A whooshing, groaning noise filled the corridor of the Dalek spaceship. A blinking light appeared, creating long shadows in the empty hall. Slowly, a large blue box materialised, seeming to glow in the dim, eerie light. The door of the old wooden police box creaked open and the Doctor's head poked out.

"It worked!" The Doctor slipped out the door and took a moment to admire his handiwork, then turned on the spot to inspect his surroundings. He took a step down the hall, coming to a crossroad. He stopped for a moment to look around again, took a few steps back towards the TARDIS.

"Where am I?!"

Rose's moment of joy at discovering the Time Lords and the Doctor was fleeting. Dalek Bas wheeled toward her ominously. Rose's mind raced, and she stammered,

"Oh, yeah. Well. That's right, innit? And that's not all. I… uh… notified the… uh, Shadow Proclamation! Yeah! And… uh… the Time Lords have a secret weapon, so you better watch out! And if you hurt me, they'll… uh… be… angry." Her voice petered out. Dalek Bas's eyestalk twitched, and the light seemed to glow brighter.

"WE SHALL SEE. THE TIME LORDS MAY HAVE A SECRET WEAPON. NOW THE DALEKS KNOW AND WE SHALL TAKE APPROPRIATE COUNTERMEASURES. WE SHALL NOT BE DEFEATED."

Dalek Bas passed Rose and began pushing buttons on the control panel. The screen lit up with lines and small blinking dots. A gauge on the side blinked at 87%. Dalek Bas began speaking and his voice echoed around the control room and through the ship. Every word filled Rose with dread, compounded by the steady increase of the gauge.

"DALEK SOLDIERS. THE SOURCE HARVEST IS AT 90%. SOON WE WILL BE AT FULL CAPACITY. WE WILL OVERPOWER THE TIME LORD FLEET. WE HAVE GAINED INTELLIGENCE OF A TIME LORD WEAPON, WHICH WE WILL FIND AND DESTROY. THEN WE SHALL COMPLETE THE CONVERSION ENGINE AND ACHIEVE VICTORY OVER THE TIME LORDS! PREPARE THE BETA TROOPS AND ASSUME BATTLE POSITIONS!"

Rose, who had been quietly making her way to the exit, stopped at the new information. Conversion engine? What the hell is that, and what's that got to do with the Time Lords? Rose glanced back up at the screen and saw the blinking dots begin to move over the lines on the display. So that must be the ship then? Right, time to make some trouble, Rose. That's what you're good at, after all, Mum always said so. The gauge flicked to 93%, and she felt her heartbeat rise. Where was the Doctor? She could only do so much stalling, and if he'd found what she thought he had, he should have made his appearance already. Pushing aside the niggling doubt that had blossomed in her mind, she called out to Dalek Bas again.

"Oi, tin can! Ya, you. So, what's all this about conversion and whatnot? Because I don't think you wanna find out what happens when that star runs out of energy, and no amount of alien technology or whatever it is you're doing will help."

"WE ONLY ACCEPT THOSE HIGHLY COMPATIBLE FOR THE CONVERSION. BIO SCAN REVEALS 72% COMPATIBILITY. DOES NOT MEET REQUIREMENTS. YOU WOULD MAKE AN INFERIOR DALEK. YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED ONCE WE HAVE EXTRACTED ALL USEFUL KNOWLEDGE."

Just then, two more Daleks entered the room, and Rose was surrounded. She whirled around searching for an escape route, but none presented itself.

"PROCEED TO THE INTERROGATION CELL," the Dalek on her right ordered. Rose flicked her eyes toward the screen again and and saw the gauge was closing in on 95%. The Doctor had show no signs of appearing, and Rose was at a loss. The Daleks want to turn us into them? But that would make billions of them. And anyhow, how would that give them victory over the Time Lords? They'll just kill all the Daleks anyway, and it's not like they can regenerate… Realisation hit Rose like a ton of bricks. The pieces fell together, and Rose knew that she had to warn the Time Lords. Warn the Doctor too, wherever he was. He was still in danger, and she had no way of communicating with him, no way to let him know how dire the situation really was. And the completion of the energy harvest from the star was nothing compared to the impending collapse of the system. Rose had a feeling that if that star went out, not even the Time Lords could save them. She knew she had a duty to her husband, her child, and her planet, but as she was marched from the control room, she felt the despair settle in. She was only one woman, and he was only one man. One human man, who had had no luck winning over the Time Lords to his cause. She knew deep in her heart that if the Doctor could have, he would have rescued her by now. He would have arrived with the TARDIS, spouting nonsensical facts and figures to distract the Daleks before single-handedly stopping the depletion of the star's energy and sending the monsters back to their prison. But he hadn't. And he couldn't. Rose felt the tears welling up as she remembered how hopeful she had been when she first saw him appear on the holograph. She thought it would be like the last time. Then she remembered that last time had killed him, made him a new man. Perhaps that was his destiny in this parallel universe. To perish fighting the same menace that plagued him from the first - but this time he would not regenerate. Bitter defeat weighed down on her as she walked toward her doom, grieving for the man she had lost the last time and the same man she would now lose for good. And that was when the room exploded and the world turned black.

Rose opened her eyes. She was lying on her side in the far corner of the room, a good twenty feet away from where she had been standing only seconds before. Or has it only been a few seconds? Looking up, she saw that she was indeed still in the control room of the Dalek ship, but now there were people standing around, all of them looking down at her with surprised looks on their faces. Rose was about to ask who all of these people were when one of them started talking to her. She tried to sit up.

"No, no, just lie back down. You've been unconscious for half an hour, you need to give your head a chance to heal. Your name wouldn't happen to be Rose, now, would it?"

"Yeah," she replied weakly. Her head was pounding so hard she couldn't see clearly, and she could feel hot, sticky blood slowly trickling onto her face from a large gash on her head, which she thought must have been where she had hit it. "And, um, who are you, exactly?"

"We are Time Lords, of the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. We have already had the pleasure of meeting your friend the Doctor, who claims to be one of us. What is all of this about, if I may ask?"

"Oh, um. Yeah," she began. "Well, you see, long story short, he's a half human half Time Lord from another universe." Even trying to say such a short sentence made Rose's headache worsen. She closed her eyes in an attempt to block out the pain. "So, um, where is he?"

"Well," replied one of the other Time Lords, "We don't know. He seems to have left our ship, and we have no idea where he went."

This was just perfect. The Doctor was missing, left without a trace, and here was Rose, halfway across the universe on some Dalek spaceship with only some ruddy Time Lords for company, and-

"Oh my god! The Daleks!" Rose sat up and leaned against the wall, ignoring the screaming agony that this small motion cause her. "We've got to get out of here! Do you guys have a ship, or some sort of -"

"Calm down, it's okay." the first Time Lord reassured her. "The Daleks have been taken care of. They are all dead."

Rose felt as if a weight had been taken off of her shoulders as her anxiety melted away into relief. "How did you kill them?"

"It does not matter. What's more important is -"

"The fact that this system is about to be destroyed and everyone in it is going to die," the Doctor said, entering the room. "Am I right?"

"Doctor!"

"Hello, Rose. Long time no see, eh?" He smiled and winked in her direction. "But like I said, this entire system is going to explode as soon as that star runs out of energy, and unless we can stop it, we're all going down with it."

"That," said the Time Lord, "is exactly why we need to get back to our ship right away. We will return you to your home planet and then return to Gallifrey to report of these Daleks' deaths."

"Or," commented the Doctor sharply, "we could stop the star from collapsing and destroying this entire system."

"And how do you propose we so that, Doctor?" The one speaking spat out the last word, and Rose got the feeling that the Time Lords didn't like the Doctor very much. "It is impossible to prevent destruction at this point, even if we could restore stability to the star."

"Well, now, I always like to think that nothing's really impossible, not if you're clever. And lucky for you, I am. Now, let's just have a look at this..." The Doctor strolled over to the control panel and started poking the screen. Beaming, Rose watched him as he began pacing, muttering to himself under his breath, flailing his arms extravagantly and wildly pushing buttons and levers. That's my Doctor, she thought. Always the one to come up with a plan, she thought. I bet he never thought he'd get to do this sort of thing again. He was finally back where he belonged, saving the universe alongside Rose, meeting aliens and stopping disasters. Then she felt the floor buck and her knees buckled, still weak from her last bout of unconsciousness.

"Doctor, any way you could speed things up?" She shouted over the loud rumbling that was starting to drown out her thoughts and the voices of the Time Lords, who were arguing amongst themselves and yelling at the Doctor. She thought she heard the leader say "There is no place in our society for…" but then his voice too was drowned by the creaking metal of the Dalek ship as the star it was orbiting began to collapse on itself and draw the ship toward the infinitely dense black hole forming in its centre.

The leader suddenly broke away from the group and started toward the Doctor as he frantically pressed buttons on the display screen, turning dials while trying to keep his balance in the rocking control room. Rose watched in horror as the rogue Time Lord shouted into the Doctor's ear, and the Doctor's face morphed into an angry glare. Controls temporarily forgotten, the Doctor shouted back at the Time Lord. Though Rose could hear nothing over the shaking of the Dalek vessel, she understood what was happening when the Time Lord leader spun on his heel and staggered to the door. She looked back at the Doctor and saw him running after the Time Lord, his face set in a grim line. He paused to yell something at Rose, but none of his words reached her ears. The destruction of the ship was only moments away, the Doctor was fleeing the room after the Time Lord leader, and the other Time Lords were a combination of lying and sitting on the floor as a result of one extremely powerful jolt. The Doctor was making a strange motion with his arms, and Rose realised he was indicating for her to take over his job. She had no idea what she was supposed to do, but she made her way to the control panel. It was then that she saw the large lever and it clicked that the Doctor needed her to flip it. Feeling a strange sense of deja vu, she gripped the handle and tugged as hard as she could.

Rose struggled unsuccessfully for several moments. She had almost given up on moving it when another pair of hands wrapped around hers and she looked up into the ancient eyes of a young Time Lady. She couldn't have been more than five years older than Rose, but her gaze was wise and kind. And at this moment, she was looking determinedly into Rose's eyes. Rose felt strenght surge into her arms and she and the Time Lady forced the lever to the other side. Just as they reached the other side, the ship gave its biggest jolt yet and the Time Lady was flung to the ground. Rose barely held on to the lever, throwing all her weight on it to prevent it from flipping back. She looked up and saw the Time Lord leader had made it to the door before the Doctor had grabbed his arm and spun him back into the room. The jolt had knocked them both the ground, the Doctor landing partly on top of the Time Lord leader whose arm was still in his grip. Rose and the Doctor locked eyes and his lips formed words.

"Don't. Let. Go."