It wasn't until she felt the coldness starting to seep through her jeans that Danni realised that she'd slid all the way down to the ground. The Master stared back at her, smirk and all, never moving. It was like, even though the picture, he could see something deep inside of her that even she struggled to reach. He had such piercing eyes.
How the hell had he managed to contact her? He should still have been trapped on Gallifrey, right? He didn't leave until he'd regenerated to Missy. Didn't he? She was sure of it…
Why was she sure of that, though? Had she looked it up, had she seen proof, or had Missy offered her that as a piece of information? Was it a lie? Was he out in the universe? Had he escaped Rassilon long before Missy came into existence?
Was he okay?
A new email quickly came in, the notification popping up in the corner of the screen. It took her a moment to be able to move her hand enough to refresh the page, bringing up the new text.
'I told you, my name is the Master.'
Apparently, she had replied to him without noticing. Apparently, it had also been a few minutes since she'd replied as well. In fact, she wasn't sure how long it had been since she'd stormed out of the Vault. She was shivering, though. Was she cold? It wasn't winter, why was she shivering?
Just when she thought she was safe with Missy in the Vault something came along and reminded her that she was still out there. That just because she was in the Vault in this particular relative time didn't mean that there was no Missy walking around. She could make it until the end of the thousand years, get let out, and still jump back to right now and grab her again. She was still walking around as a danger. And now, as well, so was the Master. And just like Missy he had sought her out. She was never going be free from either of them. She was trapped being hounded. Hunted.
'Come on, Danielle, you can't ignore me forever.'
Danni didn't scream, she just took hold of the laptop with both hands and chucked it as far away from her as she possibly could. It smashed as it hit the ground, scattering keys and glass as it skidded away but there was no relief. She just stared at it with wide eyes. What was she going to do? She wasn't safe. She was never going to be safe.
~0~0~0~
The Doctor looked up as Danni opened the door almost energetically. It swung open, hitting the fireplace behind it and bouncing off it. "Let's go somewhere," she declared out of nowhere.
"I'm sorry?" he asked as she shut the door just as quickly. She turned around, leaning against it, a grin on her face.
"Let's go somewhere," she repeated. "Just you and me. Let's go on an adventure."
"What happened to you not wanting to go on another trip?" he asked, a little concerned.
"Well, I was talking to Nardole and suddenly realised I had changed my mind," she offered and he nodded solemnly.
"That is enough to make anyone want to get as far away from here as possible," he agreed. "Bill will be here soon, though."
"Tell her not to come," Danni said as she all but chucked her laptop onto the chair in front of his desk. "Tell her your tutoring… thing is cancelled. We can go, just the two of us, can't we?"
How could he turn her down when she was so eager? He had been worried that their trip to the Frost Fair had put her back on edge when it came to leaving the university. He was glad to see that, even though she had tried to deny it, the itch to travel was still within her. He shot her a grin. "Give me a moment, my Pet."
She also grinned back and sped into the TARDIS. He quickly let Bill know that class was cancelled and he headed in after her. She was stood at the TARDIS, waiting for him like a child who really wanted to go to the park. "Where to?" he asked. "I know this wonderful little planet, beautiful skies? Or maybe somewhere far into the future?"
She shook her head and placed her hands on the controls. "Let's go random," she replied. "Let's see what she can do." And she flipped the switch.
~0~0~0~
It was very obvious from the moment that the Doctor and Danni stepped out of the TARDIS that they'd landed right in the middle of a situation that it normally took them at least half an hour to fall into the middle of. The hallway was dark, really dark. There were wires hanging from the ceiling that seemed to spark as they swung in the air. The emergency lighting that illuminated barely anything at all flickered to indicate that the power supply was intermittent at best. There was the sound of screams in the distance, almost as if the air was carrying the noise to them.
Danni grinned from ear to ear; this was perfect.
"Well, this sure is random," the Doctor commented, ducking as one of the wires sparked off another and came within a dangerous distance of his head. "Must be a weekend."
Danni looked up and down the hallway, looking for any signs of anything useful, but it was too dark to see without further investigation. She looked up at the ceiling. "The emergency lights are pointing that way," she said, pointing right as she trailed them with her finger. "That'll be the exit."
"And yet we don't seem to be terribly overrun by people trying to get to safety," the Doctor commented. She nodded before pointing up to the left.
"I think we should go that way."
The Doctor agreed completely so the pair headed up into the danger. "Did you check where we were before we left the TARDIS?" he asked her.
"Did you?" she shot back. He did not. "I'm thinking we've not gone too far. This architecture is very plain." She wasn't one for checking if there was a door in the walls anymore, but when she did drag her fingers across the wall, she did make sure she didn't find any door handles. "The colours are very plain. It's all a bit dull, so I'm thinking Earth or, at least, human-adjacent."
"Time period?" he asked and she shrugged.
"Who knows? They all begin to look a bit samey after a while."
He couldn't disagree with her there. He found a lot of the time species tended to cycle through their architectural style choices, which could on occasion make it harder for him to pin down an exact time frame. "Perhaps we can find some locals? This might not be any danger at all, they could just be right in the middle of redecorating."
She shot him a look. "And the screaming?"
"Who likes to redecorate?"
She did. In fact, one of her favourite memories from Darillium was helping Jack get set up. She'd helped paint his entire house and it had been a delightful experience. Tiring, and not as fun as building his furniture, but she'd really enjoyed it and he knew that.
Then there was the sound of gunfire very close by and she smirked at him. "I knew it, we're in trouble," she crowed happily. "Let's go save the day!"
Her enthusiasm for the danger she was practically dragging them into was a little concerning. Whilst turning his back on screaming people take his wife back to the TARDIS to find out what was wrong wasn't exactly his normal practice, the Doctor did consider doing so for just a moment. It was becoming apparent very quickly that this was more than just running off because Nardole had said something to annoy her. She was running away from something, hard and fast. He recognised that very well.
"Are we in space, or on the ground?" she asked him. He did a little bounce as he walked, feeling the gravity.
"Ground," he confirmed and she nodded as if that was what she had been thinking as well.
"So, maybe Earth, maybe not," she mused to herself. "I do like a good mystery."
They turned a corner and, in the dark, spotted their first bodies of the trip on the ground. Danni grimaced at the sight. "Oh, that is something you don't want to see," she muttered as they walked over. There were three adults and they crouched down to look at them. One of them looked distinctly older than the other two.
"The younger two have been shot," she told the Doctor. "Not sure what got the third, though. Fright, maybe?"
The Doctor pulled out his screwdriver and gave them a scan. "Well, that's surprising," he declared. "They're the same age."
"Really?" Danni asked and he nodded. "What's turned him into a grandpa, then?"
"Not sure, but a quick stab in the dark would be his two friends," he reasoned. "Why else were they gunned down?"
"Are they human?"
The Doctor gave them another quick scan, just to refresh his results. "I'd say so," he confirmed. "Although that doesn't account for what they did to him."
Danni pulled at the old guy's clothing. "Is it me, or does this scream 'military' to you?" The Doctor nodded in agreement. "So, they're attacking the soldiers. Being that they were shot and all left here, I'm going to assume that the soldiers were on the defence."
"So, what's so bad that the military have been sent in?" the Doctor finished. That was the question. The bodies, as tragic as they were, just offered more questions than they had answered. What was attacking the planet to make the military go in? Why had the two humans been gunned down as well? What had destroyed all of the infrastructure around them?
"Oh, this keeps getting better and better," Danni commented happily before she met his gaze. "It's just like old times, isn't it? You and me, in the middle of the unknown, working it out and fighting bad guys?" She didn't wait for him to answer, instead she turned back to the old man and began searching his clothing. "I've missed this so much."
He frowned as he watched her. "What are you doing?"
"Looking for identification," she explained. "I found out long ago that, when you don't have any psychic paper, military identification is the next best thing to get you into any place you want."
He knew she was talking about when she was on the run after she'd escaped from Missy. "Did you do that often?" he asked.
"I had a lot of places I needed to get into without a way to get in myself," she reasoned. "They also make great places to hide, or steal things when you need money." She pulled out a badge, not unlike a police officer's from 21st century Britain. "And they also give you more information than you expect." She handed it over. "He's not military, he's coast guard."
The Doctor took it off her to take a closer look. "Coast guard? In that uniform?" he questioned. Danni also pulled out a gun.
"And armed," she added as the Doctor handed her the badge back. "They're sending out volunteers to fight. That's a pretty bleak situation."
The Doctor stood back up again and helped her off the floor. "So, let me guess, you want to go investigate?" he asked and she nodded eagerly.
"Don't you?" she countered. She took hold of his other hand. "Come on, Theta. Mystery, intrigue, people in danger; you know you love this as much as I do."
She was using her tempting voice, with a little smirk and a look in her eye that he could rarely resist. He nodded and pulled her a little closer. "That I do, my Pet," he purred. She closed the gap between them, pulling him in for a kiss that meant that they didn't hear the footsteps approaching until it was too late for them to do anything about it.
"You!" someone screamed and they broke away to see a group of five people pointing their guns at them. "Show us your hands!"
Danni frowned. "What?" she asked bluntly.
"Hands! Show us your hands, right now!" the one at the front shouted, pointing their gun in warning at the Time Lords. The pair shared a look, completely baffled, then held up their hands like they should have been at being held at gunpoint. "And your forearms."
"Now I feel like you're just undressing us," Danni commented but they both did as they were asked. They rolled their sleeves up and showed off their arms, and with a motion of their leader's hand, the guns were lowered. They lifted up their helmet to reveal a rather young-looking man.
"What are you doing out here?" he asked them. "Civilians are supposed to remain inside the town hall until daylight."
"Yeah, we didn't get that memo," Danni replied. She pointed down at the corpses next to them. "What happened to grandad down there?"
The man's eyes narrowed slightly in anger. "That's Dale," he snapped. "He was one of our men."
"Ah, sorry about her," the Doctor quickly interjected. "She's become quite rude as of late." Danni glared at him but he ignored her. "The more important question is why did you want us to show you our arms?"
The guy looked a little distrustful at the question. "What do you mean? Where have you been?"
"You know, snogging, sleeping, generally being rather idiotic," he dismissed. "Why don't you just assume we know nothing and go from there."
The man didn't look like he particularly trusted what he was saying, as if he couldn't quite work out how no one would know what was going on. It was a state of mind that Danni and the Doctor came across on a regular basis, and one that usually only took a moment to overcome.
One of the other soldiers leant forward towards their leader. "We should move. We've already stood still for too long."
The man nodded, agreeing. "Right," he said. "We'll have to head back to base. You two will just have to sit the night out there."
"Good plan," Danni replied. "I'm Danni, by the way, he's the Doctor."
She could see the fact that he was just called 'the Doctor' was also causing pause for thought, and she loved the look on people's faces when they were deciding whether or not to question what they had just heard. It was always a fifty-fifty chance on whether they would.
"Grant," he eventually offered. "This way."
"Thank you, Grant," Danni replied before they all started heading the way the soldiers had come from. She looked up at the Doctor, smugly. "See, not so rude, am I?"
He dipped his head down slightly so he could keep his voice low. "If you're bragging about being polite, you're not being polite, my Pet," he pointed out.
She scowled.
~0~0~0~
"It happened so fast that no one really saw it coming," Grant explained. "Not even the government. Or, if they did, they were paid very well to keep quiet. One minute we were going about a business, going to work like every other day, the next the entire town was closed off."
"What, with a glass dome?" Danni asked.
"Forcefield," he corrected. "It's highly contagious, so they had to quarantine the entire area. No one comes in, no one comes out, and we're just left to fend for ourselves as we're slowly converted."
The TARDIS had landed them in an office building, of all places. Not that it was obvious from the state of disrepair the hallways had been in, but Grant and his men had led them outside and it had been the home of an insurance company. They'd not gone far down the street to another set of offices. It turned out that they were all making do with what they had around them.
The room itself was pretty decked out. They'd brought in every monitor they could find, all placed haphazardly around the windowless room, all with camera feeds. They'd managed to keep power going into the building enough to keep an eye on wherever they could, keeping watch over their immediate area. The room only had the door that they'd come through, and was in the middle of the building. Very defensible, very clever.
"And this was all down to, what did you call them?" the Doctor replied.
"Glucosphere," another one of the men, Sam, said. "They were the leading body of additives. You know, those things they put in candy to make it taste like actual fruit without having to have any fruit in them at all?"
"They've been a part of this town for decades. One of the biggest employers. The pay with a bit rubbish, but they always had jobs. My parents even worked there," Grant continued. "No one is really sure what happened."
"So, the arm thing…" Danni started leadingly.
"It's how it starts. It starts at the fingers, spreads up, and soon you're not human anymore."
"They suck all your energy. They can age you fifty years in seconds. We think that's when your heart gives out," Sam explained.
"We don't exactly have the resources to investigate, though," Grant said, a little cynically. "All we know is that when they die, they revert back."
They were sat around a table that had once been used for conferences. The Doctor sat back in his chair. "And how does your little ragtag band of merry heroes fit into this?"
"Well, we're only a small town. We don't exactly have a military presence. We all got together at town hall to try and figure out what to do next and we've all played enough video games to know that we can fight or we can lie down and die. So, we gathered whatever weaponry we had, volunteered for posts at various points throughout the time, and now we're trying to cull the infection."
"That explains your mate Dale," Danni commented. "He was a coast guard."
"Ocean's about 15 minutes up the road," another one of the men explained. "We've got a few of them dotted about. We've been cut off from that as well, though, otherwise we'd have all fled that way."
"So now it's just us against them," Grant finished. "No one is coming to help. We're the last defence."
That explained why they all seemed a little young to be fighting. And, also, why they were very quickly comfortable to just spill their whole backstory without much of a fight. In their experience, actual military was often stubborn and incredibly unhelpful.
"But you got in, though, didn't you?" Sam asked. "How did you break through the quarantine?"
"Ah, well, we didn't exactly mean to," Danni dismissed. "What about the government, though? You said that they didn't see this coming, but are they not sending their own help?"
Grant shot a look at Sam. "Show them," he instructed. Sam walked over to one of the computers they had set up and clicked a few things. The monitor changed from a black and white camera feed to a woman in a nice suit, looking at the camera very solemnly.
"To the people of Lowgrary, on behalf of everyone, we hope that you are not in pain at this most unfortunate time. And we are sorry. We are so sorry."
It was only a short clip, barely five seconds long but it looped around against. Sam quickly turned it off. "That was our president," Grant explained. "It's being broadcast everywhere from the outside. Does that sound like a government who wants to help?"
"No, it doesn't," she agreed, looking at her husband. He had his thoughtful face on, the one he got when he was trying to process all of the information that was being thrown at him, looking for patterns or inconsistencies that might help them work out what was happening.
"You said that we'll have to wait it out in here until daylight. Why?" he asked.
"It's just easier to spot them in the light. The mutation turns their skin a dull grey, it helps them blend into the darkness better. In the daylight you can avoid them better."
The Doctor nodded. "Great, let's wait until sunrise, then," he declared, jumping off his seat. "Don't let us interrupt your duties. Danielle and I will sit in the corner until then. Danielle," he shot her a pointed look and she rolled her eyes, standing up and following him over.
"The corner, really?" she asked lowly.
"Let's take a leaf out of the infected's book, and hide in the shadows until something useful comes along."
~0~0~0~
"So, what we have is a gaggle of gamers playing army men, except they're not playing?" Danni surmised. She shifted slightly, leaning her head against the Doctor's chest.
"What we have is some evil cooperation turning people into killer zombies," the Doctor pointed out. The room was dark, so they were sat in the far corner, up against the wall. Danni laid against the Doctor.
"But why? Who makes something that can wipe out part of the population? Especially if they then just cut everyone off, so it doesn't spread? And at a food additive company? Were the E-numbers just not quite enough or something?" she continued. "And why would they revert back when they died? And we heard screaming, but I don't think that was Dale, I think he might have been there for a while, so who was screaming?"
"Perhaps there were people outside who befell the same fate?"
"But everyone's supposed to be at town hall until sun up. Are there people just not following instruction? I mean, people rarely do until people start dying and the whole town is domed off from everyone else. Are the infected nocturnal? Why do they drain people? And what's with the hands?"
The questions were coming thick and fast, and he was very happy for her to brain dump on him. Their dynamic had always been that should would see something, or say something, that would stop his own stream of questions and thoughts and point him in the right direction. While he was always looking for reasons and answers, he also trusted her to find the one thing he was missing.
"Why bother patrolling at all?" the Doctor asked. "If town hall is safe, why leave?"
"Because flight is only an option when there's not a giant forcefield around your town. So, you fall to fight," Danni reasoned. "I mean, we both know being caged is only frightening some of the time. Other times it just plain infuriating and if I could shoot the things that were keeping me trapped, I would."
The sound of gunfire had them all looking at the door, surprised, as what was happening outside helped to illustrate her point. "Are there other bases like this in this building?" Danni called over.
"No, we're the only one on this block," Grant replied. Sam took a look at the many monitors looking at the building and the street below.
"Shit," he breathed. "There's tons of them."
"There must be, if your friends have circled all the way around here," the Doctor replied, jumping off the ground before helping his wife up. "Perhaps now would be a good time to see them in action. Shall we?"
"You- You want to go after them?" Grant asked, slowly, and rather confused.
"You don't want to help save your friends?" Danni countered.
~0~0~0~
By the time they made it outside, the infected horde had left and with two or three of their men on the ground where they'd been shot by the fleeing humans. Of course, there were also a few scattered corpses of people who had been aged well beyond their years close by. It was a horrid, distressing, and terribly sobering sight, but it did give the two Time Lords something to examine to try and get to the bottom of what was happening. They both split up, the Doctor with his screwdriver in hand and Danni with a sad look in her eyes as she crouched over one of the aged people.
Grant joined her by the side of the fallen man and a glance up showed that the two 'civilians' had been flanked, but neither were being disturbed. She was sure it was all just too disturbing for all of them to fight the strangest the two had brought.
She took a look at Grant, who was looking at his fallen friend like he had seen one too many dead bodies and Danni's hearts ached for him. He was so young.
She stood up, not seeing anything new that could help them, brushing herself down as she headed back over to see what the Doctor had found out. "How did you become the leader, then?" Danni asked. "I mean, you're what, 18, 20? How did you get to be in charge of your own platoon?"
"22," Grant corrected. "And, I guess, I'm the oldest. Power trickles down and the moment Dale died, I suddenly was in charge."
"Makes sense," Danni replied before frowning. She stopped. "No, wait, no it doesn't," she said. "You're the oldest?"
Grant didn't seem to quite know what to do with her question. "Yeah," he said. "Sam's 21, and Jake and Darren are 19."
"And power trickles down?" she asked and he nodded. "And there's more of you out there? More groups of merry men fighting down these weird mutations?"
"Yes…"
The Doctor looked over at his wife. He had expected her to appear at his side, but she instead seemed to be standing in the middle of the street, staring at Grant like he had just dropped some information that had changed everything she was thinking about. He walked over. "What it is?" he asked.
She pointed at Grant. "He's the oldest."
His brows furrowed. "Okay…" he started. "Does that really matter? Is it his birthday or something?" He looked at Grant. "Rather rubbish way to spend your birthday, isn't it?"
She shook her head. "No, it's not his birthday," she corrected. "He's in charge because he's the oldest. There are a lot of groups of people with guns, all with the oldest in charge. Unless they have had rather bad luck compared to everyone else, then they're all going to be a similar age as him."
"So they're all, what, 40-45?" the Doctor guessed and she shot him a look.
"He's 22," she corrected. He still had so much trouble seeing people's faces and ages, they all blurred together for him and most of the time it was adorable and she could be patient and explain it all to him. But now she was on a train of thought she had hoped he would join her on and as it zoomed past him, it just annoyed her. "If he's 22, then so is everyone else. All these young people leading armies like they're generals." She looked back at Grant. "Where are all the grownups?"
The Doctor finally joined her in what she was thinking. "Of course," he breathed. "You talked about your parents as if they were dead. I thought it was just an unfortunate consequence of this infection, but it's not, is it? They all died, didn't they? With the outbreak?"
"Not all of them," he explained. "Glucosphere employed a lot of the town, but not everyone. It spread through everyone who worked there like wildfire, but everyone else was attacked and either killed or became one of them. One by one we were slowly overrun and as people died, we had to find a new system of leadership. Eventually we settled on age because there was no other option. It's not like we can really vote on it."
The Doctor and Danni shared a look. "How long, exactly, has this been going on?" Danni asked.
"About four years, now," Sam spoke up. "I was still in school when the town closed down."
"And you've been fighting all this time, even though your authority figures are dead and the government has turned its back on you?" the Doctor asked.
"Collectively we joined together and said 'fuck 'em'."
Danni grinned. "There it is," she declared before looking to her husband. "This is the human spirit I love. Gathering together under the umbrella of telling the people in power to suck it."
He agreed, it was truly amazing and one of his favourite characteristics of humanity. He adored their spirit. It always amazed him and it always made him love them a little bit more.
Gunfire shot out from down the hallway, and there was a scream that had them all looking behind them. "Was that Jake?" Sam asked.
"Where's Sam?" Grant asked before stepping forward, gun ready. "Sam? Jake?" he called down the hallway. Footsteps rumbled towards them and it became pretty apparent they were about to be pounced upon.
A group of infected appeared form the dark. While it was obvious that they had been human at some point, their features were mangled into something rather horrific. Eyes hung out of skulls, jaws visible through rotten flesh. It was very easy to see how the myth of zombies came into existence if events similar to this had happened over history. It was like they had sprung up from the ground.
Danni quickly looked at their hands as that, apparently, was the first signs of the infection. Instead of hands they had claws, almost like they were crabs, with their fingers fused together to form the shape. They were snarling and, it would seem, rather mad.
"Run," the Doctor declared as he grabbed her hand. She held onto it tightly. "Run, now."
~0~0~0~
Sorry for the missed chapter last week! I scrapped the original version of this, so I hope that this is alright :)
Reviews!
Apella - Thanks, sweetie!
Guest - Yah, I do like a good cliffhanger. Thanks! :)
Guest - Hope this one was alright!
Psst - Thank you, I think :P Hope this is a good follow on.
DarkPhantom101 - Oh, I can't wait until we get to Oh! I don't have plans for her to regenerate anytime soon, and definitely not before Thirteen comes. If you would like some Thirteen/Danni, check the outtakes. There's some Danni/Thirteen fluff in there :)
SuspianFeels - Thank you, sweetie! Hopefully I'll be semi-reliable, but I can't promise that.
bored411 - Well, you would think so, wouldn't you? :P