a/n: Thank you to a_who_in_whoville for her most awesome beta of this story. This chapter gives hints as to who the Void creatures are. After Chapter 5 you will definately know who they are.
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who
The Doctor raced back to the medbay only to find Martha, Donna, Jack and Mickey all standing around staring at the monitor. He walked in and set his old black leather coat on the table as he walked in front of them to look at the results of Jack's DNA.
"Martha, focus in on fifth set of alleles please," he asked, as he again put on his glasses. He stared intently while everyone else shifted nervously. Finally, he sighed and ran his fingers through his hair and turned to the leather coat.
"Doctor, what exactly are you looking for? I mean, your lookin' at my DNA after staring at Rose's makes me wonder..." Jack said, not quite finishing his sentence.
"Are you sayin' Rose is like Jack?" Mickey asked, not afraid to say what Jack had been suggesting.
"What? Rose can't die?" Martha asked, looking at Mickey.
"Rose got hurt on an assignment 'bout a year ago and nobody found nothin' weird when they treated her," Mickey told them.
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "As if some primitive twenty first century human physician would know what to look for," he muttered. He then proceeded to ignore them and reached into the coat's pocket all the way to his elbow while everyone stared with raised eyebrows. Donna rolled her eyes and muttered "show off" under her breath.
He pulled his hand out of the pocket holding up a dried up wad of gum. Donna made a face. "Oh now that's just disgustin'. What, you keep used gum in your pockets?" she asked.
The Doctor set the gum on a plastic tray on the counter and began the extraction process while everyone looked on in stunned silence. He took the sample and analyzed the DNA and compared it to the samples Martha had extracted. He stared at it a bit and then reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of black pants and began the extraction process on them.
"Hey, those are mine!" Jack said, smirking a bit. "You carry a pair of my old pants around in your pocket. I'm touched. You know you could have the real thing if you..."
"Stop it!" the Doctor groused at him before he could finish. "I'm comparing yours and Rose's DNA from before and after the Game Station."
The smile slipped from Jack's face. Martha stepped up to watch the Doctor work. When he displayed the before and after of both Rose's and Jack's DNA, she gasped. "They're different. What would make them change like that?"
The Doctor took a step back and then turned to look at Jack. Jack stared back at him and said one word: "Rose."
The Doctor nodded his head and began tugging at his hair. "You never examined her after the game station did you?" Jack asked.
"I did, but not a genetic analysis. Just made sure she was all right. She looked normal, didn't even remember anything," the Doctor said softly, as sadness once again permeated his whole being. "She probably doesn't even know."
"So what does this mean?" Martha asked.
The Doctor turned and faced all of them. "It means that Rose was able to carry and channel the time vortex much longer than she should have. It should have killed her in short order. Just taking it from her killed me. I thought the Tardis was protecting her, but it goes much further than that."
"What do you mean, Doctor. What do mean Rose channeled the time vortex? Isn't that what the Tardis travels in? " Donna asked.
He sighed. "Rose did something foolish. Brave and brilliant but foolish. We had a bit of run in with the Daleks and I sent her away to keep her safe but, she found a way back. She risked her life to save me and Jack. She was too brave and impulsive for her good. She looked into the heart of my Tardis and absorbed time itself so she could fly the Tardis back to save me, us, all of us. No one is meant to do that. It should have burned her up," he said, staring off into space.
Jack stepped up. "She sort of had the power over life and death, time and space. She turned the Daleks into dust and brought me back to life sort of permanently. The question is, what did it do to her, right Doctor?"
The Doctor turned to Jack. "Oh I think I know what it did to her. Well, what it and maybe the Tardis did." He turned to caress one of the walls. "Didn't you old girl? You saw into her and knew, you saw what I couldn't. You did your best to look out for our impetuous, brilliant girl."
"What do you mean the Tardis did something to her? What did she do to Rose?" Donna asked.
The Doctor turned back to them. "She recognized the very slight difference in Rose's genetic make-up. A difference that no one else but me would have recognized. A tiny variation hidden away in her genome. Quite intricate and gorgeous really."
"Wait a minute. Are you saying someone's been manipulating Rose's DNA?" Martha demanded. "Who would do that and why Rose?"
The Doctor looked at her. "It's not just Rose. This effects an entire section of the human population on Earth. Of course, there's probably less than .0001% of the population that have anything similar to Rose's DNA. Hers is the result of generation after generation of seemingly random couplings. A brilliant accident of genetics produced the perfect cocktail for one Rose Tyler."
"But, that's still not right. If there were something like that, we'd know." Martha insisted.
The Doctor shook his head. "No, you wouldn't. It was designed to be hidden, a recessive trait concealed within human DNA. Temporally out of sync really. Humans won't even have the ability to notice anything odd for several millennia and even then, they couldn't find it. No Martha, you'd never have known it was there until it was triggered."
"Triggered how?" Donna asked, getting a bit perturbed by the Doctor's reticence to expound on this topic.
The Doctor began rubbing his neck and pacing.
"Doctor," Jack asked with a suspicious voice. "How did this get into the human population and what does it have to do with me? Are you saying I carry this trait too?"
The Doctor stopped and stared at Jack. "You do have a variation of it. It's not as dominant in you as it is in Rose."
"You didn't answer him. How did it get there?" Mickey asked.
The Doctor sighed but before he could say anything, the Tardis shook and threw everyone to the floor. Cloister bells tolled and were echoing throughout the ship. The Doctor fell to the ground, the Tardis screaming in his head and a sharp pain shot through him. He sat up and gripped his head. "Rose!" he grunted out.
Martha and Jack knelt next to him. He gasped and sat up. "Grab Rose's most recent DNA sample. Quick!" he shouted, as he stumbled up. Jack grabbed his arm to steady him. "Come on!" he said as he stumbled out of the lab and ran toward the console room. All of them ran after him and when Martha reached him, he was running around the time rotor flipping switches.
"Doctor?" she asked. He ran up to her and plucked the genetic sample container from her hand. He slipped it into a slot on the Tardis and the bouncing and shaking the ship had been doing became even more severe.
"Hang on! This is going to get rough. She's found a tear and is heading into the Void!" he shouted.
"What do you mean! Doctor, tell us what's going on!" Donna demanded. The ship pitched sideways and she flew backwards into Jack's arms. He looked down and winked at her as he steadied both of them against a coral strut. Donna glared at him but didn't make any move to step away from the charming Captain's grasp.
Eventually, the shuddering slowed and the cloister bells stopped. The Doctor looked up. "She's zeroed in on Rose. She senses Rose is in danger, something has her, something bad. She panicked and channeled a psychic message filled with fear and pain to me. It was Rose. We have to find her now!" he insisted.
Rose felt icy needles piercing her and screamed. It was almost like she was being impaled by a frozen dagger of ice and bits of ice were streaking through her body. The whispering of the Void creatures was pounding inside of her head, pressing and squeezing as thoughts streaked through her mind and others were shoved behind a tightly barred steel door. Finally, part of her broke and she screamed and was enveloped in a glow and everything stopped. She gasped and felt a new reality forming around her. She was in the Tardis. The blue green of the time rotor bathed her in its comforting glow. She sat up and called for the Doctor but she was alone.
She crawled toward the time rotor and leaned into the base. "Oh Doctor," she gasped and tears flowed down her face. She heard the familiar and comforting hum of the Tardis and breathed a little easier. "I'm still in the Void," she whispered. She pulled her knees up and curled up as close to the time rotor as she could and drifted off to sleep. When she awakened, she heard the cloister bells chiming. She felt a bit better and crawled out from under the console and stood up. The monitor was on and symbols were flying across it until there was a flash. Rose jumped back. The monitor was filled with a mixture of black, gray and silver images almost like shadows of humanoids moving about with their faces obscured.
The whispering permeated the Tardis almost echoing along her corridors. Rose looked around and wrapped her arms around herself as the cold began seeping in all around her. She backed up toward a corridor, turned and ran. She ran blindly without reason through corridor after corridor as the whispering followed her. Se ended up in a darkened cathedral-like room with tall stone pillars and Gallifreyan writing carved into the stone walls and floors. She slowly walked in, nervously looking around the imposing empty room. Toward the center was a circular stone structure in the floor, a sort of well with a bronze metallic cover over it. She knelt down and traced her fingers over the Gallifreyan writing on it. "What does all this mean?" she said softly. She looked up at the ceiling wondering if the Tardis could hear here. "If you're there, can you help me? Why am I here? Is this a way out?"
An image of a dark shadow appeared on the other side of the stone well. "Who are you?" Rose asked with a strength she didn't think she had.
"Rose Tyler possesses unexpected qualities. It has contacted that which exists outside of here and beyond us. It is the anomaly, that which should be impossible without activation by that which we were." The shadow almost floated around the room.
"You know this place don't you?" she said to the creature while trying to keep some distance between it and her.
"The anomaly has created an environment from before we became us. The environment is familiar and yet foreign."
"Before you became who you are now? What were you before? What were you known as?" Rose asked.
"What we were before is irrelevant. We are us."
"Funny, I always thought most beings were the sum of their memories. How can you know what you are if you don't know where you came from?"
It paused and its shaped rippled. "We are us. We came here from beyond and became us. Before is meaningless."
"I don't think so. You know about the Tardis and Gallifrey and yet you want me to believe you don't know what happened to you? No," she said, shaking her head and rubbing her arms as the temperature dropped.
"Why does the creature require this information when it isn't aware of itself?"
"Oh, I'm aware. I know where I'm from and how I got here. I know that this place is all an illusion just as I know that someone is comin' for me. You keep sayin' I'm different and I may not understand all that, but I do know that I've been through enough, seen enough of the universe, of the multiverse to know anything's possible. I once swallowed time and turned a Dalek army to dust. So yeah, maybe after everythin' I've done, seen and been, I am a bit changed. Who wouldn't be?" Rose noticed when she said 'Daleks' the shadowy figure shimmered again. "Daleks, you don't like that word do you?"
"Daleks, a species that exists outside of here, beyond us."
"Yeah, that's right. They destroy everythin' they can. They started the Time War." As soon as Rose said 'Time War,' the very room trembled and the cloister bells began sounding. The reality shimmered. Rose tried to steady herself as the shadowy figure before her seemed to stop at the bronze capped well. Rose stared at the Void creature. "Right, words have power, yeah? Specially those words in particular. After all, that was a big thing in time and space according to the Doctor. Sort of destroyed entire species and worlds, undid time and such. You were there weren't you? In the war I mean." It appeared to be paying attention to her.
Rose contemplated the creature before her and the pieces to the puzzle began to fit together in her mind. "That's what happened isn't it? You were there and something happened to throw you into the Void. You got stuck here and became what you are now?" she asked.
"What we were before is not relevant. Rose Tyler is incapable of comprehending what was before here."
"Really? I don't think so. I think I can figure it out. Ya see, certain things seem to affect the Void. Nothin's spose to do that unless it was somethin' big, really big. Somethin' that would have, I dunno, shook up the multiverse, maybe even ripped a few holes. You keep sayin' I'm not exactly human so maybe that's why I can feel it. You lot are keepin' me here 'cause I do remind you of what you were before. Question is why? If it doesn't matter then why keep me here?"
"We are us and we must understand. Rose Tyler is becoming self aware, it has begun to grasp its purpose, its creation. It will disclose all to us."
"Why? Why should I? Why do you need to know?" Rose asked, now feeling a bit stronger almost like she was tapping into some inner strength burning deep inside of herself.
"If Rose Tyler does not comply we will extract the information."
Rose felt something in the back of her mind, something she had not felt in a long time. She smiled and reached out to touch that inner light that was now dimly glowing inside of her, a piece that had been missing since she fell into Pete's World. She looked back up at the Void creature. "No, I don't think so. Ya see, my ride out of this place is almost here," she said and began walking a round the well a bit. The creature mirrored her.
"Rose Tyler will not depart until we decide all information has been extracted from it." It replied coldly.
Rose shook her head no. "I wouldn't be so sure of that. I think there's a Time Lord on his way here that may disagree."
"We require the information. We must understand how the anomaly came into being, it's purpose. How it's design was modified."
"Yeah, but you won't tell me why. Know what I think? I think that you're desperate to figure me out 'cause I remind you of what you were before. Maybe what you became here bothers you. Maybe me bein' here is making you think about before and it's gnawing away at you a bit. So, maybe what we should really be talking about is Gallifrey. You were there when it all went to Hell weren't you?"
The whispering increased several decibels and Rose backed up with her hands over her ears even though she knew none of this was real. When she looked up she saw the room filled with the shadowy Void creatures flying around in a frenzy. The last thing she heard before sliding down the wall into unconsciousness was "Gallifrey, Time War, Time Lords, the end of us."