CHAPTER 35
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Skaren, the son of the leader of the Zygons, had managed to get to safety by escaping in his ship just before the invaders arrived and started to kill everyone on the planet that he was on. These invaders had been awakened from hibernation by a Zygon survey ship looking for new planets to add to their territory. Now they were sweeping across every world that the Zygons lived on and seeking to replace them as the dominant life forms on them.
It wouldn't end there either. Once the Zygons had all fallen, then the invaders would slowly spread out across the rest of the universe next. They would destroy everything and everyone in their path unless someone stopped them.
Skaren could only think of one person who he knew for sure might be able to help his people before it was too late. These creatures had been stopped by the Time Lords before, and he was sure that he would need a Time Lord to stop them again. He needed to find his friend, Lily.
As he was escaping, the invaders used one of their stolen Zygon ships to fire on him over and over again and heavily damaged his ship. He quickly found that the Time Ring that Lily had given him no longer worked because the connections between it and his ship had been damaged. He couldn't get away from them that way now. He would have to try his best to escape them by himself with some fancy flying.
He flew faster and quicker than he had ever dared to try before and pushed his ship to its limits. The ship was threatening to come apart at any moment now from all of the pressure and strain that he was putting it under in his desperate attempt to escape from the enemy forces. The ship started to fall to pieces around him at last, and he was convinced that this was the end.
In a last ditch effort to preserve himself, he touched the Time Ring and tried to use it to teleport just himself to Lily's TARDIS. Something was wrong though. It wasn't working. He kept trying over and over again to teleport out of there but to no avail. Somehow the Time Ring had been damaged in the attack and was no longer working.
He sat down on the deck still holding the Ring in his hands and knew that he didn't have much longer to live. The ship was seconds away from blowing apart around him. His last thoughts were of the person that he wished that he could say good bye to the most. He met his end with a smile on his face as his ship exploded in a massive fireball.
Back on Earth in 1890, Holly Samuels was going through test papers grading them for the currently traveling Lily when she felt a sudden shiver go down her spine. She felt immediately like something terrible had happened, but she had no idea what it could be. She just knew that it felt like someone that she cared about was in danger. She was usually right in her feelings, and she didn't think that she was wrong this time.
She pulled out the cell phone from its secret hiding place inside of Lily's desk and called Lily with it. She had gotten much better at this since the last time that she had tried using it. She was sure that she had mastered how to use it now. She called Lily on the phone and waited for her to answer with a growing sense of dread.
When Lily picked up her phone in the TARDIS and answered it, Holly immediately started talking so quickly that the Time Lady could barely understand her as she said, "Lily, are you alright? Is everyone else there alright? Is anything wrong? I had a bad feeling just a minute ago that something was wrong."
"Calm down, Holly. What is it? Has something happened? Speak slowly now so that people who don't have ultrasonic hearing can understand you," Lily said in a normal voice as she tried hard not to laugh at Holly's high pitched nervous voice. She knew that Holly was very upset, or she wouldn't even be calling her.
"I had a feeling that something terrible had just happened a minute ago. Is everyone there alright?" Holly said at a normal pace and in a calmer tone.
"We're all fine, Holly. That feeling that you just had was based on nothing but nerves I'm sure," Lily reassured her.
"No, it wasn't. I've had bad feelings like that before whenever something terrible happened to someone that I cared about," Holly insisted.
"It's always come true before?" Lily asked as she started to take Holly more seriously.
"Yes, over ninety percent of the time at least," Holly confirmed.
"Yes, you have been very accurate in the past, haven't you?" Lily said in an odd tone of voice.
"You're doing that thing that you do when you see the past, aren't you?" Holly asked, referring to the ability of all Time Lords to see the past, present and all possible futures at the same time.
"Yes, I am. I know that that bothers you, but I had to do it in order to see whether you actually have psychic abilities or not. It appears that you do. You've had them since birth due to an extra synaptic engram in your brain," Lily said.
"So I am psychic?" Holly asked. She was both unsurprised and yet completely taken aback at the same time to actually have it confirmed at last.
"Yes. You can see the possible future just like I can and apparently with a great deal of accuracy. Wait there, Holly. I'm coming in a minute. I want to investigate this feeling of yours personally," Lily said.
Holly hung up the phone and waited for the sound of the TARDIS to arrive. She suddenly saw something materializing before her, but it wasn't Lily's TARDIS. She screamed as she saw Skaren appear out of thin air, covered in burns, and fall at her feet unconscious.
She bent over him and shook him in an attempt to wake him up but with no success. She could see that he was holding onto the Time Ring that Lily had given him and realized that it must have brought him here somehow. She wasn't sure how exactly because she remembered Lily saying that it was only supposed to bring him to wherever Lily's TARDIS happened to be at that moment.
Lily's TARDIS materialized in the next moment, and she came out of it to see Skaren lying there badly burned. She pulled a portable medical scanning device of her own creation out of her TARDIS and proceeded to scan the fallen Zygon with it.
"He's going to be alright, but he has several severe burns that need immediate medical attention before they become infected. Help me carry him into the TARDIS," Lily said.
Holly helped her to pick Skaren up, and they took him to Lily's medical bay where they hooked him up to a machine that slowly started to heal his burns. Skaren was completely healed in a matter of minutes and woke up feeling fully refreshed.
"Holly!" Skaren shouted in joy and hugged her tightly.
"What happened, Skaren?" Holly asked as she hugged him back. She was relieved that he was okay.
"All of our worlds are coming under attack by a horrifying invader that was awakened from hibernation by accident. They're slaughtering my people left and right and taking over all of our territories. You have to help us, Lily," Skaren said in desperation.
"You know that I will if I can," Lily said.
"How did you get the Time Ring to bring you here? I thought that it only brought you to Lily's TARDIS," Holly asked.
"I don't know. It wouldn't work because it was hit by enemy weapons fire along with the rest of my ship. I kept trying and trying to get it to work, but it refused to. I just gave up and was holding on to it waiting to die as my ship exploded. I . . ." Skaren said and stopped with a look of what on a human could be interpreted as embarrassment.
"What is it?" Holly asked.
"Nothing. I'm fine," Skaren said.
Lily bent over him and whispered, "The Time Ring managed to latch onto your thoughts of Holly and brought you here safely despite my programming it to only follow my TARDIS. It was a safety program that kicked in in order to save its user from imminent death once it was too damaged to function as it normally would. I insisted that they put that in this particular model a long time ago when we were first designing them. Aren't you glad?"
Skaren looked at her in surprise and whispered back, "How did you know that I was thinking about her?"
"You thought that you were dying. Who else would it be?" Lily whispered back with a big smile on her face.
Skaren just smiled back and shook his head. It didn't seem to matter how long he had known Lily she continued to surprise him every time that he met her.
"What were you two talking about? Skaren's going to be alright, isn't he?" Holly asked concerned.
"He's going to be fine. I was just explaining to him how the Time Ring saved him is all," Lily said as she told most of the truth.
"Who was it that attacked you?" Holly asked as she became angry at the thought of what had almost happened to him.
"They're an old enemy of the Time Lords. The Time Lords were thought to have wiped them out a long time ago during the Dark Times but apparently some of them survived and went into hibernation. They're called the Racnoss," Skaren said.
Lily looked at him in horror. If the Racnoss had returned, then she was going to need to go back and get her companions from the present. She would need their help if she was going to save the Zygons from being overrun by them. She had to stop them now before they spread any further and endangered the whole universe.
Next: Lily gathers together her friends and family as she prepares to go to war with the lost colony of the Racnoss to save the Zygons.