CHAPTER 8
I do not own Doctor Who, and I am making no profit off of this.
Thank you for all of your favorites, follows, story alerts, and reviews!
Oswin had quickly started to feel incredibly useless while watching Nyssa pour through the vast collection of Dalek secrets that she had given her as she attempted to find some information that would help her in coming up with a cure. She was a genius when it came to computers but when it came to medical matters she was clearly out of her league.
She went outside but didn't move too far away in case Nyssa needed her for something. She still hadn't received her blood test back from Nyssa yet so she was worrying about whether or not she was about to turn into a zombie at any minute or not. That was another reason for her to want to get as much distance between her and the patients as possible. She wanted to give them a chance to get away in case she turned.
She hadn't even felt sick yet, but she had since learned that that wasn't necessarily a prerequisite for the change to occur. Some of the people who had turned into zombies lately had seemed perfectly fine until they suddenly started attacking everyone around them. It was as if the disease had suddenly been made worse somehow and upgraded to a much deadlier version.
She began to wonder if the disease might not be a product of the Daleks after all. It would be just like them to be testing it on an out of the way planet like this and to keep increasing the potency step by step as one of their sick twisted experiments. If it was the Daleks though, Oswin was sure that they would have already come for her by now. They had to know that she was here if they were close enough to be watching the results of the experiments.
Then Oswin began to feel sick to her stomach as she had the horrible thought that maybe the Daleks had done all of this just to kill her. Maybe they somehow knew that she was headed here and had released the plague to make sure that she would die here. That was crazy though. There was no way that they could have known where she was going since she hadn't known herself until she got here thanks to the randomizer component that she had put into her emergency temporal shift device. She shook her head to try to come to her senses and to stop herself from worrying so much and thinking such bizarre thoughts.
When she had come out from being lost in her own little world at last, she noticed that someone far off in the distance was watching her. Oswin concentrated on the person's face for a second, and then realized in shock that it was Cassie!
Oswin started running towards Cassie as she tried to warn her about the zombies. Why had she come here? Did she just stumble upon this place like she had, or had she followed her here? Oswin began to wonder if she had just gotten the poor girl killed by coming here. Maybe someone had sent her after her after all not knowing about the horrible mess that she had gotten herself into.
"Cassie, it's very dangerous here. There's some kind of disease here turning people into zombies. You may have already been exposed to it," Oswin warned her as she got within shouting distance of her.
"I'm immune, Aunt Oswin," Cassie said.
"How do you know that?" Oswin asked her curiously as she stopped right in front of her.
Cassie's face was suddenly filled with anger as she shouted, "Because the creator of the plague gave me the cure!"
Oswin reacted with shock and surprise to this sudden outburst. As her mind was trying to process the insane thing that her friend had just said, she was completely caught off guard when Cassie blasted her in the chest with a burst of Vortex energy. Oswin quickly put up her force field, and it absorbed the quick succession of blasts that followed as Cassie began to attack Oswin in a savage frenzy.
Oswin slumped over and laid on the ground as her force field continued to save her from being blasted into atoms instantly by Cassie's increasingly powerful attacks on her. Just the one attack that had gotten through had knocked the wind out of her and left her practically helpless.
"Leave, Auntie Oswin! Please!" Cassie said in a pain filled voice as she continued to attack her.
"Why are you doing this?" Oswin asked as she finally got her breath back enough to be able to talk again.
"It's not me. I'm being controlled by the . . ." Cassie started to say to her before she was cut short by a massive burst of pain that shot through her.
"Cassie? What's happening?" Oswin asked in concern as she started to move towards Cassie.
"Don't come any closer! That's what he wants you to do. Please just go. I don't want to hurt you anymore," Cassie warned her.
"Who's done this to you? The Shadow?" Oswin asked in anger.
Cassie started to answer her, but she could only scream as pain shot through her yet again. She fell to her knees on the ground as she continued to cry out over and over again in pain.
"What is he doing to you?" Oswin asked in a now completely furious voice.
"He's punishing me every time I try to resist him, but I won't let him make me do anything to you. I'll die first!" Cassie promised.
Oswin dropped her force field and walked up to Cassie as she continued to writhe in agony on the ground. She powered up her gauntlet and blasted the blonde at point blank range with a stun blast.
Cassie fell over unconscious instantly as Oswin said, "I'll find him, Cassie. I'll make him pay for doing this to you."
"Auntie . . . Oswin," Cassie said as she suddenly woke up after Oswin had already turned her back on her to start looking for any signs of the Shadow being anywhere nearby.
As Oswin started to turn around and look at her, Cassie suddenly blasted Oswin full force in the back with a massive wave of energy. Luckily, Oswin had instinctively turned on her force field at the sound of Cassie's voice, and it absorbed the power of her attack.
Cassie was instantly back on her feet and had her eyes closed in concentration as she stretched out her hand towards Oswin. Oswin had no idea what she was up to until she saw that the controls for her force field were beginning to overheat. She was about to have her force field shut down at any moment now as Cassie was burning out the force field projector. She was doing it somehow from outside of the force field itself with her powers!
Oswin immediately activated the flight controls in her boots and began to fly up and away from Cassie as quickly as possible. Her force field gave out seconds later, and now she knew that she had no defense against Cassie's attacks.
"I can fly too, Oswin," Cassie said in a cold dead voice as she started to fly after her with her body now covered in Vortex energy.
"Cassie, I know that this isn't your fault. I don't blame you no matter what happens. I want you to remember that," Oswin said with her voice filled with emotion.
"I must destroy you. You must be eliminated. You cannot be allowed to interfere with the return of the Black Guardian. He will return, and chaos will rule. Rose Tyler will . . ." Cassie said to her, and then she stopped. She was choking on the last word of that sentence.
"He can't make you say it, can he? He can't make you say that your mother must die. He doesn't own you, Cassie, and he never will. You belong to yourself not to him. Never to him!" Oswin said furiously.
"I – I – I need help!" Cassie pleaded with Oswin.
"I know, Cass. I'm going to help you if you'll let me," Oswin said gently.
"I can't do that. I have to destroy you. He tells me that I have to do it. I cannot disobey. I must do it. I must exterminate you!" Cassie said in a robotic voice as she finally came close enough to her to attack her.
"You can give him a message for me then, Cassie. Tell him to exterminate himself!" Oswin said.
Cassie then attacked Oswin with all of the power at her command with one single powerful blast that lit up the entire sky with a brilliant flash. It looked to onlookers below as if a bomb had gone off up in the sky.
Cassie was crying now as she saw no trace of Oswin left. She had killed her! She couldn't bear the pain of the guilt in her heart now, and she began to break down as she hovered there hundreds of feet in the sky.
Suddenly Oswin appeared out of nowhere and blasted Cassie with her gauntlets at point blank range. Cassie hadn't had time to raise any kind of defense, and the attack hit her with full force and sent her reeling. Oswin disappeared, and then quickly reappeared on the other side of Cassie and blasted her again. Then she disappeared and reappeared above Cassie as she blasted her again. She disappeared and reappeared in front of Cassie now and blasted her a fourth time before disappeared yet again. She had attacked her four times in less than half a minute without allowing Cassie to get off a single shot of her own!
Cassie was barely conscious now, and she could see no trace of Oswin anywhere now as black spots started to appear in front of her eyes. Then Oswin suddenly reappeared right in front of her, and she blasted her right in the face this time.
Cassie passed out and started to fall from the sky now from hundreds of feet above the ground. Oswin flew towards her and caught her as gently as possible before she could land. Oswin landed on the ground and laid Cassie down beside her.
She pulled out some energy restraints from her belt that she had worked on that would keep her from accessing her Vortex powers if she had designed them correctly. She had created them just in case Rose or one of her family ever went rogue one day. She hadn't told Rose about this of course. She hadn't wanted her to think that she was planning to betray her. She had just wanted them around just in case. Now she was glad that she had them.
As Oswin put the restraints on Cassie, she heard laughter nearby. She couldn't see him, but she knew that the Shadow was nearby watching her at that moment.
"Do you think it's funny to turn this poor child against me? I'll show you how funny I think it is when I see you. I promise you that I'm going to be the one to end you, Shadow. You'll never see it coming," Oswin said.
"You had best be concerned for your friend Nyssa. Her attempts at a cure have still been unsuccessful, and now the disease has been accelerated. Soon every human on this planet will turn instantly. It will prove to be the final test of my little creation. Then once I have perfected it, I will use it to sweep humanity from time and space," the Shadow's voice echoed from all around her with mocking laughter.
Oswin grabbed Cassie by the wrist, and both of them moved through time and space to Nyssa's side as Oswin used the same Emergency Temporal Shift technology that she had used to defeat Cassie with to get them there as quickly as possible. Nyssa looked up in surprise at Oswin's sudden appearance.
"You look like you're been put through the ringer," Nyssa said as she looked her over appraisingly.
"I just had a huge knock down drag out fight with my possessed friend here. The Shadow did something to her that turned her against me and made her try to kill me. Now he's bragging about that he's accelerating the plague so that every human here is going to turn soon. Do you have a cure yet? We're running out of time! My friend said that she was given the cure. Maybe you can use her blood to help you find one," Oswin said.
"No, there's not enough time for that now. I'd have to do a lot of tests to extract it from her blood. So the Shadow is behind this? The Doctor told me about him once. He's horrible. He's even worse than the Master," Nyssa said.
Oswin flinched when she said that name. She suddenly realized that Nyssa might not think too much of her for even associating with Koschei. She didn't think too much of him herself though, and she had no idea why Marissa stayed with him. She just hoped that Nyssa never had to find out about her knowing him.
"Do you have the cure yet?" Oswin asked again.
"Almost. I think that I've almost got it. I'll just need a few more minutes," Nyssa said as she went back to work.
"I don't know if we have that long. If all of us turn, I want you to use this to get out of here," Oswin said as she handed Nyssa an extra emergency temporal shift device that she had always carried with her as a back-up.
"Thank you, but I sincerely hope that I won't need it," Nyssa said as she took the device and strapped it to her waist.
"So do I. I don't fancy being a zombie. It would so ruin my image not to mention my appearance," Oswin joked.
"I promise you that I'll come up with a cure in time, Oswin," Nyssa said.
Then the patients around them started to turn into zombies, and both of them knew that their time had just run out. Oswin had a lump form in her throat now as she realized that she may have only seconds before she turned herself!
"It's too late. Go, Nyssa, save yourself!" Oswin shouted.
At that moment, the two women could hear the sound of a TARDIS materializing beside them. Oswin groaned as she knew who it was.
"No, Mari. Not now! You picked the absolute worst time to come," Oswin said.
As Marissa's TARDIS finished materializing, the Time Lady was immediately out the door with a huge grin on her face.
"Is that any way to talk to someone who's showed up just in the nick of time to save your ungrateful little posterior?" Marissa asked.
"You've arrived in time to die as every human here changes into a zombie and kills you," Oswin warned her.
"Oh, this is bad, isn't it?" Marissa asked as she now noticed the zombies that were rapidly emerging all around her for the first time.
"Marissa, get back in your TARDIS and take Nyssa and Cassie here with you. I'm going to change soon too. I don't want to kill you," Oswin warned her.
"You're not going to change if I have anything to say about it, Miss Oswald! You don't get out of our friendship that easily," Marissa said.
"I almost have a cure. If only I had more time," Nyssa said.
"You do. You have a time machine. Come with me. We'll both take all the time that we need and come up with a cure. Then we'll come back here and give it to all of the still unaffected people in a matter of seconds," Marissa said.
"I hope that this works," Nyssa said hesitantly.
"Of course it will work. Come on and bring Cassie there with you," Marissa said.
The two of them dragged Cassie into Marissa's TARDIS, and it dematerialized. Oswin was now alone on the planet with the patients and the zombies. She wondered to herself if they would return in time to save her, or was this to be her final end at last?
Her hopes were answered as Marissa' TARDIS returned, and Nyssa came running out with a vial in her hand. She broke the vial by throwing it on the ground, and the cure was soon filling the entire area. Oswin breathed it in deeply and tried not to gag at the smell. It was a horrible odor that reminded her of some rotten eggs that she had once started to use for one of her soufflés and had quickly thrown away.
All of the patients began to look normal again and less sickly immediately. The zombies themselves stopped going wild and actually started to become human again. The cure was working on every one! Oswin wished that the man that she had killed could have made it to this moment with great sadness in her heart.
Everyone else on the planet was saved though, and the day had been won. Oswin hugged Marissa and Nyssa and screamed with joy. They had won. The Shadow had lost this day.
Oswin still didn't feel too great through when she saw that Cassie was still lying there with her restraints still on her.
"We don't know what the Shadow has done to her. We can't seem to find any way to reverse it. I'm going to go ahead and take her to Rose now. I'm sure that she can fix whatever's been done to her mind," Marissa said.
"I certainly hope so," Oswin said with a sigh.
"What about you, Oswin? Are you going to run away again now?" Marissa asked her angrily.
"I'm sorry. I was trying to protect you. The Daleks want me not you," Oswin explained.
"You're my friend. I'm not going to leave you to face the Daleks on your own. You're coming with me, Oswin. I need to keep an eye on you in order to keep you out of trouble. I mean you get away from me just once and look at the mess I have to clean up," Marissa said with a smile.
"I'm sorry! I should have stayed with you," Oswin admitted.
"You certainly should have. Now are you coming or not?" Marissa asked.
Oswin nodded and got into the TARDIS as Marissa asked Nyssa, "How about you? Can I give you a lift somewhere?"
"Yes, if you don't mind. I'd really love to see my friend Tegan again. She lives on Earth in a place called Brisbane," Nyssa said.
"I've heard of it. Hop on in, and I'll take you there," Marissa said.
They all left then as the TARDIS dematerialized and took them off into the Vortex. The Shadow appeared out of nowhere to watch them go. He scowled at them as he silently cursed them as the architects of his failure today.
"You've won this battle, but I will yet win the war. I have seen that Cassie was not the way to go. She is not fit to be the host for my master. I believe that I finally know who is though. Soon my master will live again, and Rose Tyler will fall! Then I will come after you, Miss Oswald. You will be the one who won't see it coming!" the Shadow said as he faded away in laughter.
Next: As Oswin and Marissa take Nyssa to Earth to find Tegan, the Daleks finally catch up with Oswin. Talk about lousy timing!