Chapter Four: Your Will Devoured

Elsewhere and elsewhen and a lot of other elses besides, Ace McShane was roughly and inelegantly spun back into existence. She stumbled upon being re-realized as a three-dimensional creature, and nearly tripped over her own feet trying to stay upright, but she quickly regained her balance.

Her heart was still thumping from the events of less than a second ago, and she was immensely confused – she had been in the TARDIS, facing off against that lunatic with the gun, and then – he had done something? And now she was here, wherever here was, and –

The place that she was now existing in was large (or possibly infinite, it was hard to tell), and, put plainly, it was just wrong. Its geometry and architecture seemed impossible, even though there was practically none of either of those things. When she looked around, she saw only flat, unchanging whiteness – no floors, no walls, no ceiling – as if she was standing on a massive, blank sheet of paper, but there was also clearly some sort of substance to it at the same time. Her feet were in solid contact with the ground, there was some form of gravity at work that felt remarkably similar to Earth-gravity, and she sort of just knew without really knowing that if she tried to move in the space, she would encounter some sort of barrier eventually – maybe not walls, but the equivalent.

The place wasn't silent, either. Ace tilted her head and listened hard, and –

Well, no. Whatever noise this place was making couldn't really be called a 'noise'. Instead of hearing whatever it was, she was... experiencing it? The closest similar thing she could think of was the sound of the TARDIS engines humming; that background noise you could hear wherever in the timeship you went. Except instead of hearing a repetitive, thrumming hum, Ace was feeling a constant, thrumming awareness – every second or so, she noticed something different that fit the number forty-five, or some derivation of that number. There were forty-five stitches on the seam of her shirt. She had been in this place for four-and-a-half minutes and counting. She had breathed in and out forty-five times since she last realized she was doing so. And the regular intervals of these realizations were approximately four-point-five seconds apart. It was unnerving, to say the least – she was sure that the number hadn't been so commonly occurring before now.

She glared at nothing, furious with how much of a headache this place was giving her, before turning her gaze upwards (probably) and yelling at her best guess of where the ceiling was, "oi! Nobody No-One, you fucker. Get in here and talk to me face-to-face, coward!"

There was silence – not even echoing, ringing silence, just her words falling flat and dead in the empty space around her. There was a moment or so where she began to second-guess herself, wonder if she was right about the Word Lord having taken her to... well, wherever.

Of course, it took precisely forty-five seconds for something to happen.

There was a pop – or sort of, it was more like reality rewriting itself, and then she heard the faint sound of somebody chuckling lowly nearby. She spun on her heel, a neat three-hundred-sixty spin, but there was no change in the surroundings. Still only whiteness. "I know you're there," she called, narrowing her eyes. "Stop hiding, or – or, whatever, just show yourself!"

"Still angry?" asked a voice right behind her, and Ace whirled around to find herself face-to-face with Nobody No-One – or sort of face-to-face, anyway. He was crouching upside-down, apparently on nothing at all, or maybe some sort of ceiling that was invisible to her, and his scarf was trailing upwards into infinity, defying any semblance of gravity. He was positioned at exactly the right height so that his head was at the same level as hers was, and he grinned at her in sadistic delight. "That's impressive, that is! I figured you'd have simmered down by now, but no, you're still just as furious as before."

Ace didn't even miss a beat. She went directly for his neck, lunging forwards with a sharp exhale of air. She got within inches of him, millimetres, even, but just as she was about to make contact, he disappeared – just vanished into thin, white air, and she overbalanced and went crashing to the ground – although it wasn't painful, just more than a little humiliating.

A split second passed – wherein Ace pushed herself to her feet once more, scowling furiously – and then Nobody popped up into existence some distance away, this time standing at a strange angle forty-five degrees crooked to Ace's version of the ground. "Not only feisty, but predictable as well," he sighed, as jovial as before. "How very typical of you."

"Where are we?" Ace said, glaring daggers at him. "What did you do? What do you want?"

"You know, it's been ridiculously hard to get a decent price for you," Nobody said, ignoring her questions. "You'd have thought that the girl that singlehandedly took down a fully-armed Dalek when she was sixteen would fetch higher on the universal market, but buyers are so picky these days."

It took a second, maybe two, for her to work through the adrenaline and confusion and fury and actually process what he was saying. "You-? You're selling me?"

"Well, yeah. Or trying to, anyway." He leered at her. "What did you think I was gonna do with you? Keep you here forever, torture you until you talked?"

"You seem a bit too sophisticated to revert to torture," Ace said, "but yeah, I did, something like that. What sort of devices do you have in this ship of yours? A brain-bender? The mind probe?"

"What?" said Nobody. "No, not the mind probe. Or anything like that. No thank you. Humans are so messy to clean up after, psychically or otherwise, and there's nothing you know that I want to have."

"Selling us to who?" Ace's eyes were narrowed.

"Oh, not anybody in particular. Whoever!" Nobody winked at her. "The Daleks were the most vocal about you in particular, but there's all sorts – the psychics behind creating the Fearmonger wanted a piece of the pie, and that's not even mentioning the Silurians, the Sontarans – "

"They all want me?" For a moment, Ace was frozen in place – the enemies she made while travelling with the Doctor never really seemed that threatening once they were in the TARDIS once more and moving away to another time and place. It had never once occurred to her that they would somehow catch up with her one day.

"Yeah, no. That's the thing." Nobody was frowning, now. "Turns out that you and the Doc, you're kind of a package deal, according to – well, pretty much everyone."

"You – what?"

"You, the Doctor, and sometimes that other little friend of yours, too," Nobody said. "You know, the one that follows you around, a bit like a puppy? What's his name, what's his name – oh yeah, Hex. What a weird name."

"What did you do to them? Hex and the Doctor?" she asked, furious.

"The Doctor?" Nobody tilted his head, then vanished and didn't reappear. She could still hear his voice, though, echoing all around them. "I didn't manage to get him, in all honesty. There's all these laws about words and meaning, and – well, long story short, I'm gonna go and grab him later, after you're taken care of. Now that'll be fun! He'll put up a wonderful struggle, I'm sure."

"Hex," said Ace from between gritted teeth. "What did you do with Hex?"

"Oh, Hexxy." Nobody was now right behind her, breath tickling the back of her neck. "Yeah, he's here. Somewhere, probably." She saw him flap a dismissive hand nowhere in particular in her peripheral vision. "In stasis, like you were up 'til now. He was going to try to fight me with a spanner, I think – did you know that? No, probably not. It was rather endearing, really, he was trying to find you – yelling your name all over the TARDIS; getting into an awful panic."

"If you hurt him – "

"Oh, relax. I'm not as boring as you are." She hated hated hated this. Everything about Nobody No-One made her feel sick and angry, and he was far too close to her for comfort. "Nah, the worst that Tommy's got ay-tee-em is a mild case of 'being shot in the hand'. Nothing big, you know?" And now his hands were on her shoulders and she froze, stiffening up.

"You shot him?" She didn't move a muscle, but her tension levels were running off the charts. "I swear to god – "

"Boring!" Nobody yelled, rather loudly, "it's not like it's serious, come on, worst case scenario he won't be able to write neatly for a week or so – "

Ace wasn't listening.

Hex is hurt, went one part of her brain, which set off immediate alarm bells, and this was immediately followed by it might be actually serious, there's no way of telling how honest this lunatic is being. One fist clenched tight, almost painfully so. Even if he's not hurt, he must be terrified right now, wherever he was. He's not used to this, not properly, not like we are. Quicker, now: Nobody's going to sell him, like me. Sell him to who? And now, angry: Hex can't be sold, that can't happen. I won't let that happen.

And then, her thoughts sprung to the Doctor (of course) – and this time things were louder, more sharp in her mind. More urgent. He's going after the Professor next. No, NO, NO. That's not going to happen, I can't let him anywhere near the Doctor, the Doctor can't get trapped here too, that CAN'T happen – and then finally, inevitable and loud and sharp and fierce –

I've got to do something.

And as Nobody kept talking, kept threatening, kept laughing at her, something inside of her – something that she thought she had got rid of; buried a very long time ago – it began to stir. At first, she pushed it back instinctively, horrified that it was still there. It growled in response, bristling angrily at her, and it was about then that she realized what this meant. And she realized that it might not actually be as bad as she thought it might be.

And she took a deep, shuddering breath, and gave herself over to the cheetah completely.

"– and honestly, I could probably get a decent price for all of you separately? But I feel like if I can get hold of the Doctor too, then, well. The Cybermen would kill for the whole set. And I mean that literally, they would literally kill to get all three of you in the same place –" and Ace really wasn't Ace anymore, and she snarled and slammed her claws into his chest, ripping downwards and tearing that soft soft skin until the meat stopped talking and started screaming, and oh scream he did, and wasn't that glorious? He didn't smell like a human but there was no doubt that he couldn't suffer like one, the strange little man-shaped thing.

This thing, this creature – it was Enemy. The Ace-creature was telling her that from somewhere very far away, and although she disliked how very human that part of her was, she also knew that it was right and this Enemy must be taken down. She slashed, tore, ripping, and then spun away from him with a glorious howl, heart pounding from the thrill of the hunt as the air around him became suddenly charged with something electric, and he screamed again, rippling the very air around him, making everything go blurry.

It didn't matter to her that he did not bleed like a creature of flesh would – indeed, she couldn't hear the rushing of blood in his veins or smell anything other than something wrong and chemical leaking from him, because it didn't matter how he bled, it just mattered that he did. She could always do something to him if he bled.

And inside, he wasn't red-pink-bone, he was leaking black, thick and viscous. It was dripping from the gashes that she had torn in his clothes and skin. It was falling to the floor, surrounding him in a deep puddle of ink as his figure warped, as he fractured and then put himself together again and fractured once more. His teeth eclipsed his face – went far too sharp far too big far too quickly – and then his colors went off and then he smelt of cinnamon briefly, and then the black stuff was dripping from his hairline, and he was doubled over, making an awful terrible keening noise.

She went for him again, knowing that he wouldn't survive another attack – and she would feast merrily on his flesh afterwards and it would be a good hunt – but she hadn't even crossed half the distance before he jerked upwards to stare at her and – "get away from me," he roared, voice terrible and vast like a flood that you can't even hope to avoid. And suddenly, she was away from him, a long distance away from him, he was now barely a speck in the distance. Which didn't make sense, they were only words, after all, and words meant nothing to her.

She started running, of course, the ground blurring beneath her feet, but she wasn't fast enough to get to him before he spoke again – "don't even move" – voice like acid, deadly serious – and she couldn't move. It was that simple. She howled and gnashed her teeth and fought savagely against the bonds, but only in her head, because each and every one of her limbs were locked firmly into place, and she couldn't even blink.

And the Enemy straightened up, slow as anything, panting heavily, with black ichor still trickling down his jaw. The wounds that she had inflicted were slowly vanishing, healing over impossibly, and she could see them going as he stalked towards her, each step measured and slow.

"Well," he said, eyes dark and cold, "this certainly is interesting, isn't it."

A part of her that was still Ace might have shivered, gone cold and terrified all over, but all of her that wasn't (which was an awful lot) was still snarling and growling and thinking of all the ways that she could rip this ridiculous little not-human man to shreds once she was free.

"That sure was a vicious, unexpected attack," he said, stepping up to meet her, getting uncomfortably close – she could smell his lack of breath, lack of blood, and see nothingness in his terrible empty eyes, but she still couldn't move. "What a shame," he said, voice barely a whisper, "that nobody survived."

He circled her once, seemingly fascinated, and then leaned in close to stare her in the eyes. It was hard enough to breathe, so there wasn't anything that she could do to fight against the bonds. She merely glared at him with every ounce of fierce, predatory disdain that she could manage.

"Aw, aren't you cute," breathed the Enemy, running a hand along her jawline. "Here, kitty-kitty-kitty – oh, but you are a savage one, aren't you," he added, drawing his hand back when she tried to bite his hand, but failed utterly. "I kinda want to play with you for a bit but – I've got things to see. Places to do."

Words, words, words, they meant nothing to her. Just rip and tear and bite and claw; no matter if the taste disappoints, it's the hunt that matters most. And this Enemy creature thing, whatever it was, it would be a good hunt – the best. She knew it deep inside herself, as surely as if she had been born with the information within her. And if only the Enemy-creature wasn't cheating, wasn't playing so unfairly by the rules of the Hunt that even she could object, he would be dead on the ground already –

A hiss of ozone. A pop of static. The flash made her blink and snarl, but when she opened her eyes, he had disappeared, folded out of existence, and she couldn't taste his scent in the air anymore. And then she could move freely again, but of course it was too late for that to be of any use.

And only seconds after that, she was gone once more.