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Chapter 5: The Night Market
[The House]
Rose had tried to force open both the front and back doors of the house. When that hadn't worked, she'd tried to open or break through the windows, including those on the second floor. Those attempts had failed too, and she was beginning to run out of possible escape routes.
A desperate cry of frustration flung itself from her throat when her 17th attempt to break the living room window failed miserably. The stone cutting block she'd found in the kitchen lay on the floor, rendered useless for her needs since it had bounced off the window and dropped to the ground without so much as scratching the glass.
Rose slammed her fists against the offending window, wishing she had never set foot in this house. She pressed her forehead to the cool surface, watching the rain that had started an hour earlier soak the parched, empty street outside. It was dark and stormy now. She could barely see the houses down the road.
"Why won't you let me out? I know you must be alive in some way, or be controlled by something. What do you want from me?" she whispered, not sure whether she was speaking to the house or its owners. "Please, just do something, tell me what you want, I just want out. I want to go back to my life. I have so many things to do, an' people, well, a person, a Time Lord, to find. I have to find him, do you understand? You really want to return home, Lex? Well so do I, but I still have to find my home, in another bloody universe. I promise, me and the Doctor, we'll come back and help you with whatever this is. Just. Let. Me. Out. Please."
Only silence met her plea. Rose scoffed (at herself, at the house, at everything) as she pulled away from the window, hot, angry tears welling in her eyes. She sniffed, hurriedly brushing them away with the back of her hand. "Course nothing happened," she chided herself, "you're talking to an empty house."
A low rumble came from the kitchen, as if the house itself were protesting. Rose slowly turned to look in the kitchen's direction. One of the overhead lights had been turned on. She was sure every light in the house had refused to work the last time she'd attempted to tear apart every room in search of another way out.
A faint crackle of electricity sounded out. A sliver of white light began stretching across the kitchen floor, reaching all the way into the dining room.
Rose started toward the source of the light with her heart pounding in her chest. She came to a stop in the doorway between the dining room and kitchen, staring with wide eyes at the sight that greeted her. The fridge door was open a few inches, and blinding white light was spilling out. The light seemed to dance across everything it touched, rippling and warping like the disturbed surface of a pond.
She ventured closer, taking slow, measured steps and glancing warily around her as she crossed the kitchen. She was still alone, as far as she could tell. Even the phantom footsteps had disappeared. She started to wrap her fingers around the fridge door handle, but jerked back when a small zap of electricity shot up her fingers.
She bit her lower lip, contemplating the handle for a moment longer. Then her eyes fell to her black boots. Boots with sturdy rubber soles.
'Ah. That should work.'
And with that, she carefully used the rubber sole of her boot to toe open the door the rest of the way.
At first, the white light was utterly blinding. Rose was forced to squint, shielding her eyes with her left hand. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision. She could make out a few shapes if she squinted hard enough, making out a few distant impressions of bipedal beings dwarfed by massive columns that rose from an indistinguishable ground. Then came the sounds, so sudden and loud in their arrival that Rose jumped in surprised when they reached her eardrums that had grown too accustomed to eerie silence and haunting footsteps. Laughter, both alien and human, reached her first, then shouting, bells ringing merrily, and the deep rumble of heavy machinery hard at work. The columns just barely visible in the light rapidly faded away and were replaced by smaller, darker silhouettes that became clearer the longer Rose stared at them.
Like the house it stood in, the fridge wasn't just a fridge. Ground-level exterior doors opened onto second-floor landings, windows that were climbed through led to the inside of the kitchen cupboards, and the dryer contained a swirling vortex of blue energy that led…elsewhere, probably.
Of course there would be a portal in the fridge.
Rose took one last look around the kitchen, the dining room, and the living room beyond. Still silent and empty.
She faced the portal again. A distant melody drifted out from its ethers for a moment, almost too faint to hear properly. The melody seemed to beckon her forward, making the Wolf inside her raise its head and turn its ears in the music's direction. A low, reassuring pulse resonated deep within Rose's mind, like the rumbling growl of a wolf separated from her pack that had finally picked up a familiar scent. This was her way out.
Rose let the corners of her mouth turn up slightly. Wherever this portal went, she would go too.
Newly determined, she stepped into the fridge and surrendered to the portal's pull. Lights and colors and sound immediately assaulted her senses, wrapping around her in a dizzying vortex that squeezed and stretched, and finally spat her out into a dark, humid alleyway.
She stumbled over to the nearest wall, bracing herself against it with one hand as she caught her breath. Her vision was still swimming from her trip. She blinked hard, relieved when she finally started to see just one of everything instead of three. The rough bricks making up the building beside her felt sticky with accumulated moisture.
Once she felt grounded enough to stand upright—something that took a lot longer now than it did on dimension jumps, because she hadn't eaten in what felt like two days straight—she was able to take in her surroundings fully.
There was a crowded cobblestone street at the end of the alley ahead of her, packed with stalls, carts, and beings from every corner of the universe. Rose's blood ran cold, even as the sight gave her a new spark of hope. She definitely wasn't on Earth.
That could be an issue, since the portal she'd come through had disappeared, but getting out of that house had to count for something. She had long ago dedicated herself to returning to her original universe, and the only way out of this mess was through.
Rose started forward, sticking to the shadows as she approached the mouth of the alley. The air was thick with smoke, humidity, and the scents of alien foods. Her hand brushed the grip of her gun, and despite not wanting to actually have to use it, she was glad to have it with her now. She had yet to establish whether this world was human-friendly or not.
Peeking out at the crowds milling around on the street, Rose saw that she was in some kind of market. Colorful flags and banners stretched between the buildings lining the road, fluttering over patrons heads. It was nighttime here, wherever here was, and the sky was filled with dark, roiling storm clouds. Every few seconds, pale green lightning flashed within the clouds without even the faintest rumble of distant thunder.
'That's odd,' Rose thought. What kind of world could have that much lightning without thunder? Perhaps the atmosphere was simply different from Earth's?
She turned her gaze back to the street, observing the multitude of stalls lining it for as far as her eyes could see. There were aliens with wings, aliens with scales, aliens with tusks and fur, aliens that crawled or slithered, and aliens with more limbs that Rose cared to count. These were all similar to things she had seen before on dimension jumps, and while traveling with the Doctor. She had grown more accustomed over time to being the only human present on such occasions, so it was more of a shock to see what looked like a few other humans from Earth perusing vendors' stalls in the market.
Rose's gaze followed the movements of one such being, a figure in a long red cloak with the hood drawn up, partially concealing his face from her view. The human (or humanoid alien) was inspecting the pottery wares of a vendor across the street and a few stalls to Rose's right.
The cloaked person picked up a small figurine of a bird-like creature, with its fiery red painted wings outstretched, and dropped two small silver rings into the vendor's waiting hand. The cloaked figure then pocketed their purchase and left the stall.
Rose inhaled sharply and stepped further back into the shadows when the dim yellow street lights illuminated the face of an elderly man beneath the cloak's hood. His vibrant blue eyes fixed intently on Rose for only a moment, but the intensity in his gaze took her by surprise. The hum of the Wolf at the back of her mind rose in pitch, not quite alarmed, but not entirely welcoming either. Then the man looked away, and Rose relaxed slightly. She watched him make his way down the street away from her, wondering why he had noticed her out of the hundreds of other beings at the market.
Maybe she should find out.
She darted into the street, jostling her way through the crowd after the elderly man. She lost sight of his bright red cloak a few times, and no doubt offended a few species in the process of finding it again, but she stayed the course as best she could. Aliens chittered, hummed, cackled and babbled in so many languages around her that it was a bit disorienting to hear them spoken over each other from every direction. The market was so much bigger than she'd thought too, stretching for city block after city block. She still had no real idea of where she was, only that the beings around her thankfully didn't seem to care about her species.
She jogged past nightclub entrances, fortune tellers' stalls, and multiple food vendors selling everything from what looked like bright pink chips to fried batter shaped into the most intricate, artistic designs Rose had ever seen produced from food.
She was just about to follow the man in the red cloak into a local bar when a massive web of lightning split the stormy sky into a thousand pieces. Everyone on the street ducked at once, letting out fearful shrieks and gasps.
Rose dropped to her knees, following everyone else's example and not caring how bruising the rough cobblestones would be. She hunched over and covered her ears on instinct just in time.
The deafening boom of thunder that followed shook buildings, rattled windows, and made the very ground beneath Rose's feet tremble violently. Her breath caught in her throat as the sound wave slammed through her body. Her heartbeat stuttered for a single, terrifying moment. Then the thunder faded away, leaving her ears ringing and her heart pounding in her chest. She straightened, scrambling to her feet and looked to those around her, hoping she might be able to get a sense of what had just happened (and why) based on their reactions. Everyone around her was in the process of re-orienting themselves, standing up, helping their neighbors gather their wares, and muttering anxiously to each other.
No vendor called out to passing shoppers. Instead, most of them began to swiftly close their stalls, haphazardly packing away their wares in their hurry. Previously happy customers were rushing to find their friends or family members and vacate the street. Everyone kept throwing wary glances at the sky.
Rose stepped out of the way of a group of shoppers rushing down the street and took her gun out of its holster, switching the safety off as she turned her gaze to the sky. The dark clouds still seethed like water just about to boil, but now, the green lightning was concentrated around one particular section of sky to her left.
A small dark shape suddenly pierced through the cloud layer, visible only for the few seconds it was lit from behind by a flash of lightning. Then the shape disappeared again. Someone screamed.
An earsplitting siren began wailing all over town, making Rose and many others jump. She had to fight to stand her ground when most of the patrons still out in the street surged toward the storefronts, pushing through open doors or racing down alleys in utter panic. Only a few beings remained outside along with Rose, racing to man what looked like well-practiced defensive positions.
Rose retreated to the end of a nearby alley and crouched behind a pile of wooden crates. What on earth had caused that burst of thunder and lighting? And why had it scared a massive, diverse crowd of aliens into running for their lives?
She nearly jumped out her skin when a cool humanoid hand landed on her shoulder. She jerked away, whirling around ready to unleash the full extent of her hand-to-hand combat training on whoever had tried to grab her. She only stopped short when she saw the man in the red cloak standing behind her. His face was half hidden in shadow, and he held himself with the confidence of a man accustomed to blaring warning sirens and many hard battles.
"It is not safe for you here!" he shouted over the sound of the sirens.
"You can speak English!" Rose exclaimed, shock rushing through her. This man had an accent she couldn't quite place, but he was nonetheless speaking a form of English, and that was all that mattered.
The man nodded impatiently. "Yes! You need to go now! They are coming and it is almost too late!" He frantically gestured for Rose to flee down the alley.
"What? Oh no, I can take care of myself, mate." She twitched the gun in her right hand to draw his attention to it.
Underneath his cloak, she could see the hint of a scowl. "You do not know them like we do," he snarled, advancing on her with more speed and grace than she'd expected from a man of his apparent age. "You have not lived through a Charter raid. I can see it in your eyes. You do not know what you speak of. You may never escape once they decide you are theirs."
"The Charter is here?" Rose asked. The name caused Bad Wolf's hackles to rise in her mind.
"Yes," the man answered,"the Fog usually keeps them out, but they must be determined to find one of their fugitives. You are clearly new to the Night Market if you do not know such things. Maybe you're even the one they're looking for this time. Maybe not. Either way, you do not know them like we do. You will only get in our way, or get yourself killed or captured. Leave now and find a place to hide." He gave her a small push down the alley when she remained frozen in place.
Rose instantly dug her heels in. "Wait, wait! Just tell me one thing. What is the Charter?"
The man glanced up at the Charter ships with disdain. "They are the universe's worst shadow, imposing their vision of 'perfect order' where they see none, and crushing those who oppose them. Those who do, like us, well, we're the lucky ones. I've heard stories though, about what they do to their prisoners. Mind-control, endless labor in the worst robot pits in the universe, and worse."
Rose gaped at him. She didn't understand the meaning behind everything he said, but she shuddered at the thought of being mind-controlled for the rest of her life.
"Now, please, go," the man urged, "and for the Anomaly's sake and yours, I hope you are not the one they're looking for!"
Rose gave a slight nod as she turned away, committing what he had told her memory as fast as possible. "I hope so too," she said breathlessly. Then she took off running.
"Watch the sky!" the man shouted after her.
"Thanks!" Rose yelled over her shoulder. She lifted her gaze to the seething storm clouds once more, and her heart sank.
Many more ships had appeared, hovering at the edge of the cloud layer. Their motionless, jet black silhouettes were at odds with the organic movements of the clouds, and now they were everywhere.
Wherever lightning flashed, another silhouette of a Charter fight craft was revealed. They had managed to surround the city by air in the blink of an eye.
Rose had never considered the possibility that if the Charter really did exist, and they really were after her, that they might have military power on their side.
White-hot lines of energy burst into existence between the Charter ships, linking each one together to form a massive geodesic dome over the city. A transparent barrier rippled into being the second the last link finished forming, filling in the dome's empty spaces. It was a three-dimensional barricade, blocking anyone from leaving or entering the Night Market on foot or by ship.
"Oh no," Rose whispered, slowing to a halt as she observed the energetic structure that now trapped her and hundreds of other beings inside the city. For the first time, she began to understand why everyone who had told her about Charter had spoken with such fear or hatred. The organization was certainly formidable.
Right then and there, with the knowledge that she was entering a fray of unknown proportions between forces possibly far bigger and older than herself, Rose Tyler swore that she would find a way to stop the Charter. Hopefully with the Doctor's help once she found him, but she would do everything she could on her own until then. She didn't know exactly what the Charter did, but she did know any organization that spread that much fear across the universe couldn't possibly be a good thing.
Rose was so caught up in these thoughts that when she took off running again, she didn't notice the two lithe, humanoid figures racing along the rooftops after her, tracking her every move from above.