CHAPTER 42
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As Donna looked at the dead woman with tears in her eyes, Dorothy walked up to the woman and touched her with a glowing hand. The woman began to breathe again and looked up at the Wolves with a frightened expression on her face.
Amanda let out a gasp of surprise. She was constantly around vampires of course, but to actually see someone come back from the dead was a new and shocking thing to her. She was glad that the woman was alright though.
"Is she a vampire?" Amanda asked.
Dorothy smiled and shook her head as she said, "No, I don't do vampires. I just rebooted her I guess you could say. It's a little trick that my Mum taught me when I was still running around in that black jacket. Maybe I should start wearing that again. It was pretty brill. I wonder if it would still fit. I'm getting as bad as the Professor with the rambling. Anyway, I just brought her back as a normal human. No special powers or anything."
"Oh," Amanda said as if she was disappointed.
Dorothy laughed as she said, "You're the only little girl I know who's disappointed that another vampire isn't about to show up."
"Vampires are cool," Amanda simply said.
"She may be a bit biased," Katherine said with a grin.
"Who are you people?" the woman who had come back to life asked.
"We're no one important. Why don't you just go home and enjoy your life?" Dorothy said gently.
The woman nodded and then turned around as she said to Dorothy in an emotional voice, "Thank you! I don't know how you did that but thank you!"
"No problem. It wasn't your time anyway. You've still got a couple of decades left. Have a good life. Go ahead and marry that boy you keep being all coy around," Dorothy said.
"How did you - ? Never mind. It's best not to question it I guess. Thank you again! Good bye!" the woman said as she left.
"How did you know all of that?" Amanda asked in amazement.
"Ancient Vortex user secret!" was all that Dorothy said as she giggled.
"Oh, very good! You love playing the hero, don't you?" Kane said to Dorothy as he suddenly appeared again.
"It's better than being a rotten scumbag any day of the week," Dorothy shot back.
"Who are you?" Donna asked.
"I am Kane, the last of the Proamonians," Kane said.
"You died though. So how is it that you're back running around this place again? I don't believe that you're a ghost despite what Glitz says," Donna said.
"Don't anger him. He was bad enough when he was alive," Glitz said.
Donna scanned Kane with her sonic screwdriver as she said, "Oi! Enough with the ghost talk, Glitz! He's not a ghost. He's not even the real Kane."
"Well, who is he then?" Glitz asked in dismay.
Kane laughed as he suddenly transformed into a woman. The woman looked familiar to Dorothy as if she had seen her somewhere before. She couldn't quite place her face though.
"He's a girl? I'm so confused. I need an aspirin. I'm starting to get a bloody headache," Glitz said as he put his hands on his head.
The woman laughed as she said, "My name is Xana. You were correct when you said that I was a hologram, K'anpo Rimpoche. I am all that is left of Kane's lover, Xana. I committed suicide in order to escape being captured for the crimes that I committed along with Kane back on Proamon. Before I killed myself though, I had discovered a way to transfer my consciousness into Proamon's computer network at the moment of my death. Once there I bided my time until Iceworld was created to be Kane's prison, and then I transferred myself into its computer. Inside Iceworld though, I started to lose control of myself. I had overreached myself and spread my consciousness too far and too wide as I tried to take over Iceworld and cause it to take off so that I could free Kane from his exile. I soon stopped being able to even think or function entirely, and I slipped into a dreamlike state that I became trapped in. I would still be in that state even now if not for the intervention of another."
"How did she do that trick with the freezing then if she's a bloomin' hologram?" Glitz asked.
"She has control over all of Iceworld now just like she always wanted apparently including its cryogenic generators that keep parts of the ship frozen and at a low temperature. She was able to redirect their systems to instantly freeze the area around that woman that she attacked earlier," K'anpo reasoned.
"Correct. I wanted to drive everyone off of Iceworld so that I could fully claim it as my own. I used Kane's image in order to accomplish that since I knew that so many here were still afraid of him," Xana said.
"Why do you want this old dump though?" Dorothy asked.
Glitz glared at her as Dorothy quickly added, "No offense. It's a nice dump as far as it goes."
"Same old Ace! Always telling everything like it is," Mel said with a laugh.
"I don't want it. My generous benefactor has requested that I take it away from all of you. They brought me back to full consciousness so that is the least that I can do to repay them," Xana said.
"The answer to one question leads to even more questions. I love it," Ileana said.
"Yeah, she's all about being cryptic, isn't she?" Donna said.
"Leave Iceworld now or I'll turn this place into your tomb. I can slowly lower the temperature on this ship until I've made it too cold for even a Time Lord to exist in," Xana threatened.
"Not too cold for a vampire though. I can easily survive," Ileana said.
"True enough but I've been watching you. You care about the others. You don't want them to die. Especially the child," Xana said.
She began to move toward Amanda who hid behind Katherine in fear. Xana gestured at Katherine and Amanda, and they both began to be covered in ice.
"No!" Katherine shouted in fear as she tried to cover Amanda with her own body to protect her from the cold.
"Let her be cast far and wide throughout this technological savanna this lifeless shade whose name is Xana," Lilith said as she pointed at Xana.
"Nice try. It doesn't seem to work on me though. It's probably because I'm only bits of data in a computer somewhere," Xana said.
"You're still projecting your image as a hologram though. Holograms are made of light, and light can be reflected," Michelle said.
She pointed at Xana as her eyes became opaque, and Xana screamed in anger as her image was broken up and spread throughout Iceworld like the pieces of a shattered mirror. For the moment, Xana's image had lost cohesion. Only for the moment though.
"She probably won't be gone long. We need to erase her from the computer somehow," Michelle said.
"It's a good thing that you have an expert on computers around then, isn't it?" Mel said as she raced to a nearby computer terminal.
She began to quickly search throughout Iceworld's computer network for any trace of Xana's consciousness. Meanwhile the others kept watch nearby for the hologram's inevitable return.
"Oh, good show. Maybe you will manage to find me before I kill all of you, but you have to ask yourself something. Do you feel lucky? Do you?" Xana's voice said as it came from all of the ship's communications devices around them.
"What the?! She's been trapped in this ship for millennia. How does she know anything about old movies?" Donna said in surprise.
"I, uh, may have put a few old movies on the ship's computer so that I could watch them from time to time," K'anpo admitted.
"Really, Wise Man? I didn't take you for the type to watch Dirty Harry movies," Donna said with a grin.
"Oh, he loves all of that tough guy stuff. He fancies himself a real man's man," Mel said with a chuckle as she continued to work away on the terminal.
"I'm plenty tough," K'anpo said with a frown on his face.
"That whining is starting to sound familiar to me. You know I can really tell that you taught the Doctor. He must have learned how to act like a kid from you too," Donna joked.
"Why are you not taking this seriously? I am still in control of this ship even though at the moment I have no visible form. I can still open up every airlock on this ship at once and kill everyone onboard!" Xana threatened.
"Why don't you then? What are you waiting on, Ice Girl?" Donna challenged her.
"She's bluffing. She's lost control of almost everything now thanks to Mel's hacking. She wants you to be too busy thinking about her next attack to realize that though," Lauren said as she suddenly appeared behind the Wolves.
"It's you again. Who are you?" Donna demanded.
"I'm a f-f-friend," Lauren said as she began to stutter nervously.
"Yeah, you've said that before, Stalker Lady. I'm not buying it though. Who are you? Are you working with Xana? Are you the one that helped her?" Donna said in an angry tone.
"No. I would never hurt you," Lauren said looking hurt.
"Why is that then?" Donna shouted.
Xana audibly sighed in annoyance throughout every speaker on the ship as she said, "If it will stop this bothersome display of hysterics, I'll tell you. It's obvious to someone of my intellect after all. Of course I can do an instant genetic scan of everyone on this ship so that helps."
"Genetic?" Donna asked as she began to really see Lauren for the first time now.
She could see now that Lauren had the same color of hair as hers and some of her facial features were the same. She gasped in a combination of shock and joy.
"Hello, Mum," Lauren said with a huge smile.
The two redheads embraced as Donna began to cry. She was going to be a mum!
"Oh, how touching! If I had a stomach, I'd probably be sick right now all over my non-existent shoes," Xana said sarcastically.
"I'll make you sick alright, you jumped-up little computer virus!" Mel said as she started up her own version of an antivirus program to drive her consciousness out of all of Iceworld's systems.
"No! I'm not a program. I'm alive!" Xana protested.
"Not anymore you're not. You died a long time ago. All that's left of you is a copy of your brainwaves left in this ship. You are just a program now like it or not, and your time has come to an end. It's time for you to go!" Lauren said in a strong voice.
"No! Please!" Xana shouted in fear all around them.
"I'm sorry," Lauren said in a saddened tone.
"I am too. I just wanted to live again. She promised me a new life. She said I could . . . ," Xana said before she suddenly stopped talking.
"She's been wiped out of all of the ship's computers. Now I'm the one who feels sick. I feel like a killer," Mel said sadly.
"She died a long time ago, Mel. It wasn't really her," K'anpo said softly as he put his arms around Mel in comfort.
Donna could see that Lauren was devastated by what had just happened and was proud of her for that. She had a good heart.
"Are you alright, Strawberry?" Donna asked Lauren.
Lauren began to laugh despite her sad mood as she said, "I'm fine."
Her mother would call her that in the future too whenever she knew that she was upset about something. Maybe this was where it had all started.
"Who did this though? We never got an answer to that. Who really wanted Iceworld and why?" Dorothy asked.
She already knew of course, but she couldn't say. She felt that it was her duty to keep those questions in everyone's mind though. It was her way of hinting at something larger going on to the others without actually coming out and saying it. Sometimes it wasn't too fun knowing the future especially when you could do nothing to change it.
"I guess we'll find out in the future. Right now all that I care about concerning the future is right here. I'm so glad to meet you. You've made me feel better than I have in a while, Strawberry," Donna said to Lauren.
"That's why I came. I knew you'd be feeling down, and I just wanted to try and cheer you up somehow. I didn't mean for you to find out who I was though. I hope that I didn't accidentally mess anything up," Lauren said in a worried voice.
A young woman with curly blonde hair suddenly appeared out of nowhere wearing a Vortex Manipulator and shook her head at the scene in front of her. She should have known that Lauren would get into trouble.
"I knew it! I can't leave you in the past for five minutes without you revealing yourself to your mum. It's lucky for you that it seems like so far that nothing's been changed about the future. You'd better leave now before you wind up erasing yourself from history," the mysterious blonde woman said.
"Just a minute, okay? I just want to say good bye," Lauren said.
"Hurry up, will you? Mum's gonna kill me if she finds out. This is a very big spoiler after all," the blonde said.
"I said cool it, Dot!" Lauren shouted.
"Oh, great! Now you've told them my name too! Good work, Lauren!" Dorothy "Dot" Noble said with an anguished groan.
"Everything's fine, Dot," Dorothy McShane said as she smiled at her.
"Are you sure?" Dot asked.
"Would I risk making your mum mad?" Dorothy McShane asked.
"No, nobody with any sense would. Not if they didn't want to have a blaster shoved up their nose," Dot agreed.
"Well, I'm pretty sure who her mum is now. I'd like to ask you who your Dad is but I know better than that," Donna said as she stroked Lauren's hair.
Lauren smiled at her display of affection as she said, "I wish that I could tell you but I c-c-can't."
"What's with all of the stuttering? Are you alright? You don't have to be nervous around me," Donna said with concern.
"No, I'm okay. I think that kind of thing just runs in my family," Lauren said with a mischievous grin on her face.
Donna smiled as she realized that her daughter was giving her a clue about her father. She kissed her forehead and gave her one last hug as she said, "I knew that you'd be a clever girl. Just like your mum. Go ahead, Strawberry. Go home. I certainly don't want to risk losing you. It's funny. I don't even really know you yet, and I already love you. You need to go now or I'll never let you go."
"I love you, Mum. Don't worry. You'll be seeing me again someday. I guarantee it," Lauren said as she kissed Donna's cheek.
Lauren reluctantly pulled herself away from her mother. She didn't want to leave her because she didn't want her to be upset like she was when she first came here. Then she saw Donna's face and realized that wasn't going to be a problem anymore. She had given her mother the hope that she needed to go on until she found her dad again. If she remembered her family history correctly, that should be soon now.
"That was smooth what you did with the stuttering. You are pretty smart sometimes. That's why I can't figure out why you can be so thick at other times. You're still my best friend though," Dot said as she hugged Lauren.
"Oh, good! I was really worried about that for a minute. I thought for a minute there that I was going to have to find a new much nicer friend. That would have been terrible," Lauren said sarcastically.
"You have quite a mouth on you, Lauren. You'd better be glad that I love you so much, or I'd pound you one," Dot said with a grin as she touched the controls on her Vortex Manipulator.
The two of them vanished then as they returned to the future. Dorothy sighed in relief. The way those two were giving out spoilers it was a wonder that they didn't both erase themselves from existence.
Donna continued to smile as she wondered if Lauren's father could really be who she thought it was. Apparently, he really had existed after all. She couldn't help but think about how long she would have to wait before she met him again.
She looked forward to it.
Meanwhile a silent observer to the whole situation finally said from the safety of her other dimensional realm, "What is it with those people and the future children anyway? Everywhere I look, there are future kids popping up. Enjoy them while you can people! Once I get through, there won't be any future for any of you! Not a pleasant one anyway."
"You're such an optimistic cheerful kind of gal, aren't you? I'm so glad to be on your side. You really help bring me up," Cassandra O'Brien said.
"Zip it unless you would like to go back to being a human trampoline again! I'm going to get that ship sooner or later no matter what the so-called Bad Wolves do about it. What kind of a name is that for a group anyway? It sounds like a high school football team," the Black Guardian said with a smirk.
"You really do hate Rose Tyler, don't you? You're worse than me," Cassandra said with a smile.
Cassandra knew that the Black Guardian would try to take over Iceworld again soon. It was only a matter of time. It was too important to her ultimate plan to just let it go now.
Next: Why is Donna's TARDIS acting so oddly lately? It's almost as if it's developed a personality of its own. Could Xana be still around after all? Also the Wolves get called out onto a case involving vampires. One of them proves to be very familiar to Alina as a ghost from her past comes back to haunt her.