A/N I don't own BBC or DW.

Book of the Update: Falling Up by Gordon and Williams

Chapter 13

"Rose?" she woke up to someone shaking her shoulders. "Rose?"

She slowly sat up, pressing her palms to her eyelids. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine," she mumbled unconvincingly. She put down her hands and blinked open her eyes, ignoring the dull pain that was still in the back of her mind. Donna raised an eyebrow. "No, really, I'm fine, look," she showed her her arms and legs and blinked her eyes a few times. "Right as rain."

"Well, alright…..what happened, though? What was wrong?"

Rose looked at her. "Nothing. 's just….I dunno, but it's gone now," she lied smoothly, feeling a twinge of guilt for doing that to her friend.

Luckily, the front door opened just then, cutting their conversation short. "Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas!" Wilf said, coming into the living room with a little dance. "Donna!" He cried when he saw her, rushing over and sweeping her into his arms.

"Hey, Gramps," she said, returning the hug.

He let her go after a moment. "I've just seen the Doctor – you'll never believe it, Donna, but Minnie-"

"Oooh no, I don't wanna hear about whatever Minnie's done this time," Donna exclaimed and then she grabbed Rose's wrist, hauling her up off the floor. "Gramps, this is Rose. The Doctor's girlfriend," she added to him in a stage whisper and Rose turned beet red.

"I'm not…I mean, it's…" she stuttered, at a loss for words. Wilf just laughed and held out a hand, saying it was good to meet her.

Sylvia, Donna's mum, called them all into the kitchen to open presents, now that Wilf was back, and Rose sort of stood off to the side as the family exchanged gifts with each other. Donna had made the Doctor take them to earth, her time, to pick up Christmas presents for her family, so she was prepared.

While they were all laughing and joking together and being exactly the type of family Rose had given up when she left the parallel world, she quietly slipped out the kitchen and through the hall and out the side door.

She'd made it halfway out of the neighborhood when a whooshing sound came from behind her and she stopped, looking over her shoulder as the TARDIS materialized. She ran and grabbed him when he came out of the ship, holding him as tightly as she could. "What happened?"

"Rose-? What?"

"Something was wrong," she said, looking up at him, but not releasing his waist, "Something was very wrong and I felt it. What happened?"

"Someone – a Time Lord called the Master – got away. I'll explain the rest later, but I was unconscious. He's still on earth, though. I can smell him. But he's too far away. What do you mean, you felt it?"

"The Master? Who was he?" she asked, avoiding his question.

"He was….agh, he was my best friend, closer than brothers, we were. But he went mad. He's awful and he's dying, but he's still my friend, sort of, and he's the only other Time Lord in the universe. I have to find him, Rose. The Ood told me, they said something was coming. It wasn't him, no, but he's involved. He's always involved. And, oh, and Wilf!" he cried, pulling his arms off of Rose and gesturing behind her.

She released him and turned. Sure enough, there was Wilf. "Wilf! Yeah, you're involved…..if I could just work out how. Have you seen anything strange? Out of place? Anything?"

He stuttered for a moment, "Well….uhm, there was…"

"What is it? Tell me!"

"Nah, nah it's nothing," he said, looking at the ground. Rose felt that it was a very big something, but perhaps something that the Doctor shouldn't know about. Not yet anyway.

"Think, think, think! Maybe something out of the blue?" he pushed and Wilf blinked rapidly, thinking.

"Well, Donna was a bit strange. She had a funny little moment this morning, all because of that book."

"The book she got you for Christmas?" Rose asked in surprise and he nodded.

"Book? What book?" The Doctor asked and Wilf pulled it out of his pocket to show him. "That's the man, the Ood showed me him," he said, pointing to the picture of Jonathan Naismith on the cover of the book.

"What're the Ood?"

"They're just the Ood," he replied dismissively, "But it's all part of the convergence maybe…maybe touching Donna's mind? While she was out shopping?"

"I went with her when she bought that book," Rose piped up, "Seemed a bit odd, she picked it up the minute we walked into the store, but I figured it was just something she knew you would like."

"Okay, so this book. This man, Jonathan Naismith. Right," the Doctor said, taking the book from Wilf and marching back towards the TARDIS, Rose and Wilf on his heels.

"What about Donna? Won't she want to come?" Rose asked, but Wilf laughed.

"She seemed a bit busy getting to know my young friend Sean," he said, humor in his voice.

The Doctor was already inside the ship and was hopping around the console, babbling about Jonathan Naismith.

Rose walked inside, followed by Wilf, who gasped and looked around him, dumbstruck.

"Oh, forgot to mention," the Doctor called, "Bigger on the inside. D'you like it?"

Wilf gaped. "I-I thought it'd be cleaner," he finally got out and Rose covered her mouth to hide the laughter.

"Cleaner?" The Doctor cried indignantly, "You know I could take you back home right now, mister."

"Listen, Doctor, if this is a time machine, why couldn't you just hop back to yesterday and catch him?"

"I can't go back inside my own timeline; I have to stay relative to the Master within the causal matrix. Understand?"

"Not a word."

The Doctor just grinned and hopped around, setting the TARDIS up for dematerialization, not even bothering to explain.

"It doesn't work like that," Rose said, "It uhh…causes paradoxes, really bad things to happen. It's complicated," she said, trying to explain to Wilf, who still looked as though he didn't understand.

"Thank you. I think."

She grinned. "Welcome aboard, Wilf."

DOCTOR WHO

"It doesn't just mend one person at a time; that would be ridiculous. It mends whole planets."

"It does what?" Rose asked in shock, not sure if she had heard right.

"It transmits the medical template across the entire population," she said in exasperation as if she were talking to toddlers.

Rose locked eyes with the Doctor. "Nanogenes?" she asked, referring to an incident years ago with World War II and a little boy with a gas mask, rewriting all of human DNA.

"Nanogenes," the Doctor breathed, running off down the corridor, Rose right on his heels.

"Thought you said this Master guy was your best mate?" she asked, and he looked at her with wild eyes.

"I also said he'd gone mad!" he sped up and careened around a corner, nearly smashing himself into the wall, but turning at the last possible second. Rose, not having Time Lord reflexes, had to grab the wall to stop herself, and was a bit behind the Doctor. He was already inside the office and yelling at everybody to turn off the gate by the time she got there.

"No, no, no, no, whatever you do, just don't let him near that device!"

"Oh, like that was ever gonna happen," a man in a straightjacket, Rose assumed he was the Master, said with a smirk before he threw his head back and a white-hot energy blasted from him, forcing the straightjacket off of his body and into a remote corner of the room.

He blasted himself into the air, grinning madly, and landed right in the center of the glowing medical gate. "Homeless, was I?" He asked, looking right at the Doctor, "Destitute and dying? Well, look at me now!" he raised his arms and laughed maniacally.

"Deactivate it!" Rose yelled, "Turn the whole thing off!"

The black man in the suit shook his head, blinking his eyes. "He's…inside my head."

Looking around, everyone else in the room seemed to be having the same problem. The Doctor ran over to the gate. "Get out of there!" but he was blasted out of the way by a red stream of energy coming from the Master's hand.

"Doctor!" Wilf called, just now reaching the room, "Doctor, there's this face…"

"What is it, Wilf? What do you see?"

"Well, I can see him!" he pointed to the Master.

"Something's wrong," said the woman on the television, "It seems to be affecting the President…"

The Doctor ran to the computer, pressing buttons frantically. "I can't turn it off!"

"That's because I locked it," the Master informed him, "Idiot."

"WILFRED!" The Doctor yelled, taking him by the hand and pushing him into the radiation chamber. "Get inside, get him out." He pushed the button to free the man and got in the chamber himself, yanking Rose inside with him. It was a tight squeeze, but they both fit. "Now, I just need to filter the levels…"

"Oh!" Wilf cried from the other half of the chamber, "I can see again!"

Rose looked at the Doctor in awe. "Radiation shielding, of course!"

"How do you know what radiation shielding is?" he asked in confusion and she grinned at him, her tongue in between her teeth.

"Got my A-levels in the parallel universe."

"Oh, brilliant! That's great, Rose!" he squeezed her fingers and she knew he was proud of her, even though it seemed like such a trivial thing compared to his wealth of knowledge. He looked to Wilf, "Press the button to let us out."

"What?" Wilf seemed confused, but pressed the button anyway. The Doctor ran out of the chamber, followed closely by Rose, who hadn't been affected by the Master's mind, for whatever reason.

"Fifty seconds and counting," the Master announced.

"Till what?"

"Oh, you're gonna love this," he said, answering the Doctor's question.

Rose heard a phone ring and looked over her shoulder. It was Wilf, and he looked very concerned. "It's Donna! She's turnin into something! Says she keeps seein 'is face in her head!" he received another call. "It's everybody! Everyone in Winston's whole neighborhood!"

"What is it?" Rose asked, looking up at the Master, "Hypnotism? Mind control? You're puttin' your thoughts into their heads, yeah?"

"Oh, no," he laughed, "Too easy. They're not gonna think like me. They're gonna become me." he raised his arms, the purple glow around the gate strengthening. "Aaaaand begin!"

He laughed and Rose looked around. Everyone, except for the Doctor and Wilf, were shaking their heads violently, and their faces were flickering between the Master's and their own. "Doctor? What's happening?" he spun around, teeth grit together, looking around at everyone.

"NO! You can't have!"

The heads stopped shaking, and Rose let out a horrified gasp when she saw what had happened. Everyone in the room besides the Doctor, Wilf, and herself, had changed. They weren't themselves anymore…they were all the Master, just in different clothes, but…all the same.

"The human race was always your favorite, Doctor," said the Master, the real one, stepping down from the gate. "But now, there is no human race. There is only the Master race!" he held his arms wide to show, and all of the Masters surrounding him, even the one who used to be the American woman on the news station on the television, echoed him, saying in unison, "the Master race"

And then he began to laugh. And everywhere, across the globe, everyone began to laugh. The Doctor stared in horror as it echoed around him, in the room, through the walls, coming in through the windows…laughter. Laughing. Always laughing.