Chapter Two

The Message


"Anka! Ania! I have to go now!"

My mum's voice woke me up from a nightmare. I gasped as I sat up in my bed.

"I'm leaving, yeah?" Mum was shouting from downstairs. I could almost see her, standing on the stairs' landing, one hand on a wooden banister, head tilted, her lovely dark hair falling on her shoulders. "Ania, promise me you won't be wandering the streets again. Ok? Baby, you know it's not safe! All the knife crime and all. Please, don't leave home!"

I moaned. "I won't, mum."

"What?"

"I won't!"

"Just stay here, darling, watch some telly, yeah? I'll be back as soon as I can!"

She's never tried to watch the daytime TV.

"Sure."

"Love you!"

"Love you, mum."

The front door banged and I was alone again. I was sitting in my bed, my pyjamas soaked with perspiration. I was afraid to go back to sleep.

The creatures. They resembled large, metallic cones, moving about purposefully and… and shooting rays of green energy… They were quite silly – big pepper-pots – and yet they scared the hell out of me.

I decided to stop reading science fiction for a while. And no more Stephen King's horrors.

I even had a name for my metallic monsters.

"Daleks." As I spoke the word out loud, a chill rushed through my body. I shivered. "Daleks."

Two hours later I was standing in front of the blue box, still shivering, although now I was wearing my tattered jeans, a T-shirt and a jacket. I was drilling a hole in the dirt with a tip of my shoe. It was raining, and my hair was soaked. I kept my hands deep in my pockets, fingers of my right hand squeezed on a small torch. I looked at the patch of grass and rubble surrounding the box. There was only one set of footprints, still visible, regardless the rain. My footprints, I had left here the day before.

"So what are the Daleks?" I asked. I glared at the blue box. "What are you?"

The box was quiet.

"I know it was you," I said harshly. "There's something inside you. Something… that makes me crazy… I had a nightmare last night because of you."

An elderly man walked past me. He gave me the look. He must have thought I was mental, talking to myself. He could have been right.

"Fine," I whispered. "Fine."

I grasped the torch even harder and walked up to the blue door. I pushed it only to find it locked again.

"Oh, don't give me that!" I snorted. "I know, I got inside yesterday. Inside, inside. So, just let me in, will you?"

'Like a door to Narnia,' I thought. 'Like an old wardrobe, leading to a different world.'

"Just let me in!"

The door opened slightly. I lit the torch and drew a deep breath.

"Ok," I said. "That's better. Thank you."

With my heart pounding in my chest I stepped inside. I was expecting to see the small compartment, all covered in spider webs, but then I was also expecting to see something else. I didn't quite know what. What I saw though… No, I wasn't expecting that.

I had to fight myself not to step back, just to make sure I would be still in front of an old blue police box. I was afraid that if I did, the vision would be gone, never to return again. So I just walked inside quickly.

It resembled an underwater cave. But it wasn't a cave. There was something in the middle, a crystal column surrounded by a round console, full of strange instruments – switches and handles, screens and buttons. Twisting pillars were bending over the central bit of the cave – room. They looked a bit like carbonised trees in the darkness. The walls; so incredibly distant; were dotted with slightest spots of light. It was orange and warm, but very faint. It was pulsating slowly, like a gigantic, old, tired heart.

I walked slowly from the door to the central pillar and touched one of the screens. The sensation was pleasant. As I moved my hand back, an orange thread lit up in the air, following my fingers. It rippled like a ribbon. I shook my hand, to get rid of it, suddenly afraid that it could harm me.

"What… on Earth… is that?" I whispered.

Slowly, I circled the console. The items imbedded in a strange metal or stone were a weirdest mixture of known and unknown. There was a pump, very much like an old bicycle pump, and a wheel that resembled a plastic element of a wheelbarrow. There was some sort of a counter. There were levers and handles, some of them metal, some wooden, some alike to antique doorknobs and some looking like futuristic spaceship's instruments. There was a hammer hanging on a bit of a string. There were scraps of paper covered in unrecognisable writing. There were little post-it notes stuck to the screen I had touched. And inside the crystal column, there were greenish, see-through tubes, waiting inertly for… for something…

Suddenly something blinked into life to my right. I gasped and jumped away, but it was just an image of a man in a black leather jacket – a projection of some sort, a hologram. The man had a funny face – large ears, and a long nose – but he seemed sad. So very, very sad. His lips moved. He was talking.

I tried not to breathe to catch his words – they were so quiet.

"This is Emergency Programme One…" the man said. I had to breathe in and out and in again. I was shivering badly.

"…this message is activated, then it can only mean one thing. We must be in danger. And I mean, fatal. I'm dead or about to die any second with no chance of escape…"

I reached out slowly. My hand went through the projection. The bluish image rippled slightly.

"And that's okay. Hope it's a good death…"

I felt like crying. No, I was crying already. Silly old Ania. Waterworks always at the ready. I sobbed and sniffled, and lost a little bit of what the projection was saying.

"…can never return for me. Emergency Programme One means I'm facing an enemy that should never get their hands on this machine. So this is what you should do: let the TARDIS die."

"What?" I whispered.

"…just let this old box gather dust. No one can open it; no one will even notice it. Let it become a strange little thing standing on a street corner. And over the years, the world will move on and the box will be buried. And if you wanna remember me, then you can do one thing. That's all. One thing."

Tears rolled down my cheeks when the image of the man turned his face towards me, as if he knew I was there.

"Have a good life," he said quietly. "Do that for me, Rose. Have a fantastic life."

And he was gone.

The place was desolate again, and very quiet. I wiped my face with the back of my hand. Thoughts were rolling through my head like stormy clouds across the sky. TARDIS. Rose. Enemy. Emergency Programme One. What was that supposed to mean? What was this place? Why was it bigger on the inside sometimes, and sometimes just as tiny as it should logically be? Why there was a transmission playing out of the blue; a transmission definitely not meant for me? Why was I able to open the box, when it was supposed to gather dust and die? Die? How could a box die? How could it all be possible?

"C… can I see it again?" I whispered harshly. "The message?"

Silence.

"Who was it? Did he die? Did he really die?"

Silence. But I had an impression that something started building, like a distant tsunami wave. It was like a weather front changing before a torrent. I could feel my hair rising. I crossed my arms on my chest.

"Who was that man?" I repeated.

Then it came – golden light. It erupted from the multitude of round formations embedded in the walls. It streamed across the room, whirling and twisting, brilliant and beautiful and so, so much alive.

I heard voices; voices in my head. Some of them I couldn't understand. And the rest…

"Time Lord…" voices whispered. "Time Lord...the last of the Time Lords, the last of a wise and ancient race..."

"An alien?" I croaked.

"…such a lonely boy…"

"He seemed human," I said weakly. "Are Time Lords human?"

"…such a power… the Oncoming Storm… Time Lord…"

"No, I guess they're not," I answered my own question. "But who was he? Why…?"

"The Doctor!" voices in my head sang. "The Doctor!"

The room was overflowing with light. It was so bright I had to close my eyes. I reached out and grabbed the console. Something slammed loudly.

"The door," I thought. "Oh, my God, it's the door."

I managed to open my eyes a little, and I started inching back towards the exit, when the central column came to life. It whooshed suddenly and rose and then fell heavily. I screamed. The glass pipes inside the column rose again, and fell again, and then they picked up a heavy but powerful rhythm, like some ancient engine. The whooshing sound become deafening. The floor jerked, running away from beneath my feet. I fell backwards and hit the floor hard again. There was light and voices and whooshing. The room was shaking and trembling, and screaming in final extortion. I felt my ears popping like on a plane during the take off. The floor tilted and I rolled across the room, to stop against one of the pillars. I grabbed its cold base and held for my dear life.

Glass pipes rose and fell for the last time.

The floor was still, and the room was quiet.

For a while I laid curled on the floor, then the panic got the better of me and I jumped to my feet frantically. I ran across the room, reached the door and jerked them open.

Next moment, I was hanging by the door latch, floating in the air… No, not air… Floating in space.

My fingers went white, I held on so hard. I looked down, and I saw my feet in dusty old Converses, kicking desperately, but in slow motion, and below them… below them…

Stars.

Not the stars you can see from your front garden. Stars in space. Dazzlingly bright jewellery of nebulas and galaxies against the deepest blackness of the void.

I was hanging by my fingertips over the colossal vastness of the outer space.


To be continued...

Author's note: I love the scene with Amy Pond (and I don't want to spoil fun to anybody, so I won't write which one). And, no, the TARDIS still not mine.