CHAPTER 55
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I woke up from the nap that the so-called Caretaker put me in with his staser to find myself chained to a hospital bed with incredibly thick chains made out of the living metal validium and a huge tube in my arm that led to a bag filled with my blood. I knew that all of this wasn't just about the Doctor, and this proved it to me beyond a shadow of a doubt. If it had really been about the Doctor, then why go after me? If he had really wanted to capture the Doctor, he would have picked almost anyone besides me to go after in order to bring him here.
Not that anything that this man had said before was the truth anyway. I'm not going to give anything away this early in the chapter, but everything that he had said about himself before was a lie. I mean come on. It was obvious that he was trying to give the Doctor a false impression about himself so that he wouldn't know who he was really dealing with until it was too late. In other words, he was using me to lead the Doctor into a trap.
That wasn't his only reason for all of this though.
"So you've decided to join the land of the living at last. Welcome to my little mini hospital that I installed back here behind the museum just for you," the Caretaker said.
"You wanted my blood all along, didn't you? Getting the Doctor is just a nice little bonus, isn't it?" I accused him.
"Destroying the Doctor and taking his remaining lives is never just a side goal. It is always the main goal to me. Learning the secret of your immortality, however, is coming in a close second today," the Caretaker said.
"If you give yourself my blood, you may not like the results. The serum that Rassilon gave me only worked on me and him, remember? Odds are that it won't work on you, and it will probably do something horrible to you instead," I said.
"I commend you for your concern, but rest assured that I would never try such a thing on myself without doing some extensive testing on it first," the Caretaker replied with a dark smile.
I didn't like the sound of those words. They chilled me to the core as I realized now just why he was bringing the Doctor here. He was going to use him as a guinea pig. He wanted to test my blood on him first.
That wasn't the reason it had to specifically be the Doctor that he tested it on of course. That will be explained later.
Hey, don't get mad at me! I'd gladly tell you right now. It's all Prime's idea. He thinks that he's stretching out the suspense this way.
"Where are Robin and the Brigadier?" I asked.
"There's no need to worry about them. They're safely tied up outside. They will be the first thing that the Doctor sees when he arrives here. They're the perfect bait for my trap for him. He always did have to play the hero after all and rescue people. This time it will be his undoing," the Caretaker said as he laughed.
"I never truly hated you before, but now I'm going to have to change my opinion," I said.
"It doesn't matter what you think about me now, Persephone. You're nothing more than bait yourself. You're right that you're not the right person to bring the Doctor here. You will bring me someone else though," the Caretaker said.
"Rose," I realized in fear.
"She's finally got it. Give her a gold star. No, wait! That was Adric. What an annoying brat he was!" the Caretaker said.
"You're not the man that I know. I can't stand him, but he would never say something like that," I said.
"Will wonders never cease? You're actually defending him? I never thought that I'd see the day," the Caretaker said with a chuckle.
"Me either. I guess the impossible can happen sometimes," Rose said as she suddenly appeared behind him in a burst of golden light.
"Rose, it's a trap!" I shouted.
"Well, I knew that already, Mum. I also know who's behind all of this. That little story that you let the UNIT soldiers overhear didn't fool me for a minute. The whole twisted performance was so over the top that it had your name written all over it," Rose said to the Caretaker as her eyes bored into his when he turned around to face her.
"I knew that I wouldn't be able to fool you. You always know me no matter what, don't you?" the Caretaker said.
"Hello, Theta. This is a nice little set up that you've got here. You hid this demented monument to your obsession with the Doctor on the smallest asteroid that you could find in the middle of nowhere so that no one would ever be able to find you unless you wanted them to. You knew better than anyone that the Doctor would be able to track you even here though if you used a transmat. He's very good at following their energy signatures with the sonic screwdriver," Rose said.
"Using that name won't score you any points with me, Arkytior. I am not your Theta in any way or form or else I would never be able to do this," the man who I'm sure that you've all figured out by now was really the Valeyard said.
Surprised? I was dying to tell you myself. Prime had to have his dramatic tension though. As if this whole situation wasn't tense enough!
Now you know why he wanted to test my blood on the Doctor. He wanted to see what would happen to him if he used it on himself by testing it on the Doctor first since he is the Doctor.
He quickly pushed a switch on a small handheld remote that he had been concealing in the palm of his hand up until that point, and a small cage fell down over Rose. Energy lit up the cage and enveloped Rose in its glow.
"I'm afraid that I'm going to have to steal some of your power, Ari. I need to in order to analyze it so that I can reproduce it for myself. You don't mind, do you?" the Valeyard said with malevolent laughter.
"I'm afraid I do, yeah. It's a good thing that I'm not really here then. I know you too well to just show myself to you so openly like this," Rose said before she vanished.
"What?" the Valeyard said in surprise.
Suddenly Rose appeared behind him and blasted him with a bolt of Vortex Energy. He smiled as he said, "That doesn't work on me. I'm wearing a Vortex Shield that automatically blocks your power from reaching me."
Another Rose suddenly appeared in front of him and punched him in the jaw with one fist while she simultaneously punched him in the stomach with the other. The Valeyard fell over like a sack of potatoes as the Doctor finally entered the room.
That's my girl! If only she had done that to the real one before she married him.
"It didn't block that though, did it? Where is everyone getting those things these days anyway? If this keeps up, I'm going to have to brush up on my old Martian fighting techniques!" Rose said with a huge smile on her face.
"You looked like you were enjoying that way too much. Should I be concerned?" the Doctor asked with a grin.
"No. I think you're okay as long as you don't go kidnapping my mother and trying to steal some of my power," both Roses said at once.
"Okay. Can I still make fun of your mother though? I'd really hate to give that up," the Doctor said.
"I don't really approve of it, but it just wouldn't be you if you didn't," the Rose who had knocked the Valeyard to the ground said as the other Rose disappeared.
"What's with all of the multiple yous?" I asked out of curiosity as Rose removed the validium chains from around me with a snap of her fingers.
"It's a new power of mine that I haven't gotten to really use much since I've gotten it thanks to the Silence. Now though I can finally cut loose at last. I can create copies of myself that I can use to do anything that I can do, but they're not really me. It's a little trick I learned from the Arkytior from the previous universe, Ishtar," Rose explained.
"I'm really going to have to meet this friend of yours someday. Everyone seems to have met her but me. Even Robin met her," I said a little peeved.
"She's basically me in almost every way. It's a little creepy sometimes," Rose said.
"I can tell the difference. She doesn't have the part of you that's Rose. Apparently she never became Rose in her reality," the Doctor said.
"I don't think that she did either," Rose admitted.
Now that I was freed, I pulled the needle out of my arm and took the bag of my blood with me. I immediately put it under my arm. I wasn't about to let anyone else have it.
"He was trying to steal your blood?" Rose asked horrified.
"Oh, yes. He wanted my immortality. He also said that he was going to experiment on someone else with it first by giving it to them. I think that he meant you, Doctor. It's a good thing that Rose stopped him when she did," I said.
The Doctor went pale then, and Rose and I both looked at him with concern. He looked horrified as if he had just realized something.
"What is it?" I asked.
"I felt a burning sensation on my hand as I undid the ropes on the Brigadier just now, and I found a small cut on it. I thought that maybe it was rope burn that caused it somehow, but now I'm not so sure," The Doctor said as he continued to look terrified.
"Oh, did you find my little trap for you, Doctor?" the Valeyard said in a weakened voice from the floor.
"What did you do?!" Rose screamed as she held him up off of the ground effortlessly with one arm.
Apparently her Vortex powers can increase her strength like my regenerative energy can temporarily increase mine. I had to wonder if that was more than a coincidence. Ever since I found out about Rose's powers, I've often wondered if it wasn't the serum in my blood that I passed along to her that enabled her to develop her powers in the first place in some way. She was convinced that it was her exposure to the Untempered Schism or even her exposure to Ishtar who she said was inside of the Schism at the time, but I had to wonder if that was only part of it. If that's so, could Allison potentially develop powers like hers too?
"There was a microscopic needle on one of the ropes that was filled with some of your mother's blood. Either I just made your precious Doctor immortal, started him on the path to turning into a vampiric freak, or I killed him. Take your pick," the Valeyard said with a chilling laugh.
Rose screamed in frustration at him, and then threw him hard against the wall. She knocked him out cold instantly.
"Doctor, how are you feeling?" I asked in concern.
"I'm alright so far I think," the Doctor said.
"So was I at first. That doesn't mean anything," I said.
"Oh, thank you so much. That's very encouraging," he said.
"I'm sorry, Doctor. I didn't know what he was up to. Maybe you'll be alright," I said with a fake reassuring smile and not believing it for a second.
The Doctor began to look very uncomfortable then as he looked like he was in pain and trying to hide it, and I knew what was coming. I remembered going through it myself.
Robin and the Brigadier came into the room at that point, and both of them looked at the Doctor with deep worry on their faces. Robin and I exchanged a look between us, and I knew that he realized what was happening. Both of them had evidently overheard what the Doctor had said.
"There has to be something that we can do? We have a full medical facility at UNIT," the Brigadier said with a guilty look on his face since the Doctor had become infected by saving him.
"We need to get him there then and quickly before he becomes violent," Robin said as he remembered what had happened to me.
"I'm afraid that it may already be too late," I said as the Doctor started screaming in pain.
He started to lash out violently at everyone around him as the pain started to drive him out of his mind, and all of us had to quickly move out of his way to avoid being attacked by him. He started trashing the entire room in his rage as Rose dissolved into tears.
"I'm so sorry, Rose!" I said as I looked at her with sadness.
Then we all had to run from him as he continued to get increasingly violent. We shut the door behind us and ran for the Doctor's TARDIS which was just outside because we knew that the door wouldn't hold him back for long.
Unseen by everyone else, the Valeyard laughed as he watched the Doctor going berserk. He then quickly used his handheld remote to transmat himself to safety elsewhere. I didn't know it then, but he still had a sample of my blood with him.
That was really going to come back to haunt me later on, but at that moment I wasn't worried about it. I was more worried about what was going to happen to the Doctor. Was I going to have to kill him if he became something inhuman, and if so would Rose ever forgive me? More importantly, would I be able to forgive myself?
Next: What happens to the Doctor next and is it irreversible? The answer may shock you. Also Goth finally escapes from the mini Matrix that Lily trapped him in.