House Call

Chapter 18

"It's magnificent…," said the Doctor in awe. He was deeply impressed that Sally had somehow gotten the blueprints to create replica of the Eye of Harmony. He was also amazed that Davros was brilliant enough to even construct it, but there it was. It was sitting right in front of them.

"Yeah, we got that, but what does it do, Doctor?" asked River impatiently.

Joe sighed and leaned against the rail and out stretched his hand dramatically. He figured that if Eleven wasn't willing to play tour guide then he might as well do it. And with a bright smile, he explained, "Behold! The Eye of Harmony, an artificial black hole created to power up all the TARDIS and enables Time Lords to travel through time. It's essentially a very large battery that was created a long time by a Time Lord named Omega. It's so old that nobody bothers to think much about it. The fact that Davros and Sally made it is a great feat in of itself because most of my people thought it was a legend."

Eleven quickly nodded his head and descended down the stairs to inspect the Eye more closely. "Yes, yes what he said. It's all very complicated, but oh—would you look at that. Ah, it's working! It actually works!"

Davros gleamed and hovered up to the Doctor and grinned. "I am glad you appreciate my work, Doctor. I could not have done it with my associate's help. She provided me with the necessary schematics to achieve this scientific wonder. I have been anticipating her arrival for some time."

River narrowed her brow and turned to Sally and said, "You, you sent Davros the schematics back in time so he'd be ready when you arrived. You wanted this to happen, but why? Why are you helping him?"

Stoically, Sally replied, "Davros will help me heal."

Irked, River lunged at her and balled her fists, but Joe held her back. "You sick bloody ship! Do you even know what you're doing?"

The redhead avatar glided across the room towards River and met her glance. She confidently stated, "As long as you stay out of my way then everything will be as it should be. Davros, let us begin. With the new Eye of Harmony the Daleks will have infinite power. Nothing in the universe will be able to stop them, nothing."

"But you're just a great big back stabber!" shouted Rose. "I thought you hated the Daleks. I thought you wanted them all dead. What's the point of helping them?"

"Power," answered Sally. "I want power. And soon all of you will witness the new era of the Daleks."

Davros laughed and commanded his Daleks to activate the machine. Suddenly, the entire room started to rumble and Joe quickly grabbed Rose's hand just in case. Though, in an instant the central orb started to move and it opened in a seam down the middle. The orb opened like the slit of an eye. A blast of blue light shot out from the orb and a beam of light traveled up the four columns and magnified the power towards the receiver where a row of Daleks began to absorb the raw power. The air was filled with their screams and the Time team shielded their eyes against the light.

"Shut down the Eye!" commanded Davros.

Slowly, the orb started to close, but abruptly it stopped. The Eye wasn't closing. A thin crack still remained. The Daleks tried all they could to close the orb completely, but it was no use.

"What is happening? Why doesn't the Eye close? Report?"

"WE CANNOT CLOSE IT. SYSTEM OVER-RIDE."

"Then fix it immediately. If the Eye isn't closed than the gravity well will breach."

Then, without warning Sally began to laugh. It was a haunting laugh and strange to witness. Eleven hadn't seen Sally show an ounce of emotion seen they met. Though, the flaming haired avatar continued to giggle until she finally stopped and said, "Fools, you should have listened to the Doctor and his companions, Davros. It might have saved you at the last minute, but now it is too late."

"What is the meaning of this?" asked the handicapped-villain.

Sally smirked and replied, "I have betrayed you. My goal was never to help you, but to destroy you. Soon the Eye will breach and all of Skaro will be sucked into the gravity well and die. The Time War will never happen and Gallifrey will be saved."

The Doctor ran up to her and shook her by the arms and shouted, "No! You can't do that. It will create an enormous paradox! Reapers will consume all of reality. There is no way that the timeline will be able to compensate such a massive anomaly. Don't you see? The Time War is a fixed point in time."

Joe approached Eleven and placed his hand onto his shoulder to draw him back. The bow-tie man met his steel blue gaze. He was searching for help. He thought Joe would help him break through to Sally, but instead he explained, "She doesn't want to see, point dexter. Don't you get it? Sally doesn't care. She only wants it to end. One way or another she wants the madness to end."

"Wait, how do you know?"—Though then it dawned on him and he shrank away— "Oh…right. Ninth man in the tenth hour. It's still fresh for you. You're feelings are still prickly—sill emo and grumpy. Though, I can't let you get away with it, Sally. This is your final chance. Stop this and come with me. You don't have to fight anymore."

Yet, defiantly Sally refused. She strode away from the Doctor and his friends and marched up to the Dalek soldiers that had been powered by the Eye of Harmony. Her black cloak swept behind her as she turned towards them and she stretched out her hand towards them like a conductor.

"It's no use, Doctor. Skaro is already mine. Daleks, destroy Davros' lab. I want you to destroy everything!"

"WE WILL OBEY! WE WILL OBEY!"

The sound of the Dalek voices rang out throughout the laboratory and like a single organism they carried out Sally's order. They began firing their lasers and destroying the equipment. Frantically, Davros tried to command his creations to stop, but they wouldn't listen. They only seemed to listen to Sally.

Enraged, the handicapped-villain grabbed her arm in a vicious grip. He yanked her closer to his deformed face and seethed, "What have you done to my creations?"

Suddenly, a slippery vine crawled out from Sally's sleeve and wrapped itself around Davros' wrist and squeezed. He cried out in pain and watched the evil-TARDIS smile cunningly. The group then saw that all of the Daleks were covered in vines as well. They sprang out from under their armor and wrapped their leafy binds all around their shells like climbing ivy.

Sally stepped away from Davros and said, "They are my creations now, my dear associate. My psychic vines will allow me to control your precious Daleks as slaves. You see I have been planning this moment for a while. There is nothing you that can do to stop me from destroying your planet. No one can stop me!"

Though, without warning the doors to the lab were thrown open and in came Loretta. "Peach! What in Rassilion's name are you doing?"

XXX

Rose supposed that Sally was feeling like she did when her Mum caught her and Mickey drinking her best liquor when she was 15. Her Mum had a fit and grounded her for a week. Though in hindsight what she and Mickey did didn't even compared to Sally destroying the world. However, Sally had the same look of horror on her face when she saw Loretta walk in.

Her green eyes went wide with shock, yet she didn't justify her actions like everybody thought. Instead, she grew deadly pale and grabbed her pilot's shoulders slowly like she was made of glass. The two nearly identical women stared into each other's eyes like a mirror and eventually Sally crumbled and began to weep.

"Oh, Loretta…my dear friend. Why did they have to wake you? Why couldn't they let you sleep?"

Curious, Eleven circled the women and noted that Sally was acting oddly more human. She was obviously close to Loretta and maybe their bond was the key to stopping her from creating a colossal paradox. Though, it didn't explain the weeping or why Sally had Loretta put to sleep.

The bow-tie man hopped closer to the pair and interrupted. "Right, so why did you put Loretta to sleep? What's the reason behind that? Where you afraid Loretta would say no to your little scheme?"

Loretta frowned and turned to Eleven and asked, "What scheme? What's going on?"

"Oh, Sally—no, I mean Peach has been a very naughty girl. She's been collaborating with the Davros and had him build an Eye of Harmony to super power his Daleks, but it was all a ploy. She really wanted to use her physic vines to highjack the super-Daleks and used them to take over Skaro and implode the whole entire planet into the event horizon. Oh, that is a good plan. It's a brilliant plan. It's so—it's so—"

"Damn sneaky," suggested Joe.

The Doctor smiled and pointed to him gleefully and said, "No, I was going to stay dastardly fantastic. Hmm, dastardly…that's a nice D word."

However, River had enough of the Doctor games and decided to get his attention. She yanked him by the bow tie and stated, "Doctor, black hole. Focus."

"Oh yes, right." Eleven freed himself from River's hold and straightened up. He gestured for Joe to head over to the Eye with a look and a bob of his head. Eleven knew his something-like-a-half-brother realized what he meant because he responded back by rolling his eyes and shifting his step. Eleven wanted Joe to try and fix the Eye and close it up while he was talking. It was always good to distract somebody by talking. It was one of his best assets. He would try and buy Joe some time by trying to connivance Sally that what she was doing was dangerous to Loretta.

Confidently, he approached her and said, "Sally, this is your last chance. Stop your plans or Loretta will be destroyed along with Skaro. She isn't protected from the gravity well outside of the ship."

Puzzled, the Time Lady asked, "Is this true, Peach? You're trying to create a paradox?"

Though, bitterly Sally replied, "Yes, but Doctor you haven't won. You've done the worst possible thing to me. You let Loretta out from the temporal flux. Now linear time will progress for her normally."

Eleven narrowed his brow. "Yes, so what's wrong with that?"

Suddenly, Loretta doubled over in pain. She groaned in agony and a shimmer of Vortex energy was coursing up and down her body. Horrified, he instantly knew what was happening.

"Loretta's regenerating!"

Sally shook her head and watched as her pilot collapse onto the ground in pain. The golden light radiated all over her form in waves, but she didn't change. Instead, Loretta appeared the same. The light gradually disappeared and nothing happened.

Shocked, the Doctor when to her and checked her pulse. Desperately, he tried again and muttered, "Come on" before pressing his ear to her chest to listen for her double beat, but she was still. There was no heartbeat and her breath was gone. Frantically, he tried some CPR, but Sally towered over him.

In a commanding voice, she said, "Stop. Loretta is dead."

"No, she can still regenerate. She can still live!"

"No, she's dead. Why else did you think I kept her in temporal flux? Do really think I would keep her trapped? Loretta suffered from radiation poisoning during the Time War. It was too late to save her. I kept her alive in a suspended sleep. It was her last regeneration, Doctor. Loretta is never coming back."

Eleven was devastated. Numbly, he held Loretta in his arms and realized that he was holding the sole reminisce of the last Time Lady. He suddenly realized he was alone again. Loretta wasn't just another one of his reincarnations. She wasn't a human Time Lord meta-crisis. She wasn't even the Master. No, she was a survivor. She lived through the Time War. She was there. She was on the front line at Arcadia. She was the last of the brave ones. She flew into the heart of hell and fought valiantly. Even her cruel twisted ship was a fighter. In fact, Sally had never stopped fighting.

The Doctor solemnly rose up after shutting Loretta's eyes and folding her hands. He squared his shoulders and turned to the rogue-TARDIS and stared into her emerald eyes with ancient wrath and barely contained rage.

He said, "Well, Peach now that your pilot is dead, do you still plan on going through with it? You've been fighting all this for Loretta's sake. You've been keeping her alive like Snow White under glass, but now that she's dead, do you really want to see this thing through? Events will be changed. Timelines will be altered. Whose to say Loretta will ever be born?"

"It's a chance I'm willing to take. Now that I have gone forward I can never go back. There are no second chances, Doctor. I'm going to end the Time War before it even begins! Gallifrey, the Citadel, the Mountains of Solace and Solitude, all of it will rise again! GHAHHH!

Suddenly, Sally dropped down to her knees and held her head. She had a massive headache and slowly one-by-one the super-Daleks powered down. Their stokes fell and they stopped hovering. Slowly, the vines wrapped around their shells began to wither away into dry leaves.

Joyfully, Eleven said, "Oh! The Ponds have excellent timing. They must have finally chop down that plant."

Meanwhile, Davros was once again free. The vines also wrapped around him fell dead too. Quickly, he ordered, "Seize them, immediately!"

"WE WILL OBEY!" cried the Daleks.

Davros smiled wickedly as his minions finally complied with his wishes. He laughed merrily at his associate's foiled plan. He should have suspected her of treachery.

"So, you thought you could trick me? I must admit that your little scheme would have worked if your plants hadn't broken their psychic link. It's a shame really. I had hoped to keep you around as a study, but now you leave me with no other choice. You must be exterminated."

"EXTERMINATE!" screeched the Dalek.

A laser beam shot Sally through the back. Her body glowed like a x-ray. Her mechanical innards were visible for a brief moment until she cried out and fell to the floor like a dead weight. Davros laughed at her still body, but then noticed Joe tampering with some of the controls to the Eye of Harmony.

Davros shot a warning beam over the leather-clad man's head. Joe ducked for cover and Rose fired back with her stun gun. Her shot hit Davros' hand and he cried out in pain and backed away.

River also began to fire on the Daleks and shouted, "Quickly, we have to close that Eye!"

However, no matter how much Joe pressed the button to make the orb shut it just wouldn't close. Irritated, he slammed his palm repeatedly over the control, but it just wouldn't go. He heard the emergency alarms start to sound and the power readings on the Eye were started to become unstable. The stabilizers on the black hole were collapsing.

"No! This is wrong! It's all wrong. Sally deliberately gave Davros bad schematics. The Eye isn't stable. She meant for it to fail."

Joe looked up and saw that what was keep the Eye open was Sally herself. She hadn't died. She had crawled across the floor towards the platform and stuck her right arm into the well. She turned her head to meet the Doctor's gaze and smiled at him with a look of pure satisfaction.

"Nobody can make a stable Eye, but Omega, Doctor. You should know that."

Eleven ran to Sally, but the Eye had grown so unstable that wind and rips of gravitational currents started to rage all around the laboratory like a storm. River, Rose and Joe rushed to hold the Doctor steady as he carefully tried to inch closer to take Sally's hand.

"Come on! Give me your hand. I'll pull you out."

Smiling, Sally said, "There's nothing left for me, Doctor. Go save yourself. You gave me all I needed. You've helped me mend our greatest wrong."

"No!" he cried. "Sally, you just made everything worse!"

"Go, Doctor! Save yourselves!"

Then, from out of nowhere the sound of a TARDIS materializing echoed out in the lab. The Time Team saw that it was Sally's TARDIS shell. The black boulder shaped ship opened her doors and instantly the Doctor's blue police box TARDIS emerged beside it.

Amy and Rory quickly ran outside, but immediately shielded their eyes from the strong winds and flashing blue light from the open Eye. Amy's red hair whipped around in the breeze and she called out to the Doctor.

"Doctor! What's happening?"

River quickly yanked Eleven back and shouted, "Quickly, everyone back inside the TARDIS!"

Yet, suddenly the doors on the blue box were thrown open and a wave of shimmering gold light spilled out into the room. It hovered in the air for a few seconds and glided unchanged by the violent winds. Then, in a flash the golden mist of light shot through the air and into Rose Tyler. It seeped into her body through her eyes and her mouth. It shook her around like a rag doll and Joe watched in horror as his love radiated an unnatural light.

"NO! Let her go! You can't have her again. I won't let her die."

However, it was too late. Rose slowly opened her eyes and revealed the temporal power that pulsed inside her head. In an eerie tone, she got up and said, "I am the Bad Wolf" just before the world was bathed in light and consumed by the Eye of Harmony's gravity well.

XXX

TBC

XXX

Cliffhanger! Ya, this chapter is longer than the ones I wrote before and a lot is going on. I hope you enjoyed it. I thought I'd try and wrap things up, but apprently I've got a few more chapters to go.

Thanks for your comments and encouragement: Kabooshka, TwiCloiser89 and TheImaginaryWorldOfKazzzaa.

Please review!