a/n: Thank you a_who_in_whoville for being the beta of awesomeness and helping me with the great apostrophe debacle.
Disclaimer: I do not own or profit from Doctor Who.
The Tardis shook and pitched from one side to the other. Everyone was hanging on for dear life until finally the Doctor seemed to get better control. The cloister bells stopped chiming. Although they still experienced turbulence, they were at least able to stand upright. Donna, who had been clinging to Jack, finally took a breath and turned to the Doctor.
"All right, enough avoidin' tell us what's goin' on. Spill now." She insisted.
He looked at her. "What do you mean spill now? I'm a bit busy Donna. Navigating the Void isn't exactly easy."
"Donna's right, Doctor. You still haven't answered anyone's question. You said someone's manipulating human genetics. Who is it and why are they doing it? You're sayin' that an entire section of the human population is effected. We need to know what's goin' on. I need to know Doctor," Martha insisted, now gripping the console next to the Doctor and staring at him pointedly.
He sighed and looked at Martha's determined expression. "It happened long, long ago in Earth's linear time line almost ten thousand years. Humans had only just evolved to what you call modern man. You won't find any evidence of tampering and no evidence that any higher life forms were there," he said, staring at the console as the ship shifted again.
Mickey snorted. "Course not," he mumbled.
Donna shoved off of Jack until she was gripping the console next to the Doctor. "Oi, we're not gettin' any younger here!" Donna said and glared at him.
He looked at her and a sad expression fell over his face. "Oh Donna, I am so sorry. They went to Earth during the Holocene era as part of a science expedition. They were scientists, biologists and anthropologists, the brightest and best. Very few knew what they were going to do to the sentient population of your planet or what they did to other worlds at a similar evolutionary stage. Earth, humans were the lucky ones. Other races on other worlds weren't so lucky. Manipulations of their gene pool had catastrophic results. All further such experiments were forbidden. What happened on Earth was done in such a way that it couldn't affect natural development or evolution, as you lot call it, unless the specific genes were triggered."
"Yeah, but who did this?" Mickey demanded, now getting seriously annoyed.
"Doctor, this sort of thing would be considered a priority one offense by the Time Agency and I wouldn't like to think what the Shadow Proclamation would do if they got wind of it," Jack said.
The Doctor scoffed, almost laughing. "The Time Agency! They're nothing but a bunch of spoiled children, avaricious, pompous self serving beings who think they are capable of policing time travel. The Shadow Proclamation had no jurisdiction over who did this. They weren't even around at the time it was done."
Donna put her hand on his arm. "Doctor, you might bounce on and off of Earth as you please throughout its history, but this is my home. Understand. My home, our home. We have a right to know."
The ship trembled and shook violently and he adjusted a few more controls. He swallowed hard.
"Doctor?" Martha said, staring at him demanding an answer.
"Time Lords. It was my people. Well, my people from well before my creation was even planned. From the dark times."
"What!" Donna practically gasped.
"But I thought Time Lords didn't interfere in less developed civilizations," Jack said.
"They didn't after the great reform, after Rassilon. Before Rassilon, my people were a bit more cut throat. The ruling party established games where they scooped other species out of time and away from their home planets to fight to the death in a dedicated area called the Death Zone. The games were for the entertainment of the Gallifreyan people not unlike the Coliseum in Earth's ancient Rome."
"That's barbaric!" Donna exclaimed. "So the all powerful Time Lords were like some posh Roman Emperor, conquering the universe and doin' as they pleased." Donna practically accused.
The Doctor fiddled with the controls and then answered. "Yeah, sort of. At least until Rassilon came into power. Course, there weren't really Time Lords back then. It was a bit different. Rassilon brought my planet out of the Dark Times, established rules and formed the foundation of our society based on science, developed our biology to withstand time travel, created the plans for the Tardis and of course, regeneration. He was brilliant and in the end quite mad."
"Yeah, but the ones that did this to humans, to Rose, they were just mucking about. Why? What did they want?" Mickey asked.
The Doctor turned to him. "They wanted a new species to serve the needs of the high old families of Gallifrey. An experiment performed on several primitive worlds. Sort of like dropping a few seeds in the ground, move along and in a few hundred years you have a tall strong tree to serve your needs. If the seeds don't germinate, doesn't matter and if it all comes crashing down, it wasn't their world anyway. To them, primitive species like yours were inconsequential."
"But that's not right!" Martha practically shouted. "How did they get away with this? I mean who was watching them?"
"They didn't get away with it. My people put a stop to it. Anyway, hardly matters now. They're all gone," he said sadly.
Doesn't matter!" shouted Donna. "How the bloody hell can you say that! Of course it matters! It matters to us and to Rose! You can't just stand there and do nothing!"
"What would you have me do?" the Doctor shouted back. "They're gone and it's done. I can't undo it without destroying millions of lives. What, you think you can just pluck DNA out of people just like that?" he shouted and snapped his fingers. "It doesn't work that way."
Martha spoke up. "The Doctor's right. It's not his fault and it's done. It's in their DNA now. We just have to watch," Martha explained. "So what is this trigger, Doctor?"
The Doctor scrubbed at his face. "I suppose to simplify, it would be exposure to a bit of raw time similar to the untempered schism only you couldn't just shove someone in. Too much would kill them and too little could cause enough change to damage them or drive them mad."
"So, no chance of it happening by accident then." Jack said. "Except for Rose. Well, Rose and me."
The Doctor looked up. "Rose is different. She had the Tardis looking out for her managing her exposure and maybe tinkering a bit herself. She protected Rose. As for you Jack, that was Rose. She just wanted to save you. Unfortunately, your genetic make up was different from hers and she didn't understand what she was doing."
Suddenly the Tardis jolted violently, throwing them all to the floor and then stopped dead. The doors flew open revealing the dark nothingness of the Void.
Rose gasped to consciousness and found herself, again in the Tardis in the large cavernous room. The room was lit from some unknown source which cast shadows about the massive stone pillars. The brass cover over the well was open now. The room was silent except for the whispering of the black robed Void creatures who flew above her, their robes fluttering around but never revealing any features except the swirling darkness within. She stood up and walked over to the well and peered inside. Within was a swirling mass of darkness with pinpoints of light dancing around, slowly being drawn into the dark center. She looked up at the Void creatures. Her body shivered from the frigid cold and she wrapped her arms around herself. She slowly walked around the well and stopped when she saw one of the Void creatures hovering near the well, almost like it was kneeling in supplication.
"You know what's in there?" Rose asked. The creature did not respond. The swirling mass over head whispered, "Harmmmmonnny"
Rose peeked over the edge and looked again at the kneeling figure. "Doesn't look like very much like harmony to me. Reminds me of a black hole. Was on a planet circling one once. Wasn't very pleasant."
She shivered again, stumbled backward a few steps and found her strength waning a bit. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on the light that had given her strength. She felt herself mentally grasping at it and yearning to hear it's song. Something flared within her giving her the strength to stand up. When she looked up she saw the Void creature looking at her. The shrouded figure looked more solid, although it still had no face, only a swirling of blackness. "Rose Tyler will share its perceptions."
"Share my perceptions? Oh, I'll share my perceptions all right. Seems to me that you lot are runnin' from somthin' I think you've been runnin' for a long time. Maybe you're not sure who you were before you became this thing you are now. What you afraid of anyhow? You end up in the Void cause you ran away or did someone put you here? Must've been bad and you must've been someone important. You know too much about the Time War not to be."
The room, once again trembled when she said Time War. The creature floated nearer to her. "Rose Tyler will share its perceptions. It is aware of itself now and its modification is almost complete. We must understand what it knows. The impossible creature perceives what we cannot. We must understand. It must show us the way."
"Show you the way?" she asked, now a bit curious about what they wanted.
"We are us. The creature has already shown us that there is more than us. Rose Tyler will show us the way to become more. If the simple creature may evolve and gain altered perceptions, then we may also become more, become the new us. Rose Tyler was designed for service of beings greater than it. It shall be the conduit. It shall show us the way and serve its purpose."
"Is that so? Funny that you don't seem to think much about what you were, yet you're all wound up about changing yourself. You're still runnin' aren't you and what, you expect me to do somethin' to help you find some new way? I don't think so," she said, as she walked around the stone well and noticed how light seemed to bend around the well almost funneling into it. When she turned around, she saw a group of the Void creatures had assembled and more were closing around her. She knew she was in danger and could feel them pressing in on her.
Another piece of the puzzle regarding who they were fell into place in her mind. She gasped. "I know who you are or who you were." The room trembled and pieces starting tumbling down around her. She watched as broken stone was slowly pulled into the black hole in the well. She felt some invisible current tugging her toward the well as if the black hole was gaining more energy and pulling this reality into it."
"Rose Tyler will show us the way now!" the Void creatures said in unison in an eerie booming voice. Rose fell to her knees as she felt this reality crumbling around her, being consumed by the black hole. She looked up as her hair whipped around her wildly. The Void creatures seemed unaffected by the chaos surrounding them.
"You were there when Gallifrey fell!" she shouted at them as more of this reality crumbled and the dark nothingness of the Void seeped in and joined the black hole in consuming this place eating away at the reality, its dark and frigid tendrils wrapping around them. She cried out as one of its icy fingers grazed her arm. "You saw it burn and you ran!" she shouted. "You ran in fear, you ran from responsibility and left it all to him. You let him bear the burden for your mistake. My God, you cowards, you threw yourselves into the Void hoping your Void ship would survive the temporal tsunami that was comin' for you and all like you. But, it didn't. It fell to pieces tossing all of you here in the nothingness, into the Howling. You paid the price for runnin' away and now you want me to lead you out don't you?"
Rose felt an icy film forming over her, leeching away her warmth, her life and her essence. She also felt the light within her fighting to keep her safe and protected. An intense anger howled from within her. "You…you said I was an experiment, that you made me. No. You don't control me. I am the Bad Wolf and I create myself and I know what you are. You are the old race, one of the first ones. You had the power of time and space at your finger tips and you let it destroy you, rot you from the inside out. You had no regard for younger races and let your own ambition and vanity consume you. You are Time Lords and this is your penance!" She shouted, almost glowing with a golden light and rage before the darkness claimed her. The creatures of the Void screamed a loud shrieking noise that shot through her. The last thing she saw before the darkness took her was a brilliant blue box with it's doors thrown wide open, its golden light warming the darkness and embracing her with its song.