliot asked innocently, but Ambrose scolded, "Don't be cheeky, Elliot. It's plain clothes! CID, is it? Anyway, it's over here." Ambrose walked over to a faraway spot, and Rory, still horribly confused, started following. "Um... okay," he said to himself.
The Doctor, Amy, and Rose ran over to a fence. "Restricted Access, No Unauthorized Personnel," the Doctor read. Rose stepped forward and pulled out a sleek, black pen from the pocket of her jeans. "We can't have that, can we?" Rose said, and she smiled mischievously. She pointed the pen at the lock, pressed a button on the cap, and watched the Doctor's reaction as it began to glow blue and buzz. The lock opened with a loud clang, and the Doctor went slack-jawed.
Amy tried to intervene by saying, "That is breaking and entering!", but the Doctor dismissed it. "Hush, Pond." He grabbed the sonic device and stared at it. "Wait a minute... This is Matron Cofelia's sonic pen! Where in the world did you get this?"
"From a bin," Rose said simply. Seeing she needed to elaborate from the look on the Doctor and Amy's face, she continued. "Well, I found it, but I couldn't use it properly until I had it modified by the TARDIS about a week ago. I copied the software on your screwdriver and transferred it to mine after wiping the older stuff."
"You stole my screwdriver? You know what, never mind, just... be careful," he warned, and tossed it back to her.
Amy rolled her eyes and stepped through the gate. Rose smirked silently as the Doctor searched the inner pockets of his tweed jacket for his sonic screwdriver. He whipped it out like some sort of superhero and tested it just to make sure it worked. Rose couldn't help laughing at that quirk of his! The events of the previous 24 hours completely forgotten, she walked ahead.
"Are you sure Rory's going to catch us up!?" the Doctor called to Amy.
Ambrose had led back to the gloomy-looking graveyard. "It's a family plot, see? My aunt, Gladys, died six years ago. My husband, Alan, died a few weeks back. We lived in a house two doors down. There's not many of us left up here now."
"Mum, he doesn't care about that. He wants to know about the dead bodies!" Elliot whined. Ambrose, who realized she had been rambling, carried on. "Yes, sorry! Well, they always wanted to be buried in the same plot. Together. But when we went to bury Uncle Alan, Gladys wasn't there. Gone. Body, coffin, everything." Elliot was now standing by his mother, and Rory stared at the hole in the ground. "What?" he said utterly confused now.
Ambrose continued, everything just pouring out of her mouth. "The mad thing is, on the surface, the grave was untouched. No signs of it being messed with." Rory didn't know what to say except, "I'm sorry, I don't understand." The worried woman reiterated. "Nobody has touched this grave since my aunt was buried. But when we dug it open, the body was gone. How is that possible?" Ambrose seemingly searched Rory's face for answers.
Amy, Rose, and the Doctor were walking in a dark, narrow cave. Rose's sonic made no sound, but glowed blue. Flashlight was one of the few non-sonic settings in the software, which she supposed would come in handy a lot during her travels. What was really bugging her was that is didn't do wood.
"What about now, do you feel it now?" Rose and the Doctor both looked at Amy expectantly, like she was supposed to feel something that wasn't a mix of concrete and dirt under her feet. "I honestly don't know what you two are on about," she said for what felt like the billionth time.
"The ground doesn't feel like it should," the Doctor said, suddenly alert. "It's ten years in the future, maybe how this ground feels is how it always feels," Amy reasoned. "No, I've been centuries in the future, and the ground's never felt like this," Rose said. The Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver and flicked it open. "Hear that? Drill in startup mode. After-waves of a recent seismological shift," he said, "and bluegrass." The Doctor pulled out the tuft of grass, tasted it, and spit it out. Rose cracked up. "Oh please, have you always been this disgusting?" Amy asked, and he answered, "No, that's recent. And what's in... here?" The threesome stepped through a threshold to find a woman working at a computer in some sort of drill lab.
"Hello!" the Doctor replied cheerily, and the woman, Nasreen, looked slightly aghast. "Who are you? What are you doing here?" She gazed upon Amy. "And what are you wearing?" Amy rolled her eyes. "I dressed for Rio."
The Doctor held up his psychic paper. "Ministry of Drills, Earth, and Science, new ministry, quite big, just merged, lots of responsibility on our shoulders, don't like to talk about it. What are you doing?" Nasreen walked away from the monitor. "None of your business."
Rose hopped off a toolbox she had been sitting on and tried to speak in an authoritative voice. "Miss, we have been sent here by the Ministry to check the status of this project. We believe something's going wrong," she said firmly, and the Doctor looked at the computer screen.
"Nonsense, everything's going very well. We just hit 21 kilometers yesterday," Nasreen protested. "Where are you getting these readings from?" the Doctor asked. "Under the soil," Nasreen replied, as if it were perfectly obvious.
Mac lumbered in. "Drill's up and running again. What's going on? Who are these people?" he asked. "Amy, Rose, the Doctor. We're not staying, are we, guys?" Amy asked in her usual Scottish demeanor. The Doctor, however, was too busy studying the mysterious hole in the floor to answer her question. "Why is there a big patch of earth in the middle of the floor?"
Nasreen, obviously tired of this man asking too many questions, said, "We don't know. It just appeared overnight!" The Doctor stood up purposefully fast, which Rose observed made Amy jump. "Good, right, you all need to get out of here very fast," the Doctor said once again looking at the small computer monitor. "Why?" Nasreen and Rose asked at the same time. Just because Rose was the TARDIS-Time Lady Girl, it didn't mean she could read the Doctor's mind!
The Doctor asked Nasreen's name, and then pointed at the strings of code appearing on the drill software. "Look at the screens, Nasreen. Look at your readings. It's moving!" the Doctor said urgently. Mac rushed over to where The Doctor and Nasreen were standing and said, "Hey, that's specially designed equipment! Get away from it!"
"Oi, in case you haven't heard, we're here on a very special mission, sent by the Ministry of Drills..." Rose stopped mid sentence, and looked at The Doctor for help, but got none. Amy was kneeling by the smoking hole. "Doctor, the steam, is that a good thing?" she asked. The Doctor was on a roll now, hands flapping. "No, shouldn't think so. It's shifting, when it shouldn't be shifting!" Rose stood up again. "I can sense it. The ground shifting, the plates moving. The invasion of the reptiles begins now," Bad Wolf said as her eyes glowed yellow.
"What the hell?" Mac said, right before the ground shook violently. Holes formed suddenly in the concrete, and everyone jumped out of the way. "Earthquake?" Amy asked over the rumbling. "Doubt it, because it's only happening under this room!" the Time Lord said. Amy tried to jump over a hole to grab Mac, but the soil crumbled under her weight. She struggled as she slid under like she was in quicksand.
Rose's mind flashed back to holding onto that lever for dear life, the Doctor- her Doctor- shouted her name as the lever pulled her towards the parallel world. Her hands slipped off the lever... He was gone... Her vision went black as she thudded to the floor.
Woohoo! How did you like Rose's new sonic pen? I thought she would've salvaged one somewhere, because she needed to defeat the rogue Cybermen in Pete's World! Anyhow, see you all next chapter!