CHAPTER 16

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THE ABSENCE OF SOUND

As Cobb and Clara appeared onboard a ship that she didn't recognize, Clara found herself automatically studying the technology all around her intently for any clues as to what might be going on. Her head was filled with questions right now as she wondered why in the world that Cobb would be kidnapping her when she knew for a fact that she had wiped his mind of any knowledge of her powers whatsoever. Even as she tried to satisfy her curiosity and think about every possible answer to what was going on, she was also already thinking up a plan of escape.

Despite the horrible situation that she was in, Clara couldn't help but smile to herself. She had really missed being able to think about fourteen things at once and still have enough brain power left over to be able to daydream if she wanted. She usually thought of herself as being more human than Time Lord after living as one for so long, but it was times like this that she truly loved being a Time Lady again!

Times like now when she was about to put the arrogant Cobb in his place.

"What are you smiling about, girl? Surely you don't think that you're ever going to leave this place if I don't allow it. I'm the one who's holding all of the cards here, and I'm the one who has complete and total control over this entire situation not you. Or do you require further proof of that?" Cobb asked as he suddenly pointed a gun at her head.

"No, I don't need any proof at all whatsoever that you're evil incarnate and that you're an arrogant prick, Mr. Grumpy. Yes, I'm aware that you think that you're in control of this situation, but you're really not you know," Clara said as she continued to smile at him as if she didn't have a care in the universe.

Cobb looked at her with amusement as he said, "I suppose that you think that you are then?"

"Oh, I know that I am. For starters and correct me if I'm wrong here but that gun that you're holding can't work without a power pack, can it?" Clara said as she held up the power cell for Cobb's gun and dangled it in front of him.

"What?" Cobb said in disbelief as he looked at the gun with wide eyes.

Then he looked back at Clara just in time to see her fist heading straight for his face! He was instantly knocked out cold before he even hit the ground.

"Say good night, Grumpy. That's what you get for underestimating me because I look like a nice, sweet ordinary girl. I am nice and sweet but I'm so, so far from being ordinary," Clara said as she quickly studied all of his technology to find out how he had taken her to the ship.

"Ooh, that's an extremely advanced version of Vortex Manipulator for your time isn't it, Grey Beard? A little too advanced it looks like to me. I wonder who you're working for and what do they want with me? Excuse me if I don't stick around long enough to find out," Clara said as she stole the Manipulator off of his wrist.

Unfortunately it didn't work though and she frowned as she immediately figured out why.

"Isomorphic controls. That's pretty ingenious to rig it up so that it only works for you. I know that you didn't think of that. That's a little bit too clever for you, isn't it? In fact, all of the technology on this ship is a little bit too clever for you," Clara said as she started to take the Manipulator apart.

"You will stop what you are doing immediately," A voice said causing Clara to look up and smile.

"Oh, hello. The Doctor told me all about you lot and how you can mess around with people's heads. It won't work with me though. I have a natural immunity to having my brain tampered with that protects me from you and your fancy little tricks that thankfully wasn't removed from me recently," Clara said as she returned her attention to what she was doing with no concern showing on her face whatsoever.

"Those are the only powers that you have remaining to you since your recent psychic brain surgery however so how do you believe that you can possibly keep yourself safe from us without them?" Another voice said as a second alien joined the first one.

"Boys, boys! You really don't understand me at all, do you? I may not be Dark Alura anymore, but I'm always dangerous when I really want to be. Just because I'm a kind person by nature doesn't automatically make me a pushover," Clara warned.

"Take her . . . alive," A third alien said as he now joined the first two.

The three aliens' hands started to glow now as they prepared to attack her. Clara was already well ahead of them though as she quickly put the power pack back in Cobb's gun and ripped it out of his hand to shoot down all three of them in rapid succession.

"Just like Grumpy over here, you just underestimated me. You should be glad that I don't believe in unnecessary killing. Don't push me though. I don't want to hurt anyone, but I won't let you take me alive," Clara said as her smile briefly faded.

She wasn't talking to the unconscious aliens who were currently lying motionless on the floor though. She was talking to the others that she knew were watching her on the camera that was hanging from the ceiling nearby.

"So you know about my powers, huh? I know that I wiped the minds of everyone in the universe so how did you lot escape?" Clara asked even as she continued to jury rig the Manipulator.

"We are the masters of memory manipulation, Clara Oswald. It is ingrained into our very genetic structure. Do you really think that we wouldn't be immune to any attempts to wipe our own memories no matter how powerful that they are?" The voice of a fourth unseen alien said over the ship's communications system.

Clara continued to work on the Manipulator without looking up as she said, "Why do you want me so badly for? I can't use my powers anymore. They're gone now for good."

"Yes, we know but we also know that those abilities are still a part of your genetic structure and therefore can still be passed on from you . . . to the next generation," The voice said.

Clara now looked up at the camera with a defiant look of anger on her face as she said, "You're not going to get anywhere near the 'next generation' if and when it ever comes if I have anything to say about it."

Clara mentally kicked herself as her greatest fear as to why she was there was now finally proven to be right. They wanted her because her genes still contained the potential to create another powerful telepath like herself, and they wanted to create an Alura of their own to serve as their weapon in order to do who knows what for them.

"Your attempts to rewire the Vortex Manipulator are futile. There is no escape," The voice said.

"Well, we'll just have to see about that now, won't we? I noticed that you're not sending anymore of your boys in the fancy suits in here to bother me. What's the matter? Are the rest of you too afraid to fight a poor, defenseless girl like me?" Clara asked with an evil grin.

"You are never defenseless, Alura Selene, and you never have been either with or without your powers. You are a Time Lady of the first rank with the highest intelligence and mental development ever recorded for your species. You are far too dangerous to ever be taken for granted. Your future progeny will likely be even more deadly than you because the children are sometimes much stronger and even more powerful than the parents are, and that is why we cannot allow you to remain free," The voice said.

"Well, you don't have anything to say about it do you? Now when I can just do this," Clara said with a triumphant grin as she finally activated the now fully reconfigured Vortex Manipulator on her arm.

She started to disappear right away but screamed in agony even as she did so. She was already unconscious as she left the ship.

"For all of her intelligence, she did not anticipate that we would implant a shocking device in the Manipulator's systems that would attack anyone but Cobb who tried to use it. Just as we had hoped that it would, keeping her talking while she worked on it distracted her just enough to keep her from noticing it. Now we only need to track her down and find her before she wakes up, and she will be ours to do with as we will," The voice who had been speaking to Clara said to the others with him.

As Clara's mysterious kidnappers set out to find her, Count Grendel meanwhile was searching for a very different target as he arrived on Earth in disguise. He wanted revenge on more than just the Doctor after all. He also wanted to do something to get back at the Time Lady who had been instrumental in helping to lose him the throne of Tara: Romana.

It didn't take Grendel long to use the information, which his and Cobb's new 'partners' gave him in exchange for his help, about Romana's whereabouts and her current human identity of Tish Jones to track her down. He smiled as he went to her home and found her standing outside of it talking with a woman who he guessed must be her human sister, Martha. They were just about to go inside the house.

Luckily Grendel was in disguise so that Romana wouldn't recognize him. She'd never see through it in time to save herself he thought to himself smugly.

He now walked up to her and began his plan to kidnap her as he said, "Excuse me but are you Tish Jones?"

Tish looked at him in surprise as she said, "Yes, that's me. Who are you?"

"My name is Wulf. B. O. Wulf to be exact. I'm a lawyer and I've come to represent you in a lawsuit against the government for what happened to you and your family during The Year That Never Was. Just because no one remembers it doesn't mean that it didn't happen and that you shouldn't receive a massive payment for the suffering that you had to go through during it," Grendel said.

He had to admit that this cover story he had come up with was brilliant. He had thought it up after reading through all of the information that his partners gave him about Tish's life. It seemed that they somehow knew everything about her even about a year that no one else could remember. Whoever they were they must have been watching the Doctor's friends for years. He had no idea why they would do that unless they hated the Doctor as much as he did which only made him like them even more since they then had something in common.

"If you want to participate in this suit against the government, you'll have to sign some papers. If you'll just let me inside your home, I can have you sign them and be in and out before you know it," Grendel said.

"Sure, that sounds good," Tish said as she went to open her front door.

"It does?" Martha asked in surprise as she had thought from the look on Tish's face that she found this man just as suspicious as she did.

"Oh, yes it really does," Tish said as she gave Martha a wink.

Martha had no idea what was going on but she went along with Tish since she obviously knew something that she didn't. As Tish opened her front door, she quickly grabbed something from inside the house and pointed it at Grendel.

"Martha, put your hands over your ears!" Tish yelled.

Before Grendel could comprehend what was going on, Tish used her sonic screwdriver to bombard him with an ear-shattering wave of sound that instantly made him scream out in pain. Martha was wincing as she heard it quite loud and clear even with her hands covering her ears and standing behind Tish so she could easily sympathize with the howling Grendel who was being quickly driven to his knees by the full blast of it.

Grendel knew that he had only moments left before Romana completely knocked him out with her attack so he did the only thing that he could. He teleported back to his hideout on Tara as quickly as possible in order to escape her.

Tish smiled as she said, "I bet that'll make him think twice before he messes with me again. I'll have to warn the Doctor about him if I can find him."

"Who was that?" Martha said in a loud voice because she still couldn't hear well.

Tish looked at her apologetically as she said, "Sorry, Martha. The effect isn't permanent. You'll be able to hear fine in a few minutes. That was an old enemy of mine from my first days of traveling with the Doctor. His name is Count Grendel. He must have wanted revenge on me and thought that he could come here in disguise and kidnap me. Apparently he forgot about the fact that there's one very distinguishing feature of his that he couldn't hide if he tried, and I was hardly likely to forget about that."

Martha smiled as she said, "Oh, you mean his huge . . ."

Both sisters giggled as Martha pointed to a part of her face and Tish nodded as she said, "Yep, that's it alright. It even makes the Doctor's chin look normal. Come on inside and rest for a few minutes until your hearing's alright, Martha. He's not going to be bothering us again anytime soon," Tish said with a grin.

Martha smiled as she decided that there were definite advantages to her sister being a Time Lady.

Meanwhile Grendel sighed in relief as he finally returned home. Then he realized that he wasn't quite out of trouble just yet as he sensed someone behind him and quickly whirled around to confront them. This didn't help him much though because as soon as he did so he found himself on the receiving end of a massive punch to the jaw!

As an already near deafened Grendel rubbed his jaw and glared at his newest attacker, they said to him, "I finally found you at last. Now it's time for you to talk."

Even as Grendel was being grilled, the Doctor was currently conducting his own search for him on the planet Tara unaware of any of this happening. He had been systemically tracking down each and every one of Count Grendel's old henchmen or anyone who ever even knew him since he had arrived on the planet. The Doctor working together with the Master had then used the latter Time Lord's considerable skills at hypnotism to make all of these people talk.

So far though they hadn't found one clue as to where Count Grendel had gone to or about what he was up to. None of his former associates knew a thing no matter how hard the Master interrogated them.

Luckily for them, however, Jenny was much better at searching for people than they were. She had been looking for her father for her entire life with little or no clues to follow up on after all so she had gotten to be quite the expert at it.

Therefore it was no surprise at all that both Time Lords were taken completely off guard when they came back to the TARDIS with a dejected look on their faces only to find Jenny sitting in the Captain's Chair with a smug superior look of triumph on her face.

"What did you find?" The Doctor asked knowing right away what that look meant as he had seen it too many times on his own face.

"Well, I just asked around and found out that several of the android makers of this planet had received an extra amount of business lately. It didn't amount to much if you just asked them about it individually because someone was trying to cover their tracks and not get all of the androids in one place so they had gone to many different android manufacturers and used different names to order them with. I quickly figured out that the people ordering all of these new androids were the same person though because there was one thing that all of these buyers had in common. Despite all of them having different appearances they all had a huge nose the size of a planet just like Count Grendel. What are the odds of so many people on this planet all having the same kind of nose? Once I figured out that Grendel was buying all the extra androids I found that all of the people with large noses had given the same address to the different buyers. I then went to that address and guess what I found!" Jenny said proudly.

Then she jumped down from the chair and pointed to a tied up Grendel who was sitting on the floor behind it. Grendel burned holes in all of them as he glared at them with a handkerchief stuffed in his mouth.

"What did he say?" the Doctor asked eagerly.

"I hope that he didn't say anything yet. I really want a chance to get the truth out of him my way," the Master said with an evil smile.

"Sorry to disappoint you, Kosch, but he already told me what I needed to know just before you two got here after I searched her brain with my own telepathic abilities just like you showed me how to do, Dad. He was working with Cobb. Cobb has Clara and he gave me the exact coordinates that he took her to. It seems that he had to go there once to meet with Cobb's partners in person to convince them that he really was willing to work with them and wasn't one of your friends. I've already entered the coordinates in the TARDIS, and we can go as soon as you're ready, Dad," Jenny said.

"What did these partners of Cobb's look like?" the Doctor asked curiously.

"Who cares? Let's just go now and get Alura back," the Master said impatiently.

"I like to know what I'm getting into before I go charging into a situation blind," the Doctor protested.

"Since when?" the Master said.

"Since Clara's life is at stake," the Doctor said shutting him up quickly.

Jenny's smile faded as he said, "That's the one thing that made me hesitate to go by myself which I almost started to do. Cobb doesn't remember what they look like or anything about them at all whatsoever. He thinks that they must have hypnotized him to forget them somehow."

"Oh, no!" the Doctor said as he had a sinking feeling that he knew exactly who had Clara now.

"What is it? Who has her?" the Master asked.

"They're some of the most insidious enemies that I've ever fought in any of my lives. If they have her, then we have to get her away from them as soon as possible," the Doctor said as he immediately dematerialized the TARDIS in order to go after Clara.

Clara meanwhile woke up near what she could feel was an open rift in time and tried to stand up. She was too weak though and started to fall over. Before she could hit the ground however, a strong pair of arms instantly caught her.

She started to struggle to free herself from them at first fearing that the aliens might have found her already. Then when she saw the face of the man holding her she soon decided that she no longer wanted to.

"Hello," Clara said as she smiled sweetly at him.

"Hello," The man said as he flirted with her.

"I'm Clara Oswald and you are?" Clara asked.

"Captain Jack Harkness. Pleased to meet you, Clara," Jack said as he helped move her inside of Torchwood while she continued to smile at him.

Nearby the Moment and Merry watched as Merry asked, "So Mum is safe now?"

"She is for the moment anyway. At least she's with someone who can help her now anyway. I'm not supposed to interfere, Merry, but I figure that it was alright if I gave my old friend Jack a call and told him to wait outside for me to show up. I mean if he happened to see Clara at the same time as he's waiting for me then it's really not my fault if he helps her after that is it? Future Jack did tell me that he met Clara after all so it's not contradicting anything," The Moment said with a grin.

"You're sneaky, Aunt Rose. I like that," Merry said approvingly.

The Moment started to contradict her about her name but decided not to. If she wanted to call her Rose, then she was alright with it she supposed even though that wasn't really who she was.

Meanwhile back on the ship that Clara had just left, the Doctor materialized the TARDIS to find himself watching several very familiar aliens on the monitor. They were looking at the TARDIS in surprise as they no doubt thought that the Doctor would never find them.

"I remember them! I didn't before but I do now for some reason. I came across some of them while trying to find you. They made me forget them so that I couldn't warn you about them. They really hated you with a passion," Jenny said.

"Who are they? Why would they hate you so much for, Doctor? Well, besides the obvious reasons of course," the Master asked.

The Doctor frowned at him as he said, "I didn't understand it for a long time, but I do now after piecing together a lot of information that I learned about them from different sources including the Moment. They hate me because they thought that I was destined to bring back the Time Lords at Trenzalore when I went there to die. They wanted to kill me in order to stop that. It looks like that whole future has been undone though somehow by you, Jenny, since you brought them back ahead of schedule. I don't know why they would still hate me now after that though."

He was surprised to find a member of the Silence answer him through his monitor as he said, "We will use Alura to create a child with such power that they will enable Madame Kovarian to finally wrestle control of the Papal Mainframe away from that pretender who always coddled you, Tasha Lem. Kovarian is the only rightful Mother Superious, and she will take the Church into a new and glorious golden age. No one will stop us this time, Doctor. Not even you."

Then to the Doctor's complete shock, three Silents suddenly broke into the TARDIS and began attacking the three Time Lords with electrical bursts from their fingertips!

"Silence will still fall!" The Silents shouted in unison as the Time Lords screamed in pain.

Next: It's the Doctor, the Master, and Jenny versus the renegade Silents who still serve Kovarian while Clara and Jack have to deal with some Silents of their own who have come after her. It's a good thing that Martha and Tish show up to help them after getting a call to meet the Moment there isn't it? Also what was Cobb promised by the Silence in order to get him to work with them anyway and did he receive it?