Hey guys, thanks to everyone who has followed and/or favourited this story, and as always I'm especially grateful to those of you who review - you are the reason I keep writing!
I'm actually pretty proud of this chapter and how it differs from canon (though not too far... ) I hope you like it as much as I do :)
"Try again," Cheen ordered Milo.
Her partner tapped the screen and the computer responded, "Brooklyn turnoff one, closed."
"Try the next one!"
"Brooklyn turnoff two, closed."
"Oh, what do we do?" Cheen cried.
Rose kept quiet, an uneasy feeling creeping through her.
"We'll keep going round," Milo resolved. "We'll do the whole loop and by the time we come back round, they'll be open."
Another roar, much closer than the ones they'd heard earlier. It shook the entire car. Rose couldn't take it anymore, everything about this screamed there was something wrong.
"There's no way in hell that's just the air vents," she said.
"What else could it be?"
"What the hell is that?" Cheen panicked as another snarl rocked the vehicle.
Rose placed a hand on her arm. "Cheen, look at me."
The girl did, her frightened eyes boring into Rose's steady ones. "It's going to be alright, yeah? Whatever's down there, we'll figure out a way to get around it."
"It's just the hydraulics," Milo argued.
"No, it's not," snapped Rose. The couple gazed at her in shock. "I'm sorry, I really am, but there's something down there and we can't waste time pretending there's not."
"Calling Car four six five diamond six," a voice from the radio buzzed before she could say anything else. "Repeat, calling Car four six five diamond six."
"This is Car four six five diamond six," Milo answered, speaking into the radio communicator. "Who's that? Where are you?"
"I'm in the Fast Lane, about fifty yards behind. Can you get back up? Can you get off the Fast Lane?"
"We only have permission to go down. We need the Brooklyn Flyover."
Rose was ready to hit him. Did he not realise how much danger they were potentially in?
"It's closed," the car behind them reported. "Go back up."
"We can't. We'll just go round."
"Don't you understand? They're closed. They're always closed! We're stuck down here, and there's something else out there in the fog. Can't you hear it?"
"Do as she says!" Rose ordered when another bellow came from below.
"But it's just the air vents," protested Milo.
Rose rolled her eyes in frustration as the woman from the car behind them said, "Jehovah, what are you, some kind of stupid kid? Get out of here!"
Another roar, and Rose could hear screams in the background of the other car. She lunged past Milo for the steering wheel, attempting to yank it upwards, but it wouldn't budge.
"We can't go up," she realised in a horrified whisper.
"I can't move!" The woman behind them reported in panic. "It's got us!"
"But what's happening?" Milo asked frantically.
"Milo, move!" Rose cried, hoping that if he was quick enough the other car might even be able to escape. If she was being honest with herself she knew there was probably no chance for the woman and her passengers, but it didn't stop her from hoping.
Milo finally did what he was told, shooting forward as Rose grabbed the communicator.
"We're moving now, do you think you can follow us?"
But the woman was screaming, words jumbling together into an incomprehensible babble, before there was nothing but the crashes and bangs from whatever creature had attacked her.
"Can you hear me?" Rose tried again. "Hello?"
But there was nothing. Rose squeezed her eyes shut for a moment before setting aside her sorrow and focusing on what was in front of them.
The three of them were tossed from side to side as Milo expertly dodged large shapes that loomed out at them from the fog. The car was jolted violently as some of the creatures crashed into them, and all three of them shrieked.
"What are they?" Cheen sobbed.
"They look like giant crabs!" Rose replied as one giant claw closed in front of them. They would have crashed straight into it if Milo hadn't swerved swiftly below it.
"We're going to die!" Cheen wailed, and it snapped Rose into action.
"No, we're not!" She shouted, racing around the van to see if there was anything they could use to get them out of the situation. There was a sealed hatch in the roof and one in the floor, plus an abundance of chemicals and supplies in the back. She did her best to take charge, like she'd seen the Doctor do so many times before. "We need to figure out why we can't go up. Milo, Cheen, why did the steering lock when I tried to go up?"
"We only have permission to stay here!" Milo shouted as the car took a particularly big blow that knocked it almost on its side. "The system automatically identifies how many people you have onboard and because we have three and we've been approved we're designated Fast Lane!"
"Designated Fast Lane… that's it! " Rose cried, knowing exactly what she needed to do. She reached up to the hatch on the roof and tried tugging it open, but it wouldn't budge.
"What I wouldn't give for a bloody sonic screwdriver," she muttered under breath. The van lurched again as a claw smashed into it.
Rose grabbed the only thing she could think of – the gun that she'd tossed on the bed earlier – and pointed it at the hatch.
"It's not a real gun!" Cheen cried from her seat and Rose just about exploded.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S NOT A REAL GUN?! THE ONE TIME I ACTUALLY BLOODY NEED ONE OF THESE STUPID THINGS AND IT'S NOT EVEN REAL? WHO KIDNAPS SOMEONE WITH A FAKE GUN?!"
"Is that really our most pressing issue right now?" Milo shot back.
Rose knew he was right, they wouldn't survive much longer if she didn't act now. She could rant about the stupid fake gun later, preferably to the Doctor when she was safe and sound back onboard the TARDIS.
Without wasting any more time she flipped the gun in her hand and smashed the handle against the roof. It took a few solid whacks for the seal to give slightly and she tossed the (now slightly mangled) gun away and pushed as hard as she could against the hatch, which burst open with a sucking noise.
"What the hell are you doing?" Cheen screamed.
"Just trust me," she called back, jumping up and gripping the edge of the hole. "Whatever you do, Milo, don't slow down."
And she hoisted herself out of the van and into the middle of the monsters' den.
x
Martha was ready to cough up a lung by the time she and the Doctor reached the last car.
"Excuse me, is that legal?" Cried the vehicle's owner indignantly, a man in a navy blue suit and black bowler hat.
"Sorry. Motorway Foot Patrol. Whatever," the Doctor coughed, quickly abandoning the weak excuse. "Have you got any water?"
"Certainly," said the gentleman, reaching over to a water cooler and pouring both of them a drink. "Never let it be said I've lost my manners."
The Doctor chugged his water and peered out the window. "Is this the last layer?"
"We're right at the bottom," suit-guy confirmed. "Nothing below us but the Fast Lane."
"Can we drive down?" The Doctor asked him.
"I'd love to, anything to speed up my trip."
"Hold on a minute," Martha interjected. "I don't think we should."
"What?" The Doctor rounded on her, a spark of anger in his dark eyes.
"Well think about it," she justified. "Rose could be anywhere along the Fast Lane and we don't even know what's down there! You really want to plunge straight down without any idea where to start or what we might be up against? Let's take a look before we do anything."
"Alright," the Doctor conceded, albeit reluctantly. "That's a good point. Excuse me."
He side-stepped Martha to reach the hatch on the floor and sonicked it open. Martha judged the ground to be at least 300 metres away, although it was hard to tell because the layer of exhaust fumes was particularly thick below them. A chilling snarl rose up from the murky depths of the smog.
"What's that noise?"
"I…" the gentleman swallowed. "…try not to think about it."
Amongst the haze were spots of something that Martha couldn't identify. She squinted as she peered down at them.
"What are they, Doctor?"
"That, Martha, is the million dollar question. What's down there? We just need to see. There must be some sort of ventilation." He moved away from the open hatch and held his sonic to the screen on the dashboard. "If I could just transmit a pulse through this thing, maybe I could trip the system, give us a bit of a breeze!
That's it! Might shift the fumes a bit, give us a good look."
"What are those shapes?" The driver asked as the mist began to clear away. Martha could see claws – giantclaws – snapping open and shut.
"They're alive," the Doctor breathed.
By now enough of the fumes had lifted that they could clearly see the creatures. They were similar to crabs, Martha thought. If crabs were roughly the size of ten elephants and could roar, that is.
"What the hell are they?" Suit-guy asked, taking the words right out of Martha's mouth.
"Macra," the Doctor said, looking concerned. "The Macra used to be the scourge of this galaxy. Gas. They fed off gas, the filthier the better. They built up a small empire using humans as slaves and mining gas for food."
"Great," commented Martha dryly.
"They don't exactly look like empire builders to me," chimed in suit-guy.
"Well, that was billions of years ago. Billions. They must have devolved down the years, now they're just beasts. But they're still hungry and Rose is down there."
There was a loud clang as somebody else landed on the car's roof.
"Oh, it's like New Times Square in here. For goodness's sake!" Huffed suit-man as a woman, half cat like Brannigan, dropped into the space. The thing that struck Martha as most odd was her outfit – long grey robes and a matching nun's wimple! Then there was the fact that she carried a gun.
"We've invented a sport, Martha!" The Doctor said cheerfully.
"Doctor," the newcomer smiled at him. "You're a hard man to find."
"No guns," suit-guy said, having spotted the weapon in her hand. "I'm not having guns."
"I only brought this in case of pirates," she dismissed. "Doctor, you've got to come with me."
"Do I know you?"
She smiled at him reminiscently. "You haven't aged at all. Time has been less kind to me."
She glanced down shyly and the Doctor examined her for a second before exclaiming, "Novice Hame!" and sweeping her into a hug. "No, hold on, get off," he said suddenly, pulling back to glare at the cat nun. "Last time we met you were breeding humans for experimentation!"
"I'm sorry?!" Martha cried, and the woman gave her an apologetic glance before returning her attention back to the Doctor.
"I've sought forgiveness," she assured them. "For so many years, under His guidance. And if you come with me, I might finally be able to redeem myself."
"I'm not going anywhere," said the Doctor firmly. "You've got Macra living underneath this city. Macra! Rose is stuck down there and I'm going after her."
"You've got to come with me right now!" Demanded novice Hame.
"No, no, no, you're coming with me. We're all four of us going down there to save her."
"I'm sorry, Doctor," whispered Hame. "But the situation is even worse than you can imagine." She grabbed his arm and said "Transport."
Martha felt a hand grip her arm and the next thing she knew, she was lying on a cold, hard floor with the Doctor's shouts of 'Don't you dare!' ringing in her ears.
Martha felt as though all the wind had been knocked out of her. She was definitely going to have some bruises tomorrow.
"Ah," the Doctor groaned from beside her. "Rough teleport. Ow. Martha, you okay?"
"Peachy," she responded sarcastically. She pushed herself up gingerly as the Doctor turned to Hame.
"You can go straight back down and teleport people out – starting with Rose!"
"I only had the power for one trip," the cat woman informed them.
"Then get some more," the Doctor growled. "Where are we?"
"High above, in the over-city."
Martha glanced up but they were surrounded by darkness and she couldn't make out anything beyond the small patch of light where the three of them were standing, streaming in from a huge strip of what must have been a window, high above them and even further away. She squinted in an attempt to peer through the curtain of darkness as the Doctor shouted at novice Hame.
"Good! Because you can tell the Senate of New, New York I'd like a word. They have got thousands of people trapped on the motorway. Millions!"
"But you're inside the Senate, right now," Hame said sadly, recapturing Martha's attention. "May the goddess Santori bless them."
She touched her bracelet, the one that had transported them here, and the building flooded with light. Martha sucked in a gasp as she saw that they were at the bottom of a huge chamber surrounded by raised benches. And sitting on those benches, covered in dust, were the skeletons of hundreds of people.
"They died, Doctor," murmured Hame softly. "The city died."
He walked slowly through the ruins, gazing sadly at the evidence of a once beautiful city reduced to dust. "How long's it been like this?"
"Twenty four years," Hame replied. Martha's thoughts flew to the poor people stuck on the motorway with no idea what had happened above them. All those prayers and dreams, all for nothing. They were trapped, and they didn't even know it. She swallowed back tears as the Doctor found his way over to a skeleton that was lying on the floor near them and crouched beside it.
"All of them? Everyone? What happened?"
"A new chemical. A new mood. They called it Bliss." Hame reached down to pick a dusty patch off the bones, a patch that looked exactly like the one the vendor had sold the young woman in Pharmacy Town. "Everyone tried it. They couldn't stop. A virus mutated inside the compound and became airborne. Everything perished. Even the virus, in the end. It killed the world in seven minutes flat. There was just enough time to close down the walkways and the flyovers, sealing off the under-city. Those people on the motorway aren't lost, Doctor. They were saved."
"So the whole thing down there is running on automatic," he realised.
"Isn't there a way to get them out?" Martha questioned softly.
Hame shook her head ruefully. "There's not enough power. We did all we could to stop the system from choking."
"Who's 'we'? How did you survive?" The Doctor asked her.
"He protected me. And he has waited for you, these long years."
A rasping voice rumbled through the abandoned building, causing Martha to shiver.
"Doctor," it called. Martha's eyes widened as she realised that the voice wasn't calling through the building, it was in her head!
Apparently the Doctor could hear it too because he spun around, racing around the corner to find its source. Martha followed, moving past the Doctor to see a giant head, suspended in a glass jar as tall as the Doctor and at least five times as wide.
"The Face of Boe!" The Time Lord cried, going up to the face a crouching so that he was almost eye level.
"I knew you would come," Boe whispered, although his lips didn't move.
Martha wanted to ask how they could hear him and how the Doctor knew him, but she could see this wasn't the right time.
"Back in the old days, I was made his nurse as penance for my sin," Hame was saying.
If the Doctor heard her, he didn't let on. Instead he gazed at Boe and said, "Old friend, what happened to you?"
"Failing," the Face said weakly, and the Doctor pressed a hand to the glass.
"He protected me from the virus by shrouding me in his smoke," explained novice Hame. "But with no one to maintain it, the City's power died. The under-city would have fallen into the sea."
"So he saved them."
"The Face of Boe wired himself into the mainframe. He's giving his life force just to keep things running."
"But there are planets out there," the Doctor said, turning to face the cat woman. "You could have called for help."
"The last act of the Senate was to declare New Earth unsafe. The automatic quarantine lasts for one hundred years."
"And you've been up here all this time," Martha realised. "Doing your best to keep everyone alive."
"We had no choice," she responded, not looking at either of them.
The Doctor stood up and placed a hand on Hame's arm.
"Yes, you did," he said gratefully.
"Save them, Doctor," the Face of Boe implored. "Save them."
x
"What are you doing?" Cheen screamed from inside the van as Rose clung for dear life to the handle on the top of the hatch. It wasn't very big, and it was positioned so that she couldn't see it very well with the door open, but she couldn't close the hatch without cutting off communication to Milo and Cheen. Rose pressed herself as low to the car as she could, but at the speed they were going and with the jolts and jerks caused by Milo's frantic attempts to dodge the monsters, she was very nearly thrown off multiple times in the span of her first thirty seconds out of the vehicle.
"Just don't stop moving," she called back. She was terrified, and trying her best not to show it.
Her lungs started to burn from the polluted air but she ignored it, focusing all her energy on gripping the handle and not being thrown to the mercy of the giant crab things. A huge claw burst through the cloud, catching her shirt and tearing it slightly, although thankfully not deep enough to pierce her skin.
From inside she heard the automated woman's voice say, "Fast Lane access, revoked."
"The steering wheel's locked!" Milo panicked. "What do I do?!"
The car lurched again and Rose had the unpleasant sensation of her stomach falling to her feet. She wanted to talk to the other two but she was already coughing from the smog and didn't want to risk inhaling any more than she had to.
The next minute stretched out so long Rose thought it would never end. The car began to rise through the hazy layers of fog and away from the snapping claws and vicious growls of the creatures that lived at the bottom. The ride was far from smooth – the creatures seemed hell-bent on making them victims, slamming into the flying van with huge amounts of force as they made their escape.
Rose squeezed her eyes shut and kept her head down, still clinging to the metal handle with all she had. She blocked out Cheen's screaming and the creature's bellows, and thought about the Doctor. All she wanted was to see him again.
She'd been so stupid back in that damn alleyway when he'd been ignoring her. Instead of trying to understand why he was acting strangely, she'd been petty. She hadn't spoken to him, had kept her distance.
The thing that tore her up the most, though, was knowing that if she didn't make it back to him then the Doctor would never forgive himself for avoiding her those last few minutes. She was determined to make sure he never got the chance to feel guilty.
She didn't even notice the point when the sound of honking horns became more prominent than the noise from the monsters, or when Cheen stopped screaming. Eventually though, she realised that the air was no longer whipping through her clothes, and that she was lying flat instead of being tossed around.
She cautiously raised herself up to see that they were now at the bottom level of the traffic jam, with thousands of cars hovering above her. She wriggled over to the hole and peered down. She grinned at the sight she was greeted with; Cheen and Milo snogging the life out of each other.
"Oh don't mind me," she joked, jumping back down into the car.
"Thank you," Milo said sincerely after breaking away from Cheen. "We'd be dead without you."
"How did you think of that?" Cheen wondered.
Rose shrugged. "When you guys kidnapped me you said you needed three. I figured that meant you weren't allowed in the Fast Lane with less. When Milo said that thing about it automatically knowing how many people you have onboard the only thing I could think to do was trick it into thinking there was only two of us – "
She broke off in a fit of coughing. She was passed a bottle of water (she couldn't tell who by) and once she'd finished it they all lapsed into a tense silence.
"What happens now?" Cheen whispered finally, teary eyed. "There are those, those thingsliving beneath us, killing anyone who goes down there. It's horrible."
Milo's brows furrowed together. "You know what this means, don't you? All the stories were true. The ones about the beasts, and how the over-city is cutting us off. If they weren't then they'd know about the creatures. They would have done something by now! It means that either they really are sealed off from all of us, or they just don't care that we're being killed."
"What happens now?" Cheen repeated despairingly.
"The Doctor will think of something," Rose said confidently. "My friend, he'll know exactly what to do. We just need to get back to him."
"There's no way. Hundreds of thousands of cars up here and you want to find one specific bloke? Good luck."
"You don't know 'im," Rose defended, accent slightly thicker due to her distress. "We'll find a way back to each other. Always have, always will."
"He looked kind of nice," Cheen prompted.
"He's…" Rose didn't finish, unable to find the right words to describe her Doctor.
Cheen raised her eyebrows. "Are you and him..?"
"Yeah, no, sort of. It's, um, it's a bit complicated."
"But you like him," Cheen pushed, smiling.
"I love him," Rose admitted.
"Does he love you?"
Rose paused for a second, biting her lip. "Yeah, he does. Yeah."
"Doesn't sound so complicated to me," Milo smiled.
She gave a small smile back but didn't reply with words. It wasn't something she could easily explain.
"You know, we still don't know your name," said Cheen.
Rose blinked, having completely forgotten that the pair knew less about her than she did about them. "Oh, uh, it's Rose."
"Nice to meet you, officially," Milo said, and Rose chuckled.
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