Alternate Footsteps: Volume Two
Episode Three: Afterlife
An infinity of white. No up. No down. No left. No right. That was what the Doctor felt as he woke up in shock after feeling as if he had been burnt completely alive by the Dalek weaponry. He didn't feel as if he had been dead though. To him, it was almost as if he had been sleeping and had dreamt a very bad dream. Something was wrong and he would do his best to find out what was going on. The universe was being burnt by the Time War, the Daleks had his TARDIS and there was nobody else like him to watch over things.
He needed a way out.
Ameela opened her eyes and looked around her. She was trapped inside a single moment. More precisely, she was stuck inside the moment when the radio telescope the Doctor and her had been in exploded. Flames were paused, the Doctor was eternally trapped in an expression of fear and the control room was bathed in an orange light.
"What the hell is going on?" she said, walking around the blazing control centre in confusion and adding, "At least I'm still alive."
The Doctor had started walking. He didn't know which direction he was going in and he didn't know if he was walking towards or away from anything. All he knew was that he was walking. He could feel that he was on the floor and that there was some sort of gravity in this nowhere place. But he had nobody to say what he was thinking to. He was alone with his thoughts and no chance of escape.
Ameela decided to walk out of the radio telescope and onto the tip of the grassy hill that it was perched on. She couldn't feel any heat or rain or wind though. She could see the Dalek saucer firing at the radio telescope and it continued to still be firing. It never stopped firing. She couldn't hear any noise either. It was just silence. She couldn't even hear her own footsteps in the grass.
"Doctor?" she called out, sounding slightly afraid, "Please tell me you're there."
No response came.
The Doctor had decided to take out his sonic screwdriver and scan his local environment. The tip of the metal tube glowed red as he slowly swung it around.
"Fascinating." he remarked, learning the results, "Hardly any readings whatsoever. Just enough oxygen in the air to sustain me for quite a while."
He put his sonic screwdriver away and continued walking, thinking about what he had just found out.
Ameela didn't know what to do next. She had tried calling out for the Doctor and she couldn't talk to anyone nearby. She was alone in a frozen world that would forever be burning and it was impossible for this world to stop burning. And then it occurred to her that, unlike a few minutes ago, she believed the Doctor would get her out of this. That thought echoed around her head constantly and she tried to think of things to do before he would turn up. If he would turn up. Because another thought occurred to her just then.
If she was trapped in a world that was frozen in time, where was the Doctor?
Within the infinity that the Doctor had found himself in, there was still no way out. He was still walking along, hoping that something would enter his life so that he could escape. Not wanting to keep thinking about escaping, his mind turn to something else. Where was Ameela? Was she in a white void somewhere? Or was she dead? Or was she somewhere else entirely? Wherever she was, he knew that he couldn't get to her. He and Ameela were separated and he wanted to know that she was safe. He hadn't felt like that in a long time but she had helped him out with her local knowledge. He felt that he should make sure she had gotten out alive. He hoped she had. He wanted her to have escaped death as he had done. All he needed to do was escape, find Ameela and get his TARDIS back. Unfortunately, at the moment, that seemed impossible.
Ameela had spotted a single solitary Dalek hovering above Alpha City. It presumably was the first of its invasion fleet. The first to scream the word that Daleks always screamed when they destroyed anything. Life. Cities. Planets. That word that Ameela had feared and that word that made children scream in fear. The Dalek couldn't say that word though. It couldn't say that word and it never would say that word. From Ameela's perspective, that Dalek would have a permanent existence of sitting in the sky on the brink of attacking. The Dalek saucer that the Dalek had come from would always be firing at the radio telescope. From her perspective, the Doctor would always be on the brink of death, seconds away from oblivion. Unless he was somewhere else and the version she had seen earlier was a fake.
Suddenly and inexplicably, an opening appeared ahead of the Doctor. It was a large swirling black vortex that led to somewhere, probably. He scanned it with his sonic screwdriver and frowned.
"How can this be here?" he wondered, "In fact, how did any of this happen?"
He decided to walk straight into the opening and the inky black swirls of the opening engulfed him as he crossed from one place to another.
Ahead of Ameela, an opening appeared. It was large, black, inky vortex and she had no idea where it connected her with. But, she decided, wherever it led had to be better than a planet frozen in time. So she walked towards it and became engulfed by it, vanishing from Vostar Alpha.
Onboard a Dalek ship, far away from the Vostar System, two black inky vortexes opened up and the Doctor and Ameela walked through them. They found themselves in a large control centre, surrounded by Daleks. A red Dalek with black sensor globes and a flamethrower instead of the usual sucker arm regular Daleks had moved towards them. The Doctor stood in front of Ameela defensively.
"Now you keep back!" the Doctor warned, "I'm your worst nightmare and if you're afraid of me as much as I think you are, I know you know how much damage I could do to this ship."
"DOCTOR, YOU AND YOUR ASSOCIATE WILL NOT BE EXTERMINATED BY THE DALEKS." the red Dalek grated, making the Doctor frown and then smile a few seconds later.
"Don't tell me you've become too scared you can't even exterminate me!" he laughed, remembering how he hadn't done this in a long time. Ameela thought about this and started giggling as well at the thought of the most deadly warrior race in the universe being afraid.
"THIS IS NO TIME FOR HUMOUR." the red Dalek screamed as a holographic blue square flickered into life above the room. The Doctor looked up to see a face he recognised instantly. The Daleks and Ameela, however, did not know who the old looking woman was
"Daleks, I wish to inform you that this stupid war has gone on for far too long and it will end now. You are the cause of the Time War and so you shall be eradicated from history. The Time Lords are also the cause of this war and shall also be removed from the timelines. This way peace shall be restored to the universe and no more Time Wars shall be fought." came the voice of an old companion of the Doctor's who still sounded as young as she did when she had been travelling with him. In those days. Now she was dressed in brown rags and wielded a powerful looking energy weapon. Behind her was a TARDIS. Of course she could pilot that, the Doctor realised, she had been taught by the Time Lords.
"She's an old friend of yours, isn't she?" Ameela deduced, noticing the expression of fear on the Doctor's face.
"Yes, she is. And she should be known by the Daleks as well." the Doctor replied.
"SPECIFY WHAT YOU MEAN."
"Her name is Dorothy McShane, or Ace to her friends. You encountered her before. But I have no idea what happened to make her like this and I will do everything in my power to stop her. No matter what the cost." the Doctor promised, glancing around and then walking towards the TARDIS. Ameela watched the screen for a few more minutes before following him inside and then the TARDIS dematerialised as the Doctor began his hunt for his old friend.
TO BE CONTINUED...