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The Fourth Adventure: Me
"Hey," said a sharp voice from somewhere above me, "still breathing?"
I opened my eyes slowly, hardly daring to believe that I was alive...above me stood the Doctor, the arm of his leather jacket scuffed, torn and dripping with slime, the same slime that was covering my entire body. I took a breath and tried to sit up - slowly. The room had been torn apart. Computers lay, smashed, on their sides across the floor, whilst a hole the size of a boulder had been punched in the big screen at the front of the room, shattering the glass and revealing the electronic spaghetti underneath. My eyes darted left and right, looking for any sign of that monster, that millipede of an impossible size, the Whispering with all it's faces thrown away.
To my left, also lying down (and, unlike me, out cold) lay Rose, herself covered in the same slime (saliva, I reminded myself with a shudder) that I was. In the corner of the room stood Tirwyl, who was attempting to operate one of the only computers left standing. The look on his face told me it was a no-go.
"Where is it?" I demanded, leaping to my feet and swaying faintly, "where's the Whispering? Did you see it? Did you-"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," the Doctor cut across me impatiently, "I saw it. You realize what it's done?"
"No," I said groggily, "on account of having been unconscious, no." Rather than sounding clever with all those big words, the sentence came out weak and slurred.
"It was gonna eat ya," the Doctor explained, "would've if I 'adn't turned up jus' then. But...ha...when it saw I had a Dimension Trap...that changed things a little. It ran. Tried ta take a bite outta me, but ran just the same."
"It's gone?" I exclaimed, my heart sinking all over again, "you mean it got away?"
"No." The Doctor said triumphantly, a grin spreading out over his face, "well, yeah. But no at the same time. Not quite. I didn't have time to throw the trap, but now I've seen it's sorta natural form, I can go one better - I can corner it good and proper. I know how to stop it teleportin' away again."
"You do?"
"I do," the Doctor said, beaming. "Now I know how big it is, I know it's limits. It's a huge advantage. But the...uh...not so good news is that it's gone to...um...well, it's gone to Earth."
"What!" I shrieked, clapping my hands to my face, my stomach turning. The Doctor raised a hand to silence me.
"Forget it, Lyn. I know what we're dealing with now, and I'll make sure it can't get away next time. Once we've finished here, we'll go and get it. I promise ya."
"What d'you mean once we're "finished here" though?" I demanded. "If it's gone, their safe. Right? We gotta get back to Earth now."
"We got Rose back." The Doctor observed, changing the subject, and looking down at her, smiling. "She'll sleep a little, but then she'll be right as rain. That counts for somethin' right?"
"Course." I snapped. "But we've got to go, Doc!"
"We can't." The Doctor replied shortly. He turned to Tirwyl. "Well?"
The Captain turned to face us and, for the first time, removed his helmet. He was black, his curly hair cut very short, a light beard dusting over his chin. He was, I was surprised to see, well over forty. Perhaps over fifty even. He'd fought and moved with the speed and agility of a man half his age. His eyes were very round, and slightly bloodshot; he'd been crying for the loss of his men. I'd suspected that earlier, I felt sure of it now. Who could blame him?
"It's finished us off," he moaned, "it has. Look at the readings."
The Doctor pointed his screwdriver at the console and grimaced. "Ouch." He said, biting his lip.
"What did we ever do to it?" Tirwyl said miserably.
"Nothin'," the Doctor replied, "it ain't done this out of revenge or spite, buddy. It's done it purely to hold us up. Flight or fight. That's what it's always come down to."
"What's it done?" I said urgently, looking down at Rose who appeared to be stirring.
"Oh, this base is powered by an ion reactor," the Doctor explained casually, "which it's sent into meltdown."
"Which is bad, right?" I whispered, my mouth dry.
The Doctor and Tirwyl nodded grimly. On the floor, Rose whimpered and made a feeble attempt to open her eyes. As I looked at her, very suddenly, it was as though I'd been transported momentarily to another dimension; the room got darker, and the Doctor and Tirwyl, along with Rose vanished. The smashed computers vanished too, and I was alone. No - not quite - there was a window in the far corner of the room, one I hadn't noticed before. I ran towards it. And stopped - in that window was Rose, looking back at me with a frightened face.
I walked towards the window, and as I did, so did she...it was then that I saw the window was not a window, but a mirror, a mirror in which Rose was trapped. I made to smash it at once, and she did the same. Our fists came into contact with the glass and the illusion broke, catapulting me back into the here and now.
I staggered backwards and blinked. The Doctor cut off in mid-sentence and gazed at me sharply. "You okay?"
"Yeah I...zoned out I guess..."
"Nah," the Doctor said, "it's the ion reactor. It's already leaking. Frying ya brainstems, piece by piece. Hallucinations are the fun part. Get ready for dizziness, followed by crippling headaches, nosebleeds and death. Unless we sort it out right now."
"We can't. We've got to get out of Locus Heights," Tirwyl said, "we can't save the city, we can still saves uselves."
"No." The Doctor said sharply, "we can disable it by hand. Lynsey - with me. Tirwain, look after her."
"Tirwyl," he snapped, "but you can't! You'll be toast before you get within ten feet of it man!"
"You'd be, yeah. Lynsey'd be, yeah. Me? Nah. Probably not. Maybe not. I dunno, hopefully not. Anyway, Lynsey! Coming?"
"I certainly am." I said promptly, following in his wake as he made for the staircase. As we left, I heard Tirwyl speak again.
"You should let me do it." He mumbled, in a voice that he meant to sound noble and brave, but which instead sounded terrified, in case the Doctor accepted his suggestion.
"Sorry Tirwyl," the Doctor barked, not looking round, "but you m'man, are the one with something to live for. This is my job."
"Don't say that." I said to him sternly. "If you die in there, I guess it'll fall to me to turn it off. So I kinda guess you'll try not to die in that case."
"Fair play." The Doctor said grudgingly. Let's go.
And just like that, there we were, inside the reactor room, a control room smaller than the one we'd come from (the one we'd been standing in a split second ago!) but otherwise little different. Through a heavy-duty metal door, with a thick glass window, was a giant cylinder constructed from some cold, grey metal; the reactor, I'd bet. It looked all right - no smoke, no cracks in the casing, nothing like that. But the computer bank in here was flashing red, the words CRITICAL flashing up on every screen available. Bit of a giveaway, what?
"Okay," the Doctor said, guiding me to the controls. "I need ya to hold...that one down," he placed my hand on a small black lever to the right of the console, "and press... this here button every four seconds," he said, directing my left hand to an orange button, "every four seconds, Lynsey. No more, no less. Got it?"
I said that I did. The Doctor took a deep breath, and rolled up the sleeved to his jacket. "Okay," he said, "okay...now I'm gonna 'ave to open that door...it'll make you hallucinate again, but jus' for a mo."
"Right." I said, gritting my teeth.
"Whatever ya do, 'old onto that lever. You get me?"
"I hear ya, Doc. Just go for it."
He nodded. We both held our breath as he reached for the handle of the metal door. Then, quickly before he could change his mind, he wrenched it open and rushed through. But that split second in which it was open was enough; there was a ghastly wooshing noise, like air escaping from an airlock, and the air in the room took on a sultry, metallic tang which made my head swim. I felt the world close up, and tightened my grip on the levers. In front of my eyes, there but not quite there, swam a gigantic millipede which peered down on me and spoke with a woman's voice, Rose's voice;
Why am I the baddie this time? Why? What have you done? Is it your doing? Did you ask for this! I just wanted to help you! We both did!"
I snapped back to reality, and the millipede was gone. The Doctor was speaking to me through a radio built into the computer. "Keep me talking," he said, and I was shocked to hear how terribly hoarse his voice had already become, how terribly weak and strained. A monitor flicked into life, the big red CRITICAL sign vanishing to be replaced with a video of him in the reactor room. He was doing something on a small keypad attached to the side of the great tank.
"Easy!" I laughed encouragingly, "Easy as! Tell me a story, Doc! A good one! Focus on tellin' me it good, coz I'm a tough audience, me."
"Awright," he said weakly, "ever told ya about the Other?"
"No, no." I replied, "tell me now."
"Three...three Time Lords to start with," he whimpered, "Om...Omega who on'y built. Rassilon, on'y grew. An...and the...the Other...only ruined...an..."
He wheezed and I saw him drop to his knees.
"Keep going!" I screamed desparatley, fighting off the panic. My head had started hurting now. Really badly.
With a burst of strength the Doctor got back up and continued. "Gallifrey shoulda been...p...p...perfect," he stammered, "an' legend goes that it weren't coz of...of this Other...not real though. Not real...and..."
And he slumped down again. I burst into tears as I saw him crash to the floor, smacking his head on the metal reactor as he went. I knew he was done, that the ion energy leaking out was too toxic even for him, let alone me...
Or did I know that? For even as I'd broken down, I'd noticed something change - the monitors, rather than screaming CRITICAL in red, had changed. They now (excluding the one on which I was watching the Doctor) warned sternly CAUTION in amber...
And then I understood. I understood that I needed to do, understood that actually he wasn't trying to shut it down, and hadn't been...he went in there with it CRITICAL, knowing only he could (perhaps) survive that, but that it would incapacitate him...he hadn't been trying to shut it down. Merely to lower the ion levels to CAUTION...and even as I watched now, I saw him raise a weak and shaky arm, tapping the console lightly.
My job.
But what of my current task? What if I stopped hammering this button and pinning down this lever? Would that not flood the chamber with ion power again, killing him then and there, melting me from the inside out the second I walked through that door, assuming the whole thing didn't explode and wipe out the city?
Of course not; I laughed as I understood only now that I was doing absolutely nothing out here. Fiddling with random controls, doing nothing this way or that about the reactor. My real job, the job that needed doing and that which the Time Lord himself couldn't do, was to shut the reactor down. Saving what remained of the city.
I let go of the controls, not entirely comfortably despite my near certainty that I was achieving nothing by holding them down. For one, heart-stopping moment I simply stood there, waiting. But when nothing exploded and the screens didn't move from CAUTION, I relaxed (relatively speaking, of course). And I turned to the door of the reactor room. I assumed - that is to say, I guessed - that I'd know what to do, purely because the Doctor trusted me to know. I suspected - that is to say I hoped - that it would be as simple as one button saying "purge" or "shut down" or "emergency stop" or some such lovely, final slogan which would turn the thing off. Before the leaking ion energy killed me.
As I walked to the door, I again hallucinated a little, the ion power effecting me even here, outside the reactor room. Standing at the door I saw not the Whispering, but Oddbob, Oddbob with his white face and his rainbow suit, Oddbob with his painted smile and his balloons. He leaned against the door on one arm and grinned at me with hideous teeth. When he spoke, however, it was Rose I heard for a second time.
It's all wrong! I'm here not there! I'm not who I am, and your not who you are! We're not who we are! Let it go! Let us go! Why can't you just let me go? Maybe you can control it, maybe you can't, but you do know! You understand, even if you don't realize it yet! Let me go! You can, and you will, and I know what it means, but you have to!
"Hey, old buddy," I said to Oddbob pleasantly, ignoring his (or Rose's) cries, "this one's been long overdue." I struck out with my right fist and struck Oddbob on the chin, feeling his clammy face shudder under the force of my punch. I knew it to be a hallucination only, but who says the hallucinator can't make up the rules sometimes? I slapped him across the face, and I slammed his head against the metal door. The clown, the nightmare of my childhood, the creature which nearly took me away, who turned my friend into a monster, screamed and fled - I watched him fly from the room, out of the door and down the stairs, knowing he wasn't there, knowing that the real Oddbob (if ever he had been real) hadn't tormented me for years, but laughing triumphantly just the same as this ghostly version was sent away screaming and sobbing, his tears leaving tracks on his white face, washing the greasepaint from it.
Fun over - for now I was at the door, face to face with the cool metal...did I expect to die in there? No - I trusted the Doctor. I trusted him to keep me safe. But was I scared? Yes. For in there, through that door were two rooms moulded into one; A room containing an ion reactor which was failing, leaking ion energy which would overheat my brain, burn it out from the inside, leaving me a useless husk, eventually exploding, flattening this city and vaporizing the two people lying down next to it. But that's not even what scared me. For the room was also a room of nightmares. It would send me to hideous places, make me see hideous things, relive hideous memories, hear hideous voices like that warped version of Rose's...it could cost me my sanity, I knew...the true danger, the physical danger and hurt, didn't scare me. It was what it would do to me mentally - what I might see, what I thought I'd learn - that scared me...
It ended here. This. Whatever this was, however this had happened...it went no further. Because Rose was right. I knew. I didn't know I knew, not yet. But this was it. End of the line. This had happened before, and I knew where they were going next. Not me. They.
With that in mind, and sadness in my heart, I wrenched open the door to the reactor room and ran through, hearing it slam firmly shut behind me...
"Hello again," Rose said, emerging from behind the door as it closed again. I started, and wheeled around, ignoring the throb in my head, the blurry lines shooting across my vision. I thought, at first, that she wasn't there, simply a hallucination. But then she touched me on the cheek. I felt her skin against mine and stared in disbelief. "But your downstairs..." I murmured, "out cold..."
"Can't I be both?" Rose asked me innocently, "can't I be up here with you as well?"
"I hope so," I told her quietly, as my head swam, "because I can't do it with you, I don't think..."
"Hang in there." She laughed, and arm in arm, as staggered towards the reactor, headed for the control panel the Doctor had been working on. The closer we got, the worse I became, though Rose didn't seem to be effected at all. I saw Oddbob again, waving at me from the corner, balloons in hand. I looked up and the millipede was there, crawling along the ceiling. Then - in some ways worst of all - I looked behind me. I stopped and stared, for there were two women standing there. One was mother, with her hair askew and her skin yellow. She grinned at me with rotten teeth. Next to her was Jeanne, who stared at me in dismay. Her eyes said it all; you abandoned me, Lynsey! I half-raised you, I fed you, I looked after you! And you never came to see me again! How could you? How could you?
"It wasn't like that!" I cried, ignoring mother, who was approaching me, her fists clenched. I felt Rose pull me away, but I resisted and dropped to my knees. "I'm sorry, old timer! I'm sorry...I just..."
Rose slapped me hard around the face, and I started, leaping to my feet and clutching my face. "Do ya mind?" I screeched. I looked around, and the two ghosts had vanished.
"Not really," Rose said, "now come on!"
We staggered the final few feet and I crashed against the console, propping myself up against it. Rose bent down to check the Doctor, who lay motionless, his eyes shut tight. "Breathing." She assured me, holding her hand over his mouth.
I nodded. "Get him outta here," I told her, "and yourself. I can do this."
Could I though? Yes. I thought so. I looked at the controls, and although there wasn't a big red "stop" button (typical much?) I thought I understood. Two levers on either side. One said "increase" and the other "reduce." I had to hold onto the reduce power. Dump the energy, cut the power...save the city.
"Get him out." I repeated to Rose. "Find Tirwyl. I can handle this."
"Okay," Rose said, dragging the Doctor by his ankles. "I'm coming back for you."
"Counting on it." I told her, turning away from her and looking down at the controls. I gripped the "reduce" lever and pulled it down, dismayed at how much resistance it offered. I gripped with both hands and held it firm, my headache exploding a hundredfold as I strained my muscles. I heard Rose speak again.
No, no, no! My job! My job! My victory! Not your life, girl! I saved Locus Heights! Me! Not you!
"Just shut up!" I wailed, screwing up my face against the tears. I felt as though I was on a roller coaster, and the safety bar had come off; I was flying through the air, holding on by my fingertips, my brain being eaten from the inside. I saw home; not where I'd grown up, because that had never been home. I saw mine and Steph's flat in Wallbridge, I saw the sofa where I'd slump, exhausted, after work, the television I'd watch until late on nights off. But on the screen, a clown danced and jived on stage, in front of an audience of small boys in brown coats and old hats, and curled up on the sofa like the domestic pet of some unspeakable entity, was the Whispering, the millipede of such astonishing size. Steph walked through the door of her bedroom in her blouse and tights, ready to go to work; the blouse was black, smoking and the tights were torn. Steph was a skeleton.
"Mornin' Lynnie," she said, giving me a wave with a spider like, skeletal hand, which fell apart as she waved it. She collapsed as bones onto the floor, her skull rolling across the room with impossible speed. It landed at the foot of the sofa, and the Whispering devoured it, the crunching sending spasms of nausea through my stomach.
"No!" I screamed, bringing myself back to the here and now. No! I'd loosened my grip on the lever, and the pressure of the ion reactor was building. With renewed strength I yanked it down and held it there, crying desparatley. "No, no, no!"
The scene changed. I was at work, and the Doctor was there at my till, pennies over his eyes. In the queue behind him, my mother and Jeanne.
"Useless girl!" My mother cried, landing a punch on my nose, sending me flying backwards off my old seat behind the till. "Useless, useless, useless!"
I righted myself, only to be floored again, this time by Jeanne. "Eat my eggs, would you egg-girl?" she cried, opening a pack of eggs on the conveyor belt and pelting me with eggs, boiled eggs like the kind she used to give me sometimes. They were piping hot. "Eat my soup, would you soup-girl?" She threw scorching tomato soup over me, and I felt my skin scald beneath the liquid, "leave me to die, friendless, would you, drug girl? I died in that flat, y'know! Here's an updateth, if you will - I be muggeth by friendeth of mother of yourn! He wanted my jewelery, and he pushed me, so he did! Me ol' neck snappeth as me fell! I died alone, and scared, and you never so much as thanked me!"
"No!" I wailed, "no, you can't be dead! Not you! This is an illusion, and I ain't believing nothing! You hear me? I deny this! I deny all of this!"
"Deny him." The Doctor said icily, pointing over my shoulder. The Whispering was charging towards me, scuttling over the tills, it's impossibly long body stretching all the way to the back of the store. It's mouth was wide open, yellow mucus pouring out. Riding on it's back was Nick Turner, my long-dead friend, holding a hand-gun.
And then it was gone, and I was back in the reactor room. I leaned my entire body weight against that lever, for the reactor was now making noises I didn't like...
And boom, I was somewhere else - the promenade. The millipede was charging at me from across the river, over half of it's body in Wallbridge, the back end sitting in Nywell on Crouch.
I was sitting on the bench on which Rose had spoken to me...in the sim...sim-s-s-s-s-s-sim-m-m-m-simulation!
The Whispering pounced. But the moment was prepared for. Mother, emerging from behind one of the ice cream kiosks which she never once took me to, threw me a familiar object. It was long, with a blue light at the end; the sonic spear.
I grabbed it in my hands, and twirled it with ninja skills I'd never had. I ripped the blue light off the end; beneath it was a needle-sharp point.
The Whispering opened wide, and I gave it it's dinner - the entire length of the spear, point first, into it's mouth. The creature shrieked agony and recoiled.
"They're coming for you," I told it softly, "and they'll find you, and they'll corner you, and then I'll be the one who finally gets you. And I know that, because I've seen it happen. I've seen it before."
The creature exploded into dust, showering me. Behind me, applause. Rose was there, on the bench. That bench. Of course. She'd never left it.
Then everything went black, and I only heard her; this is all wrong! I never betrayed the Doctor! I'd have died before I'd betrayed him! Let us go! This has gone on long enough, and I'm tired, and your magnificent. This was meant to make you better, but the Tardis has made a mockery of us! She's laughing at us! She's playing, and we're the toys, and I've had enough!
And I was back in the reactor room. I couldn't go on; I had no strength left.
"Give it up." A voice said. I wheeled around; the millipede was there.
No! How? This wasn't the hallucination! This was real!
But then Rose appeared, and slammed the spear into his mouth, just as I had done. Struggling against it, she turned to face me.
"Come on then, new girl!" She screamed, fighting off the massive creature, "do the job for me! End this!"
I turned away and, with a final effort, managed to yank the lever down hard.
The reactor went quiet, and just like that, the headache went away.
And I knew. I stood there, stock still, tears rolling down my cheeks. I felt like laughing - almost.
I turned around. Rose wasn't there, and nor was the Whispering. Of course not - the Whispering was headed to Earth. And Rose was downstairs.
Except she wasn't. She never had been.
I stumbled away from the silent reactor and it's controls, and as I did so, I heard the Doctor speaking to me from far away. His voice was soft, loving even.
Thank you for my life, the voice told me.
I shut my eyes against the tears and made for the door, on legs that refused to stop shaking.
Thank you for Rose's life, it continued.
I watched as my hand reached weakly for the handle of the reactor room door. I tried to pull it open, but I hadn't the strength.
Lynsey - the times we would have had
The door finally flew open, and I fell from the room. Rather than hitting the floor, I was caught in a pair of large, armour clad arms. I looked up and saw Tirwyl's face glowing down at me, grinning broadly, his eyes watering.
the times we would have had, darling
Behind us, the Doctor lay on the floor. His eyes were shut, but his chest was rising and falling. Tirwyl lowered me down next to him, and sat on his other side. "He'll be just fine." He promised me.
I nodded, too choked to reply. I reached out and stroked the Doctor gently on the cheek. I bent down and kissed his forehead gently. "Thanks." I told him.
oh, the times we could have had
It was the Doctor's voice, but he wasn't speaking. Tirwyl reached over the sleeping Doctor and grabbed my shoulder. "You saved us," he told me, crying himself, "you saved Locus Heights!"
"Did I?" I said faintly, tears rolling down my cheeks.
"How can we ever repay you?" Tirwyl blubbed. "I don't even know who you are! You never said."
the times we would have had
I laughed miserably and looked up at Tirwyl. "What's your name?" He asked me.
the times we didn't have.
And I, looking him squarely in the face, opened my mouth and replied, "Rose Tyler."
The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1969 Part 2
So...stopped a whopping great ion reactor melting down, saved a city, all the usual day-to-day tasks. Well, I can't be taking all the credit actually - I dumped a shed load of the ion power, but it half-killed me. I slept six hours and woke up feeling like I'd regenerated (bloody terrible, in other words).
But my pal actually shut down the reactor. It was she, not I, who saved the city, she not I who actually shut it down. She suffered terribly in there, but she carried right on and did what needed to be done. If Tirwyl hadn't risked his life by going in and pulling her out afterwards, she might even have died.
That's how amazing a girl she is. Oh, she earned my trust a long time ago. My respect, however? If she hadn't earned that before, she's certainly earned it now. She's here to stay so long as she wants. She's proved herself to be the best of the best, and it's my sincere pleasure to have her. I'll even start using her name in here now - Rose. Rosie T. Rosie-Wosey T T. Let's stick with Rose. There! So now whenever I get the itch to read over old adventures in a thousand years or so, I'll remember the name.
Still, all is not won. Locus Heights is safe. It'll rebuild. But the frozen sea will have to wait. For now, friends and allies, we must to Earth. I've got a fix - little town in Kent, name of Wallbridge. It's there. In some big old supermarket, no less.
So let's go shopping. Sounds like fun. Doubt it will be.
END OF CHAPTER
Author's Note: Thank you for reading!
If anyone's confused, then re-read the Doctor's Diary segments - but not starting from chapter one. Start from his earliest entry, found in chapter six. :)
Anyone's free to PM me if they're still unsure, but hopefully it does make sense when you re-read those parts.
Thanks again! Hope you've all enjoyed it.