Etched in History

The Nightmare Begins

A splitting headache was what roused Rynne from her unconsciousness, making the student completely disorientated when her eyes finally fluttered open. A hand rising to her skull, her head was still pounding, making it easier for confusion to take over. Where was she? The last thing that Rynne remembered was touching the side of the TARDIS, and then those dreaded pains again...

The TARDIS! Of course! She had to be inside of it now, as the Doctor and Martha wouldn't have just left her outside. Not if they were the characters that Rynne had created all along: it wouldn't make sense for them to suddenly change their behaviours now. The line of thought giving the young woman a new resolve, she sat up, although the movement was obviously too quick for her body to handle. A wave of nausea washed over her, the surroundings spinning out of control. Giving up for a moment, Rynne closed her eyes, waiting for everything around her just to calm down.

When she finally was able to stop the room from its impossible movements, Rynne noticed that the inside of the TARDIS was completely unlike what she had originally imagined. She had imagined a main control room, with a panel in the centre, a large, thick tube running from that same panel up into the ceiling. She had imagined a golden bronze colour on the walls, metal floors and an unearthly greenish-blue light emanating from the main structure, the whole centre in similar shape to a dome. This, on the other hand, was utterly different, unlike anything Rynne had ever seen, and it terrified her.

Finding the strength to stand, Rynne took in her surroundings. She had just been lying on the hard ground: the floors were metal, but a polished black, not the silver of her supposed vision of the Doctor's alien machine. Around her, it was true that there were golden colours, but the walls were flat and lifeless, straight and angled instead of that comforting curve she thought that she had seen. The room was smallish and rectangular, with an equally rectangular door at the end of it, but it was shut. Locked, in fact, when Rynne tried to force it: she was a prisoner.

"Doctor? Martha? Where am I?"

"Quiet. I'm trying to think." The words shocked the poor girl, whirring around to see two figures at the end of what should probably now be termed a cell. It was the pair of travellers that Rynne had expected to be her captors, stuck in the same position as her.

"What happened? I mean, one minute-"

"You collapsed, and now you're here? Yes, yes, but I need to think! I just said I was trying to think: I didn't just say it for fun, you know!" The rudeness of the tenth regeneration of the Doctor was well known by now to Martha and most others that had met him. Now, he sat, head in his hands as a frown of concentration made its sanctuary on his brow.

Martha, on the other hand, just sighed, knowing that she would have to try and sort something out. "Oh, don't worry about him. He gets like this when he doesn't know what to do." The words sounded inevitable, and words that Martha would say. The fact that Rynne's characters were actually in existence was a rather abstract concept: when they were right there in front of her, speaking lines that she would have written for them... now, that was something special.

Still standing, Rynne backed away, slumping into one corner. "This is all wrong... all wrong..." Fresh tears fell down her cheeks, the girl shaking her head as her mind was desperate to try and comprehend what was going on.

"Wrong? You were the one that brought the tracking device on board... do you know what you've done? Now, they have us, as well as that manuscript of yours!"

Anger just didn't seem to cover how the Doctor was feeling, venting all of his frustrations onto Rynne, sitting alone in one corner of the room. "Tracking device?"

"The little black object that you had in your pocket. Tracking device."

"But... but that's impossible!"

"And yet you're here?" The Doctor had a point, Martha raising an eyebrow at the use of one of that Time Lord's favourite phrases. "Where did you get it, Rynne? Or is there something else you want to tell us?"

Her eyes darting everywhere for an answer, Rynne had no reason not to tell them where the tracking device came from. "I went to see Jane, and told her about seeing you. She told me not to visit you, then visit you, and leave it in the TARDIS... I don't know why!" A look of desperation took over her face. "What, you think I did this on purpose? Oh, wonderful. Now my own damned characters have an axe to grind!" A wracking sob, and Rynne ended up almost curled into a ball in the corner. This was just far too much to understand. Today... today everything had gone so badly, terribly, completely, utterly wrong, it was unreal. Was she dreaming? Was this all a nightmare? It would be wonderful to think so, but it didn't look as if it was going to happen.

The Doctor then glanced at Martha, instantly regretting how hard he had been on the writer. Trapped here, no idea who their captors were... and he had just wanted a scapegoat, which was an awful thing. It wasn't Rynne's fault, it was clear that she had no idea what the black device was, and from the sounds of it, she had been duped by this 'Jane' character. "We're not your characters, Rynne. We're here. Right here, and we were real all along."

Rynne just shook her head. "Maybe I have finally cracked. First Jane, then me. Maybe it's catching!" Balling up her fists, the students' muscles tightened as she stopped another sob. "Aliens, Time Lords, TARDISes and time travel..." The words were spoken as if they were a mantra, something that she had sat and memorised. "If I just finish writing the book, then this will all disappear, and everything will be alright again. It has to be."

"And you honestly think that all of this is going to go away? This is real, Rynne, you have to accept that. You've been writing about me and my people, and... and it has to stop."

"I can't stop! Why should I stop? I only need to write about Bad Wolf and the Vortex, then everything will be over." At the words 'Bad Wolf,' the Doctor flinched. "I just... I didn't believe, then I did believe, and now I find myself in an alien prison with fictitious characters, and... and I don't know how I'm even supposed to begin coping with this. It's just... it's unreal!"

Martha had sat quietly, watching the banter between the pair of them. Finally, she decided to speak up, and see if she could help, even just a little. "Well, why don't you treat this as a role-play? Like, tell me and the Doctor what to do, yeah, and maybe that'll help you!" The Doctor, at first, looked at his dark skinned companion with a raised eyebrow, but quickly warmed to the idea. After all, this would truly test her knowledge, and see whether this was all just part of a bigger set up. "What do you have to lose?"

"I suppose you have a point," Rynne replied, unconvinced as she sniffed, regaining some composure. The shock was beginning to leave her, the student starting to think that it had been the return of her senses within these strange surroundings. At least now she had something to really concentrate on, Rynne giving Martha a small, thankful smile. "Okay... well... the Doctor would use his sonic screwdriver on the lock of the door, springing us out. The supersonic waves of the transmitter would vibrate the mechanism, opening the lock."

Clearing his throat, the Doctor pulled out his screwdriver. "First thing I tried. The door is deadlock sealed, with our captors holding the only means of letting us out." Martha was still amazed that Rynne could sit and nod, knowing exactly what the Time Lord was saying. The two of them were like peas in a pod, knowing exactly what the other meant, where she was still on the outer edges, having no idea what to do or say next, wanting to know what they meant but too afraid to ask.

Sensing Martha's discomfort, Rynne stood, drying her eyes, concentrating more on trying to help out. "A deadlock seal is basically something that cannot be broken by use of the sonic screwdriver. Basically, we're trapped." Martha was going to try to be clever and point out that Rynne had used 'basically' twice, sounding rather like the Doctor, but she thought against it. The odds would end up at two to one, with Martha herself being in the obvious minority. Rynne, on the other hand, was too busy trying to think of another way out. "Actually, why do we need to get out?"

Martha's eyes opened widely. "Are you kidding me?"

"No, wait... go on," the Doctor said, encouraging Rynne's train of thought.

Starting slowly, her own mind getting used to the seemingly obvious logic, Rynne swallowed. "Well, if we were going to be killed, the ones that have us would have done it by now, so we have to be safe for some reason."

"To be killed later on? No thanks!"

The Doctor agreed with the philosophy student. "She's right. We have to be of use alive, or else why go to all of the trouble of caging us like this?" Martha was going to argue that their captors may have devised some awful torture for them, or that they wanted them to stay alive for some kind of gladiatorial set of games, but she knew that she'd just be overruled by the pair of them anyway. Watching Martha's sigh of resignation, the Doctor paused, thinking for a moment. "Anyway, we still all need to have a proper chat. You seem to be doing a bit better now," he then commented, looking directly at Rynne. "Maybe it was just the teleportation that sent your emotions off the chart."

"Or maybe I'm doing my best to get used to you both actually existing." She stopped, silently apologising for the bite behind her words. "If this is all real, how can this be happening? How can I possibly know about the Time Lords, and you?"

Martha couldn't help but chip in. "Well, we don't really know, I thought of all kinds of stuff, but the Doctor just said it wasn't possible. Why did you even start writing it?"

"Because of my dreams." The Doctor raised an eyebrow as his curiosity piqued, Martha frowning as she readied herself to pay close attention to the next set of information. "I started having these strange dreams… I was probably a few months into being eighteen, then every time I slept, I had dreams of space. Over time, they got stronger, like movie scenes were playing." Shaking her head, she shrugged her shoulders. "I'm a natural writer, so the natural thing to do would be to get the dreams down: they were so fantastic, I thought it was just my muse helping me out. Eventually, it became an obsession. And then the seizures… they were what drove me to write as much as I could each day. I don't know whether one day I may just have a heart attack and… well, you know."

It all seemed a little too out of the ordinary for even the Doctor to really have an answer about. First, the dreams, and then Rynne's attacks, landing her unconscious for no known reason at all. How could this even begin to make sense? "So where did this 'Jane' come into the picture?"

"Jane? She's the only person I've ever really trusted. She…" Rynne cleared her throat, refusing to start crying again. A part of her told her not to go on, not to reveal anything else about herself, but this was the Doctor. The only thing that seemed right was that she had to tell him everything she could, and hopefully he could work out everything before it was too late. "She was the one that helped me find a family. When I was born, my mother went mad and tried to kill me. Jane protected me, and gave me to the people I call my parents now. She's always been there: oh, Doctor, you can't judge her. She's senile, and whoever told her to give me the transmitter must have confused her."

Martha looked around. "It must be hard for you to have seen her. Did she have family, or her own nurse, or something?"

"No, no, I…" Suddenly, Rynne felt rather foolish and uncaring. "I always presumed it was senile dementia. She started rattling on about aliens being the reason behind my heart problem, and one day I had enough. I hadn't seen her in months before I went to see her about you two."

Sharply, the Time Lord caught Rynne's gaze. "Aliens? What did she say?"

At first, Rynne was going to reply with a slightly vicious comment, but then she remembered exactly who she was dealing with. If he wanted to know about it, the information was bound to be important, so why deny him it? "Jane started saying that she knew aliens performed surgery on me, or something, and that's why I collapse. She also said something about signals to pick up information on the Time Lords… which I suppose could be true, considering the manuscript." Running a hand down her face, Rynne had to concede the last fact. "I just completely freaked out, and stormed away from her. I never thought… I never thought it could possibly be true…"

Before the Doctor had a chance to ask any more questions, though, there was a distinct noise outside of the chamber they were all trapped in. The trio then stood, Rynne standing right in front of the door as whirring and an exploding mechanism set it blasting inwards. Luckily, the student was standing back far enough not to be hurt. However, the sight before her was far from a happy one, instead bringing her to her knees. This was the final proof: everything was real. Her stories were real, the manuscript was real, the Doctor was real… and now this was, too. A horribly streamlined, golden pepper pot guarded the doorway, preventing any escape, its weapons poised in case any of them decided to try and make a wrong move.

The gravity of the situation left the Doctor speechless, Martha reminded darkly of their time back in New York, where the Cult of Skaro tried to set up a beacon to others of their kind at the top of the Empire State Building, back in the 1930's when it was busy being built. Rynne looked up at the metal monster, lip quivering in a grim realisation of her own, unable to stay completely silent as the deadly eyestalk lowered so the horror looked directly at her. "It's not Darlk… it's Dalek…"