Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who. Obviously.
A/N: Thank you to everyone who's been reading and reviewing this story! It's very encouraging, and it means so much to me! Now, without further ado, here is the next chapter.
Chapter 3 - The Best Laid Plans
Pete Tyler, Rose's step-father and Head of Torchwood, burst in through the door to the monitoring lab. A troop of Torchwood employees followed in his wake, giving the appearance that he had a gigantic, billowing cape of people flowing out behind him. At once, he swooped in to give his only daughter a reassuring hug, before stepping back and saying formally, "What's the status, Agent Tyler?"
Rose straightened up, stepping into the soldier role that she had built for herself, answering, "Project Bad Wolf has been monitoring a signal coming from Earth's orbit for three and a half months now. There has been no change until today, when we discovered that the signal indicated that an entity was actually in orbit, broadcasting a single phrase: 'Bad Wolf'. In an attempt to discover the origin of the signal, we mirrored it back to them. We received a response demanding us to surrender the Bad Wolf, or the planet would be 'exterminated'. We took the use of the word 'exterminate' as a sign of a Dalek threat, and I issued the orders to notify you and to begin the preparations for a Dalek attack as according to procedure. Since then, we have been able to secure video of the Dalek ship in question, and it appears as though a Dalek army, consisting of at least two thousand Daleks, is leaving it and heading to Earth as we speak. We have reason to believe that they will head here, to Torchwood One, in search of something within these walls."
Pete Tyler remained silent for a moment as he processed all of the information. Then he asked calmly, "Do we know what it is that they're searching for? This 'Bad Wolf'?"
"Not exactly," Rose evasively prodded the floor with the tip of her shoe, unwilling to answer that particular question just yet.
"Do we have any way to attack the ship that's in orbit?"
Rose chewed on the bottom of her lip, trying to think of the various ways that a ship in orbit could be destroyed. She had seen something similar once before, when the Torchwood in her original universe blew up the Sycorax ship on Christmas Day. But Rose had personally shut that project down in this universe when she began working at Torchwood. All of the equipment had been dismantled and the pieces put into storage. There wouldn't be enough time to build it anew.
"No," Rose admitted. "Well, maybe if we had a vortex manipulator or some other form of teleport in storage somewhere, we might be able to send someone to the ship and have them blow it up from there."
"No," The Doctor cut off her thought before she got any ideas of blowing herself up with the ship. "We don't have a teleport in the Alien Artifacts Department, I'm sure of it. Besides, to build an explosive device strong enough to knock out the defenses of a Dalek ship, even from the inside, would take more time than we have at the moment. The only way that plan would work would be to enable the self-destruct mechanism on the ship, but it could only be done by someone who understands the Dalek technology well enough to do so, and only if said person was able to successfully navigate to the ship's control console without being killed first."
Rose spun around to give the Doctor a questioning look. The only person here that might have that much knowledge of the workings of a Dalek ship would be the Doctor, so she found herself wondering if he would be able to do it.
The Doctor silently nodded at her, confirming her suspicions. He knew how to destroy the ship from the inside then.
Knowing this, Rose asked hesitantly, "Even if we did have someone that could figure out how to self-destruct the ship, would they be able to get off of the ship before it was destroyed?"
"Probably not," the Doctor gravely answered her.
"Well then," Rose turned back to her father, "We have no way of destroying the Dalek ship. We'll have to settle for destroying the Daleks, one by one. We have weapons that can hurt them, although it's questionable how many of the guns are still operational. They'll concentrate their attack on this building first, so if we can secure it as well as possible, we may stand a chance at destroying them before they discover that what they want isn't here and begin attacking the rest of the world."
Pete turned to the people that had followed in his wake and started issuing orders. He sent some to find and distribute weapons, others to organize the Torchwood employees and agents of various departments, and more to alert the governments of the world of what approached and how to best keep the civilian population safe. Once his entourage had cleared out and it was just Pete, Rose, and the Doctor, he asked, "What if they get tired of attacking us, since we can attack back, and decide to wreak havoc on the civilian population?"
"Welll, we'll need to distract them for as long as possible," The Doctor input. "I'm their sworn enemy. If they know I'm here, they'll want to come after me. We can use that to lure them wherever we want. It'll work for a time, at least."
"And what about this 'Bad Wolf' that they're after?"
"Technically, it's Rose," the Doctor replied with a frown.
Pete glanced at his daughter, concern radiating from his eyes. "How can that be? Why would they want you?"
"Not me, per se," Rose answered. "Apparently, a long time ago—well, more like a long time ago in a future far from here—I seem to have gotten hold of some powerful power of some sort and destroyed a bunch of Daleks. I don't remember it at all, and I don't have that power any more, but I called myself the Bad Wolf, and now they're here for revenge or something, looking for something that looks just like me."
Pete sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking of all of the possible outcomes of this situation. They weren't looking particularly good.
"I talked to Mum," Rose said, looking for something to reassure her father. "She picked up Tony from school and they're hiding out in the shelter at home."
"Good. That's good, they should be safe enough there. Any chance I could persuade you to take shelter with them?"
"Nope, I wouldn't miss this for the world," Rose grinned at him.
"Yeah, that's what I thought," her father replied, full of both concern and pride. "You're too much like me for your own good, sometimes."
Rose laughed and patted her father on arm, "There's nothing wrong with that."
Pete gave her a broad smile, then started pacing about the room. It wasn't long before he stopped and said, "Okay, here's what we'll do then. They want you two, but we need to draw out their attack here for as long as possible in order to keep the rest of the world safe. If we assume that they'll attack from the bottom of the tower and move up, then we can put you two at the top of the tower so that they reach you last. In the meantime, we'll have agents taking them out on all of the levels below, so that by the time they reach you two, we'll have destroyed as many of them as we can beforehand."
"No!" The Doctor and Rose protested at the same time. They had no interest in putting so many other lives at stake.
"Doctor," Pete answered their protests, "you yourself said that we could use you to lure them places. It's a good plan, even if you don't like it. By the time they reach you and discover that Rose doesn't have this power that they want, there won't be as many of them, if any, to attack the rest of the city. Besides, it'll buy you some time to come up with a better plan to get rid of them all."
"But I didn't mean to hide me away and let others die in my place!" The Doctor replied, the fury of the storm flickering in his eyes. "I meant, place a trap for them, use me to lure them into it, and then kill them all!"
"And that'll be exactly what we're doing," Pete answered quietly. "The trap is Torchwood itself, and you two are the bait."
"And what if they don't take the bait?" The Doctor asked darkly.
"They will," Rose replied grimly. "We'll need to show ourselves to them first, then make a beeline to the top of the tower. How could they resist the temptation of killing both the Bad Wolf and the Oncoming Storm?"
The Doctor opened his mouth to angrily reply, but Rose cut him off. "I don't like this plan anymore than you do, Doctor. Do you really think I want to let anyone die for me? I don't. And you should know that. But I think it's the only chance we have to concentrate the attack here, and limit the number of civilian casualties. Each of these Torchwood agents signed up knowing full well the dangers associated with working here. Isn't that better than letting innocents suffer at the hands of the Daleks?"
The Doctor refused to answer her question, instead attempting to break holes in the plan, "What if they attack the top first? They are coming in from the sky, after all."
Pete answered this one, saying, "Lock-down procedures have already begun. The windows all have reinforcements that drop down over them, so the only way in will be from the ground floor where we'll leave the front doors wide open."
"You know if they follow your plan and do make it to the top, they'll kill every last person along the way if they have to," the Doctor said, glaring at Pete.
"I know," the Head of Torchwood returned the Doctor's glare with a hardened look of resignation.
"So what if they make it to us and kill us? What then?" the Doctor walked circles around Rose's father, his hands stuffed in his pockets as he did so. "Who will defend the Earth with both Torchwood and us gone?"
"There's other Torchwood locations to continue the attack," Rose replied reluctantly as she stared at the floor, not quite able to meet the Doctor's eyes. "And we can use the building to our advantage. If we have no more opportunities to defend ourselves against them, this building is wired with a self-destruct mechanism that can be used to demolish it, along with anything inside of it. Hopefully the majority of the Daleks would be inside at the time."
The Doctor paused his movements about the room to stare at Rose as if he had never properly seen her before. He knew that she had changed during the time that they spent apart, but here she was talking about exploding a building in the middle of a city, sacrificing themselves and a bunch of other Torchwood employees in the process, along with anyone else within who-knows-how-large of a radius around the building. The Rose that he knew would never even hurt a fly, but this one was casually discussing plans to blow up the city.
Rose belatedly looked up at the Doctor's eyes to see his giving her an accusatory look at made her heart feel as though it was cracking inside of her chest. "Don't look at me like that, Doctor," she whispered. "I know you disapprove of such things, but someone always has to be the one to wield the gun for you when you can't do so. I had to face a lot of things when you weren't there, and they have changed me. I will not do this without a burdened conscious, but I will gladly be the one to hold the gun for you, Doctor, if it means that you don't have to."
The Doctor was shocked into silence, as he realized that he took happy, innocent people as his companions and turned them into soldiers, into weapons for himself to wield against the universe. And he had now done so to Rose. His beautiful, sweet, compassionate, so very human Rose. He hated himself for it.
The Doctor was startled when Rose placed her hand on the side of his face. He had been so caught up in his thoughts that he hadn't noticed her move closer to him. He met her eyes as she caressed his cheek with her thumb, and the amount of love and emotion that radiated from her big, brown eyes crashed over him all at once, like a tidal wave slamming into a cliffside during the middle of a storm.
"It'll be okay, Doctor," Rose said reassuringly. "It'll give us time to think of a better plan, and then maybe not so many people will have to die. And if we don't think of anything else, at least we'll go out fighting together and take as many Daleks out with us as we can, yeah?"
The Doctor could not agree with her, but at the same time he didn't have a better plan. So he did the only thing that he could think to do, with her body mere inches from his own. He placed his hands on her shoulders and pulled her to him, his lips crashing against hers in a desperate plea for respite. Their arms twined around each other, his wrapping around her waist, her fingers threading through the back of his hair. It was the opposite of that first kiss they had on the beach. This time, the Doctor was the one requiring reassurance and an anchor to hold him to this world. Rose was only too happy to oblige him.
Rose's father cleared his throat pointedly, causing the pair to quickly jump apart. They had forgotten that he was still there.
"Right," The Doctor said as he straightened out his suit jacket. "We've got mere minutes to save the world from an army of Daleks. No TARDIS, no sonic screwdriver, and no more regenerations. Think we can do it?"
"Allons-y!" Rose shouted before she gave him her patented tongue-in-teeth grin.
The Doctor reached out to grasp Rose's hand in his own and they excitedly ran out the door of the lab together, with Pete following close behind them.