The Split Initiative - Part 2
Featuring the Alternate 4th Doctor, Ellie Finch and Susan
Gallifrey, sometime in the distant past...
President Romanadevatrelundar stared at Commander Vornig, amazed to hear what he had discovered.
"And you're sure that this is true?" she asked him.
"Yes, Madam President. The Zero Man, apparently, comes from another universe. Should I pursue him?" he enquired.
"That would be the best idea. But be careful though, Vornig. You'll be vulnerable."
"Madam President, I'll be careful. Don't worry about me."
Now.
The Doctor and Susan held on for their lives, as the TARDIS began to take off. The time rotor rose and fell, but red lights were flashing all over the console. The usual calm wheeze of the time ship was replaced by a harsh whinny, like an innocent horse in pain.
"Hold on, Susan, hold on!" the Doctor cried, as a black haired man, dressed in a black suit, white shirt, black waistcoat, trousers and tie, suddenly appeared, brandishing a powerful-looking laser blaster.
"Don't worry, Doc, I'll take it from here." he casually said, firing the blaster at the console and making the TARDIS unleash one final cry of pain before ultimately dying. The Doctor and Susan then collapsed to the floor, looking up at him shortly afterwards.
"Who are you?" the Doctor asked.
"Don't you recognise me? Oh, sorry. New face. Let me take it from the beginning then. I'm the Zero Man and I've come with a message from home."
"What's the message?"
He aimed his blaster at the Doctor's head.
"Save your universe, or die."
"I thought I dealt with my home universe a long time ago. You tried to invade this universe on Earth in 1997 but I changed the timelines and made sure that you stayed away. But now you're going around cementing yourself in Gallifreyan mythology."
"You didn't deal with us. Because things reshifted. Time was going round, over and over again. The Dalek war continued to happen, people always kept on dying, planets kept on burning. You even vanished from the timelines, but I suppose you weren't even aware of that. This universe is nice though."
The Zero Man stared into the Doctor's eyes.
"Doctor," he continued, "save your home. Save your people."
"Grandfather, what should we do?" Susan wondered.
The Doctor stared at the Zero Man for a few more seconds, before taking his blaster in a swift move and opening the TARDIS console up to reveal a large crystal, glowing green at the heart of the ship. He then aimed the blaster at it, waiting to fire.
"Fix what's happened here, Zero Man, or I shoot the temporal crystal. We both know that the destruction of a temporal crystal can lead to the destruction of the TARDIS powered by the crystal, taking you, Susan and me with it. In a normal TARDIS it would be bad. In a damaged TARDIS it would be catastrophic. It's your choice though."
Ellie and Vornig decided to step out of the TARDIS into the void and found that the ground was, unusually, solid. They were on a planet.
"This is very odd," Vornig said, jumping up and ground, "why would somebody want to keep a planet secret?"
"Dunno. Something's wrong though. Vornig, can you think of any reason that someone would want to attack you in any way?"
"Well, there was the Zero Man."
This was a new surprise.
"Who's the Zero Man?"
"A figure from Gallifreyan legend. He apparently came from hell, only that he came to Gallifrey in a TARDIS."
"There was a TARDIS in hell?"
"Exactly. Nobody knows how that TARDIS got there, or whose TARDIS it originally was. But I managed to discover the true identity of the Zero Man, because the Zero
Man is just what Rassilon called him, a long time ago."
"Him? Who?"
But, before Vornig could answer, the blackness lifted, revealing their surroundings: they were on a desert planet, surrounded by sand dunes. There was something in the distance that Ellie noticed as well. It was a tall red tower, with a message written on it in white ink.
ALL HAIL THE ZERO MAN.
What was even stranger was that the tower then opened up and the Doctor, Susan and someone else stepped out.
"Doctor, what are you doing here?" Ellie asked, "And who's the other guy?"
"Him?" the Doctor answered, indicating the Zero Man, "Oh, he's the Zero Man. And he's from my home universe."
"You're kidding."
"Not at all."
"Doctor, if I may intervene," the Zero Man announced, "my real name is Tulhorm."
"Tulhorm?" the Doctor wondered, "But that's impossible."
"What? Who's Tulhorm?" Ellie queried.
"He's my son. He's my son and yet he isn't."
"And why is that written up there?"
She pointed at the message which made the Doctor shiver.
"Things are worse than I thought. Time is altering constantly and I don't know how to stop it. Tulhorm, we need to get back inside Vornig's TARDIS and return to my TARDIS. Come on!"
A few moments later, the Doctor, Ellie, Susan, Vornig and Tulhorm were inside the Doctor's TARDIS and the Doctor was at the control console, setting course for Gallifrey prior to Vornig's departure.
"Why are we going back to Gallifrey?" Vornig asked, "You'll only be erasing everything that's happened from history. An entirely new timeline where your son is free to roam the universe will be born. Do you want that?"
"No. I want something else. There's a piece of technology that I want to use and you'll see why later on." the Doctor enigmatically replied, landing the TARDIS and stepping out, onto the beige sands of his homeworld. Well, almost his homeworld.
After half an hour's walking, the Doctor entered the Citadel and slowly made his way to the Timeline Visualiser. The Timeline Visualiser was a useful piece of equipment that was only kept on Gallifrey: pick a timeline, any timeline, and you could step into that timeline at the drop of a hat.
He programmed the controls so that he could arrive on Gallifrey just as Vornig was about to leave. He then pushed open the glass door and entered the doorway.
Gallifrey, sometime in the distant past...
Commander Vornig sprinted back to his TARDIS, ready to undertake his mission to find the fugitive only known as 'the Zero Man'. Vornig was, in his seventh incarnation, a young man with extremely short black hair, a rough face and a scar under his left eye.
"Commander," Cardinal Heevos asked via the comms unit in his left pocket, "we've detected temporal anomalies surrounding Gallifrey. If you attempt to dematerialise, then your TARDIS will be caught in a time storm so powerful that it could catapult entire planets into new timelines."
"I understand, Cardinal. But this mission is important. I must get to the Zero Man and defeat him before it's too late." Vornig replied, just before he tripped over and fell to the ground. A tallish old bald man looked over him and smiled.
"You don't have to get to him, Vornig. He's my business and that's that." the Doctor replied, kicking Vornig in the head before walking off, towards the TARDIS bays.
The Doctor had now realised that there was a reason that Time Lords mainly used TARDISes and that was because there was no way of stepping out of the Timeline Visualiser. But, history was slowly reshifting and he knew that there was one last thing to do.
He chose a TARDIS at random, entered it and dematerialised the ship, setting course for early Gallifrey.
Tulhorm's TARDIS ripped through the Interuniversal Rift at an astonishing speed and crashed on Gallifrey, many decades before the concept of time travel had even been thought of. Tulhorm emerged from his damaged ship and walked across the sand, blaster in hand. Then something odd happened: another TARDIS arrived, in a much smoother way than Tulhorm's arrival. The Doctor stepped out from his TARDIS, which now looked like a police box, and glared at Tulhorm.
"Son, leave this universe now." he demanded.
"No, Doctor. I won't go until you clean up your mess. You burnt your universe so now you make things right."
"It wasn't me who burnt it."
"Then who was it?"
"Someone who was a lot worse of and arrived in a TARDIS. You need to do your research. Or do you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Because I've just used the Timeline Visualiser to erase you from existence. You never ripped through the Interuniversal Rift and you were never here. I went through every single timeline and made sure you never happen."
"But there are infinite universes. That would mean that you should have been dead."
"Thank goodness that the Timeline Visualiser can duplicate those who go inside. I simply duplicated myself at infinitum and then set about making sure that you never exist. Goodbye."
He watched Tulhorm fade away and then returned to the TARDIS, setting off for new adventures.
THE END