DAY 148

Time Warp I

Rose

"Go faster!" the Doctor shouted at her.

"I can't go any faster!"

"FASTER!"

"We're on sand! There's no traction!"

"What do you mean there's 'no traction'!? We're in a monster truck!"

"Yes, I know we're in a bloody monster truck and I'm telling you sand doesn't have a lot of bloody traction!" Rose continued to shout back at him. It would help if he would take the wheel, maybe, instead of just leaning out of the window with a harpoon gun nestled on his shoulder. She pressed her foot down even harder, but anymore and the accelerator would be slammed straight through the floor and into the desert below. Rose wasn't a very good driver to begin with, let alone in a monster truck – one of which she had never driven before – and across a few hundred miles of sand dunes with an earthquake rippling beneath them.

"It's going to get away, Rose!"

"I don't understand why we have to chase it anyway, why can't we just wait for it to show up in the valley again?"

"So it can eat more people!? No! We have to catch it!" he continued, then he slid his narrow frame back into the bumping monster truck again – which was bright green and had some weird-looking naked alien women on it who were bright green with bulbous heads and even more bulbous extremities – and took his sonic screwdriver out of his jacket pocket. This he then pointed at the dashboard.

"What are you doing now?"

"Turbocharge," he answered, and Rose didn't even have time to brace herself before they blasted off at nearly one-hundred miles an hour across the dunes. The sky was dark blue with stars glowing high above and the temperature was dropping as they pursued the ripples in the ground marking the trail of what the locals called 'the Worm.' Every fifty yards, sand shot upwards like a geyser, and this they followed, going miles and miles away from the tiny village and civilisation.

"We're gonna crash!"

"Just keep following it!" he said, returning to his previous position of hanging out of the window halfway with the harpoon, Rose ready to grab him and pull him back in if it looked like he was going to fall.

And then it appeared, the great monster they were hunting, bursting out from below. It knew they were chasing it as it rose out of the ground, enormous, burrowing deep into the dunes without any difficulty whatsoever. It was armoured across its whole body, big, grey organic plates of bone, and it burrowed through the dirt with its own thorny face, teeth working like a drill. It came up in front of them and Rose slammed on the brakes. The Worm was gigantic in front of them, the biggest creature she ever saw, and it shrieked and wailed and angled its mouth, with a dozen rows of razor blade teeth straight towards them. The truck nearly crashed into it – and that beast could digest anything – and the force of Rose stopping flung Ten forwards.

"DOCTOR!" she shouted, and lunged, grabbing his spindly ankle. There he hung, upside-down, out of the window of the lime-coloured, rusty monster truck, Rose keeping him aloft, angling his harpoon gun towards the gullet of the Death Worm that threatened them.

"KEEP STEADY!" he ordered her, like she was going to let him go, and he pulled the trigger. The Worm's head was blasted apart by the souped-up harpoon, which had a bunch of extra nails soldered onto it, and the Doctor must have got it right in the sweet spot. The whole ground began to tremble underneath them, and the giant Worm with the harpoon stuck in its face started to pitch and lurch to either side. "Don't keep me steady, pull me up, PULL ME UP!" So Rose did, she dragged him all the way back through the open window and started the truck again. "Reverse!"

"I'm trying! The gearstick is stiff!"

"REVERSE!"

And the stick snapped right off the gearbox in her hand and they were propelled backwards, stuck in reverse permanently, trying to escape the Worm as it writhed around. She was sure it was dying, but it was huge and it grew higher and covered them with its shadow. Then it began to fall properly, the Doctor was shouting at her, she was shouting at him and at herself and at no-one all at once as they went backwards. They were no longer turbocharged and the colossal Worm was falling straight towards them.

It slammed onto the sand dunes with an almighty thump, kicking up enough dust to cause a miniature sandstorm around them and their commandeered monster truck for a few brief seconds. Rose brought the truck to a stop as the dust began to clear, the rumbling from the Worm now ceased. The Doctor had found himself practically upside down with his head in the foot-well of the passenger seat. While he struggled very awkwardly to right himself, harpoon gun now dropped out of the window nearby when he had used up his one projectile, Rose just stared with her hands frozen on the steering wheel.

"Do you think it's dead?" he asked, running a hand through his hair.

"I bloody well hope so after all that." Ten turned to look at her, and she looked at him, both breathing deeply. Then he cracked a smile, looking into her eyes, as the dust cleared to allow them to see the enormous dead Worm in front of them.

"We did it," he said, grinning. And then she began to laugh.

"And his face!" Ten exclaimed as they stumbled back onto the TARDIS later, shutting the door. The pair of them were both in a fit of giggles, "When we said the Worm was dead! And he says – he says 'we'd better get the forklift to bring that back here.'"

"Forklift!" Rose guffawed like she had not just been there ten minutes ago when this conversation had happened with the sheriff of the only town in the valley, "And you said-"

"I said-"

"Better make it a crane!" they said together, holding onto one another to stop from falling over they were laughing so much. And then somebody in the console room cleared their throat, and it appeared they had interrupted some sort of little gathering there and the two of them had not even noticed.

"Are you drunk?" Nios asked them coldly. But everything Nios did she did coldly. Rose was trying not to smile and wiping a tear from her eye with her hand still on the Tenth Doctor's arm.

"No, no," she said, him shaking his head, "Just this thing, with this worm, it was…" and they began to laugh again. Mickey Smith sighed.

"They've always been like this," he said, leaning with one hand on the console just behind Martha. River Song was there as well, ignoring all this, doing something with the computer. "I could tell you a nasty story about these worms inside of toilets, they were-"

"Don't tell that, nobody wants to hear that story," Martha said.

"But I like that story," he complained to her, doing a little pout, "That's the story of how we got together."

"Not really," she said. He raised his eyebrows and she sighed and relented. "Well, alright, a bit, but you can tell that story very easily and leave out all the stuff with the worms and the toilets. Besides, they look like they've seen a bit too much worm for one day."

"A bit too much worm!" Rose exclaimed again, finding this incredibly funny for some reason, and collapsing into Ten again. They probably really did look like they were drunk, it wouldn't surprise her. "Do you know, he shot it with a harpoon gun."

"Where'd you get a harpoon gun from?" Martha asked.

"Well, you know. Here and there," he shrugged.

"So you murdered an innocent worm?" Nios questioned. River laughed a little absently, and it was unclear whether she was laughing at that comment from Nios. River seemed to be one of the few people the synth actually got along with well enough.

"No, it was killing and eating people," Rose said, and then the room fell a little flat when she began to feel like an imposter. She cleared her throat and aimed to restore some of their respect for her, "What are you four doing, then?" She let go of Ten and he scratched the back of his head.

"Following a hunch," Mickey answered. Things were beginning to grow a little awkward now that Ten and Rose had stopped laughing.

"Have either of you seen Jack recently?" River asked, looking up from the monitor finally. Ten and Rose both frowned.

"No," they said together, then again, "Why?"

"Because nobody's seen him, not for nearly five days, and he isn't answering his phone," River said, "I'm sorting through the TARDIS logs."

"Oh right, well… as long as you're on the case," Ten said, "Child of the TARDIS; she won't hide anything from you, I'm sure. Best woman for the job, really." River made a distracted noise of agreement with him. Rose thought River Song probably thought she was the best woman for every job, though.

"Ugh, I'm tired," Martha said, breaking a silence previously only being permeated by the hum of the engines and by Nios's judgmental stare, her still apparently annoyed about them 'murdering an innocent worm.' It must be an act though. Well, Rose hoped it was an act, she wouldn't put it past Nios to try and kill her in her sleep as vicarious vengeance for their slaughter of an invertibrate.

"You slept for ages, though," Mickey said, "You didn't get up until eleven."

"I know that, and I'm tired," she said, "And lightheaded. I need a nap."

"A nap? At this time?" Mickey questioned her, and she began to walk off.

"Yes, Mickey, a nap," she said, heading for the doors. Mickey followed her closely and continued his argument, questioning a lot of her recent behaviour, it sounded like. Rose, admittedly, was not really up to date on the happenings of Martha Jones' life, though. Perhaps she and Martha ought to have a catch up? A girls' day? But then Mickey and Martha were gone, and River was still engrossed in her search through the databanks of the TARDIS and the flight log.

"What gives you the right to play god?" Nios asked them.

There were a few moments where Ten looked like he was mulling this over, like he may actually give her a genuine answer, or like he was about to try and explain something slightly complex to a young child but he was searching for the right words. Rose saved him the trouble, though.

"Superpowers," she said, making her eyes glow vividly gold on purpose, opening her palm to reveal a cluster of bright atoms dancing on her fingertips. But Rose's showing off had an unexpected consequence, when she felt a stabbing pain in her head and gasped. The gold died away and she found that she had collapsed in the brief interval where she had slipped away, into the side of the console with the Doctor coming to steady her.

"What was that?" he asked seriously. Even River had now looked up from what she was doing.

"Is she okay?" River asked.

"Maybe she's got what Martha's got," Nios said. River gave Nios a look.

"I very much doubt that what Martha's got is contagious," she said flatly.

"What? What do you mean?" Nios asked.

"I think I saw something," Rose said.

"Anything helpful?" River inquired sarcastically, Nios rendered very confused now and Ten looking over her in a very worried way. He was much too overprotective, Rose thought; funny when she was the one who could rip open the hull of a battleship if it suited her. Rose didn't know what she had seen, though. Something, she was sure, because there was a dip in her memory for a split-second and half a dozen blurry pictures, but she could not fathom what they had been.

"C'mon, let's go back to our room," Ten said quietly. Rose let him lead her because she was trying to decipher what had just happened. As far as the time vortex and the Bad Wolf went, she really did feel like she was more of an expert in it than the Doctor was, despite what he may think. So if she didn't know what had happened to her, she highly doubted that he did.

"Let me know if you have any visions about Jack," River called after them.

"Yep," Rose called back, though she mumbled it a little, Ten taking them the other way through the TARDIS to get back to the Bedroom Circle. The route that did not require traipsing through Nerve Centre and being forced to talk to whoever was lurking in there.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine, really," she said, "It was just… the time vortex, or something."

"'Or something'? I keep telling you, Rose, the Bad Wolf is dangerous," he told her, lecturing her again.

"Yes," she said through gritted teeth, "I know it is. But I didn't do anything. I only made my eyes glow! That's not even the time vortex, that's the mutation. Sort of. Remember? Eyes change colour constantly?" He sighed. "I don't know what happened. I got shown something."

"Something?"

"I don't know what. Maybe there's something I need to see. Maybe it is to do with Jack, who knows?" Rose said, moving away from him as he tried to lead her like a lost sheep back to their room. He put his hands in his trouser pockets and walked alongside her. He was worried about her, like always, but she didn't think there was anything to be worried about. And he couldn't even do anything anyway, no matter how much he might complain about Bad Wolf being a fully integrated part of Rose Tyler now. There was no way to reverse their mutated strain of the 'superpower syndrome'; that had been made perfectly clear a week ago.

Whatever it was, though, was not as short-lived as Ten and Rose may have hoped. And this time it wasn't triggered by her being liberal with her abilities, it hit her out of nowhere, more vividly, and she could very nearly make sense of the things she saw. It was as though she was having an out-of-body experience. She did not know where she was, she wasn't even sure she was anywhere, as she was pulled out of herself and thrown somewhere else entirely. Everything was hazy and warped as though through a broken lens, crystallised and multiplied. Rose realised – not on her own, but with a nudge from whatever higher power was tapped into her to begin with – that this was time. The time vortex. She saw very little, a few faces and bits of machinery and slivers of things she could just about identify as famous events, but she knew that everything was falling apart.

And then she was breathing and she was in Ten's arms again, having fallen completely, and he had pulled her into their room. The door was closed and she sat on the floor next to it, propped up against the wall, the Doctor crouching down and touching her face.

"Rose!?"

"We have to – have to go," she stammered, woozy, her head swimming.

"Go? You can't go anywhere," Ten said, "I'll go get Martha to-"

"No, no," Rose said, getting to her feet, fighting against him when he tried to make her sit back down, "It's the time vortex – it's more than that. It's just… time itself, it's being destroyed."

"Destroyed? You can't destroy time," he said.

"Well someone's doing a very bloody good job of trying," she said, feeling the stabbing return to her head. She did not leave herself this time, but she saw her hands light up gold, her whole body began to glow and judging by the fear in his face her eyes must be glowing, too. She probably looked just like Bad Wolf, but she was fully aware of herself, even if she was not quite in control. Sometimes it was as though she had another personality hiding in the recesses of her head.

"Rose? What are you doing?" he asked her seriously.

"I am the time vortex," she said, or rather, the Bad Wolf said through her mouth, "I am reality." And she grabbed his arms and the world began to move. They were stationary, the Doctor frozen in fear for her safety, and the entire universe twisted. But it was jerky, like a stuttering film, and sometimes the inside of her brain stung as they shifted – until they dropped just like that out of time and space and into a dim room, the only light coming through a narrow window set into the door. It was a bright light, white and blinding, and Rose touched her temples with her fingers.

"That wasn't you," Ten told her, and she met his eyes, his cold eyes.

"God, you look at me like I'm a monster!" she shouted at him, "I'm getting sick of it! This isn't my fault!"

"I'm just scared of what she'll use you for."

"She is exactly what she said she is – the time vortex. But breathing through me. It's not like I'm possessed by a demon, Doctor," Rose snapped, "It doesn't want to hurt me." But then he shushed her because they heard noise in the corridor next to their very cramped storeroom. A dozen or so people came running through, all of them dressed in black outfits like a SWAT team and carrying automatic weapons. "See?" Rose hissed, "I told you something's going on." The Doctor didn't say anything.

"Hold on – what do you mean, 'time' is being 'destroyed'?" he asked. But she didn't really know what she meant. Not until they felt what could only be described as a ripple, a ripple with penetrated all the walls and blasted through the air until sounds became muffled. It was like listening underwater, or trying to hear when your ears were popped, and she thought their surroundings – poorly lit as they were – now bore some sort of dull hue imposed atop them. Rose opened the door, forcing the lock easily, and they stepped out into the brightly lit, all-white corridor.

"I think that's what I meant," she said, shocked, indicating the soldiers who had just run past. There they all were, with their guns in their hands, but they were not moving at all. They were completely frozen. Around the Doctor and Rose Tyler, time had stopped.

AN: Full disclosure, this is derivative of the game Quantum Break that came out last year. But in a pastiche kind of way.