I don't own Doctor Who.
Hanging by Threads.
When the TARDIS materialised, the Doctor was becoming increasingly worried; why would the TARDIS materialise in space? According to the readings, they'd materialised just outside Earth's solar system, but why?
This day had been something that the Doctor had planned for a while now ever since she'd escaped from that stinking prison asteroid when the Judoon had snatched her out of the TARDIS after that mess with the Master and the Cybermen, the day she had discovered she was not the person she had known herself to be.
For a long time now the Doctor had been scouring time and space for any lead on the Division, an organisation that the Doctor had likened to the Celestial Intervention Agency, and she had a theory the CIA was linked in some way to the Division but it was hard to be sure.
Finding leadings had proven neigh impossible. An organisation devoted to interference was hardly likely to make it easy to track should anybody get wind of it, but the Doctor was thousands of years old and she had learnt enough over the aeons she had lived and travelled the universe since the days she'd travelled with Susan back in the days when she had thought all she'd needed to do was to keep her safe before travelling to the Dalek occupied Earth in the 22nd century and coming face to face with the man who wiped out an entire civilisation because he was desperate to save himself.
But she had gotten a lead. Karvanista, a Lupari. Possibly one of the last members of the Division left in the universe, well as far as she could find. She had come to a convoluted plan and came up with dozens of counter plans when Karvanista 'caught' them.
She had wanted him to catch them.
She had wanted to lull him into a false sense of security, why else would she make it easy for him to handcuff them onto a gravity bar and set the TARDIS up accordingly?
The Doctor had spent a long time hunting down Karvanista, who was the only known Division operative she was able to find. He was her only lead. She couldn't let him go.
But then it had all gone wrong.
Not only had the TARDIS had trouble heading to Earth, but she was also confronted by that telepathic message. That should not have happened. The TARDIS telepathic circuits were designed to protect their pilots from anyone attacking them, with firewalls and temporal traps, and she was confronted by the view of an asteroid or moon that was dark, barren, and lifeless and was being used as a prison by an alien who disintegrated two people.
The alien had snatched her out of the TARDIS. It showed an alien incarcerated since the dawn of the universe. The Doctor knew that was possible, especially when she had met some of them like the Beast/Devil. Two armed guards were evaluating a prisoner's cage before the containment chamber shut down, and he killed them. The creature had said something just before he attacked them that caught the Doctor's notice.
"You have performed invaluable service to Division."
These two had been members of the Division?
Who was this creature?
But after he had killed them, the creature transformed after soaking up their life energy, and it seemed to regenerate like a Time Lord. The creature's new form was similar, but different, with an almost skeletal appearance but it also appeared almost crystalline, reminding the Doctor of the members of the Council of Eight. It had been a sinister meeting, especially since Octan had closely resembled her eighth incarnation, but ever since she had gotten her memories back and she had reset the timeline she realised all of the Council had, for reasons she didn't still get, resembled her previous lives at that point.
But this creature was different. It not only knew of the Division, which meant it had tangled with them hundreds of years ago, but it also knew her well. The Doctor was also concerned about Yaz. She was keeping Yaz at arm's length to protect her, but she had made that mistake before and it had led to Yaz, Ryan, and Graham discovering that Gallifrey had been destroyed. A part of the Doctor wanted to open up to Yaz in much the same way her Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh selves had opened up to Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy, Rory, and Clara, but every single time she was tempted to open up she decided to put it off. But sooner or later Yaz would discover what she was hiding; the Doctor might have told Ryan and Jack she wasn't who she'd thought she was, but this was different.
In any case, so many things were odd.
The TARDIS was acting up like the Block Transfer Computations were being corrupted, but that should never happen; there were thousands of safety locks to prevent that from happening. That time when the TARDIS became infected by the Faction's biodata virus didn't count; that time the TARDIS had taken the virus into herself in order to save her.
This was different.
It was like some kind of disease had infected the TARDIS and the interior universe hadn't broken down. Nothing was as it was meant to be going today. Karvanista's ship was leaking temporal residue, and then there was their whole mission. The Lupari fleet had gone to Earth, not to destroy the planet as so many aliens in the past had tried in the past, but to rescue humanity, with whom they were species bonded with one another (she really did need to work on this incarnation's irritating habit of jumping first to conclusions when she believed the Lupari planned on invading Earth); she actually thought it a bit rich that they would care now about humanity.
Where were they when the Cybermen tried to conquer Earth during his second incarnation's first real operation with UNIT? Where were the Lupari when Davros tried to use Earth as a cog in the Reality Bomb engine? Where were the Lupari when the Sontarans had tried to turn the planet into a clone world?
But the only reason the Lupari were meant to react like this was if there was some really, really big threat. And there was. The Doctor had already seen it. Karvanista had told her about something else, something called the Flux.
He had described the Flux as "A hurricane, ripping through the structure of this universe, disrupting every particle. The falling of the structure of the universe. A cataclysm of unknown proportions or patterns. We... we don't know for sure."
The Doctor had not liked the sound of that, but what worried her the most was Karvanista seemed to believe she should know about the Flux herself, and she wondered if the knowledge of the Flux was just yet another memory the Division had taken from her.
The Doctor stared perplexed at the Time Rotor. "Why have you brought us here? Multiple readings? It's one event. I said, trace one event In all of time and space, you bring us here. Why?"
After she had met Dan Bishop and Yaz and got them both into the TARDIS, the Doctor had scanned the entire universe to discover more about this Flux, wondering if it was Davros's reality bomb all over again. If it was, she wanted to know more so she could stop it.
The Doctor was so distracted she didn't even hear a whispered conversation between Yaz and Dan behind her. "Who's she talking to?" Dan asked staring at the Doctor's back as if he were worried he'd fallen in with some loony or something.
"The TARDIS," Yaz replied.
"What, is it alive?" Dan looked around the console room slightly nervously, fully expecting to see eyes or something on stalks.
Yaz was more nonchalant, but she had wondered to herself that very same question. "No idea, but they do chat."
Oblivious to the conversation, the Doctor had been checking the readings on the console before she was satisfied. She turned and walked over to where Yaz and Dan were, but they were both standing in front of the TARDIS door. "It's brought us to the edge of your solar system. Doesn't make any sense. There's nothing here."
She opened the main doors and peered outside. Overall the entire solar system looked precisely as it should, with the black void of space coloured in with stellar gases and supernovas and nebulas in the distance. It was an awe-inspiring sight to behold, and one that the Doctor had always admired. It was so hard to believe something was destroying it now. She was so taken in by the view she let it overcome almost all of her problems; her fears the Block Transfer Computations of the TARDIS interior were being corrupted, her search for Karvanista, her quest to learn more about the Division and discover what they had taken from her, questions about her own past, worrying if the Master had survived because she was sure he had survived considering he had survived things more devastating that a death particle for centuries, Yaz's suspicions, the Daleks, the Cybermen, but most of all she could even pretend that the skeletal crystalline alien she had seen after it had psychically snatched her away from the TARDIS and the Flux could almost be considered a dream.
She was so taken in by the view she almost missed Dan and Yaz's footsteps behind her before the two humans made it to the door and peered out.
"Whoa. When you say nothing…," Dan's voice and the tone of awe inside it made the Doctor smile. This was one of the reasons why she loved taking humans with her on her travels, only to hear them be amazed like that.
"Yeah. Nothing here, except an amazing view," Yaz said jovially.
"How can we breathe?"
"Protective air bubble." Clearly the crash course Yaz had taken in understanding the workings of the TARDIS was paying off; it was one thing knowing about the protective forcefields and air shells, but the Doctor had given her lessons on the basics of operating the console. Not enough, but some.
"I'll take your word for it." Dan was clearly trying to take it all in. The Doctor wasn't worried, if he stayed with them for longer, then he'd take views like this in his stride, but at least they learnt hanging in space like she and Yaz had after she'd recovered from her recent regeneration and gone through that mess with Tzim-Sha.
The toiling of a bell made their heads spin around to stare into the depths of the TARDIS.
Oh no.
The TARDIS cloister bell.
Yaz turned to the Doctor, her expression already showing that that noise could not have been a good sign, "What is it?"
"The Cloister Bell," the Doctor whispered just as the bell toiled again. "It's a warning."
"Of what?" Yaz asked nervously, not that the Doctor could fault her. The Cloister Bell had rung ominously many times in the past, and each time it had not been good.
"The TARDIS is worried," the Doctor replied.
"What's that?" Dan asked, drawing their attention back out into the vista of space. The Doctor's eyes quickly took in the sight of a vast brown cloud that was glowing like there were thousands upon millions of fires held within travelling through space.
The Doctor might not have seen the threat Karvanista had described on his ship, but she had a good idea what this was. "The Flux. This is what the Lupari have seen. What they were trying to protect humanity from." Desperately she reached into her pocket and took out her sonic screwdriver; the screwdriver's scanning function was limited, but if she could get an idea of what it was with that, perhaps she might find a clue to stopping this….
"What's it doing?" Dan asked as she took the scan.
The Doctor checked the scan results, her eyes widening with horror as she read off the almost unbelievable readings. "Disobeying every law of Time and Space. Disrupting every particle it comes into contact with. Oh!"
The Doctor found herself looking above the cloud, watching as it disintegrated the Moon and Earth, an alien world she didn't recognise, but she watched in horror as the people tried to run as the Flux ate away the city with towers like artificial mushrooms. The sheer scale of the devastation and the way it shook her nearly had the Doctor fall out of the TARDIS, but Yaz and Dan quickly managed to grab her and stopped her from falling.
"Doctor, what's the matter?"
For a moment the Doctor couldn't answer Yaz's question.
She had seen and experienced many devastating events over the centuries. She had witnessed races like the Daleks and the Time Lords trying to destroy the fabric of creation, but what she'd experienced was more horrifying.
"I can feel it all," the Doctor whispered, at last, her voice so quiet and horrified by what she had just seen play out across the entire universe thanks to the TARDIS and her ability to see and hear across the whole vastness of time and space. "I can feel the universe breaking."
"But you can stop it, right?" The Doctor didn't say anything about Yaz's almost unshakeable faith in her capabilities, but she was too horrified by what she'd just seen and her head was spinning as she tried to concentrate on the present. Could she even stop the Flux when she didn't know the first thing about it?
"No," the voice of the alien who'd disintegrated those two Division operatives spoke, and suddenly the Doctor found herself in an alien landscape where the sky was a light purple as though a sun was glowing through a haze while the dark sand below was rising through the air like a reverse rainfall and as she looked around, mentally trawling through the list of places this might be, she found herself even more perplexed.
Great, so even the laws of physics had no place in dreams.
"Hello again, Doctor," the alien said, from behind her. The alien had seemingly recovered from his long imprisonment, and now he was wearing a dark jacket with square shoulders.
The Doctor asked the only obvious question in her mind, "Who are you?"
The creature chuckled - she wished it wouldn't, the jagged teeth alone made this creature hideous enough without taking into account the crystal growths in its head and around its face. "They were so efficient. There is not a tiny corner of you that remembers."
The Doctor stiffened angrily. She had known this thing knew of the Division and it was clear they'd met, but what she hated the most was he knew her well whereas thanks to the Division she didn't remember a thing.
But what made her angrier was here was somebody else who believed she should know more than she did; the Division had taken everything from her memories of working for them, and the whole thing with Tecteun - the fact the Time Lords had become what they were because they had tortured a child was bad enough, but the implications that she was that same child made her sick, and this thing knew the tale probably. "Remembers what?" She asked quizzically while she tried to keep the anger out of her voice.
The Creature stepped lightly towards her. "You and I, dancing across Space and Time, locked in combat," he said as he walked around her, while the Doctor turned; she didn't know if he was going to disintegrate her, but it was unlikely, still it was better to be safe than sorry. "And now, after so long apart, we get to do it once more."
"I don't know you," the Doctor hated to admit that but this thing knew she didn't remember him, why would it matter?
"Yet I know you. I remember every battle... which gives me the advantage. Our final fight has begun," the creature said, leering toothily at her before the Doctor suddenly found herself jolting backwards.
"Ah!" She cried, getting a glimpse of the TARDIS doors while she felt two pairs of hands on her. "Doctor. Are you all right?" Yaz, sweet, kind Yaz asked next to her. Still reeling from the unexpected telepathic conversation and the fear of knowing a new enemy she didn't know anything about, the Doctor lashed out without meaning to, but she hoped Yaz didn't take it too personally. "Stop asking me that."
"Is it me, or does it look like it's changing direction?" Dan suddenly said - the Doctor would later ask herself when she looked back on this whole thing when she had recovered from the psychic invasion if Dan was trying to distract them so Yaz didn't lash out back at her, or if it was an enormous coincidence. "It's like it's coming for us."
The Doctor watched as a large thick tendril of the cloud suddenly came for them. "Get inside!" The Doctor pushed Yaz and Dan back into the console room while she closed the doors; with the state the TARDIS was in right now, she didn't want to be too trusting of the Exo-chronoplasmic shell. She raced to the console and pushed down on the dematerialisation lever, but the TARDIS stuttered and the Time Rotor refused to lift. "Do not stall on me now," the Doctor begged her ship, but the TARDIS refused to budge. "Taking evasive action," she picked up the hammer. "Sorry," she said in advance knowing how much the TARDIS hated percussive maintenance. "Sorry," she said hitting the console again. "Really sorry." She smashed the console again. "This is impossible. The end of the universe is chasing us."
"So what are you doing?' Dan demanded.
What could she do? She knew the Flux was being controlled and directed, and it was likely what was affecting the TARDIS. She knew it had something to do with that creature who knew her and had fought her often enough during her time with the Division. Their only hope was to flee into the past, find out what the Flux was and then hopefully come up with a plan while repairing the damage the universe had taken. There might not be a restoration field like the one she'd found in the Pandorica, but she could make something similar perhaps? The Doctor didn't know, her options were too limited at the moment.
"The only thing I can do," the Doctor began as she remembered the Lupari fleet, if their ships had the kind of technology which could block off the effects of the Flux, then Earth and humanity might be saved. "If the Flux is coming for us... then we're gonna head to Earth."
Yaz and Dan's "What?" Made the Doctor wince, and made her realise she hadn't really explained her reasoning while she was aware from the TARDIS readings Neptune was falling apart as the Flux washed closer and closer to Earth. The Doctor turned on the communications system and tuned in to the Lupari communications network. "TARDIS calling Karvanista," she said, hoping Karvanista was in the mood to talk and listen; they needed allies right now, not problems, or some stupid debate.
"Bring me back my human, now!"
Relieved that Karvanista was quick on the ball, the Doctor was about to tell the Lupari warrior they had more important things to deal with now, but unfortunately, Dan was prepared to waste time. "I'm not your human!"
"I am trying to save your worthless life," Karvanista argued, but while she could admire his dedication the Doctor wasn't in the mood for an argument when they were running out of time. "Listen to me," the Doctor interrupted, sending a look at Dan that was so harsh the human actually took a step back and gave her the chance to speak,
"We're approaching you fast...and the Flux is right behind us, following us, as we head to Earth."
"It can't be. We don't have enough time to get all the humans on board the ships. The battalion's only on the edge of the planet." The Doctor had never seen a Lupari look or even sound afraid, but this was the first.
"We have to have time, Doctor. My family are there," Yaz said while she clung to one of the columns. "Mine, too," Dan added. "And Di. I'm late to meet Diane."
The Doctor didn't have time to reassure either of her human companions, she had to get this to Karvanista right now. "I've got a plan here. There's only one chance to survive this. Karvanista, you said the battalion ships were designed to fit together to form a protective structure."
"What about it?' Karvanista asked worriedly. Hoping the worry was focused more on how soon it would be before the Flux got to them rather than anything that she might come up with - the Doctor might want to know more about the Division but she needed Karvanista's cooperation right now - the Doctor focused on the console while she transmitted an urgent diagram of her idea, and she hoped the Lupari understood it and implemented it quickly before their plans became pointless and Earth disintegrated.
"I'm sending you a formation for the ships. Get it communicated to them instantly. You have to move fast."
"What good will that do?" Karvanista asked a moment later, the Doctor just hoped he had taken that moment to look over her ideas. If not then Earth was in trouble.
"Just do it," the Doctor argued, wondering why everyone was so obsessed with asking questions at times like this. "That shape, that formation. Got to outrun this thing. Ah!" The Doctor suddenly said at the TARDIS jolted violently, sending Dan hurtling to the wall while the Doctor herself fought to keep hold. "We're being dragged into the heart of the Flux."
"Can the Tardis withstand it?" Yaz asked.
"I don't know," the Doctor replied while she kept her doubts to herself; the TARDIS had been experiencing odd turns today, and she frantically checking the readings she was getting but none of them made sense. "I don't understand it and I hate not understanding."
Karvanista's voice came back over the communication channel. The dog-like alien's news was the best thing she'd heard for the last half an hour. "Battalion positioned, just as you ordered."
For a moment, the Doctor was struck by something in the Lupar's voice. It was almost reverential… she pushed that aside, now was not the time. "Lock them into the pattern now," the Doctor shouted.
"This better work."
"You're telling me," the Doctor agreed, but since she didn't know what the Flux was doing or even how it came about, there were so many things she was unsure about. "Interlocking," Karvanista said, and the Doctor watched on the small holographic screen - a part of her wondered if she should go back to this console room's original scanner just to do the view justice as she watched the Lupari ships connect and surround Earth. "Lupari Battalion now encasing Earth. It worked. The pattern worked. The battalion is shielding Earth," Karvanista called in delight.
"Your ships better be as good as you say they are, Karvanista," the Doctor said.
"What about you? Get your ship behind that Battalion wall."
"Doing it now," the Doctor replied as she went around the console, her mind on giving the TARDIS a rest while learning as much about the Flux as she possibly could. There was no doubt in her mind the Lupari knew much more about the phenomenon than Karvanista had told her earlier. But what she really wanted to know was who that alien who'd already reached out twice to her, and discover who he was and if he had anything to do with this mess. But sparks flew from the controls, making the Doctor recoil and almost sent her flying as the TARDIS juddered before she raced back to the controls.
"Trouble, right?" Yaz called.
"I can't get us out of its pull," the Doctor looked down at the controls with desperation; a part of her wondered if she should delete some of the excess 'weight' of the TARDIS to give her ship more power, but she decided against it. The Block Transfer computations that made up the interior volume of the micro-universe was already shaky, she had no idea what would or could happen if the TARDIS was in her current state; for all, she knew they could be thrown out into the vacuum. And if that happened they could never stop the Flux.
She needed the TARDIS to help her. "We can't outrun it!" She yelled.
"But we're safe in here. We're sealed in." Dan's optimism almost made the Doctor smile, until the multiple sets of doors flew open - the Doctor wondered if the alien was responsible and had overheard Dan's statement and opened the doors to prove to them they were anything but safe.
The force of the Flux cloud managed to penetrate the TARDIS interior, sending particles of dust everywhere that made it hard to see clearly. It was almost like being in the middle of a sandstorm on a desert planet. "Oh no," Dan yelled.
"Come on, Doctor," the Doctor said to herself as she raced through all the things that could help them escape this disaster. "There must be something you can do."
But she wasn't having much luck….and then she had an idea.
It would be dangerous, but it seemed to be their only hope. "One last throw of the dice," she said as she took the hammer, which was hanging onto the controls thanks to its hook. "Get down," she yelled at Yaz and Dan before she lifted the mallet, pausing for a moment as she weighed these options. What she was about to do could cause tremendous harm, to her, Yaz, and Dan, and the TARDIS was bound to hate her for it, but there was nothing she could do. She would not do this unless there wasn't any other way. She only hoped the TARDIS accepted that. She smashed a hole in the console, and a stream of orange vortex energy spewed out of the time rotor and rushed out to meet the Flux. "Flux, meet Vortex energy. See what that does to you," the Doctor yelled before the TARDIS automatically shut off the stream so she herself didn't die. But the cloud was completely unaffected.
"Ah. Not much, by the looks of things," the Doctor tried hard but she felt she was failing to hide her panic; the Time Vortex was the heart of Time Lord power. The idea of it not being enough to reverse the effects of the Flux and dissipate it was horrifying, and with the Time Lords…gone, thanks to the Master, there was no help or hope from that corner.
"The end of the universe. I always wondered what it would feel like," the Doctor said as the Flux arrived at the door, ready to pour into the interior of the TARDIS like the vortex energy which had streamed out to meet it.
Please, one last miracle, please old girl, the Doctor pleaded, but with the universe and the TARDIS hanging by threads, she wasn't sure if hope was even enough anymore.
Please let me know what you think.
