Doctor Who

Stop the Clock

Part 2

Brad 'Birdie' Edwards was a simple man with a relatively simple life. He knew exactly what he was destined to be when he grew up.

As such, it was no surprise when he was in juvenile detention for attempting to steal cars at fourteen, nor when he kept making repeat appearances to the point where it became a second home. Better than his actual home, at any rate.

It was there that Brad took on the name 'Birdie', a wonderful play on the fact that he was just a jailbird. It was suppose to be an insult, thrown at him by jailers who cared more about a paycheck than their duty of care. But Brad kept it, much like the gangsters he had seen in the films, and made it his own.

He was never the most successful of criminals. Any gains he made were quickly lost, and he found himself going in and out of jail the same way an overly-spoilt child might pay a visit to the sweet shop.

It was while he was on the inside that he met Arthur Leverton, a man who had made a somewhat successful career out of his criminal activities, but had recently been caught in a heist with men he realized were certainly not going to be happy to see him when he got out.

Leverton took Birdie under his wing, teaching the young boy everything he knew. Birdie has a smart head on his shoulders, and once they were free started to take the lead when it came to undertaking the crimes, with Leverton being the mastermind behind them.

It was during this that the two of them recruited a nervous young man, one Stanley Hopkins, who had learned everything there was about being a criminal from American movies and was thus entirely unsuited for the life ahead of them. But the three of them formed a somewhat successful gang of sorts, stealing from the convenient and pocketing the loot. They were never destined to be anything more than a footnote of a footnote in the book of history.

That was until Birdie found a strange device sitting in his house one day. He had no idea where it had come from, or who could have possibly put it there. Career criminals tend to be very thorough when it came to home security after all.

Those questions were quickly ignored in favour of more pressing questions, namely 'why was everything around him frozen' and 'how could he use this in his favour'. A few quick experiments revealed that yes, time was indeed frozen, and that no one seemed to notice him during this state. A few accidents and mishaps later and Birdie quickly realized the gift that had been given to him.

As such, he recruited Leverton and Hopkins into his unit, and very quickly they found themselves swimming in dough.

The device was incredibly simplistic, a literal stop-start button embedded into a strange cube covered in markings, some of which reminded Birdie of the inside of a clock. But he wasn't going to look this gift horse in the mouth.

He had only had it for a week, and already they were doing fantastic... that was, until things went horribly wrong. Birdie had tested the machine, he knew what was suppose to happen, and the fact that time hadn't resumed no matter how many times he had pressed the buttons worried him greatly.

Things were further complicated when a group of strangers suddenly entered their hideout, as if they owned the place. A notion quickly dissuaded the moment Hopkins fired on them. Like it or not, it appeared to Birdie that the three of them had officially upgraded to murder.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The bullets streaked through the air faster than the speed of sound, which would have been fatally tragic for the Doctor and her friends if they were not moving so much faster than that. Carefully the four of them moved out of the way of the bullets slowly heading towards where they were moments ago, gently twisting in the air.

Ryan reached out to touch one, but the Doctor quickly snatched his hand back.

"They're still got their momentum, remember?" said the Doctor. "And if you were to get too close you might short out the time differentiation... Ah. Yes, that makes sense, doesn't it."

"Put your gun down Hopkins," said Birdie angrily. "Before you do anything stupid."

"Yes Birdie," said Hopkins sheepishly. "Any idea what's going on Leverton?"

"I'm as lost as you are kid," said the older man, eyeing the new people suspiciously.

"Well if you're quite finished waving your toys around," said the Doctor, spying the object sitting on the desk in front of Leverton. "What do we have here?"

She picked up the cube, looking it over from every angle, before scanning it with her sonic.

"Yep, definitely Time Lord tech," she said, putting her sonic back into her pocket and tossing the cube up and down in one hand. "Time War as well, from the feel of it. Clearly it must be the cause, it's not being affected by the time dilation like everything else. What's a piece of Time War tech doing in Cardiff? You," she said, spinning round and pointing an accusatory finger at Birdie. "Where did you get this?"

"I dunno," said Birdie. "It just appeared in my house one day. I don't know anything, I swear."

"No, I don't suppose you do," said the Doctor, scanning the man's face. "Still, you should have turned this over to the proper authorities."

"I ain't giving it to the pigs," sneered Birdie.

"Oi!" said Yaz, annoyed.

"Too many questions," said the Doctor, looking around. "And what I need right now is answers."

"I presume we're taking it back to the TARDIS?" Graham asked in concern.

"You read my mind," said the Doctor. "You lot can just wait here."

"Oh no you don't," said Leverton, taking a step forward. He tried to follow through with his other foot, but couldn't. He tugged at his leg in desperation, but his foot seemed stuck to the ground.

"Why can't I move?" asked Leverton in concern.

"The effect must be wearing off," said the Doctor. "This device wasn't designed to stay on for long, its starting to lose its charge."

"What do we do?" asked Ryan.

"Just keep moving," said the Doctor. "Kinetic energy should stop us from being frozen in place."

"What about me?" asked Leverton in concern.

"Oh you'll be fine," said the Doctor. "From your perspective everything will just return to normal speed... Well, presuming I can fix this. Don't worry, the cops will make sure you're okay."

"You what?" asked Birdie. "I'm not letting you call the cops."

"It'll be irrelevant if I don't get time restarted," said the Doctor, but before she could continue, Birdie suddenly made a lunge at her. The Doctor stumbled back in shock, the cube slipping from her grasp. She made a desperate grab at it, but it bounced off her fingertips, floating through the air.

As if by some cruel twist of fate the cube ended up right next to one of the bullets, close enough that a spark of electricity jumped between the device and the projectile. The bullet whizzed forward, slamming into the wall, while the cube landed on the ground, cracked.

"No no no no no!" the Doctor said urgently, rushing over to the cube and picking it up.

"What?" asked everyone, concerned.

"It got shorted out," said the Doctor. "Like dropping an electrical appliance into water. It's completely busted."

"So what does that mean?" asked Ryan.

"It means that if I don't get it charged then the lack of time is going to hit all of us," said the Doctor. "And there'll never be another moment of time again!"