Anti-Rose
Chapter Four.
Rose began to wake up. Her head was throbbing, she felt sick and her head seemed to be spinning. As she became more conscious, she became aware of the fact that she was in a seated position, and that her hands were tied behind her back, and her legs were tied to what seemed to be chair legs. Lifting her head, she opened her eyes, and stared.
She was in the TARDIS.
She shook her head. No, there were a few subtle differences. It looked slightly darker and slightly shabbier. Not the TARDIS, but definitely a TARDIS. Then she saw a figure enter the room through a door in the console wall.
His hair was pale blonde, almost white, and he wore a calf-length black leather coat. As he turned towards her she could see that his eyes were dark-brown, maybe, or almost black. At first she thought that maybe the Editor from Station Five had obtained a TARDIS, but then she noticed that the shape of him, his body, his face, were that of her friend, the Doctor. She looked at his face again, and felt cold. There was something else in that familiar face that was totally alien to the Doctor she knew: a mocking cruelty in his eyes and his smile. He crossed over to stand before her.
"I'm glad to see you're awake. I scanned you while you slept. The scans indicate that you have travelled through time-something humans of your time are unable to do without assistance from some other, superior race. It's unlikely to be the Daleks; they kill everything non-Dalek they encounter, so that only leaves my race, the Time Lords. Who is your travelling companion? The Master? The Rani? Someone else?" he asked her.
Rose, in her reading in the TARDIS library had found references to the Rani and the Master, two evil renegade Time Lords the Doctor had crossed swords with before.
"No, neither, but who are you, and why have you tied me up?" she said, not willing to volunteer information about the Doctor without him here. His reaction was to grab her hair painfully and pull, so she was looking up at him.
"I will ask the questions here, not you. Understand?" He released her hair and stood back.
"What I want to know from you is who you are and what you are doing here, and who your travelling companion is."
"My name is Rose Tyler." she told him.
"Interesting. I know a Rose Tyler, and it's not you." He pulled on her hair again, and scrutinised her face. She cried out at the pain of it, but he didn't appear to notice. "As far as I know, she was an only child, but you have her look about you. Perhaps she has a twin she was unaware of, that her mother had adopted at birth, but no, you both have the exact same name, so unless there's been a galactic-sized coincidence that's not the answer."
"Another Rose Tyler?" Rose asked.
"Yes, she looks a lot like you but her hair is black, and shorter." he said. "I believe you met briefly some minutes ago.
"She attacked me!" Rose recalled. "For no reason at all!"
"I happened to overhear your conversation. You mentioned 'the Doctor', which happens to be the name I travel under. She obviously thought you were in league with me. Do you also travel with someone who calls himself the Doctor?"
"Yes." said Rose. "A different Doctor. Not you, the imposter Doctor."
Rose had braced herself for the blow she somehow knew that comment would elicit, but it still nearly took her head off her shoulders. It also knocked the chair she was tied to flying, and she cried out as she landed awkwardly, unable to save herself with her hands and ankles tied. He roughly pulled the chair back upright.
"I am no imposter. If anything, he is copying me. I am sure we will at sometime meet. Tell me, Rose Tyler, is he anything like me?"
"Physically, yes, except for your eyes and hair, but otherwise you couldn't be more different. I think I prefer mine."
"Where is yours now?" he asked. "Hurt, I think you said. He'll probably recover soon enough, Time Lords are a tough bunch with a few tricks up their sleeves where injury and death are concerned."
"Like two hearts?" Rose asked.
"That's just a fact, not a trick. I know van Statten wanted to patent the binary vascular idea, it may be more efficient but we have more tricks than that."
"You met van Statten too?" Rose asked.
"Yes." the Doctor said. "I made him pay for what he put me through-after I destroyed his pet Dalek."
"Okay." muttered Rose. "My Doctor may have left van Statten to his own people, but I'm sure that they gave him his come-uppance."
The other Doctor had been thinking. Then he stood up straighter.
"A parallel universe, or alternate reality, that would mean it all made sense! Your name, your knowledge, your looks, everything. Let me guess, you had some catastrophic failure or incident aboard the TARDIS that ripped a hole in both realities, allowing you to pass from yours to mine."
"I-I don't know!" Rose stammered truthfully.
"It must be. All the facts fit. So there's another Rose here, another Doctor, and another TARDIS."
He had his back to his TARDIS doors while speaking to Rose, so it was only Rose who saw them creak slightly open, and she had to school her face when she saw the Doctor-her Doctor-peering through, with his finger to his lips. She quickly transferred her attention back to the Doctor immediately in front of her.
"Another Type Forty. What could I do with two TARDISes and a rip creating a path to another reality? With you in my hands I have the key to that other TARDIS."
"Wrong. Two type Fortys mean that I have the key to your TARDIS, which is how I got in." another similar voice said. The Doctor in front of Rose turned, to find Rose's Doctor standing by his console. Anti-Rose was by his side, her weapon raised and pointing at the blonde Doctor.
The other Doctor moved quickly behind Rose and her chair, and Rose saw anti-Rose hesitate.
"Second thoughts, dear?" the other Doctor mocked. "You know very well that that weapon will kill me, but it's range is such that it would also kill your other self here. That's the good thing about leaving morals behind-no worry about killing innocents to get what you want."
He put his hand in his pocket and took out his sonic screwdriver. He held it out in front of him at arm's length, so both Rose and anti-Rose, as well as Rose's Doctor, could see it. He put his hand on Rose's shoulder.
"You know what this is, Rose Tyler? Has your Doctor used it yet?"
"Yes." Rose said. "It's a sonic screwdriver." The other Doctor nodded.
"Very useful at low settings for picking locks, jamming radio and sonic frequencies, performing scans, and, of course, undoing screws. At higher settings it can be used to reprogram computers and androids, black out satellites and so forth. At the higher frequencies it can cut through various types of metals and even shatter diamonds. About a third of the frequencies are within human tolerances and most of those are not even uncomfortable. One or two may even be quite pleasurable." He set it and held it against Rose's head and activated it. A wave of terror ran through her but she quickly realised all it was doing was sending vibrations through her flesh that were making her giggle. He withdrew it as Rose noticed the horrified look on the Doctor's face.
"Of course, that leave two thirds of the settings that could be quite unpleasant." He remarked. He reset it once more, pressed it against Rose's chest and activated it. Rose felt breathless, panicky, the vibrations rippling through her body this time made her want to faint or throw up, possibly both and not necessarily in that order, and she heard herself cry out. Mercifully, it stopped.
"That, as I am sure you know, Doctor," he said, mockingly addressing Rose's Doctor "is one of the milder settings. Usually used for resonating inflexible materials. However, there are many subsonic and ultrasonic frequencies that could have a much more devastating effect on human tissues or human sanity, some visible, some not. Some may damage without marks some may leave nothing left, others may scar horrendously." He made another adjustment to his sonic screwdriver. "I've just chosen a setting at random, one I've never tried on a human before. Shall we see what it does to the young lady here, or is your friend there going to stop pointing that weapon at me?" He placed the sonic screwdriver against Rose's throat, and looked at Rose's Doctor and anti-Rose, who was still pointing her gun at him.
"Your move." was all he said.