"Sorry, sweetheart," says the guard. It's difficult to tell under the mask, but she swears she sees gentleness in the man's eyes, or the ghost of gentleness-past, perhaps. "You en't got a choice."
Sighing heavily, the guard shakes his head. "None of us have."
He shoves the spear into her grasp and pushes her out into the light.
She throws a hand in front of her face to shield her eyes from the blinding brightness, but it doesn't do anything to help with the sheer wall of noise. It's as if she is at the beach at high tide, and someone is blasting the crash and thunder of the waves through a series of megaphones all around her. Slowly, her eyes adjust to the dazzling white and she lowers her hand, cautiously, to reveal a giant set of bleached stone walls flanking her on all sides, an enormous oval amphitheatre of stone arches and pillars and heavy wooden doors; it's all very much like something out of a medieval storybook, as if horses and knights with lances might ride out any moment now to compete for the favor of their king. Atop the walls sit thousands upon thousands of spectators of all species and genders and shades of the rainbow. The audience cheers and shouts, clapping hands and stomping feet and hollering in a cacophonous mix of languages both Earthlike and distinctly not.
So, that explains the noise. But it doesn't explain where the hell she is, or what she's doing here, or why.
A quick scan of the stadium around her reveals a patchwork outer stage of wooden platforms and rigs replete with chains and ropes and walls—places to climb, places to hide, places to trap. And she watches as, filtering through doorways much like hers, perhaps a dozen other players creep out into the arena, some of them cheering right back at the audience, others cowering in the dirt, all of them clad in ill-fitting and ill-assorted pieces of armor, just like her. Fighters, she realizes. Fellow fighters.
And the audience all around them is screaming for blood.
A fighter looks her way, fear evident in the violent trembling of the sword clutched in their hands. At least we've got something in common, she thinks grimly, and offers them what she hopes is a reassuring nod.
A voice roars out above the din, voice booming throughout the arena, and the ruckus around her multiplies exponentially, competing with the desperate thump-thump-thump of her blood hammering in her ears. Now the audience is chanting as one. She doesn't understand the language, but the shape of the chant, its ritual pauses and deliberate cadence, tells her everything she needs to know—it's a countdown.
She glances down at her watch. Eleven more minutes until the Cannon is recharged. She can survive eleven minutes.
(Right?)
"Let the games begin!"
Heavy wooden doors all around the stadium slowly creak open, each of them revealing a dark, monstrous silhouette housing a pair of bright-shining eyes. Ear-splitting roars echo throughout the stage and the audience responds in kind, each of them screaming and shouting until she can't tell which scream is spectator and which is beast.
Ten more minutes.
Her grip on her spear tightens and she screams out a roar of her own.
Ten monsters down, two to go; the wood and sand beneath Rose's feet is a gruesome rainbow oil-slick, stained with the blood of beasts and combatants alike, and some of it drips red from her. She grits her teeth and tears off a length of her overshirt and winds it around the weeping gash on her thigh, rasps out a quick thanks to the fellow fighter who helps her where her trembling fingers fail.
(Three minutes left and it hurts, horribly, that she can't take any of the combatants back when she makes her jump to safety. She hates it. She hates it so much she can taste it, bitter and bile.)
A monster swipes at her newfound friend and she grabs the fighter, pulling them into a roll with her. Shouting in anger, she hurls her spear straight into the flank of the creature, pinning it to the ground.
One monster and three minutes left.
"You do realize that after we dispatch this one, they'll turn us on each other?" asks one of the other fighters. "What do we do then?"
Earlier, she had silently cursed her helmet and the way it made sweat roll down her forehead. Now she's grateful for the way its face-guard conceals her lie.
"We'll stand together and fight back," she says.
Two minutes left.
The last beast pounces on a fighter and without even thinking, she sprints toward it, leaping onto a platform-suspended chain and bodily swinging into the beast, knocking it off its victim. She and the monster roll in the dirt and she wrenches a bloodied scimitar out of the sand—the beast rounds back, lunges for her and she pulls back the scimitar, ready to—
"Stop!"
A voice rings out across the stadium, cutting through all other noise like a knife.
The instant the creature's claws reach her, it freezes in midair, body convulsing with an invisible charge. Digging at its collar, whining, the beast backs down, ears flattening, head shaking in pain. The creature's whimpers seem unnaturally loud in the now-silent stadium. It's as if, once that mysterious voice spoke, everyone is holding their breath. Everyone but her.
Panting with exertion, she slowly pushes up and out of the dirt, the scimitar held shakingly in front of her while she scans the crowd of spectators for any sign of her unseen savior.
"You, there!" barks the voice from before. "In the blue leather. Unmask yourself!"
She glances down at her wristwatch. Just fifteen seconds now. If she can hold out for just fifteen more seconds—
"Combatant! Remove your helmet or the beasts will do it for you!"
Grudgingly, she reaches up with one hand and fumbles at the battered metal helm, pulling it off and tossing it to the ground in a puff of multicolored sand. "Satisfied?" she shouts. "Drink your fill, cos it's the last you'll see of it!"
Right on cue, her wristwatch starts its telltale chirp, and she drops her scimitar, ready to slam the button that will take her home.
"Rose Tyler!"
Her palm is mere millimeters from the button when it halts at the sound of her name, echoing through the stadium like a gunshot.
Rose's blood rushes in her ears. Her heart catches in her throat.
Over a hundred jumps now, over a hundred universes, and never, ever, not in even a single one of them, has Rose ever told anyone who she is.
How could anyone here know her name?
Eyes narrowed in suspicion, heart convulsing painfully, Rose hesitates. She searches the faces in the crowd, trying her damnedest to discern between one stranger and the next, but nobody looks familiar, not at this distance, anyway. Something churns uncomfortably in her gut, telling her no, no, no, don't be ridiculous, this place is a literal death-trap, escape while you can; something else tells her that there's only one person right here, right now, who could possibly know your name.
"Doctor?" Rose says, her voice quiet, uncertain. Only the littlest bit hopeful.
Murmurs ripple through the audience around her, sound leaking back in little by little as the voice, no longer amplified, still shouts sharp and loud enough to be heard, "Bring her to me. Unharmed!"
Rose doesn't fight the guards that come for her, nor does she allow herself to feel the tiny flame of hope struggling to flicker and burn deep inside. Instead, she goes with the guards willingly, allowing them to guide her away from the carnage. She spares a glance for her fellow combatants; her frightened little friend offers her a wave and she nods in response, but most of the fighters just watch, dumbfounded, looking every bit as puzzled as Rose feels. But Doctor or not—and as much as she would love it to be him, Rose is leaning toward Not at the moment, considering that she can't imagine any scenario in which he would willingly stay present for such a grotesque display—maybe she at least managed to buy some of her fellow captives an extra day.
Besides, it would be foolish not to check out this lead, no matter how slim it may be. There's no way she'll allow herself to come so far, and fight so hard, and risk so much, just to chicken out at the last second. She'll check, she'll do her due diligence, and she'll leave whenever she needs to. She's got her hopper. She's got the Cannon back home. She's safe.
"Never known his Lordship to demand an audience with a fighter," admits the guard from earlier, with a sidelong nervous glance Rose's way. "What d'you suppose he wants with you?"
Rose swallows down her anxieties and straightens her shoulders with a confidence she doesn't quite feel.
"Guess we'll find out," she murmurs.