Chapter Two
Of course it had to be Torchwood. He should have known. And to make things worse the energy that was responsible for Donna's disappearance from the church was so ancient that he hadn't even bothered to scan for it. Mostly because there was only one place in the entirety of time and space where it should exist in pure form – in the heart of his TARDIS. But someone had found a way to extract it and dose Donna with it. Not to mention that Huon particles were one of the very few substances a simple biodamper couldn't hide. Fantastic. Just what he needed.
The Doctor crossed the room with a few large steps. A quick glance out of the window confirmed his suspicions. The Santas had found them.
Then the Christmas decoration came to life and his day got one hell of a lot worse. Suddenly the Santas were standing in the room, remote controls in their hands.
"Donna!" the Doctor yelled. "Get the people out of here!" For a few seconds Donna simply stared at him and he gestured at her impatiently. "Move!"
Eventually she complied. He shoved every thought not related to the current situation into the back of his mind. He couldn't afford to be distracted right now.
Remote control. He quickly adjusted the settings of his sonic screwdriver and blocked every frequency that had ever been used for that specific purpose throughout the universe. The robots stopped dead, just in time before they would have pressed really impressive red buttons on their respective remote controls. Given his vast experience with threatening red buttons that meant that there had to be explosives in the room.
"Donna!" he yelled again, while he disabled the motivators in the robots with his sonic. Now whoever was controlling them could try.
"Yes, Doctor?" She sounded annoyed. Again. It seemed that was her normal state of being. Well, he'd deal with that after he had found out what was going on here. He changed the setting of his sonic screwdriver once again and scanned for a signal strong enough to control the Santas.
"Get us some transport," he ordered in a tone not even his..., uh, Rose's harpy of mother would have questioned for longer than it took him to say Raxacoricofallapatorius. And since when exactly did he refer to Jackie as his mother-in-law, at least in his thoughts? Rose would be laughing her head off if she knew that.
"Where are we going?"
"H.C. Clements. And bring your fiancée," he told her, his tone somewhere between grumpy and excited.
~o~o~o~
Bringing the fiancée had at least solved the transport problem. Half an hour later they entered H.C. Clements and the Doctor went for the nearest computer terminal.
"Hey, that's confidential!" Lance protested.
The Doctor considered him with a long suffering glare and decided to ignore him. "You might think H.C. Clements are just fancy locksmiths, but they've been founded by Torchwood," he began the day's lecture on the mysterious ways of the universe. He pointed the sonic screwdriver at the screen, overrode the access control and began to type furiously.
"Who are they?" Donna asked.
He answered her question without looking at her, his eyes never leaving the screen. "They were behind the battle of Canary Wharf." When that didn't evoke a response he continued, "Cybermen invasion?"
"Holiday in Spain, remember?"
He sighed in frustration. "Donna, you should do something about that big picture of yours."
"Why?"
"Because you keep missing it. But still... Why dose you with Huon particles?"
His gaze fell on the slightly magnetic box the owner of this desk used to store paper-clips and he could have banged his head on the desk. Stupid, him. He should have seen it much earlier. He emptied the box and took a single clip.
"Huon energy is a very ancient sort of energy, and nowadays there's only one place in the universe where you should find it in pure form: In the heart of my TARDIS. So, imagine that this box is the TARDIS and the magnet in it is her heart. And this," he held up the paper-clip, "is you. Then the particles activated and," he flipped the clip at the box, where it got stuck, "you were pulled to her. Easy." He beamed at her.
Donna stared at him incredulously. Then she wacked his arm. "Ouch! What was that for?" he asked, rubbing it. Being around Donna turned out to be at least as dangerous as being in the vicinity of Jackie Tyler.
"I'm. Not. A. Paper-clip! Bloody Martian!"
He grinned. "Come on, it could be worse. I might have compared you to a H4 pencil."
Donna glared at him. If looks could kill he would be regenerating right now. He turned to her fiancée. "Lance, what was H.C. Clements working on?"
"I don't know. I'm the head of personnel, not a bloody project manager," Lance replied dismissively.
The Doctor rolled his eyes and ignored the comment in favour of the computer. A few commands, then the monitor flickered and showed a building plan. He stared at it intently for a few seconds and raised an eyebrow. "That's interesting."
He was already halfway through the door when he turned around and noticed that Donna and Lance weren't following. "What are you waiting for? Come on!" He gestured impatiently.
Donna recovered and tugged at Lance's hand. "What's interesting?" she asked.
"That was the official building plan on the screen. And it showed just one basement level."
"So what?"
"Then how come the lift has got a button for lower basement?"
~o~o~o~
This opportunity was as good as any, Rose decided. Thankfully her mum and Mickey were still asleep in the back. She had been thinking about what she wanted to do with her life since she had come to this universe, and today's events had made it painstakingly clear that her stay here would probably be longer than she thought. "Pete?"
"Yes, Rose?"
"I'd like to switch departments. At work," she clarified. After three weeks of working part-time for Torchwood she was absolutely certain that she would never be happy in research. "Don't get me wrong, it's interesting and I'm willing to help out whenever they need my, well, expertise sounds a bit overblown, don't you think?"
"But I thought you liked it there? What do you want to do instead?"
"All that poking and prodding at alien artefacts is just... I don't know... It's different when you've been out there, seen things, done stuff. From the moment the Doctor took me to see the end of the world I knew that I would never be happy with an ordinary life."
Pete looked as if he was going to say something, but she didn't give him a chance to get a word in. "Yeah, I know that working with Torchwood R&D is not exactly what most people would call ordinary, but being stuck in a lab guessing if the thing I'm examining is a weapon or a hair dryer is driving me crazy. Mum will probably kill me, and she will definitely kill you if you support me, but the only thing I ever wanted to do was field work."
"Rose..." Pete began tentatively.
"Don't tell me it's dangerous," she interrupted him. "I know that. I've been doing that sort of things for more than two years. And remember, I was in the factory with you. I'm not going to faint if someone points a gun at me." She gave him a wry grin. "I'm jeopardy-friendly, after all."
"Rose, I don't know what your life was like with the Doctor, but endangering yourself is not going to bring him back," Pete said carefully.
"I know that, Pete. And despite what you may think I'm not reckless and I am able to follow rules." When it was important. In other circumstances, not so much. "I have learned my lesson. The hard way." It was unlikely she would ever forget seeing her real dad die in front of her, for one of her mistakes.
"But you probably would have to kill people."
She sighed. "Believe me, I know that. I'm not naive. It wouldn't be the first time. Mum believes I've got nightmares because of what happened in the lever room. She's not entirely wrong, I admit that, but that's not all. I'm responsible for the death of at least one person." She still saw Toby's face in her dreams, heard the words of the Beast. Rationally she knew that she'd had to pull the trigger, that everyone in the little spaceship would have been dead if she hadn't, but that didn't make it easier.
Not to mention that she had nearly managed to bring about the end of the world and almost killed the Doctor. During the first few nights after their visit to 1987 she had dreamed that she was the only human being left on Earth, condemned to wander the planet for eternity. At some point she would discover the TARDIS somewhere and enter the ship, hoping she would find him inside, waiting for her. Then a hologram would come to life, over and over replaying the last few seconds before the Reaper took him. Every time she'd woken screaming, only to find him in her room, telling her that he was alive, that everything was okay. Sometimes she still wondered how she could possibly have deserved his forgiveness. In his place she would have probably dumped herself on Earth.
Pete's words interrupted her thoughts. "Rose, if that sort of thing is affecting you so much, don't you think you were better off with another job?"
With great effort she shook off the memories. "Pete, that I have nightmares only means that I've got a conscience. Who would you prefer to do that job? Someone who cares or a machine?"
"If you have to ask then you don't know me at all." He sounded offended.
"I know. I'm sorry, Pete." She meant it.
He nodded. "Drop Operatives an application and if they consider it then I'll support you." Then he smiled at her. "But you're going to be the one who tells Jackie."
~o~o~o~
Maintenance tunnels were the same everywhere in the universe, in every timeframe. Oh, there were minimal differences, of course. Some had stone or concrete walls, in space stations or star ships they were plain steel, but there was one thing they all had in common, even if it should be impossible. They smelled musty. This one was no exception.
"You know, if this was Harry Potter these would be brooms," Donna grinned, pointing at the electrical scooters that were conveniently parked in a corner.
The Doctor grinned back. "Donna, if this was Harry Potter I would summon the motorcycle I've stored somewhere in the TARDIS."
Donna laughed. Lance looked far less amused.
Five minutes later, after discovering that the entire project was hidden under the Thames flood barrier, they found what they were looking for. A full-fledged scientific laboratory for extracting Huon particles. The Doctor had to admit that he was impressed. The only thing it was missing was the cliché evil scientist.
"It doesn't make sense. What would anyone want with enormous quantities of Huon particles in liquid form?" he murmured thoughtfully, while he wandered through the lab.
"What do they do?" Donna asked.
"Apart from the fact that they unravel the atomic structure, not much. That's the reason my people got rid of them."
"Your people? Who are you working for?" Lance enquired.
The Doctor grinned manically. "Oh, I'm not working for anybody. Not anymore. But I'm incredibly curious. Which makes me wonder what's hidden behind that door." He pointed with the sonic screwdriver, but before he could unlock it he was interrupted by Donna.
"Wait! You are not going to open that door until you answer a couple of questions. One: Somebody put that stuff into me?"
"Yes," he replied, staring at her intently, taking in her stained wedding dress. He had the nagging feeling that something about her was important. Something extremely obvious. Like... "The wedding!"
"Yeah, you ruined it."
"Oi! Not my fault! You were the one who appeared in my TARDIS," he protested.
"Are you saying this is my fault?" Her eyes narrowed dangerously.
"Donna, what did I say about that big picture of yours? Unless you dosed yourself with Huon particles it's definitely not your fault. Anyway, it was your wedding, you were excited, practically a walking hormone cocktail. That activated the particles and charged you until you got attracted by a magnet, in other words, the heart of the TARDIS."
"But what does that mean: Am I safe?"
The Doctor stayed silent.
"You said your people got rid of the particles. Why did they do that?" she pressed.
"They were deadly," he admitted, almost matter-of-factly, avoiding her eyes and staring at the wall.
"Oh my god."
He took her hand and finally looked at her. "I'll do whatever I can to sort this, Donna."
She nodded slowly.
He held her gaze for another few seconds, then he turned around and with a mighty pull he opened the door, only to stare incredulously at a full grown spider-like creature that was sitting in a web covering the entire ceiling of the cavernous room.
"Fantastic," he muttered sarcastically. "Racnoss."
Compared with what was in front of him he would have preferred the evil scientist, in every possible stage of insanity from your standard madman up to a narcissistic megalomaniac. And that included the combined forces of the Master and the Rani. He really should stop thinking that his day couldn't get any worse, since fate seemed inclined to prove him wrong. As soon as he had finished the thought a couple of robots lined up along the wall of the room, which only emphasised his point.
Then he discovered the hole in the ground. "Oh, someone's been digging."
"Down and down, all the way to the centre of the Earth," the Racnoss Empress said from her position high in the cobweb.
"What for?" he asked, slightly distracted by watching Lance slowly retreating into the lab.
"Dinosaurs?" Donna suggested tentatively.
"Nah. This isn't a Jules Verne novel." He grinned at her.
She grinned back and asked, "But what are they?"
"The Racnoss. They are an ancient species from the Dark Times. I thought they were extinct, extinguished in a great war. Apparently I was wrong. They are carnivores, omnivores, even."
"They eat people?"
"Oh, more than that. They devoured whole planets. That's why the Fledgling Empires went to war with them."
The Doctor saw Lance appearing on the balcony, an axe in his hands. The bloke hadn't struck him as the adventurous type and that could only mean two things: either he had misjudged him, or Lance tried to double-cross them. Maybe he was too pessimistic in this incarnation but he somehow doubted that Donna's fiancée was going to be of help.
"They killed every one of us, except for me," the Racnoss Empress sneered, interrupting his thoughts.
"But what does that have to do with me? Why did you dose me with that Huon energy thing?" Donna demanded. She lacked the foot tapping and the dye job, but apart from that she reminded him strongly of a very pissed off Jackie Tyler.
The Doctor glanced at her and saw that her gaze was directed at Lance while she was speaking. It looked like she was trying to distract the Empress.
The creature ignored her.
"Hey, lady, look at me when I'm talking to you. What do you want with me?" Donna shouted. He was impressed, he grudgingly admitted to himself. Not everyone would try to distract a spider the size of a small cottage from what was going on behind their back, although he suspected it would be in vain.
"Oh, the bride is feisty!"
"You bet. And I don't care what you are, a spider is just a spider, and an axe is still an axe. Lance, do it!"
The Racnoss turned around and hissed at Lance, who held the axe above his head. In the last possible moment she stopped, Lance dropped the axe, and they began to laugh. Not too pessimistic, then, the Doctor concluded.
"Lance, do it!" Donna repeated, sounding annoyed.
Lance laughed harder.
"I'm sorry," the Doctor said quietly.
"What for?" She looked at him for a brief moment, thoroughly confused, then she returned her gaze to her fiancée. "Get her, Lance." There was a trace of desperation in her voice.
"God, you're so thick," Lance said disdainfully.
"He brought you coffee, Donna," the Doctor explained slowly. "Every single day, for six months. Lance was the one who dosed you with Huon particles."
Finally Donna understood. "But we were getting married," she said in a small voice.
"You really don't get it, do you?" Lance sneered. "Of course I had to say yes. I couldn't risk you running off. I had already invested too much effort in you. But really, have you ever listened to you? No wonder you never managed to pull anybody else. All that endless jabbering about celebrities and diets. And don't get me started on the sex. I should be recognised as a saint for spending half a year with you."
Donna winced.
"So what did she promise you?" the Doctor asked, interrupting Lance's tirade.
The other man turned his attention to him. "You know, the big picture, you keep missing it yourself. The Human race is nothing. She gave me the chance to see what's out there. In the grand scheme of things, humanity is nothing. Don't you understand that, Doctor?"
"Who is he, this little physician?" the Racnoss Empress asked, interrupting her consort.
"Oh, I'm just a stranger, passing through," the Doctor answered evasively, digging in his pocket for his sonic screwdriver and fiddling with the setting. "But still, what are you doing here?"
Lance grinned. "This isn't like a bad movie, where you can get the baddies to reveal their plan, Doctor."
"Kill him. All we need is her!" the Empress ordered.
The Santas raised their weapons. Again. He really hated the feeling of looking into a muzzle.
~o~o~o~
"You know, you're completely missing the obvious here," the Doctor said, still fiddling with the setting of his sonic screwdriver.
"And what would that be?" the Empress asked disdainfully.
"This." He pressed the button of his sonic screwdriver and prayed that his TARDIS would have recovered enough to pull this stunt. Apparently she had, because his faithful ship materialised around Donna and him. Although he winced when the bullets hit her hull. She really disliked bullet holes in her exterior. Now she would be irritable for weeks.
"Sorry, old girl." He patted the console affectionately, but received only an indignant hum in response. "When this is over we'll just float in the Vortex for awhile to let you rest. But now..." He adjusted a few knobs and loosened the handbrake. The time rotor began to move.
"How did you do that?" Donna asked, her back turned to him, her voice wavering. He knew she was still processing what had happened and needed someone to comfort her, but truth be told, he was rubbish at comforting, although Rose had told him differently. He had a long list of unsuccessful attempts to console companions as proof.
"I just reversed the charge of the particles, and they drew the TARDIS to you, like a magnet." He tried to keep the conversation on the problem at hand. Much safer that way, much less memories.
"And where are we going now?"
The Doctor flipped a switch and the time rotor slowly came to a halt. "The beginning," he replied softly, unable to tear his eyes away from the sight on the monitor. Here he was, standing in the same spot in the universe, only ten billion years earlier, give or take a few hundred million years. And without her. He moved his fingers. His hand felt empty, incomplete, as if it was missing a limb. Right. Forget that bit about less memories. The universe could be a bitch sometimes.
"Of what?" Donna's less than enthusiastic question interrupted his musings.
He straightened, walked over to the doors and opened them. "Donna Noble, welcome to the creation of the world."
~o~o~o~
The view in front of her eyes was unlike anything Donna had ever imagined. Dust and gas clouds sparkled in a million colours where the sun hit them. Larger rocks floated through space, every once in a while colliding, breaking in to smaller parts, or merging into bigger ones.
It took her some time to take in his meaning, but then she asked, "Where's the Earth?"
"All around us. All those rocks and dust."
She wiped her eyes. "Puts the wedding into perspective. Lance was right. We're nothing, compared to this." For a few seconds she simply stared at the sight.
"Lance is an idiot," the Doctor said, interrupting her thoughts. "Just look at it. This whole process, it's beautiful. Even the end of the world is not the end. I've been there, Donna, I've seen it. You just march on, spread out across the galaxy and mark eternity with memorable events: birthdays, weddings, even deaths. That's what living means. Everything else is just vegetating."
They gazed out of the doors for some time, both of them lost in thoughts.
"That looks like the Isle of Wight," she said eventually in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere.
He smiled at her. "Maybe it is. See, it begins with a single rock, a bit heavier than the others. It becomes the centre of gravity, pulling everything else in. And after a few million years..."
"Earth," she completed his sentence.
"Exactly. But the question is... what was that first rock?"
Suddenly Donna saw something moving through the dust that looked suspiciously like a star-shaped rock, drawing a line of dust and gas towards itself. "Look!"
The Doctor muttered something indistinguishable under his breath and spun into action. He closed the doors, headed over to the column in the middle of the room and began to twist knobs and turn dials while Donna just stared at him. "Hold that lever down," he ordered, pointing at a large bar next to a line of green lights.
She didn't react, still trying to process what had happened.
"The Racnoss starship was that first rock," he explained impatiently, while he furiously turned dials and flipped switches. "And I've got the dim feeling that they know that we know. We have to get back as soon as possible and stop them from whatever they're planning. Otherwise the end of the world might come a couple of billion years sooner than it should. So hold that lever down. Now, Donna!" He gave her a glare that would probably haunt her in her dreams and she complied without another word.
The Doctor dived under the grating, pulled something out that looked like the Star Trek version of a surfboard, although it was much smaller, and began to loosen a panel from the bottom of the console, quickly connecting the intergalactic surfboard to his ship.
"What are you doing?"
"Giving us a bit of protection. Hopefully. Do you see the blue button next to the line of red lights? When I say now, press it."
He fiddles with a few cables for about a minute then shouted, "Now!"
She pressed the button. Nothing happened.
"Donna! For god's sake, push that button! Now!" the Doctor yelled from beneath the console.
That did it. This was her wedding day, she had ended up in a space ship that was bigger on the inside, her guests had had the reception without her, her fiancée had only agreed to marry her so he could feed her to a giant alien spider and now another alien was treating her as if she was an idiot. "Bloody Martian! I did push the button! I'm not stupid!" she yelled back.
The Doctor mumbled something that sounded like "Could've fooled me," and swapped a few cables which connected the surfboard thing to the console. Suddenly the ship jerked violently and the Doctor let out a sharp cry of pain. Admittedly her sympathy was limited.
It was difficult, what with him being buried under the console, but somehow he managed to give her an accusing glare. "What'd you do?"
"Nothing," she gave back indignantly.
He got up and stared at one of the monitors for a few seconds, then he began to type commands. "They're reversing it!"
"What?"
"Remember how I called the TARDIS to get us out of that lab? They must've figured out how to undo it."
"Well, isn't there something you can do to stop us? Like a handbrake or something?"
"What do you think I've been trying to do, Donna?" He kicked the console in frustration and smashed his hand down on the button he had asked her to press earlier. Men. If it doesn't work, use force. It seemed not even aliens were different in that regard.
Unfortunately the results proved him right. With a stuttering sound the column in the middle came to live and began to move, although it was nowhere near as smooth as it had been before.
A manic smile lit the Doctor's face and he began to adjust the instruments on the console. "Good girl! Hold on, we're landing!"
Seven seconds later the ship hit the ground.
Of course Donna ended up on her back on the grating. She would never do this again. At this point she wasn't even sure if she meant the wedding, the spider or travelling in this absolutely mad blue box, but she definitely would never do this again. Ever.