Hello everyone! Wow, it's really been forever since I've updated this story. (In all honestly, I wasn't sure if I'd ever get this chapter written and posted…)
Apologies for any typos or other mistakes — this chapter is unbetaed.
Life has been a little crazy for me these past few years, but I've recently worked a lot on this story, and I hope you enjoy this newest chapter.
Thank you for reading!
Chapter 11: Caging the Wolf
[The Night Market]
With the harsh, buzzing sound of the Charter forcefield grating against her eardrums, Rose hurtled around a corner into a dark alleyway between two crumbling blocks of flats, desperately searching for a place to hide.
She nearly tripped over rubble and rubbish in the road a few times, and her boots slipped on the damp, grimy cobblestones, but she found her balance and keep running.
The Night Market's power had gone out soon after she'd fled the central marketplace, sending the city's already dim streets into near total darkness. The only major sources of light that remained were the Charter forcefield and ships overhead, and the silent bursts of lightning splintering across the sky.
It wasn't much light to go by, but it was enough for Rose to finally glimpse her enemy up close.
She only saw them for a few seconds out of the corner of her eye, but she knew it was them. A squad of six humanoid beings in black tactical gear, with their faces completely hidden behind the visors of their identical gleaming helmets.
They appeared out of nowhere in a narrow alleyway just as Rose ran past, all faceless, nameless shadows blending in with the darkness around them. She barely had time to register their presence and start to turn her head for a better look before they were gone.
She stumbled to a halt in shock, then quickly doubled back to make sure she hadn't imagined them. She came to a halt at the mouth of the alley, searching the darkness for any sign of the squad, or even just another living being.
No one was there, Charter or otherwise.
All she could find were the charred remains of a small mechanical device lying in the middle of the alley. Every fragment of metal and wire was melted and burned beyond all hope of rescue or recognition.
Despite the threat of the Charter hanging over her, Rose knelt down to inspect the fragments. What was left of the device looked like it had been crushed, or partially blown up by something but she couldn't figure out why or how. She touched a metal fragment in front of her, heart sinking and stomach turning over as she realized what might have happened.
She hadn't noticed anyone else in the alley before the squad appeared, and if she hadn't noticed them, she might have ever known they were there at all.
But someone might have been there, someone who the Charter was looking for, who made this device. And if that was the case, then it wasn't too much of a stretch to imagine what might have happened to them.
The man in the red cloak had warned her that the Charter took prisoners. If all Charter's soldiers had the ability to teleport as quickly as Rose had just seen, then she could understand more about why people were so terrified of them.
The thought sent a chill up her spine, and she instantly straightened, heart pounding as she surveyed her surroundings. Was she being watched now? Was a Charter squad coming for her? Or were they already here, hiding in the shadows and waiting for the perfect moment to strike? She had been warned so many times, but she hadn't completely believed that the Charter would actually come for her. She had done nothing to them, so why would they have any interest in her?
Now, in an eerie back alley of the Night Market with only shadows and the Wolf for company, she finally started to believe all those warnings.
"The Charter is coming for us all," Morgan had told her. As had the man in the red cloak. And Lex had whispered into her mind, 'Beware, Bad Wolf. They will find you if you stay here much longer. Then they will take you.'
Letting a little bit more of the Wolf's power rise to the forefront of her mind, Rose turned away from the alley.
There was still no one else on the road. Just shadows and piles of several generations' worth of alien rubbish. Except…
Except that it felt like there was something out there.
Rose couldn't see it, but she could sense it. A cold, immovable something hovering at the very edge of her mind that very distinctly wasn't hers. Whatever it was, it made the Wolf growl low in warning at the back of her mind.
A massive bolt of lightning suddenly tore across the sky, making Rose jump and throwing the streets of the Night Market into stark relief.
Something moved in the shadows of a shop to her left, and she didn't hesitate to let Bad Wolf's power pour through her entire being as she took off running again. She would find a way out of the Night Market, find her way to a place where the Charter wouldn't find her, shadows didn't move on their own, and she could figure out a new way home.
To her Doctor.
Rose finally stumbled across a temporary shelter on a narrow road lined with market tents.
The tents looked like they all had been suddenly and violently abandoned. Wares were strewn all over the road, having been cast aside in the midst of a panicked rush to get to safety when the Charter attacked.
Something was definitely burning nearby, but Rose couldn't see any smoke or flames coming from any of the tents, so she decided that one of them would do for now. Just as a temporary hiding place, so she could get her bearings and come up with a better plan. Then she could find a proper hiding place that wasn't liable to go up in flames or collapse at any second.
Rose rushed over to the closest tent, one made of thick canvas fabric that was held up by metal poles. Gun raised, she parted the closed tent flaps and slipped inside, letting out a shaky breath of relief when nothing immediately sprang out of the darkness to attack her.
As her eyes gradually adjusted, Rose realized that the tent was filled with a variety of glittering objects of all shapes and sizes. She carefully closed the tent flaps behind her and moved further inside, pausing to pick up one of the smaller objects.
It was made of smooth, polished glass that had been crafted into a flowing, abstract shape about the size of her hand.
'More artwork,' she guessed. The Night Market seemed to have a surprising amount of that for a place with rubbish piles everywhere and deteriorating buildings on every street.
She carefully set the glass sculpture down and felt her way toward the back of the tent, relying mostly on the Wolf's heightened awareness of space and time to keep from bumping into things and shattering all the breakable pieces of art around her.
She maneuvered around a small table cluttered with what felt like tall spirals of glass, and sat down against one of the legs with a stifled groan, relieved to give her aching muscles a much needed rest. The cobblestones were hard and uneven beneath her, but she didn't have the energy to care.
She tried to keep her breathing as quiet as possible as she caught her breath and listened to the sound of distant shouts and bursts of gunfire.
Where could she possibly go after this? She had no dimension cannon, no way back to Pete's World or even that house in Santa Fe. The Charter has trapped everyone in the Night Market with that forcefield.
Of course, she could try to wait out the attack, but that could take who knows how long, and every second she could spend trying to out-wait the Charter would be another second they could be using to find her, or to capture others in the city.
Rose gritted her teeth in frustration. Would this day ever end? It was starting to feel like it wouldn't.
She didn't know how many hours she had been awake now, but she knew it was verging on far too many.
She leaned back even more as sheer physical exhaustion started to set in. That's when her gaze fell on a thin sliver of metal wedged into the cobblestones beside her. She squinted at the metal, puzzled by how brightly it gleamed in the dark tent.
Brushing her fingers over it, she discovered that the metal was slightly curved, and surprisingly warm to the touch. She dropped her head back against the table leg behind her and absently ran a finger over the metal again, contemplating how to get out of the Night Market as soon as possible.
People had to have gotten here somehow, right? And if there was a way in, there should also be a way out — preferably one that didn't involve being a prisoner of the Charter.
Without warning, the metal beneath Rose's fingertips suddenly grew searingly hot.
She instantly jerked her hand away with a hiss of pain and dropped her gun to cradle her burned fingers in her free hand. "What on Earth…" she muttered to herself, staring down at the offending piece of metal in utter bewilderment.
The moment she spoke, the piece of metal began to vibrate on its own against the cobblestones, producing a quiet, high-pitched hum that reverberated through the tent.
More slivers of metal began to appear, rapidly connecting to each other from end to end until they formed a large ring, big enough for a person to comfortably sit in with their legs crossed.
Rose watched in alarm as the cobblestones inside the ring began to change too, warping and melding together like molten rock. They took on a silvery hue as they flattened out to form a single circle of metal.
A massive hinge rippled into being along one side of it, and finally, a smaller ring of metal grew out of the center and formed a hand-wheel.
Then the soft hum faded, leaving the tent silent once more.
Rose gaped at the new circle of metal in shock. It looked like a door. A concealed door, or some kind of maintenance hatch, previously hidden by some kind of…. Well, she wasn't sure what to call what she had just seen.
It almost looked like magic, if she had to name it something. The Doctor wouldn't have called it that, and it definitely wasn't magic, but the Doctor wasn't here, and Rose didn't have time to come up with a fancy, science-y name for whatever she'd just seen anyway.
She leaned over the door and tentatively prodded it with the end of her gun.
Was this some kind of access point into the city's water systems? Or something else?
When nothing else happened, Rose sighed and lowered her gun. She was getting distracted. This door might not lead anywhere, and she could be wasting valuable time trying to puzzle it out.
Or….
A new possibility struck her. Maybe this was the reason that most of the Night Market residents seemed to have disappeared from the city altogether?
With her options dwindling and no idea where the Charter's soldiers were currently lying in wait, Rose decided that the door was worth a try. She holstered her gun, grasped the metal wheel in the center of it with both hands, and tried to turn it.
At first, it refused to budge.
The sound of a nearby explosion and sudden shouting made Rose flinch, and she threw a panicked glance at the tent flaps.
That had been close. Much too close. She had avoided most of the fighting until now, and she'd rather keep it that way.
She quickly renewed her efforts to wrench the door open. With painstaking slowness, the wheel finally began to turn in tiny increments, until it eventually spun open with an almighty 'CLANG!'.
Rose gave a breathless gasp of relief as she heaved the hatch door open and peered into the dark opening beneath it.
A metal ladder was bolted to one side of the hole and descended straight down into darkness. It was far from an appealing sight, and certainly not what she had hoped for, but it was something.
In the end, the sound of someone running down the road toward her tent finally pushed Rose into action. She scrambled down the ladder without another thought, giving up all pretense of being quiet as she strained to pull the door closed after her.
It slammed shut with finality, plunging her into total darkness.
Everything suddenly became quiet and still. The sounds of distant explosions and shouting vanished.
A low, constant rumbling came from far below her, but other than that, the only thing Rose could hear was the sound of her own breathing echoing around her. She inhaled deeply, and instantly wrinkled her nose as a new, sickening smell hit her.
She'd caught whiffs of it earlier, but now it was impossible to ignore: the overwhelming stench of dead fish wafted through the air all around her, settling into her nose and lungs like another, inescapable layer of Might Market grime. She gagged and fought the urge to throw up as she blindly reached up and fumbled for the locking mechanism on the underside of the door.
Her hand passed over several interlocking gears that were all warm to the touch, but nothing stood out as a specific way to lock the door from below. With a final, stubborn tug on one of the gears, Rose gave up and began descending the ladder one rusty rung at a time.
The ladder creaked ominously as she made her way down, and she gripped the sides of it tightly in anticipation of a rung giving way the moment she stepped on it.
Fortunately, the ladder was shorter than expected, and nothing broke. When her feet finally made contact with solid ground she was relieved to discover that the ground didn't seem to be covered in dead fish or rodents (which she almost expected it to be, given the smell).
She blindly felt the side of the ladder, then ran her hand over the stone wall beside it, trying to find anchor points to ground her other senses in the darkness.
The wall was rough and covered in something slimy that Rose really didn't want to think about too much as she continued blindly searching for anything that might help her find her way.
A few tentative steps forward, and her hands abruptly ran into another grimy wall of rock.
'Alright. There we go. Two walls, I can work with that,' she thought.
This was good. She could do this. She'd come this far, and maybe the darkness would be alright (as long as that's all it was). If she squinted a bit to her right, she could almost see a tiny, flickering light in the distance.
She made her way toward it, stumbling over loose stones and slipping through puddles of foul-smelling sludge. The ground was so slick and uneven in places that she had to keep one hand on the tunnel wall so she didn't lose her balance.
She kept her gun primed in her free hand at all times, wary of the darkness at her back and the silence ahead of her.
Despite her efforts to stay calm, her wariness grew with every step. More than once, she swore she heard someone walking behind her, but every time she'd turn around, there was nothing there.
Once, she even dared to whisper, "Hello?"
There was no response, only echoes of her voice calling back to her.
When she finally made it to the source of the light, she discovered that the tunnel she was in ended in a small, man-made cavern carved out of solid rock. She stopped short at the end of the tunnel, staring up in bewildered awe at the cavern's appearance.
Two fluorescent lights dangled from the ceiling by bare wires, illuminating a massive and unapologetically overwhelming work of art.
Every inch of stone, from cavern floor to cavern ceiling, was covered in some kind of artistic mark, paint and graffiti layered over each other again and again.
Abstract swirls of color looped around countless images, symbols, and words from languages Rose had never seen before. The crowded jumble almost hurt to look at, but at the same time, it was hard to look away from it.
She took a deep breath and stepped into the cavern, pausing to listen for any signs of a Charter squad, or Night Market residents nearby.
Still nothing. Good.
She moved further into the cavern, turning in a slow circle to take in the whole thing.
Three tunnels branched off from the cavern in other directions. Another circular door, like the one she'd found, was set into the wall high above the cavern floor. The door was accessible by a rusty ladder that was missing several of its rungs.
When the first new whisper of sound reached Rose's ears, it was so quiet that she almost passed it off as just air flowing through the tunnels, or something happening above ground. Then she heard the same sound again, louder this time, and belatedly realized that it wasn't either of those things.
It was a voice, speaking quietly in one of the tunnels branching off from the cavern.
Footsteps became audible a moment later, tentative and stumbling. Rose tried to pinpoint which tunnel the footsteps were coming from, but there was too much of an echo in the cavern for her to tell exactly.
The voice didn't sound like she expected the Charter to sound, but still…
Making a split second decision, Rose darted back into the tunnel she'd come from and crouched down in the shadows with her back pressed to the grimy stone wall. Hopefully the darkness would cloak her presence well enough.
The footsteps got even closer to the cavern, and Rose's hand tightened around the grip of her gun. Moving slowly so she didn't make too much noise, she carefully shifted into a more stable position and raised her gun with both hands. She didn't want to shoot if she didn't have to, but she would, if the person approaching the cavern was with the Charter.
Much to Rose's relief, instead of a Charter squad, a red-haired woman came staggering into the cavern, muttering under her breath.
The woman looked a little worse for wear, clearly fatigued, out of breath, and with a bad cut on her forehead. But she didn't look like she worked for the Charter. She didn't look like most of the Night Market residents either. Her clothing looked a little too clean and Earth-made for that.
More importantly, she seemed to be speaking English.
Rose lowered her gun and watched the woman look around, then made her way over to one side of the cavern and sat down against the wall with a groan. Rose hesitated a second longer, then got to her feet and cautiously approached the cavern. The woman didn't seem like a threat. Maybe she knew more about the Charter and Night Market.
The woman scrambled to her feet the second Rose stepped into the cavern. "Who are you?" she demanded.
Rose quickly switched on the safety of her gun and holstered it, then held up her hands non-threateningly. "I'm not gonna hurt you. My name's Rose," she said, trying to keep her voice calm.
The woman eyed her suspiciously. "I swear, I'm not here to do anything, or take anything! I just want to find my friend and leave. That's all!"
Rose nodded. "I'm trying to get out of here too."
"Hold on. You're speaking English!"
Rose nodded again.
"Oh thank god!" the woman breathed. "I haven't been able to talk to anyone! Do you know what's going on? I've seen some, um, some people down here, running, shouting…It's like they're running for their lives. I tried to ask what was happening, but I couldn't understand a word they were saying."
Now, that, Rose could relate to. (Thank god the man in the red cloak had been able to tell her some things.)
"The people here are being attacked," she answered.
"By who?"
"By this organization called the Charter. How did you get here, if you don't mind me asking?"
The woman went rigid. "The Charter's here?"
"You've heard of them?"
"My friend and I just learned about them today."
"Me too," Rose said, with no small amount of surprise. So, this woman probably wasn't from the Night Market, then. Which meant she could be a visitor. And that meant she might know a way to leave.
"Sounds like you know quite a bit," the woman said.
Rose shrugged half-heartedly. "It's been a very long day."
"I'll say." The woman leaned against the wall and tilted her head back to look at the multicolored ceiling. "So the Charter is really up there?"
"Yeah. Where are you from?"
The woman gave Rose a mildly unimpressed look. "Earth. Are you not—"
"No, I mean, where on Earth?" Rose clarified.
"Oh, Chiswick."
"So, how did you end up here?"
"Long story. Do you know how to get out of here?"
That was not the answer Rose had been expecting. But the woman was waiting impatiently for an answer, so she simply gestured up at the rusty door in the cavern wall and said, "That door leads up to the road, I think, but I wouldn't go up there now. The attack is still going on."
The woman released a long-suffering sigh. "Is it really bad? What's the Charter doing?"
"I think they're taking people. Destroying things. I don't really know why. And…they might be after me," Rose admitted.
The woman arched an eyebrow. "That sounds like them. Why are they after you?"
"I don't know. I don't know anything about them. I just know that they're fast, and they can show up out of nowhere. They wear black armor and helmets, and they have a lot of ships. A lot. But that's all I know. I barely had a chance to see them before they disappeared."
"I thought they wore lab coats."
"I don't know. The ones I saw didn't."
"Brilliant. There's more than one kind of Charter agent."
Rose shrugged and glanced at the tunnels again. She was glad for this brief reprieve, but she knew it couldn't last forever. "You said you saw others down here. Where were they?" she asked.
The woman gestured to the tunnel she'd exited. "A long way back that way. I don't know how far, I could barely see a thing for half of it. There are other caves and caverns. Lots of panicked aliens somewhere, too. It was utter chaos when I got here. I tried to follow some of them and ask what was going on, but they were just panicking, and…I got lost."
"Sounds a little better than where I came from," Rose commented. "Do you think we could try to retrace your steps? I don't know what else to do. I just have to keep moving. I don't know if the Charter can get in here, but I don't want to find out."
The woman pursed her lips unhappily, but eventually nodded and motioned for Rose to lead the way. "Alright. I don't fancy running into Charter agents down here either," she muttered.
They started down the tunnel the red-haired woman had been in before, carefully feeling their way through the darkness. This tunnel was more roughly hewn than Rose's had been, and colder.
It wasn't long before the woman spoke up again. "So, how did you get here? You never said."
"I'm not entirely sure," Rose admitted. "I just arrived in the Night Market, and then the Charter attacked."
"The Night Market? What's the Night Market?"
Rose nearly ground to a halt in surprise. "You don't know?"
"If I did, I obviously wouldn't be asking!"
"Sorry, I just…" Rose shook her head and forced herself to keep moving. She could ask more questions later, when they were someplace safer. "The Night Market is the city above us," she explained.
"That's an odd name," the woman said. After a moment, she added, "I know it sounds mad, but I honestly don't know how I got here either. I was investigating a house with my friend, and— I don't know if you're familiar with temporal anomalies or not, but, basically, one of those had formed inside the house— and while we were inside it, my friend got pulled into a portal. Disappeared right before my eyes! Then I got pulled in too, and the next thing I knew, I was falling out of thin air into one of these tunnels. My friend wasn't with me. I've been trying to find him ever since."
Rose whirled around to face her, torn between believing everything she said, and denying that it was possible. "You went through a portal in a house?"
"I know what it sounds like, but it's true!" the woman said defensively.
Rose gaped at her.
A temporal anomaly inside a house. A friend that was pulled into a portal out of the blue. The Charter.
This woman had gone through a portal inside a house, and come out of it into the tunnels below the Night Market. Almost exactly like Rose.
Could it be…? No. But what if….
Was it possible for the same anomaly to exist in the same house in two different universes?
What were the odds of that?
Oblivious to Rose's shock, the woman continued. "Whatever you think, I'm telling you, all of that really happened. And my name's Donna, by the way. Donna Noble. Don't think I said that before."
Rose could barely force a response out of her mouth. "Rose Tyler."
Donna went stock still. "Rose Tyler," she echoed.
"Yes?"
"You've got to be kidding me."
Rose drew back slightly, not sure where this was going. "No, that's my name. Is something wrong?"
"Oh my god!"
"What?"
"Wait, where are you from? Or, no, maybe that's the wrong question. Sorry, I'm not very good at this stuff. Um, what universe are you from? Or what year? Does any of this make sense?"
Rose's breath caught in her throat. "Why are you asking me that?" she whispered.
Donna grasped her arm, clutching it like a lifeline. "My friend, the one I'm looking for, he used to know someone named Rose Tyler. He told me she was lost, trapped in a parallel universe. Is that you?"
In that moment, Rose's entire world collapsed inward, everything else vanishing from her awareness except for Donna's words. She was barely aware of the next words that came out of her mouth. "You know the Doctor?"
"Yes!" Donna exclaimed. "Yes, I know him! Are you —"
Still stunned, Rose could only nod and mumble a faint, affirmative answer.
"Oh, I cannot believe this!" Donna yanked her into a hug, and Rose gave a helpless laugh as she returned it.
This woman knew the Doctor. Donna Noble knew the Doctor! And the Doctor had told Donna about her!
Donna soon released her and stepped back. "Sorry, I just, I thought you couldn't come back!" she said. "The Doctor told me— Oh, it doesn't matter what he said right now. He'll be so happy to see you again!"
At those words, the weight that had settled over Rose's heart since the worst day of her life finally began to lift.
"I've been trying to get back for a long time," she whispered. Tears began to prickle at the corners of her eyes, and she hastily wiped them away with a small sniff.
After a moment, Donna hesitantly touched her arm again, offering comfort. "How long has it been?" she asked.
"Four years," Rose murmured.
"Four years? But it's only been three years since Canary Wharf!"
Donna's response brought Rose as much relief as it did discomfort. "It's only been three years in your universe," she explained, wiping her eyes on her sleeves again. "But, um, in Pete's World— I mean, in the parallel universe I was in, I think time runs a bit ahead. I don't know why. I'm not even sure if it always has, or if it's because of the darkness coming."
"The darkness? Don't you mean the Charter?"
Rose shook her head. "No, but it doesn't really matter right now. That's another story. We should get out of here first."
There was really no time for her to explain the entire dimension cannon project to Donna, or tell her all about the darkness stealing the stars in the parallel universe. She would have to tell her everything later.
Donna started to press her for more details, but Rose interrupted her with another question. "How did you really get here? Is the Doctor… Do you know where he is? Or where he could be?"
Donna paused, shifting position in the darkness. "No, I don't," she said finally. "Like I told you before, we were investigating a temporal anomaly inside a house in California. The Charter really didn't like that, but we ignored them because the anomaly inside that house was too dangerous to leave alone. So we followed the house in the TARDIS from California to Santa Fe, where the Charter moved it. The Doctor said the Charter must have frozen the anomaly in time right after it formed, but it was still a really big, unstable nexus point. And the Charter made it into a bloody public art exhibit, if you can believe it."
Rose blinked. She hadn't seen the house in an art installation, that was for sure. But she knew that house, and she also knew the kinds of messes the Doctor could get himself into. So yes, she could believe it.
Donna continued. "I wasn't kidding about a portal opening up out of the blue and pulling me and the Doctor in either. But wherever he is, we'll find him. I know we will. Or he'll find us."
"We will," Rose agreed. "I've been looking for him for a long time. I'm not—"
She suddenly broke off when she heard a faint creaking sound echo through the tunnel.
Donna jumped, and Rose cursed as she pulled her gun out its holster.
"Go! It might be them!" she hissed.
Donna dug her heels in. "What? No! I'm not leaving you!"
"Just go! I'll—"
The telepathic equivalent of a wall of molten metal suddenly slammed into Rose's mind, searing through her thoughts and burning through her nervous system without mercy.
She crumpled to the ground instantly, choking on her own breath. Chilling darkness closed in around her, suffocating her, blinding her, and paralyzing her.
She couldn't see, she couldn't move, and she couldn't think.
Donna cried out, and Rose tried to turn her head to see her, wanting to help her fight off their attackers, but her muscles refused to cooperate.
Footsteps approached from all directions, and then cold, gloved hands wrapped themselves around Rose's arms and wrenched them behind her back.
Panic shot through her faster than thought.
The Wolf howled. A new wave of heat tore through Rose's veins, and everything exploded into golden light.
Someone screamed. Maybe her. Maybe someone else.
She lost track of her assailants, Donna, and even her own location within space and time.
No thoughts ran through her mind.
Nothing was allowed to.
Then, quite abruptly, the heat and pain cut off.
The hands holding her arms behind her back let go, and Rose slammed onto a smooth, hard surface on her knees. She collapsed onto her side, shaking and gasping for breath.
Her temples were pounding, her entire body ached, and her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. She struggled to sit up and pull her hands out of whatever bound them, but it was no use. Whatever type of metal handcuffs were locked around her wrists refused to give in.
She fell twice before finally making it to standing, and almost immediately stumbled sideways into a wall next to her.
Her head knocked against the wall and new pain spiked through her temples. She gasped again, fighting with her entire being to stay upright.
When the pain finally faded to a slightly bearable level, she blinked hard to clear her vision, and squinted at her new surroundings with growing horror.
'No. Oh no. No, no, no.'
She was no longer in the Night Market tunnels.
And Donna was gone.
Rose gulped in a determined breath of air, not wanting to believe it. She turned unsteadily until her back was pressed against the wall and she could see her entire surroundings better, hoping she was wrong about Donna.
Blinding white surfaces assaulted her from all sides, from the walls to the floor and ceiling. She was alone in a room of pure white, illuminated by mercilessly bright overhead lights. And in the center of the room sat a gleaming, metal chair. Metal restraints were attached to the arms and legs, and each leg was bolted to the floor.
Rose's blood went cold, and she frantically surveyed the rest of the room, looking for any kind of escape route.
She was in an odd sort of prison cell— which was saying something, because Rose had seen a lot of prison cells in her time. This one was surprisingly spacious, and well lit. She already detested the sight of its polished white walls, but that was more beside the point.
Then there was the metal chair in the middle of the room, and a narrow metal bed (if one could even call it that) pushed against the far wall.
The bed was next to a small, curtained-off corner of the room, which Rose could only guess at the purpose of without the energy to walk over and peek behind it. Previous prison experiences led her to guess that there was probably some kind of toilet or torture device behind the curtain.
There were also tiny security cameras attached to the ceiling, each covered by a protective dome so small she almost hadn't noticed them. Each dome was pure white except for a small black opening in the center. When Rose shifted slightly to her left or right, she could hear machinery whirring away inside the protective domes.
So, she was being watched by someone already. Tracked by cameras, and she hadn't even done anything (yet). Great.
Last but not least, there was the cell door, which wasn't really a door at all.
One entire wall of the prison cell was missing, giving Rose a clear view of an empty, stark white hallway.
She took a few cautious steps toward the opening. It couldn't be that easy to escape, could it?
A few feet away from what appeared to be freedom, a faint buzzing sound reached her ears and she came to an abrupt halt.
That same buzzing sound. Always that buzzing sound.
She held out a hand and tentatively approached the open front of her cell. Her hand soon collided with a wall of static electricity, and she jerked back with a wince.
The air in front of her warped and fizzled with sudden energy, and she backed away from it with a sinking feeling in her stomach.
Alright then. She probably wasn't getting out that way.
For a few seconds, she thought she saw several guards in grey and black armor stationed in the hallway outside of her cell, but then the forcefield rippled again, and the guards disappeared from view.
It was nauseating to look at the forcefield directly after awhile, so Rose looked away, trying to focus on something else that would ground her. Not another illusion or portal, but something solid and tangible.
She stumbled over to the narrow bed at the far back of her cell and sat down on it with a groan. The cameras overhead whirred as they shifted into new positions, never letting her out of their sight.
She couldn't help but wonder why any of this was happening. If this was a Charter prison cell, where was everyone else? Where were all the other prisoners, all the other people taken from the Night Market? And what had the Charter done to her and Donna in the Night Market tunnels?
Rose buried her head in her hands. rubbing her aching temples in a futile effort to sooth them.
She had to get out of here. She should probably use this time alone to come up with some kind of plan, like what she wanted to say and do if and when someone from the Charter came into her cell. How she might fight back. How she could find Donna, and escape from this prison.
The longer she silently turned these thoughts over in her mind, the more she began to notice how unnervingly quiet it was in her cell. It was too quiet. Too empty.
She knew she couldn't be the only prisoner of the Charter, because she'd been warned so many times about being found and taken, but she couldn't hear or see signs of another living being outside of her cell (other than the illusion of guards she'd glimpsed, but she wasn't sure she could trust what she'd seen yet).
She wished her arms weren't still cuffed behind her back, too. The position was starting to make her wrists and shoulders ache in an unfortunately familiar way. It was an ache she was unfortunately familiar with, no thanks to her ability to attract trouble on basically every planet in every universe she'd ever encountered.
The buzzing of the forcefield abruptly changed pitch. Rose jerked her head up, then struggled to her feet as a man in a black uniform came into view, walking down the hallway outside her cell. He came to a halt right in front of the forcefield.
Rose drew in a shaky breath. She had to be strong. She had to find out what the Charter was up to and what they had done to Donna. Then she had to find the Doctor and Donna, and stop the Charter from terrorizing anyone else.
The man before her appeared to be human, with short blond hair and pale skin. His jet black uniform stood in stark contrast to everything around him, and was nothing like what Rose had expected a Charter soldier to wear. The man carried no visible weapons, nor was he wearing any armor like the squad in the Night Market. His uniform seemed less protective and more form-fitting, consisting of simple black trousers, boots, and a racer jacket that was zipped up to his neck.
His gaze was fixed on the screen of a small black device strapped to his left wrist. Every few seconds, he would lazily swipe a finger across the screen. He didn't look up at Rose even once.
She took another fortifying breath, waiting impatiently for him to do something. She was not naïve enough to believe he was truly ignoring her. This Charter soldier was probably just biding his time, trying to increase her anxiety by making her wait.
Well, that wouldn't work on her. She took another breath and turned her attention to the device on the man's wrist.
It reminded her of some of Torchwood's older comm devices, but it was clearly much more than that. It was about the same size as a watch, or maybe even a small vortex manipulator, but it was square and much sleeker and slimmer than a vortex manipulator. It also had a touch screen, and a single button on one side.
The exhausted woman on the second floor of the Victorian house had checked Rose's wrists for something, and demanded to know if Rose was "one of them". She had also said "they always wear watches". Although the woman hadn't specified the type of watch Charter agents wore, Rose had no doubt that she was currently looking at one of the "watches" the woman had feared so much.
The Charter soldier didn't look up until four helmeted guards in grey and black armor came marching down the hallway and positioned themselves on either side of him.
Then he raised his head, and his eyes – cold, dark blue eyes— met Rose's through the forcefield. She squared her shoulders as much as she could while handcuffed, holding her head high as she returned his gaze with a stony glare.
The man seemed to expect this from her. A knowing smirk momentarily flitted across his face, before his features returned to a passive, unreadable expression.
He stepped forward and pressed the button on the side of his watch, and a small section of the forcefield sealing her cell dropped away just long enough to admit him and the guards inside.
The second they stepped across the threshold, the energy barrier slammed back into place at full strength.
"What do you want from me? And what have you done with Donna?" Rose stepped forward, hurling her words across the cell without hesitation.
The blond man tilted his head slightly, studying her the same way one might study an exotic beast trapped in a cage.
"You are a living paradox, Rose Marion Tyler, also known as the Bad Wolf," he said, naming her with all the certainty of someone who knew absolutely everything about the topic at hand, and all the pride of someone who expected to always be right.
With a jolt of surprise, Rose realized that she may have miscalculated a bit about the Charter. How did they really know about Bad Wolf? Only a few people in any universe knew about that. Just her mum, Mickey, the Doctor, and Pete! So how did anyone else know?
Rose clenched her hands into fists behind her back, desperately trying to stay calm. "Why am I here?" she demanded. "And what did you do to Donna?"
The man scoffed. "We did what was necessary to protect the structural integrity of the Multiverse. Something you obviously care very little about."
"You mean attacking innocent people is your idea of protecting the Multiverse?" Rose laughed in disbelief. "You actually think that's protecting people? You hunt them down, terrify them, trap them, and attack them for no reason! That's not protection!"
"Tell yourself what you like," the man replied. "The Charter had to take action."
He tapped once on the screen of his watch, and the prison guards stepped forward.
Rose scrambled back as they advanced, trying to call on Bad Wolf to defend herself, but it was no use. The guards grabbed her and hauled her over to the chair in the middle of the room, unperturbed by her efforts to escape.
They removed her handcuffs and shoved her into the chair, forcing her wrists and ankles into the open restraints which snapped shut and locked in unison. A tingling current of energy instantly shot through her, immobilizing her from the shoulders down.
Her breath caught in her throat. She couldn't move. She could barely even feel her arms and legs.
Once she was secured, the guards stepped back and the Charter soldier (or whatever he was) moved closer. "I assume you know how this works," he said. "I ask questions, you answer. You can make this easier or harder on yourself. It's your choice."
"What do you want to know?" Rose hissed through clenched teeth.
"I want you to tell me about this." The man reached into the pocket of his jacket and withdrew a familiar round, yellow device, holding it up for her to see.
Rose choked at the sight of her long-lost dimension cannon. "You took my cannon?"
"The Charter had to confiscate your primitive trans-universal device in light of your recent actions," he corrected. "You used this device to knowingly destabilize the orderly structures of the Multiverse, thus endangering infinite worlds and lives. So tell me, why are you so intent on using this 'dimension cannon' of yours over and over again? What point does your reckless quest across dimensions serve? You have torn so many holes in the fabric of reality in the process. Why?"
"I wasn't trying to destabilize the Multiverse! I was—" Rose quickly clamped her mouth shut, not wanting to give away any more information that could be used against her.
The man seemed to know exactly what she was doing. He moved even closer, gazing down at her with sharp eyes that drilled into her soul. She blinked, unnerved by his unwavering stare.
"Your silence won't save you from anything, Bad Wolf," he intoned. "One way or another, you will tell the Charter everything we want to know."
Rose gritted her teeth. "My name is Commander Rose Tyler, and I will not tell you anything!"
"Very well. You have made your choice."
Rose shot a glare at him. "You don't understand! You know nothing about me, or why I made that cannon! I had to make it! If you and your Charter really want to protect the Multiverse, then you should know about the darkness destroying the stars, and you should be doing something about it! Stop it, before it destroys everything in every known universe!"
An amused smirk appeared on the man's face. "That's a very creative answer, I'll give you that. I had hoped that the Anomaly hadn't corrupted you entirely, but it clearly has."
Rose opened her mouth to respond, but broke off when the man stepped back and nodded to the two guards standing behind the chair.
She only had a moment's warning before the guards' gloved hands were wrapping around her neck, covering her mouth, and clamping down on her shoulders with an iron grip. She shrieked and tried to reach for the Wolf's power, then promptly recoiled from the static burst that flooded her mind instead of the Wolf's warm presence.
'No, oh no, no, no, no, no—'
A needle pierced the side of her neck, injecting a frigid substance straight into her carotid artery. The guards' hands shifted, one of them giving a sharp tug on the necklace around her neck until it snapped. Then they released her.
She cried out from both shock and pain. She couldn't see what the guards had injected her with, but she could feel it spreading through her bloodstream, bitter cold and moving oh so slowly, chilling her to the bone from the inside out. She was freezing, turning to ice— and the guards had taken her TARDIS key!
"What did you do to me?" she croaked, turning her gaze to the man still standing passively before her.
He took a step back, and his dispassionate demeanor was broken only by the smirk still on his face as he answered, "We both know you were never going to talk willingly. I offered you a choice because I hoped you would take the easier option. You did not."
"Oh, that's rich! You…you imprisoned me for…no reason!" Rose only managed to get the words out as her lips started to go numb. 'Come on, Bad Wolf! Where are you?' she pleaded silently.
The man scoffed again. "No reason? You truly don't understand, do you? Did you really think you could get away with tearing holes in the Multiverse's most integral structures, consorting with known criminals across multiple dimensions, and killing an entire squadron of agents in the tunnels beneath the Night Market? Your mind is clearly lost to the Anomaly. You endanger the lives of everyone in every universe you set foot in."
Rose gaped at him, heart sinking like a stone. What was going on? She hadn't done any of that, she just wanted to stop the darkness destroying the stars and go home! Surely wanting to go home wasn't a crime, even in the Charter's books!
And what gave them the right to decide whether was right and wrong for the universe, or which universe Rose got to live in? She simply wanted to go home to the TARDIS and the Doctor, in the one universe out of hundreds where she felt like she truly belonged.
"No….I didn't…it…wasn't…" She could barely open her mouth now, lips too numb to properly form words. Her eyes stung too, and her frigid eyelids almost closed against her will, but she fought to keep them open even as her vision blurred with tears.
A wave of vertigo swept through her as the seconds passed, merciless and overwhelming. Her head gradually lolled against the chairback, temples throbbing in time with her pounding heartbeat.
Had she really killed an entire squad of Charter agents? Was that what had happened in the Night Market tunnels?
And what about Donna? Oh god, what if—
Rose couldn't clearly see the man before her anymore, but she could practically hear his satisfied smirk when he spoke again. "As a senior investigator for the Anomaly Crimes Division, I hereby charge you with the previously stated crimes against the Multiverse. And that, Bad Wolf, is why you are here."
Rose tried to respond, tried to lash out at the agent, tried take back her cannon from the arrogant man who had stolen her dimension cannon, but she couldn't move.
The agent held out a hand to one of the guards behind the chair, and they handed something to him.
Although Rose couldn't quite see it properly through her tears, she knew what the object was. Her TARDIS key. Her way home.
She tried to speak, to move, to stop the agent from taking it away from her, but it was too late. He was already turning away and addressing the guards standing at attention by the forcefield. "The officers will be here shortly. Alert Officer 106 if anything happens."
Then he turned to leave the cell.
"What….you…no…wait…" Rose mumbled, shivering as the frigid alien substance taking over her veins began to encase her to her heart and numb the nerves in her neck and upper spine.
She saw the agent pause at the forcefield, TARDIS key and dimension cannon in hand, but he didn't respond. He simply exited the cell and disappeared down the corridor without another word.
Rose sluggishly shook her head, desperation flooding through her. Surely there was a way out of this. What would the Doctor do? And where was Donna? Donna had to still be alive, she just had to be!
'Bad Wolf,' Rose begged, 'please, help me. Where are you? I need you! Why can't I feel you? Please…'