Domination: Volume Two

Episode Two: The Living Dead

Featuring the Ninth Doctor and Lauren Dunbar

Earth, 1388.

John Grant and his son stared out over the battlefield, ready to fight. They were both members of the Cult of the Red Grove and this is what they had signed up for. The enemy, a savage pack of marauding aliens known as Owl Orcs, stood opposite them in their ranks. John and his son stood amongst the members of the Cult of the Red Grove, clutching their swords and shields, which had the symbol of a red tree painted on them.
"Advance!" John called, glancing at his son before leading his men into battle. They charged towards the Owl Orcs and the Owl Orcs charged towards them, wielding swords that sparkled with blue light. The Owl Orc leader, a tall strong beast, struck down John's men, one by one, and John decided to take the leader on.
"Little man, you have no power." the leader snarled, revealing his fangs, "This world shall be ours."
"Not while the Cult of the Red Grove lives on. Not while I still have breath in my lungs!" John cried, swiping at the leader with his sword and jabbing towards his chest. The leader deflected the attack and struck John's shield, making it clatter to the ground. John, now only holding his sword, tried to stab the Orc leader but with no luck. The Orc leader then stabbed John in the chest, killing him.'

John's son, meanwhile, was taking on the Orc leader's adjutant alone. He had no sword but a shield and was successfully deflecting attacks. Until he saw his dead dad.
"Dad!" he screamed, running over to the body, tears dribbling down his face, and dropping his sword. He knelt by his father's side, only to be stabbed by the Orc leader. John's son collapsed onto his dad's body, only just glimpsing a tall blue police box materialise. The last thing he saw was a short man carrying an umbrella with a question mark handle emerge from the police box.

630 years later...

It was falling. Part of it was sentient and it could feel every sensation of falling. The rush of the wind, the cool temperatures, the decrease in altitude. It could also feel the great power that surged through it. It was time, space and the fire of reality contained within a small black sphere. And it was falling to Earth.

Another strange object that had already arrived on Earth was a tall blue police box, which had suddenly appeared at the ruins of Westham Abbey. Inside this police box, the Doctor was examining the controls on the TARDIS.
"So, you're sure Rose is here? Because the TARDIS arrived after she arrived at that spaceport." Lauren said, not helping him.
"Certainly. Rose stole a shuttle and the one place she would definitely go would be home." the Doctor confirmed, before adding, "But we're not at Rose's home unfortunately. We've got a bit of clearing up to do."
This made Lauren feel curious.
"Clearing up? I thought Rose was more important." she said.
"Well, a long time ago, there was a war. The Time War." the Doctor explained, making some final adjustments, "And I ended it. Ever since then, I've been clearing up the mess made after it. That could be small things, like that Gallifreyan book in Sutekh's temple, or big things, like a Dalek in Utah. The TARDIS detected the energy signature of a powerful weapon so I thought we should pick it up before anyone else gets their hands on it."
"Good plan."

It didn't like being hot. It became singed as it fell towards the ground and it didn't like that. This world was not ideal. It needed to leave its prison. It had a function. It had a purpose. It needed to be used. It knew, of course, that the war had ended millennia ago but it sensed the presence of a Time Lord. There was a TARDIS. A Time Lord. And someone who was so far away from her own time. It realised that it had been wrong in its original judgement. This planet was ideal.

The Doctor and Lauren left the TARDIS and Lauren immediately noticed that they were near some sort of castle. She looked up and also realised that the weapon the Doctor mentioned hadn't actually arrived yet.
"Err, I suppose that flaming object in the sky is our weapon, yeah?" she said, pointing at the flaming sphere that was falling to a spot near to them.
"Ah. Seems that the TARDIS has arrived at the wrong time." he replied, looking awkward, before adding, "Again."
They both set off towards the falling orb.

DCI Allison Reynolds and her partner, DS Martin Blake, had already set up a cordon around the crash site when the Doctor and Lauren arrived. Allison immediately noticed the Doctor, because she had seen the files on all of his incarnations, and rushed over to them.
"Doctor, good to see you!" Allison cried, noticing Lauren and asking, "Who's this?"
"Ah. Allison, meet Lauren Dunbar." he replied, before saying to Lauren, "Lauren, meet DCI Allison Reynolds. I've met her a few times before and the fact that the police are here worries me."
"Why?" Lauren asked, "This should be a simple job."
"Exactly."
"What should be a simple job?" Allison wondered, not knowing what they were talking about.
"You know the thing that fell down here? We're here to get it." Lauren explained, "Can you take us to the object?"

Allison led the Doctor and Lauren to the orb and then stood back, with her partner Martin.
"Is that the Doctor?" he asked her, "He doesn't look like the people in the Redgrove files."
"You were at Redgrove?" she wondered, having heard of the organisation.
"Yeah. But I left. I needed normality again."
"What did he look like in the Redgrove files?"
"There were two versions that got involved with Redgrove incidents: a young man in a Lord Byron costume and a short man carrying an umbrella. This one's different though. I have a bad feeling about this."

The Doctor scanned the orb with his sonic screwdriver and the scan confirmed that the orb was the right orb. But, as soon as the scan was complete, a beam of blue light rose up and connected with a point beneath the ground that was nearby. Lauren rushed down to the ground and the Doctor stayed a few metres back. A skeletal hand rose up from the ground and a body, bathed with white light, rose up after it. The body slowly became more and more human every minute and the Doctor recognised it immediately.
"John Grant." he muttered, "Of course."
"Who's John Grant?" Allison asked, now stood beside the Doctor and Lauren.
"There was a battle here, long ago. The Cult of the Red Grove, an ancient cult who defended the Earth from alien attacks, fought the Owl Orcs, a race of horrifying orc creatures from the Tajikon Nebula." he explained, "John Grant led the Cult of the Red Grove into battle. I arrived after he died, so many lifetimes ago."
"How can a skeleton be restoring then? Because you didn't tell me anything about this orb." Lauren said, not pleased, "It's time to explain what this thing can do."
The Doctor sighed and smiled awkwardly.
"The Orb of Time contains the spirit of a powerful Time Lord called Paramellius," he explained, "and, as the legends say, the soul of Paramellius has enough power to act as a genetic extrapolator."
"And a genetic extrapolator is?" Martin wondered, thinking the same question as everyone else.
"A genetic extrapolator can recreate a living person from just one bone. But what the legends don't say about genetic extrapolators is that they implant some of the sentience of the extrapolator on the genetic material. That orb is a Dalek weapon and if an ancient knight is being resurrected, things aren't looking great."

The now resurrected John Grant glanced around him with curious eyes. He held his sword and his shield but his son was nowhere to be seen.
"Where is Arthur? Where did he go?" he demanded, "I wish to see my son!"
"John, you're about 630 years ahead of your time and also you've got a bit of the mind of a Dalek in you, so we need to undo this." the Doctor explained, making John shiver with fear.
"You really should have broken that in a subtler way." Lauren commented.
"What do you mean?" John wondered.
"John, you've been resurrected by an alien intelligence and part of that intelligence has been inserted into you. We need to reprogram the orb." Lauren said, before asking the Doctor, "Can't we just sonic the orb?"
The Doctor nodded and sonicked the orb, making it crumble. A transparent ghost appeared in its place and a blue beam of light was connecting the ghost to John.
"I demand audience with the Soul of Time!" the Doctor cried.
"We shall speak." the ghost whispered in a high pitched voice, "Who are you?"
"I'm a Time Lord and I can set you free. Only if you agree to my terms though."
"And what are your terms?"
"Undo the resurrection. That's all."
"But we must find a host. The Guardian of the Dark is returning. He shall dominate and rule the Anti-World. He shall rise up and we must run."
"You can run after you've undone your mess."
The ghost nodded and reversed the energy connection, making John turn back into a skeleton. The ghost then entered the skeleton and everything returned to normal.

The Doctor and Lauren dragged the skeleton into the TARDIS and then stood outside it, opposite Allison and Martin.
"The skeleton said something about the Guardian of the Dark." Martin said, "What did he mean?"
"Doesn't matter. We need to go now so, erm, bye." the Doctor said, entering the ship. Lauren stayed outside for a few moments, waving goodbye, and then followed after him.

The TARDIS, having left Earth, materialised in the darkest point of space and the doors opened. The Doctor shoved the skeleton that contained the Soul of Time out of the TARDIS and let it drift among the stars. The doors closed and the TARDIS dematerialised, arriving in the Time Vortex.

The body drifted towards a space skimmer and Captain Pandorix of the Celestial Intervention Agency grabbed the skeleton. He dragged it onboard the skimmer and jammed it inside a containment box.
"The body has been found." he said into a speaker on the console, "I will return to my TARDIS and prepare for his iminent return."

THE END