Life was unimaginably good.
Alba's three month long probation period had flown by in a flash. She had settled into an easy routine at the vet's office, and she genuinely liked both her coworkers and the merry menagerie of dogs that were permanent residents there. Each of them had a different personality, but all of them were endearing in their own individual ways, and she came to love them all. She didn't even mind having to walk and clean up after them when Jordan, the regular dog walker, called out sick. When Dr. Bradford offered her a permanent full-time position at the practice, she accepted it without even needing to think about it. Although the Doctor hadn't initially been thrilled at the prospect of her working full-time while pregnant, he had gotten over his misgivings when he saw how happy it made her
After she'd been working there a few weeks, they had ended up adopting two red dachshund puppies, a brother and sister, that had come to the Sanctuary after their owner had suddenly died of a heart attack. After much deliberation on the topic of names, they finally christened the two dogs Artemis and Apollo. Both of them had taken to Alba immediately, and they followed her around the penthouse, like baby ducklings following after their mother. It took them slightly longer to warm up to Jamie, though they eventually did. Apollo would jump up onto the couch in the living room, position himself on an empty cushion, and then slowly but surely ooze his way over and into Jamie or Alba's lap. Artemis was more wont to curl up on the tops of their feet. It became so comfortable, it felt like they had been doing this together for years, rather than a few short months.
Right before they had adopted the dogs, they went to Earth to visit Alba's mother and announce their pregnancy. Andrea had been equal parts thrilled and concerned, since she was still under the impression that the Doctor worked for Doctors Without Borders and that part of his job was traveling to less than savory places. They both assured her that it was perfectly safe, though she, understandably, remained skeptical. Alba kept her mother updated the best that she could, using the hacked mobile phone to text Andrea sonograms of her first grandchild, the different names they were thinking of, new recipes she had tried, and little snippets of her every day life, as much as she could without giving away the actual truth of her whereabouts.
On the weekends, when neither of them were working, they would hop in the TARDIS, put on the randomizer, and go where ever it saw fit to take them. They visited Woman Wept, a world of ice that when viewed from above, looked like a woman in anguish curled in on herself. Alba stood on the frigid beach, looking out at waves that had frozen mid-crest, Jamie's arms wrapped around her waist and his hands resting protectively over her belly. But that wasn't even the strangest or most beautiful place they went. They saw the Diamond Coral Reefs of Kataa Flo Ko, the Fifteenth Broken Moon of the Medusa Cascade, the planet Barcelona, where the dogs had no noses. They visited feudal Japan, Victorian England, an impossible future space base orbiting a black hole. They witnessed the day the sun expanded and engulfed the Earth, reducing it to dust. They went back in time and saw Gallifrey as it had been when the first humans colonized it. The two of them grew closer and closer together, as Alba's body grew gravid with their child.
"How long are you going to stay with me?" he had asked her one night as they were laying on the deep red grass, staring up at the stars in the sky.
"Forever," she had answered immediately and without thought, reaching out to clasp his hand tightly in her own.
Harry was in prison, the company was Jamie's, Alba had a job she loved, and they were going to have a beautiful baby. Neither one of them had a care in the world. Neither one of them could have ever imagined just how wrong things would go.
Alba was walking home from work on a Friday afternoon. Well, at this point in her pregnancy, it was more like waddling than walking, but she tried not to think too much about it. Instead, she was thinking about what to make for dinner that night, where they might go on their next trip in the TARDIS, whether or not she could convince Jamie to take her to Andrea's for a quick visit. She was deep in her thoughts when a cherry red hover car with tinted windows pulled up next to her on the street. The window rolled smoothly down, revealing a face she was less than thrilled to see. It was Rani. The last time she had seen her had been at her and Jamie's wedding, and she was barely recognizable now. Her dark brown hair hung in lank drifts around her pasty face, and there were deep shadows underneath her eyes. She was dressed in all black, and wearing black leather gloves over her hands, despite the moderately warm weather. She looked like she had seen better days. Given what had happened to her husband, Alba supposed she had.
"Rose! Thank goodness I found you. Listen, you have to come with me. There's been an accident at the lab, and the Doctor was injured."
Alba stopped on the pavement and stared skeptically back at Rani. "So why are you here? Where's Jack?"
"Jack is at the hospital with the Doctor. He sent me to come find you. Listen, we shouldn't delay-it was a rather serious accident."
Alba whipped out her phone, and quickly dialed Jack's number. It rang several times before going to voicemail. She frowned down at the phone, and looked back up at Rani. "I don't believe you. Jack would never send you to get me. I hope you don't actually think I'm stupid enough to believe a line when I hear one. Piss off."
Rani pursed her lips. "You're making a very big mistake."
"Yeah, well you would say that, you harpy," Alba shot back. She continued walking. She was just beginning to dial Jamie's office number when she felt something cold and metal dig into her back.
"If you scream, I will blow the baby right out of you, here on this street," Rani hissed in her ear. "Now you're going to get in the hover car, and you're not going to say a bloody word. Got it? Just shake your head, don't say anything."
Numbly, Alba nodded her understanding.
"Good," Rani said, taking her firmly by the elbow and steering her back to where the hover car was parked. She kept the gun pressed against the small of Alba's back the entire way. Alba shot pleading looks at the people they passed on the street, but none of them seemed to notice her silent cry for help. Rani opened the door and shoved her roughly into the passenger's seat before walking back around the front of the car and taking her place on the driver's side.
"Where are you taking me?" Alba asked when they were in the air.
"What part of 'you're not going to say a bloody word' did you not understand?' Rani answered nastily.
At that moment, Alba's mobile began jingling. Jack's name and face popped up on the screen. Rani reached over, snatched the phone from Alba's grasp, and hurled it into the back seat. It bounced impotently off the rear windshield and fell onto the floor, well out of reach. There was no way she could attempt to retrieve it without Rani seeing her. She clasped her hands in her lap, twirling her thumbs nervously. She had no idea what was coming next, but she knew it couldn't be good. Rani drove dangerously fast, skirting around other vehicles, garnering angry honks from the other drivers. Since the windows were tinted, there was no way for Alba to even signal any of the other hover cars they passed. She was well and truly trapped. She swallowed thickly in nervous anticipation. She didn't recognize the landscape unfurling beneath them. Where was Rani taking her and what was she planning on doing?
Alba estimated they had been driving about half an hour when Rani stopped the car outside a giant building, surrounded by a protective glass dome. She got out of the car, taking the keys with her, and unlocked the gate. They drove through, and she got out once more to lock it behind them. She pulled up to a loading dock, and stopped the hover car. From the looks of it, they were outside some kind of warehouse. Rani muscled Alba out of the car and began dragging her up the stairs, the gun clutched in her other hand. For fear of getting herself or the baby hurt, Alba couldn't put up much resistance.
"Don't bother trying to run, there's nowhere for you to go," Rani said, temporarily releasing her so that she could fumble with a ring of keys. She unlocked the door to the warehouse and shoved Alba over the threshold, into the darkness within. The place stank to the high heavens, and Alba gagged. She bent over at the waist, dry heaving weakly until the feeling of nausea had passed. Suddenly, the warehouse was flooded with light. Rani was standing next to the switch, surveying the space with a pleased look. Alba looked around, taking it all in.
The warehouse was filled with fifty gallon drums, most of them bearing the tell tale skull and crossbones symbol that indicated the contents were toxic or poisonous. In the center of the vast space was a single metal folding chair and a pile of rope. Alba swallowed. She had a pretty good feeling (or rather a bad one) that the chair and the rope were meant for her. Rani jammed the gun against the small of her back and guided her towards the chair, confirming her suspicions. She could do nothing more than sit helplessly while Rani used the rope to secure her to the chair. The fiber of her bindings bit into her ankles and wrists, chafing the delicate skin there raw. She put on her bravest, most stoic face. She was determined not to crumble in front of her captor, even if she was about to lose her life, which seemed pretty likely, given the circumstances.
Rani began pacing back and forth in the space around the folding chair, muttering to herself. She still held the gun limply in one hand.
"Where are we?" Alba finally worked up the courage to ask.
Rani stopped her pacing, and trained the gun on Alba. "We're in an abandoned warehouse, owned by McCrimmon Industries. Very few people are even aware this place exists anymore, so it's unlikely we'll be interrupted. Even better...when they arrested Harry, they took all of his keys. None of them even suspected that I had made copies, a foolish assumption on their part. When they finally find your body, after an anonymous tip from me, your husband will be the number one suspect."
"So you're going to kill me?" Alba asked.
Rani chuckled darkly. "What do you think?"
"You'll never get away with it. You took me in broad daylight, in the middle of the street. People saw me get into your car. They'll know you did it."
Rani snorted derisively in response. "Not bloody likely. Everyone knows how unreliable eyewitness testimony is. People don't pay attention when they believe everything is fine. I'd be surprised if anyone even remembered seeing you today. No, the most likely suspect will be your precious Doctor. After what happened to his first wife and daughter, it's not going to look very good for him. He'll end up in the same prison he sent Harry to, where he'll rot for the rest of his pathetic, lonely life."
"But why? Why are you doing this? What do you have to gain by killing me? It's not like you'll gain control of the company after what happened with the vortex manipulator," Alba said, straining against her bonds.
"You think I care about that anymore? No, I know I can never take control of the company. This isn't about that. This is about revenge. You and your precious Doctor ruined all our carefully laid plans, and now I'm going to make him suffer like he made me suffer. Oh, he'll regret everything. He'll regret ever spurning me!" Rani shouted, pounding her fist against her thigh.
Alba stared back at her, confused. "What the hell are you going on about?"
"It was years ago, but I never forgave and I never forgot. That smug bastard, Jamie, was my partner at the Gallifreyan Intelligence Agency. We were friends, or so I thought. He confided in me about his troubles with Romana, how he sometimes regretted having Susanna. I thought maybe he liked me, as more than a friend, and he was rich! I wanted in on that endless fortune. But when I propositioned him, he laughed in my face! The nerve of that man! He told me he'd sooner sleep with his sister, if he had one, before sleeping with me. We were just partners, nothing more, and he would never cheat on his wife, as much as they argued or fought. He embarrassed me. I vowed to make him change his mind, at any cost.
So I thought to myself, if only Romana were out of the picture, maybe that would change things. I didn't mean to kill her and the baby, not really. I didn't even know she would take the baby with her that day. It was supposed to just be a simple accident, brake failure, carefully engineered. I thought she'd end up in a coma, but things went awry and she and the baby were both killed on impact. And Jamie was never the same after that, after the accusations that he'd had something to do with their deaths. He left the GIA, and we fell out of touch. I started dating Harry, to try to get closer with him again, but him and Harry never really got along. Harry shared my aspirations for wealth, though, so we ended up getting married. I figured that was the only thing that might give me a shot at the McCrimmon fortune. And I was so close...so very close, when you and the bloody Doctor had to go and ruin everything!"
Alba stared at her, gobsmacked. "You were Jamie's partner at the GIA? He never mentioned."
"Well, of course not. Our work at the GIA is still classified. Oh but trust me, dear Rose, if you even knew some of the things we had done together, the sins we committed, it would curl your hair," Rani chuckled mirthlessly.
"So it was iyou/i all along, you who killed his wife and daughter? Over money? Are you bloody insane? Money isn't the end all be all. It can't buy happiness."
"Whoever said money can't buy happiness has obviously never been poor. There's no poverty on Gallifrey, but there are definitely some who are considerably more wealthy than others. My parents were nothing special. They both worked menial jobs for meager pay. I vowed that I wouldn't live like them, that I'd do better for myself."
"So you thought to do better for yourself by killing a man's wife and trying to trick him into loving you? Don't talk to me about poverty, because I actually idid/i grow up poor. I ate Ramen noodles, I wore second-hand clothes, and I grew up on a council estate. And I can tell you for sure-money doesn't buy happiness. Happiness comes from within, and from loving others, really loving them, not faking it. Although I'm not surprised that someone so obsessed with money and material things is too blind to see that," Alba spat.
Rani advanced on her, brandishing her weapon wildly. She jammed the gun against Alba's temple, and clicked off the safety. "Just shut up, you stupid kid!"
Alba ignored her, and plowed onwards calmly. "What I don't get though, is why Harry would kidnap me if you were trying to take control of McCrimmon Industries? It just doesn't make sense."
"Harry kidnapped you because there is significant money to be made in the black market slave trade. He didn't select you himself-he was sent to get you by your mother's debtors. Neither one of us had any idea that the Doctor would end up going to that very same slave exchange and finding you there."
"You're mad. Completely insane," Alba said, still squirming against the ropes. There was almost no give to them, and they were beginning to cut off her circulation.
"Enough of your petty little questions. Time to be silent now," Rani said, cocking the gun.
"Drop it," a steely voice echoed through the warehouse. Rani and Alba both turned to see the Doctor standing by the doorway, holding a gun of his own.
"You!" Rani hissed. "How did you find me?"
He stepped forward, keeping the gun trained on her. "I put a microchip in Rose's phone. When she didn't come home and she didn't answer, I knew something was wrong, so I looked up her location. Imagine my surprise when the tracking information pointed here. I knew there was no way she could've found this place at random, so I came out to investigate. Now drop the gun, Veranika."
"Dream on, arsehole," Rani hissed, turning back to Alba. Before she had a chance to pull the trigger, a shot rang out. Blood erupted in a burst from Rani's shoulder, and she collapsed to the ground, screaming and clutching at her wound, her gun forgotten on the ground. The Doctor wasted no time running across the warehouse to the chair where Alba was bound. He took out a pocket knife, and began slicing through the ropes binding her to the chair.
"Are you alright?" he asked, paying no mind to the woman who was bleeding and thrashing around on the floor.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Just a little shook up, that's all. If you had gotten here a moment later, I would've…" she croaked, her voice breaking.
"Shh, don't even say it, because it didn't happen," he said, gathering her into his arms. He looked down when he felt something pulling on his ankle.
"Just finish the job, you coward," Rani hissed, leaving bloody fingerpaints on the hem of his trousers.
The Doctor was still holding the gun loosely in his right hand. Rani's gun was at his feet, and he kicked it, sending it spinning off and into a pyramid of neatly stacked chemical drums. He pointed his own gun at Rani's head, and his hand began to waver. Finally, it dropped back down to his side. "No. That's your way, and I won't do it. You can rot in prison with Harry for the rest of your pitiful existence, for all I care. But I won't become like you."
In the distance, there was the sound of sirens. Alba sighed in relief, and sagged against Jamie, who wrapped his arms tightly around her. The nightmare was finally over.
