Chapter 3
Thalon watched through the mirror glass that didn't quite work with his Gallifreyan eyes, as the tall one Rose called George put all his belongings into a bag-like thing to be taken away and catalogued. He was waiting for a signal from Rose, and he saw it as she walked in to talk to the man and tucked some of her hair behind her ear. He pulled out the sonic screwdriver he'd picked from Rose's pocket, although when he said "pick" he meant more "Rose let him take in a convincing manner from her pocket". He rather likes the blonde woman and can see what the Doctor sees in her, he'd have her for himself if she weren't married to his brother in the oldest, deepest traditional way of his people. "Well bro, I've always wanted to be more like you, even if I never let on. Time to see if this daft scheme your Rose has come up with works."
Pressing the button and turning it, the door of his holding cell opened and he rushed out and grabbed Rose in a classic hostage-taker pose, standing behind her using one arm to restrain her arms behind her back, and the other pressed the sonic screwdriver to her head. He just hoped the other man didn't know it really couldn't do anything to her. "Hand goes near that panic button and I kill her dead."
George looked stunned then put his hands in the air, "Okay, okay, just don't hurt her."
"It's okay, just do as he says, don't act the hero," Rose told him in a panicky voice and she had to applaud their acting skills.
"Okay, now throw me that bag," as George moved forward he added, "slowly." As the bag was thrown gently to him, he noticed George's hand move towards the button on the badge he wore. He acted quicker than he thought possible and pointed the sonic screwdriver at George, turning it on, a puff of smoke coming from the badge as sparks flew out of it, causing the taller man to jump back and rip it off his shirt. "I told you no panic button. Now hands behind your head."
"Okay, I'm sorry just don't hurt Rose," George squeaked, making Rose feel really bad for doing this to him, but the less people that were in on this, the better. She didn't want anyone else getting in trouble because of her. It didn't matter about her really, since she was leaving, but the longer she could hold the pretence of being a hostage, the better, because of the diversion that Mickey had agreed to do in R&D for her.
"Now on your knees, then lie down, face to the floor." As George lay down, Thalon rummaged through the bag and pulled out some rope from inside another bag-like thing that was way to small to hold so much of it. "You stand still or I'll hurt him badly." he said to Rose and tied up the other man's wrists and ankles, finishing up by bending his knees so his legs went up, then doing the same to his arms, only keeping them straight and tying his wrists to his ankles tightly so there was no give in it. "Well George I'm sure you're a lovely bloke and I'm sorry for all this, but I'm afraid I have to leave. So you just practice your yoga like a good boy and I'm sure someone will be along sooner or later. Oh and sorry to tell you, but the cameras seem to be on the blink. They didn't seem to like the setting I used to open the door." Thalon then searched through the bag again and pulled out a roll of parcel tape. "Oh, I almost forgot." He ripped some of it off the roll and covered the man's mouth, "Can't have you shouting too loud. Besides to do yoga properly one needs to breathe through the nose." He shoved a nasal spray up each nostril and squirted, "Also, since humans are susceptible to congestion, just to make sure your airways are clear for the next few years. You should be thanking me too, because that makes you immune to the common cold and most flues--"
"You're rambling again," Rose interrupted.
"Oh, sorry." He pulled out a final thing, which turned out to be a wallet, took out a blank piece of paper from another leather wallet inside that and placed it in the front pocket of his jacket with the Gallifreyan symbols on it. Finally, he pulled out ten twenty-pound notes and placed them in George's back pocket. "Compensation from the people of Gallifrey since I'm their only representative here. I'm really sorry mate."
Rose coughed loudly, "Excuse me, can you live a little? Supposed to be the hostage here remember?"
"Sorry. I'm not as good at this stuff as my brother, the Doctor's been doing this for years, whereas me, I just about know how to tie someone up. Besides, if I was doing this the Time Lord way I'd be wiping his memory and he gets nothing. Not allowed to give people money because it's interfering..."
Rose sighed, "Fine, fine, but when we get out of here think "evil genius"."
"No, that's our other brother, Koshieshi, but we disowned him. He'll be trying to take over the universe in some harebrained scheme that'd put that coyote in those cartoons to shame... the one that keeps trying to catch that bird thing... anyway he calls himself the Master, and it's the Doctor's job to deal with him, and I deal with the upset that the Doctor makes. It's the whole circle of--"
"Look as interesting as it is to hear about your family and I'd love to hear it, we really don't have time right now. You haven't just regenerated or something?"
" I did just before I got here... I still am, technically, since the process lasts fifteen hours and it's been nine. This is only my fourth one so it's my fifth body. Had a nasty incident involving a stampede of big chicken things... the good thing about these clothes is they will literally make themselves fit anyone; were designed for regeneration during battle... the not so good thing is that red may have been good blending on Gallifrey but not so much on a white grass land planet. I'm babbling again aren't I?"
"Yup, now come on. We'll get you some tea when this is done. And before you ask, you're not ginger." As Thalon started taking things out of the bag and stuffing them in his pockets, George looked rather curious as to why everything seemed to fit just fine soon as it squeezed past the opening. "Sorry George, I didn't want you implicated in this. This is Thalon and he's the Doctor's brother, and he's helping me get home to him. So I'm helping him escape. Please don't worry about me because I'll be fine. It has been so great knowing you, you're the best friend I've had in a long time, I'll really miss you." She placed a kiss on the top of his head and turned to her new friend, "You ready?"
Thalon went to George and picked out an iPod from his pocket, putting another £400 in his pocket, "Yeah, I'll need to borrow your iPod, here's the money to cover it in case I don't get it back to you." He then picked up the Rubik's cube, "Can't forget him." Turning to Rose, "Okay, ready to go when you are."
Rose rolled her eyes, "Right. Think bad, think you're gonna hurt me if need be--"
"I couldn't do that..."
"I know that, you know that, but the people here aren't supposed to know that. Now remember: I'm your hostage."
"Okay." he replied and pointed the sonic screwdriver at Rose's back and moved out of the room and turned down the corridor only to notice Rose wasn't following him.
"The lifts are the other way," Rose sighed, and at that moment she couldn't help but wonder what she's got herself into.
"I knew that... I was just making sure you knew that..." He turned and followed Rose to the lifts with the white doors and chrome panelling at the end of the white sterile corridor. He pressed the button and waited for the lift, "So how long has your friend got the camera's blinking on and off for before they notice that the one in the holding cell is offline?"
"Probably ten minutes more... but we'll have to be careful; this area isn't used much so there aren't many people here. We normally only have a few mischief-makers to deal with, they are taken elsewhere. These cells are for the dangerous prisoners, it's harder to escape from here but Mickey has taken the extra security measures offline as well. Normally an alarm goes off when one of the cameras go off or when the door's been forced open, or the if there's use of a sonic device but the alarms don't seem to be working as well as half the cameras blinking on and off. Appears the computer systems have contracted a new virus that will take the experts at least an hour to fix. Oh and the virus seems to have corrupted our conversation records including back ups and double back ups beyond repair, as well as the data trail."
"That's some friend you got."
"Mickey's from my universe as well, we used to go out before I met the Doctor." Rose replied as she got in the lift with Thalon. Thalon used the sonic screwdriver on the controls to go up two levels.
The lift doors opened and they walked out into a vast underground storage area that was packed with chrome shelves of white cardboard boxes and some larger objects that wouldn't fit into a box. Thalon grinned manically and ran forward to the nearest box and started digging, then the next one and did the same for all the boxes occasionally putting things in his bottomless pockets. He picked up one of the larger unboxed items and looked it over, "It's amazing looking at all the stuff here! I mean here's a vintage Angorianaian glob-bread toaster! I've not seen one of these for years!"
"I've seen enough to last a lifetime, thanks," Rose replied, rolling her eyes. That was another one of Rast's 'products', "and before you use it you should know that it's likely to blow up."
Thalon put it in his pocket anyway, which was comical considering the size of it. "Yeah maybe but I'm sure I can fix it... or at least use the parts. You get a lot of Angorianaian stuff then?"
"Yeah mostly from the same guy. His name's Rast, he's always coming here trying to sell off stuff that doesn't work. Just yesterday it was exploding doorknobs. I mean, how the hell did he get an ordinary metal doorknob with no mechanical parts in it to explode? That's the one thing that beats me. He only does it cause he fancies me, so he wants to get caught so he can chat me up for a few hours before we're forced to send him on his way. The only thing he's ever brought here that works is that sonic screwdriver, and that's cause I asked him to get me one. Not that Torchwood knows about it... and now you've got me babbling!"
"Oh it's just my winning personality." Thalon said, flashing a grin.
Rose laughed, "You looked so much like the Doctor there, it's funny."
"Yes well we're a lot like each other except that I've behaved like a good little Time Lord, never getting into trouble, never enjoying life, never going to do something just because it's there or to see what it feels like. I was always envious of him that he could do all that, and I'm fed up of it. But now? No more Time Lords to rebel against so better late than never eh? It's just hard sometimes to stop myself automatically going back to my old ways. The Doctor does it so naturally everyone always blamed it on the human in him."
"Hang on... human? What d'you mean human in him??"
"Human in him, like I said. The Doctor's half human. Same as our other brother. My dad had an affair with a human woman, it was a huge scandal at the time but I love my brothers to death, anyway. Always sticking up for them, stopping the other kids from picking on them. Was always getting into fights at school cause I was keeping the other kids away from my brothers. There was this one time I had several broken ribs, a broken nose, and a black eye cause I lost it at this one boy that called the Doctor a 'half-breed' and took his school books, throwing them around everywhere and ripping them and so on. I might have been bad but you should have seen the other boy, he wasn't able to walk for two months. I'm 5 years older than the Doctor and Koshieshi; they're twins: the boy in question was 7 years older than me and a lot bigger and heavier. Anyway after that no one picked on them ever again when I was likely to get back at them; were too afraid. So it's not surprising he never said, it's a sore subject. It's probably why he's so attached to Earth and humanity."
"Thought you said you've been a good Time Lord? And poor Doctor, I never knew, it must have been terrible. I mean isn't that such a human thing to do to other kids? I didn't expect it of your own people."
"Time Lord, not boy. Never got into trouble after I went to the Time Lord Academy then became one. And yes, you'd think we should be past that, but our people never mixed with other societies until a few years before the War started and most of that was the Doctor's doing, whether directly or indirectly. A few things started to change after he was born, then he brought a human back with him that stayed behind and married one of our cousins. Then Romanadvoratrelundar, or Romana as the Doctor nicknamed her and she stuck to, went with him on a mission from the High Council to keep an eye on him but at the same time they needed plausible deniability for. She got to see the universe in a different light from what we see as pure observers. We only step in when something is going to go wrong with timelines and cause a paradox. Romana was out there with him, interacting with people, and when they tried to call her back to Gallifrey she left the Doctor and hid, getting to learn more. When she eventually came back, she wanted to do something to change things and got all the way to the top, shaking the old order of things along the way. If it wasn't for her and the alliances she made despite the xenophobia of some of our people, the Daleks would have got the whole universe and the other realities and universes a long time before. Our people may be dead, there may be a few stray Daleks but the Time War is over and the universe is safe... for now, at least." He gave a small smile at another memory, trying to forget the War, "He even managed to get a human girl in the Academy, she was a wolf also, so could be classified for refugee status, and the Doctor adopted her to get her in. She was a laugh, used to blow things up all the time, she wasn't afraid of anything; she took out a Dalek with a baseball bat once. Though I think it gave his actual son another excuse to not speak to him, they never got along much. He was very much a 'proper' Gallifreyian and the Doctor was a radical, even blamed him for the human genes."
"Hardly his fault, that," Rose said as they moved to another row of shelves and Thalon took more things. "And what d'you mean, "also a wolf"?"
"Well when the War started they made up their differences and became close friends. My brother even managed to set him up with another Time Lady in our unit. The war changed a lot of people... Even Koshieshi became less evil and helped out. As for "also a wolf"… Okay, "wolf" is a term for people that are born from a paradox often created by themselves. Ever wonder why there is no Rose Tyler in this universe?"
'I create myself…'
The realisation of what those words meant dawned on her that instant, it was something she never thought of before. "You mean when I looked into the TARDIS I made sure the events happened that led to my birth? But the paradox is that if I never was born, I'd never have been able to go with the Doctor and look into the TARDIS?"
"Bit like the chicken and the egg, huh? You're good, I'll give you that. A lot of your species at your stage of development can't grasp that. You're special though, 'cause you have a part of a TARDIS' heart in you, a part of the Time Vortex. Most wolves don't have that."
"Why do you call us wolves?" She asked, a little more curious, that's one thing the time spent here had brought her: an insistent curiosity about things.
"The wolves of Fenric," he replied. "Fenric is an ancient evil from the dawn of time, the Doctor has encountered him twice, once imprisoning him and the second time killing, but you can never truly kill evil, so no doubt Fenric is still lurking around somewhere. Fenric's wolves are people that he uses to do his bidding through manipulating events without knowing their true purpose. You're the Bad Wolf because you go against Fenric's plan by destroying his army, so the legend says, despite him setting up the situation to destroy the lonely stranger because he has stood in his way before. There's another Wolf mentioned that fights him as well and that's created by the Bad Wolf, one that cannot die. I mean, the whole thing is so detailed, I've only told you the basic version of the kid's story."
'I bring life'
"Jack... Oh--"
"Who's there?"
"Quick, take me hostage again!!"
Thalon pulled a ray gun out of a box beside him and pointed it at Rose's head just as the cause of the voice came around the corner. "No fuss or I shoot."
The owner of the voice froze, it was an average build Asian woman dressed in a white lab coat and trouser suit underneath. She stopped dead and looked at them both a little befuddled. "Miss Tyler?"
"It's okay, just do as he says, he's a little crazy."
"And hands away from your badge or you may find out just how crazy I am!"
The woman put her hands up in front of her, "Okay, but if I don't check in soon the alarm will be raised."
"The alarm system is down, all I need is a few more things and we'll be on our way."
"Okay, what do you need? Maybe I can help," she asked, obviously trying to think of a way to raise the alert that there was a hostage situation and an ET has the director's daughter.
"I need a wormhole generator, power crystals, and data storage crystals."
"Fine, I can get you those things, the unsorted crystals are all on row O, but for the other thing, you'll need to go to R&D."
"Right, let's move then, you lead, but keep your hands where I can see them."
The woman turned and walked back the way she came with her hands up in the air. Rose and Thalon followed, they turned around the corner but only got a few steps when they ran into a security guard.
"Oh crap," Thalon muttered. "Okay, no one move! I've got Miss Tyler here as my hostage, anything happens and--"
"We have a situation, unfriendly in the un-catalogued storage room, he's got Miss Rose Tyler from Special Division hostage, request immediate backup."
"I'm so sorry about this," Thalon said before firing his weapon at the guard then the Asian woman causing them both to crumple to the floor. "Thank Rassilon for the invention of the stun setting."
"Never mind that, they'll be along any minute, let's move!"
Rose ran along full speed, Thalon running after her, making sure to keep his gun pointing forward and turned into row 'O'. He then proceeded to grab as many boxes as he could and just tipped the contents into his pockets. Once he got to the sixth one there was a shout from behind them somewhere, "They're still alive, have the floor evacuated. Remember, only stun, we can't hurt the hostage."
"Over there," Rose pointed ahead of them, "there's an air grate."
Thalon ran along behind Rose and got to the air grate and looked at it. "It's screwed on."
"This might be a guess, but I think they called it a sonic screwdriver, and not just because they thought the name sounded cool."
"Oh yeah, forgot. Told you I'm not as good at this as my brother." Thalon used the sonic screwdriver to unscrew the grate then pried it off. "Ladies first." Rose went through and Thalon closely followed behind, putting the grate back in place and screwing it shut from the inside with the screwdriver. "Some people might think it's just a gimmick making a screwdriver sonic but how else is someone supposed to screw something from the inside?"
"Just in time, too," Rose added as the guards ran past them. She started to crawl forward, only she had to stop at the sheer noise of it. "Why is it never so noisy when they do this in films?"
"Well it'd kinda spoil the plot a bit if they made a lot of noise sneaking through these places."
"But they'll know where we are."
"I think they'll figure it out eventually, anyway. Come on let's get moving. If we go quick might take them longer to figure out exactly where we are." They crawled ahead as fast as possible under the circumstances. Eventually they had to stop as the vent split of in all directions. "What way?"
"How should I know?" Rose sighed, "I'm guessing we don't go down without breaking a limb at least, and unless you can climb up walls, not up, so guess a direction?"
Thalon gave a small chuckle, "Or… we follow the company logo."
"What d'you mean?"
"Read it."
Rose looked at the logo that was off to the right side, it had a little wolf head and under it, it read "Bad Wolf Ventilation Inc.". Rose had to give a small laugh herself, "Guess I already saw this coming." Sure enough, every time they had a choice in direction there was a logo telling them where to go until they reached a grate. "Oh well, I suppose it's time to find out where Bad Wolf has taken us to then."
Rose pushed open the grating and they came out to find they were at one of the stairwells belonging to the emergency exits. "We're still on sub level four, and R&D is on level Ten in this universe."
"Time to get climbing while I throw together a device that should help us out."
"At this stage I wouldn't be surprised if you produced a bazooka from your pockets."
"No, sorry, it got destroyed when I blocked the barrel and fired it remotely to make a bigger bang when I took out that squad of Cybermen. I wanted to take out the factory in Battersea but someone got there first."
"That was us, me and the Doctor along with Mickey, Jake and my Dad."
"Well, guess I should thank you then," Thalon replied pulling out some wires, the iPod and a small black box with slits for a microphone on one side. "I thought I was imagining it when I could feel him then, he probably thought the same about me. I spent a week helping to clean up after that. Good thing getting rid of that gun anyway, I hate guns; only use them as a last resort. My military issue ones are still in the TARDIS."
"You used one on that guard and the filing clerk back there," Rose reminded.
"I was panicked, Time War made me like that, shoot first, think after. Anyway it was on stun, stun is different to the kill setting, I don't mind stunning people or doing something that's not going to do permanent harm. Mind you, Daleks I've no problem killing, that's probably another hangover from the war."
"I couldn't, not at first. First one I met absorbed my DNA and it changed, it became something different. I stopped the Doctor from shooting it, and in the end it couldn't handle the new feelings it had and it ordered me to tell it to die. I did. I had to; I still have second thoughts but I know it was the right thing to do."
"You're amazing, Rose Tyler. Your capacity to love and care, it's amazing. You got upset about TARDISes dying, a Dalek - even though it's a born killer, and you took in a broken man and helped him. Put him back together again. You're a special person, I can see what my brother fell in love with."
"Don't know about that," Rose said shyly, which was unusual because she wasn't the shy type.
"I see it in you, your heart, and you wouldn't be running up stairs with me in a daft scheme to get back to him carrying a piece of his soul if he didn't love you deeply, and you the same," Thalon stated quite seriously as he finished up connecting the iPod to the box with the sonic screwdriver. "In fact he's probably still thinking about you right now and kicking himself over so much he didn't do, if I know my brother. And I do know my brother."
