Rose struggled to open her eyes, which felt like they were glued shut. Her head was thick with nausea. Her first conscious thought was that she was hideously hungover, but memory seeped back and she blinked furiously, tears gumming up her eyes and streaming as she managed to squint into a painful light. It was the hangover from hell, combined with an eye infection.
She cramped over and threw up.
"Eww," said a man's voice, a dismayed noise.
She was on a bed, of sorts, except that it was more like a dentist's chair, and she had just chucked up on the floor beside it. There was a shimmering kind of sound, and a whining, buzzing cylindrical thing glided up to the mess and began to suck it up with an extruded tool.
The sight made Rose feel worse. She rolled back onto the chair and found she could see properly now, though through a gunge of tears that kept making everything blur.
She was somewhere bright, white, gleaming, like a kid's idea of a spaceship interior. Moulded walls and surfaces, even light with no apparent source, and over in the corner of the room – sitting on the floor, like she'd been there a while and had tried to make herself comfortable – Sarah Jane.
And standing in front of them both, watching them, was a shortish, stocky man in his sixties who looked maddeningly familiar. His close-cut dark hair was streaked with silver, and he was dressed conventionally – in bizarre contrast to the tin-foil, flashing-light surroundings – in what looked like an expensive, though oddly-styled suit.
"Sorry," said the man, unapologetically.
She knew him from somewhere, and really well. It was infuriating.
"That's a side effect of the matter transference process. You should feel better in a few minutes. Fortunately, I've got my automatic servitors to clean up."
"Rose, are you all right?" asked Sarah, from her position on the floor. She was in a pair of silk pyjamas.
Rose stared at her stupidly, and turned back to the man.
"Where the hell are we? Who are you?"
"You don't remember me, Rose? And I thought your memory had been unaffected. Have I changed so much in forty-five years? I'm disappointed, I thought I'd kept in shape." He gave her a sly smile.
And suddenly, Rose recognised him. "Oh my God. Adam! Adam Mitchell!"
His smile broadened.
She clicked her fingers.
He tutted and shook his head. "Rose, Rose. That won't work any more. You don't think I wouldn't have acquired the expertise to fix that little problem in all the years since we last met?"
"You know this bastard?" said Sarah.
Rose slithered off the dentist's chair – the cleaning robot thing had already scarpered – and wobbled towards Adam.
"There's no point," said Sarah Jane. "There's an invisible barrier in the air, we're both trapped behind it."
"He travelled with us in the TARDIS for like ten minutes," said Rose, not really surprised to feel the thick, unyielding air beneath her fingers. "The Doctor chucked him out for being a wanker."
"Doesn't seem to have changed much, then."
"Ladies!" said Adam, holding up a hand. Rose noticed that his nails looked like they had been professionally manicured. "I don't want to harm you. In fact, I'm trying to help you – "
"Then take us back home!" cried Sarah. "If you think we won't be missed, you're out of your mind. My husband will report my disappearance as soon as he wakes up and realises I'm gone!"
"Yeah, and so will my mum," said Rose, but with less conviction. Somehow, she felt that they ahd been taken somewhere far beyond the reach of the authorities.
Adam smiled. "I'm afraid, my dears, that it will do no good. We're about as safe from interference here as we could possibly be."
"Are we still on Earth?" asked Rose.
"In actuality, we're nowhere." Adam smirked. He was obviously enjoying the situation. "This ship." He raised his hand. "It's not unlike the TARDIS in the way it operates. The basic technology is on a par with what the Time Lords created. It exists nowhere. In a void. Which is why I said that we're as safe here as we can be. Nothing, literally nothing can affect us here."
"How did you get hold of a TARDIS?" said Rose. "The Doctor said that his was the last in the universe."
"The Doctor doesn't know everything, Rose. And besides, this isn't a TARDIS. It uses technology the operates on the same principle and it enables me to travel in time to a certain extend, but it doesn't travel in space. And it's nowhere near as large. This control room, and some basic accommodation quarters are all there is to it. But what it does, is allow me to stand on the edge of everything. The universe could unravel into nothingness, and I'd be safe in here. Nothing can get in, unless I choose to bring it. Nothing can get out, unless I let it."
"You might as well let us out of these cages then," said Rose, her gaze scanning the instrumentation panels. The controls didn't look anything like she recognised from the TARDIS, so she believed what Adam had implied, that this ship was made by a different people. Everything was light and hard-edged, there was nothing of the semi-organic softness of the Time Lords' technology.
"Oh no," said Adam, with a soft chuckle.
He was even acting like a cut-rate Bond villain. What a plonker.
"What are you going to do with us?" asked Sarah Jane. She looked calm, Rose thought, like someone who was used to handling tense situations.
"Why, nothing. As I said, I haven't brought you here to harm you. I removed you from the time stream in order to stop it unravelling, while I worked out how to fix the problem. Once it's been repaired, I'll return you both and you can get on with your lives. You won't even remember you were here."
"It was you!" cried Sarah Jane.
Rose bit the inside of her cheeks. The same insight had occurred to her at the same moment, but she kept silent.
"You did something to my memories, you wiped out a chunk of my past! I don't know how you did it, but I did know the Doctor, I did travel with him, and you've taken that away from me!"
Adam looked smug. "Only in a manner of speaking, my dear. I've done nothing to you personally. Your memories of your life are, in fact, quite accurate. What I've altered, is that life itself."
"What are you talking about?"
"The Doctor no longer exists."
"You killed him, you bastard!" Rose screamed, flinging herself at the solid air.
She was only vaguely aware of the thump, like hitting the soft wall of a padded cell.
"No," said Adam, still smiling.
Rose sank to her knees.
"Please – don't start that again – " He winced and turned away.
Her body had taken over, and was trying to retch. There was nothing left to come up. She convulsed, and tasted bile at the back of her throat.
"Rose," said Sarah, compassionately. She knelt beside the invisible barrier that separated them and pressed her hand against it.
"No," said Adam again. "I knew better than to do that. The idea of going back to a point in the Doctor's long, inglorious history and simply putting a positron beam through his brain appealed, but there are two problems with the crude approach. For one, he would probably just regenerate, defeating the object of the exercise. There must be a way to kill a Time Lord permanently, but it's not something I've managed to find referenced anywhere, not for certain." He sounded regretful that this piece of academic information had eluded his researches. "In any case, the Doctor is notoriously resourceful, and he might find a way to stop me. But the second, more serious objection is that altering the timeline with a sledge hammer, as you might say – that's very dangerous. Bad things happen to all and sundry, if you kill someone who was meant to live, or save someone who was meant to die. Believe me, ladies, I don't want to destroy the world." He smiled tightly.
Rose glanced at Sarah, and their eyes locked. Her expression was tense, but still composed.
"When the Daleks and the Time Lords destroyed each other in the Time War, do you know what happened?"
"The Time Lords were killed."
Adam clicked his tongue. "No, the Time Lords were removed. They were extracted from the timeline altogether. There are no Time Lords any more and there never were any. They no longer exist and they do longer ever did exist."
"Except the Doctor."
"Except the Doctor, no longer." His tone was filled with a smug exultation. "That's what I've done, Rose. I've used the same technology to remove him altogether. There never was a Doctor. He's joined his people, at last."
"Why… Adam, why?"
"Oh, for God's sake, Rose." Adam's suave master-villain persona slipped, and suddenly she glimpsed the geeky, amiable boy she had liked enough to wheedle on board the TARDIS despite the Doctor's reluctance. "You always thought the sun and moon shone out his arse. Look at what he did to me!" Adam stabbed a finger at his forehead.
Rose saw that Sarah Jane winced and wrinkled her nose as, grotesquely, a metallic hole spiralled opened in the centre of his forehead.
"Adam," said Rose, "you did that to yourself."
"But the Doctor didn't help me, did he. He dumped me back on Earth in the year 2012, where this made me a freak. You saw the way your friend reacted just now. Imagine what it was like to be trapped in a time and place where everybody – friends, family, potential employers, potential girlfriends – recoiled from you in fear and disgust."
"What, did everyone go around snapping their fingers at you,t hen?"
"Anything set it off!" Adam roared, suddenly furious.
Rose shifted back a little along the floor. Maybe the cheesy-villain act wasn't so much of a pose. It was just possible that he was a bit on the unstable side.
What was she thinking? He had abducted them from their beds and locked them in a cell on an alien spaceship. He was barking mad.
"TV remotes, car ignitions, mobile phones, automatic doors – I couldn't go anywhere or do anything without my forehead opening up and people running, screaming. I went for a job interview and five minutes in the CEO took a call on his mobile and click, the room cleared. I had to break off contact with my parents because they wanted me to see a specialist. I went into hiding in the end because I was being pursued by agents of an organisation called Torchwood. I spent years destitute, homeless, cut off from family, friends, hope – any kind of future. All thanks to the Doctor!"
"I'm sorry…"
"What did I do to deserve it? Tell me that! I got the neural connector put in by accident. He could've taken me somewhere to get it removed. Nothing would have been easier for him, would it? And he'd've done it if I'd been some teenage bint he was shagging. But no, my face didn't fit so he just abandoned me to a life of horror."
"You did try to nick that data, too."
"So what? Who is the Doctor to act as judge and jury? Do you honestly think, Rose, that the Doctor himself hasn't committed acts far more heinous than a bit of technology theft?"
"You know," said Sarah, "your life doesn't appear to be one of horror now, particularly. That suit looks like it cost a bit, for a start."
Adam broke his interlocked gaze with Rose and turned his attention to Sarah. "Ah, but my present situation is the result of a lifetime of struggle, a lifetime of intense focus. Eventually, let's just say, I found a way to work, not exactly with those nice people at Torchwood, but alongside. I contracted extra-terrestrials, I did some deals, I acquired material wealth and technologies. My whole purpose, once I learned it might be possible, was to find a way of undoing what had happened. Look at me. I'm sixty-four, I've never married, never had a family, never had anything approaching a normal life. My parents died before I could speak to them again. Yes, I have material wealth and yes, I have a time ship, but this is not what I want. This is a means to an end. What I want is to go back to before I met the Doctor, and never have met him. I want the life I should have had."
"That's insane," said Sarah Jane.
"Is it? How about you?"
"How about me."
"Since I eliminated the Doctor, things have started to settle into shape. I've been into the new reality a few times and done some research. I wanted to find out how the lives of others who'd been in contact with the Doctor would turn out without him. You seem to be doing particularly well for yourself, Miss Smith."
"I work hard. I've always worked hard."
"Oh, indeed. But your life hasn't been blighted by exposure to extraordinary experiences no 20th century human should ever have had, nor – forgive me – by a heart broken by an irresponsible and impossible man."
Rose caught Sarah's eye. She looked puzzled and angry.
Adam turned a control on the console, and one of the viewscreens fizzed into brightness. "One of the particularly impressive technologies installed in this ship is a cross-timeline scanner. This scanner is locked onto the old timeline, the reality before I removed the Doctor. Hold still, Miss Smith."
Sarah gave a little yelp as an instrument extruded from the ceiling and hovered its tendrils near her forehead.
"Just getting a bio-print… wait a moment for the scanner to focus… Here we are." The static on the screen resolved into an image. Sarah Jane was sitting at a computer in a dim light, tapping away at the keyboard. Her hair was slightly different and she looked tired. Behind her, Rose could see the edge of a floral curtain. "That's you, as you would be right now, in the old timeline. Probably working late into the night to meet a deadline."
"I do that often enough. What's wrong with that? It looks like an improvement on my situation right now, anyway!"
"Is that your home?"
"It… looks like my parents' house in South Croydon. What am I doing there?"
"Maybe your parents are dead, and you inherited the house."
"My parents are still alive," said Sarah Jane, in a quieter voice.
Adam shrugged. "Your mother had cancer a few years ago, and you were able to pay for her to see a specialist immediately. Who knows whether it would have been too late, if she'd had to go on an NHS waiting list? Who knows how your father would have coped without her?"
"You bastard," said Sarah.
"Me? No! I'm the one who removed the baleful influence that put you in that situation – poor sad Sarah Jane, all alone in a semi in South Croydon – and enabled you to become what you always should have been – rich, famous, a crusading reporter, a wife and a mother. You should thank me!"
Sarah Jane was silent, and Rose saw tears gleaming in her eyes.
"As for you," said Adam, turning again to Rose, "you're just a kid. You didn't deserve to have your life screwed over by a philandering intergalactic hobo, either. You think you're in love with him, but you were being exploited. I'm doing you a favour, too. If you were going to be able to remember it, you'd thank me eventually."
"Piss off, Adam."
"What went wrong?" asked Sarah Jane. There was a slight tremor in her voice, she still looked calm. "I'm assuming that neither of us should have remembered anything about the Doctor, once you – eliminated him. But Rose remembers everything, and I remember dreams."
"Ah. Now we come to the crux of the matter." Adam began to pace. "Well observed, Miss Smith. This is why you're such an ace reporter, I take it. Always cutting to the chase with the right question."
"I feel inclined to echo Rose's sentiment, but go on."
"The timeline hasn't entirely settled. My instruments here told me that. I spent quite a while trying to pinpoint the focus of the disturbance, and a few hours ago I found that it was centring around a certain house in SW3. When I scanned the property, I realised that it contained both of you, and of course I knew what your connection was. I've done a great deal of research into the Doctor's activities on Earth, you see. That's how I knew all about your parents, I'm afraid. I wasn't sure which of you was creating the problem, but I had to assume that somehow, one of you was. I was even afraid that somehow, the Doctor himself had evaded me, and was hiding there. He wasn't," he added. "I searched the property thoroughly with a portable bioscanner."
Part of Rose was still, she realised, half-expecting the Doctor to appear from a panel or something and save her. She hadn't been able to suppress a flare of hope just then. Her throat caught.
"So the question is," said Adam slowly, "why are you snagging the timeline? It can't simply be the memories. In the old reality, everyone who'd been in touch with them remembered the Time Lords. The elimination process didn't alter people's perceptions."
"Well, why did that happen now, anyway?" said Rose. "Aren't you asking the question the wrong way round? You haven't thought this through, you prat. Cos I thought about this myself, yesterday. In the real world, people remember the Time Lords. How come nobody out there, except me and her, remembers the Doctor."
"Even I don't remember him properly," Sarah Jane added.
Adam shook his head. "It's not clear."
"You don't know what you're doing!" said Rose. "You're playing with toys you don't understand, same as you always did."
"Shut your stupid, ugly mouth, you little slapper!" Adam exploded. "I'm trying to help you, don't you understand? I suppose I could just kill you both and that would probably solve the problem, but I am not a killer – unlike your precious Doctor."
"The Doctor is not a killer! He saves lives!"
"The Doctor has caused the death of millions. You stupid infatuated child, he destroyed his own people. There is virtually no limit to the evil that man has done, from genocide to the ruination of individual lives. Whether you can understand it or not, I am the good guy here."
"The Doctor saves lives. He always means to do good. And he's not a patronising git, either."
Glaring, Adam turned on his well-polished heel and left the room, by way of a door that slid silently up into its frame and back into place. Outside, Rose just managed to see a glimpse of white, curving corridor.
"It might not have been the best plan, to antagonise him," said Sarah Jane.
"It was hard not to! What a tosser."
"But we're his prisoners, and we're completely at his mercy here."
"No. No, we're not. He needs us. He's scared of us."
"You might be right," said Sarah after a moment. "I was kidnapped once, you know."
"Yeah? By someone wanting a ransom?"
"No. A political kidnapping. In Kabul. I was out there doing a documentary on a school for girls that some women were running in defiance of the authorities, and I was captured by a terrorist group who had nothing to do with that particular cause. They wanted the British government to release some prisoners – convicted bombers."
"Did they?"
"No. But I was released after six weeks. They kept me in a cellar, in someone's house. They might have let me go me anyway, of course, but I survived by trying to connect with the men, and in fact one of the men's wife. I kept them talking. They could easily have killed me, but in the end they didn't. That's what I feel we should do here. This barrier, whatever it is, seems absolutely solid, and there's nothing to manipulate."
"Nothing except him. Sarah, what if he find out how to make what he's trying to do permanent? Am I even going to know? Are we both going to go back to what our lives would've been if the Doctor had never existed, and not remember any of this?"
"Maybe," she said, and shrugged.
"But it's not right. You can't go around wiping people out, just cos they pissed you off. He's off his head, you can see that, can't you?"
"He does have some issues," she said dryly.
"But you don't want your old life back, do you. You said yourself when we was talking in your kitchen, that you were glad it hadn't really happened to you. Well there you are, it turns out it really did."
"How can I answer that?" Her voice rose a tone. "I have children. You don't know what that means."
"Yeah, well I will soon."
"Oh? Oh!"
"Oh my God," said Rose slowly. "The baby."
"Is it…?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, Rose."
"But don't you see! Adam's eliminated the Doctor from time and space, stopped him from ever existing – but he hasn't, cos I'm still pregnant, the baby's still here!"
"But – are you sure, that perhaps, in this new reality – perhaps if you'd never met the Doctor, you might have been pregnant anyway, by someone else?"
"No! No, I thought of that earlier, and I had a scan. Just before I came to see you, I had a scan done. It's got two hearts! It is the Doctor's."
"But if the Doctor never existed, how is that possible?"
"Because I haven't really gone into that timeline! That's why I remember everything. Somehow, the baby's protecting me, keeping me anchored – like a lifeline."
She clasped her hands together in triumph and excitement, but at Sarah Jane's dismayed expression, she turned around.
Adam had come back in, unnoticed.
"Oldest trick in the book," he said. "Leave your prisoners alone and out spills the confidential information. Did you really think I wouldn't have this room under surveillance? So much less stressful than torture."
"What book's that then?" Rose backed away, pointlessly, suddenly feeling extremely threatened in a way she hadn't before. "Evil Overlording for Idiots?"
"Extraordinary thing. Of every variable I calculated, every scenario I envisaged, it never occurred to me that the Doctor would simply be careless in bed. Or indeed, that the consequences would have such an interesting effect. I wish I could research it further, but time is running out. Sorry about this, Rose."
"Get away from her!" Sarah Jane screamed.
Rose was holding herself perfectly still, waiting for the exact moment that she knew must come. To approach her, with whatever weapon he was holding in his hand and pointing towards her, he would have to drop the barrier. As soon as she saw his other hand move towards a switch, she broke into a dive.