The Tyler Factor

By Lumendea

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Nightmare: Falling

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.

…

Rose's eyes flew open and she gasped for air only to start coughing as thick ashy air spilled into her mouth. Her eyes began to water as she looked around and found herself in a rocky hillside with thick dark smoke billowing in the air around her. Rose covered her mouth and carefully climbed to her feet. It took her a moment to realise that she had switched memories. The city was long gone and what looked like quarries were barely visible to her through the smoke. She was dressed in a worn out and itchy dress with sturdy old fashioned looking boots. Looking around Rose tried to see if she could find someone.

"Rose!" a voice called out behind her, hushed and low. "Come back inside, it's not safe. The masters will find you!"

She spun around just in time to catch sight of someone ducking into a tiny cave opening. It was positioned in the shadows of several boulders and Rose doubted she'd have spotted it easily. But she hesitated and turned to look back through the smoke. In the distance, she thought she could see large metal ships moving through the pollution and a hint of the city skyline, but the mere sight of these sent a terrified shiver through her. Rose wasn't sure where it had come from, but after another moment she turned and headed into the cave.

Up ahead it went down sharply and the low light from the smoky outside quickly faded away. Thankfully just as she was becoming nervous Rose stumbled around a corner and spotted the flickering glow of a line of small lamps. They were electric and flickered wildly, but they gave off a faint glow that when combined let her see the path worn into the rock. She sighed in relief and began to follow the pathway, keeping her eyes open for anyone else.

The cavern seemed to stretch ahead of her forever and the small lamps didn't give off much light. Yet Rose had the odd sense that she was seeing better than normal. Rose put her hand on the cavern wall in an attempt to keep steady as she carefully navigated her way down a slope in the pathway. She nearly lost her balance twice and felt oddly faint.

Then the caves opened up and Rose stepped into a large open space filled with the sounds of people and the low flickering of lamps. She could see tents and long tables set up everywhere and a small river running through the cavern with multiple water wheels on it.

Curious, Rose slipped into one of the tents at the far end of the camp only to gasp in shock. Nude dead bodies were piled up in a large tent that Rose stepped into at the edge of the camp in the cavern. The stench of decay hit her hard and sent her stumbling back. The bodies were stacked neatly one on top of each other in an alternating pattern like a flesh Jenga puzzle. Just thinking of such a comparisons made Rose duck out of the tent and back into the main area. Somehow the smell was confined to the tent and Rose was grateful for it even as it confused her. She looked around the camp and noticed that there were only a few people moving about and noticed several small dark areas where small niches were dug into the side of the cavern.

Deciding that those were probably safer than the tents, Rose walked forward and peered into one. Dark eyes stared back at her out of a frail and gaunt face. It was a girl about her age with twisted arms and legs sitting amongst several other deformed people. One of them reached towards her and Rose saw deep scars covering their limbs and small electronic plates fused to their skin and bones in places.

She just stood there staring, her mind trying to understand what it was that she was seeing. Someone stepped up behind her and Rose tensed as she heard a deep sigh.

"Poor things," a gravely male voice said out loud. "But luckier than most." She turned to see a tall thin man of Asian descent with several long scars over his face. He gave her a smile with dirty teeth. "We're the really lucky ones uh Rose, never captured."

"Right," she answered weakly feeling sick to her stomach.

The man gave her a worried look but nodded hesitantly before he slipped away. She watched him go for a moment. There was a tingling sense of him being so familiar to her, but it slipped away like the memory of a dream. The irony of that comparison wasn't lost on Rose. She turned back to the people who was shivering together and as bile rose in her throat she walked away.

All through camp, there were signs of a very terrible life. Children were working alongside adults in moving heavy stones, grinding flour of some kind and even a few helping to stack bodies in tents. She could hear whispers about the 'masters', 'resistance' and 'death' all around her. Fear was creeping up her spine at the constant onslaught of despair from all sides. A group of armed men and women stumbled into the cavern with ashen faces and several more of the weak and sickly looking humans who had wires connected to them.

She stayed at the side as the people were all but dumped into another little hole and the fighters went off in the other direction. No one spoke to her and there was a tense silence suddenly hanging over the place. Rose walked toward the hole full of new arrivals and looked in at them. They looked even worse than the others with red bloodshot eyes, visible veins and small pieces of technology hooked up to them that looked very painful. One of them was a child no older than seven who looked at her fearfully.

Rose's knees began to buckle even as she closed her eyes and took slow deep breaths. She turned and stumbled away from the hole and to the edge of the camp. No one moved to speak with her or help her. "This isn't real," Rose whispered to herself. "This isn't a part of your life or your world. It's terrible and sad that there are worlds where this is history, but it isn't your world."

Laughter echoed around Rose in the cavern and she couldn't help but shiver from the sound. In front of her, the sickly humans didn't seem to notice anything and just huddled closer to together with laboured breathing. Around them, the gases billowed out of the vents and the low growling in the distance continued.

"This isn't real, I'm not really here," Rose told herself again even as the giggling became louder.

"Oh look at the frightened little Defender of Earth. It's not so easy now is it, to be brave when you don't have your Doctor or the Guardians watching over you. I suppose in the end you're just a little girl who just lost Daddy again."

"What do you want?" Rose demanded as the Nightmare Man slunk out of the shadows with a wide grin.

"Life," the Nightmare man breathed happily. "Your nightmares, your fear, they're giving me such power. One more little nightmare from you, and I'll be in your world."

"You can't," Rose insisted trying to sound brave and confident and failing horribly.

"I'll send everyone into an eternal sleep. A whole world of nightmares for me to feed upon. And I'll grow stronger and stronger," the Nightmare Man told her gleefully. "Oh, it's going to be so good. And it's all because of you, Rosie."

"Where are you from?" Rose asked, her fingers clenching in the fabric of her dress.

"What?" the Nightmare Man asked, tilting his head at her.

"What planet are you from?"

"I'm from nowhere. I'm from everywhere."

"You're just an alien, and I've stopped aliens before," Rose said both to herself and the Nightmare Man.

"But wouldn't it be terrifying if I was so much more than that? Get ready for the end of the world, Rose," the Nightmare giggled with widening eyes. "An eternal sleep of nightmares. Oh, and it's all your fault. You're a nice little crack between the worlds, a link between realities that I can force my way through. Goodbye Howling, hello planet Earth!"

…

Sarah Jane sighed loudly and sat down in the armchair with her eyes on Rose. There was a nervous energy beneath her skin as she tried to figure out what to do. She couldn't help but feel irritated with the girl even as a tiny smirk escaped her. Things always seemed to go sideways when Rose Tyler was around.

Two figures rushed into the attic and it took Sarah Jane a moment to identify them and calm down. She nodded in greeting to Sharon and Shareen but wasn't offended when they barely acknowledged her. Sharon knelt down next to Rose, her face completely calm as she checked her friend's pulse and examined her eye movement. Sarah Jane found her respect for the medical student growing at how professional she was even when confronted by something like this with a friend. Then again she reflected with a small smile, Sharon and Shareen had been exposed to plenty of strangeness over the years thanks to their friendship with Rose.

"Well she's asleep," Sharon announced with a loud sigh. "Not that I'm telling you anything you don't already know."

"Anything else?" Shareen asked as she hovered nearby and gently brushed a stray blonde hair out of Rose's face.

"No signs of trauma," Sharon replied with a frown. "But her face is showing signs of distress and her body is pretty tense for being asleep. I'd have to agree that she's definitely having a nightmare." Sharon reached out and gently pinched Rose's arm, but there was no response. "No reaction to outside stimuli. Under normal circumstances, I'd want to take her to the hospital as this appears to be some kind of comatose state."

"We can't risk that yet," Sarah Jane insisted with a shake of her head. "I just Rose could have told me more of what is happening."

Sharon and Shareen exchange knowing smiles that irritated Sarah Jane, but she said nothing. With a shake of her head, Shareen put her hand on Rose's head and gave her an affectionate look.

"Don't take it personally Sarah Jane," Shareen told her. "She's pretty paranoid about keeping timelines straight."

"She has to be, her whole life is a tangled mess of events that overlap each other," Sharon added with a chuckle. "And there are things that even she doesn't know."

"Careful," Shareen told her friend sternly. "We're the secret keepers of that one."

Sarah Jane gave the young women curious looks, but shook her head and turned back to Spock who was finally getting close to finishing his scan of his system. She'd have a talk with Rose once things were back to normal about adjusting Spock's settings so he could do other things at the same time. She'd learned long ago that timing was critical. A yawn escaped her despite the tension in the room and Sarah Jane blinked back a wave of exhaustion.

….

Rose has moved off by herself to try and regain some semblance of balance. Climbing up the slope of the cavern opposite the way she came in, Rose found a quiet spot to think where she could clearly see everything. The Nightmare Man had hinted that fear fed him and she wondered why he was using these sorts of memories rather than drawing on more simple primal sorts of fears. Sitting down on a rock, Rose surveyed the camp and swallowed by a rush of bile. Maybe she was giving him too much credit… or maybe not enough. After all, she couldn't wake up, stimuli wasn't doing anything to help her and that was no simple task.

Maybe it wasn't just about simple jump scare sort of fear. Maybe he was trying to immerse her in a hopeless long term kind of terror. Force her to confront a life where she was helpless. Rose nibbled on her lip, already feeling a little bit better from being able to work through that much. Thought was the enemy of fear, it kept fear from transforming into primal panic and helped you work your way out of being afraid. With a deep breath, Rose looked up towards the cavern roof and tried to think of some way to get away from the Nightmare Man's power.

Then the cavern began to rumble like an earthquake and everyone below in the camp began to scream and run. From her place up the slope Rose flinched as she saw people climbing over and crushing each other as they tried to head down the cave. She frowned in confusion and looked around wondering what was upsetting them so much. Then she caught sight of metal figures marching down the entrance path, their footsteps adding to the rumbling sound. Each figure was vaguely humanoid but much bulkier and heavily armed like some kind of battle robot.

Rose's breath caught in her throat as the things began to fire into the crowd with energy weapons. Red beams of light illuminated the cavern with a violent red glow. She couldn't move, Rose wanted to, but for some reason, it felt like she was chained to the bolder and simply couldn't move. The metal figures marched through the camp, not even going around tents, but walking straight through them. Humans fell down in front of them and were crushed. The body of tents collapsed and corpses were sent flying.

The rumbling of the cavern grew worse and worse. A high pitched sound made Rose flinch and grit her teeth. As the roof began to shake even more violently Rose looked up towards it. She gasped softly as she watched the rocks above her head begin crumbling. Large boulders came falling and crushed humans, robots and what little remained of the camp. Bright lights appeared far above and Rose shut her eyes against the sudden onslaught. Then as her vision cleared and the sounds of the screams began to fall away with the dying Rose opened her eyes and looked up. A large ship was hovering just above the huge hole with bright searchlights shining down into the devastation.

She couldn't help it. Her heart was racing, her body felt frozen and rage and terror were clawing at her chest. Rose screamed.

…

Sarah Jane shook her head in an attempt to stay awake even as she yawned loudly. For some reason over the last few minutes, she'd begun to feel very sleepy.

"Mistress," K-9 called out. "I am detecting unknown radiation in the house."

"Radiation?" Sarah Jane asked with a slight drawl as she tried to wake herself up.

"Yes Mistress," K-9 answered rolling towards her. "You must leave the house immediately, further delay will make escape impossible."

She blinked several times and turned to look towards the girls only to gasp slightly. Shareen was sprawled out on the floor with her head slumped against the sofa by Rose's feet and Sharon was snoring softly with her head near Rose's. Forcing herself to stand up, Sarah Jane shook her head again and started walking towards the doorway.

"Johnny!" she called out loudly. "Luke!" Sarah Jane swayed in the doorway as her knees began to give out.

"Mistress!" K-9 said with a hint of worry. "Please resume seated position."

"I'll fall asleep K-9," Sarah Jane argued. "Something is affected us."

"Affirmative, but that is no longer avoidable Mistress, please resumed seated position to avoid injury."

The robot dog was right, she realised with a jolt of worry. She was falling asleep and there was nothing she could do about it. If she tried to get down the stairs….

"K-9, you and Spock have to work together," Sarah Jane told him as she stumbled back to the chair. "We're counting on both of you."

"Affirmative Mistress,"

Sarah Jane sunk down into the armchair as her eyes began to feel even heavier. "What is doing this?" she asked softly as her eyelids slid closed. "What does it what?" Her last words were slurred as Sarah Jane felt herself slip away. She fell asleep.