You will probably want to read the Introduction before you start.
Prologue
The Dalek Empire was a point at the edge of the universe that no one went near. Everyone knew, and those who didn’t were mercilessly obliterated, standing as an example to others. Vast, unstoppable armadas; ostentatious parliaments, and armies of Daleks, soaring through the vacuum. The Daleks expanded their empire slowly and subtly, so as to avoid the attention of the Time Lords until they were ready to fight them.
But one ship avoided all of this, sailing in quickly and without a fuss. This was the Doctor’s TARDIS, its shields at maximum. It was invisible – partly down to its size, and partly because the Daleks arrogantly assumed that no one would be stupid enough to walk straight into their dominion.
They were wrong. The Doctor was stupid enough, and took one liberty which led to a sequence of events that would change him irreversibly.
Dalek Spaceship
The Doctor stepped out cautiously, keeping to the shadows. The scanner had told him that there were no Daleks on-board, but the Doctor doubted everything he heard about them. They were intelligent and experienced at deceit and manipulation. He suspected that even Autumn Rivers could slip up in front of the Daleks, and she sensed this, also staying within the immediate vicinity of the TARDIS.
“The Daleks can’t know I’m here,” the Doctor mumbled. “I’m just hoping to find some answers. Maybe I can hack the Pathweb…”
He craned his neck. The spaceship was massive, more like a temple with Dalekanium-lined columns and an impressive stained-glass window, showcasing the image of the Dalek: symmetrical, uniformed.
When the Daleks first came out of the shadows, the Doctor’s reaction time was slow. He thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, blurring the ship’s columns. It was only when their lights flashed that he realised the trap he had walked right into.
“DOCTOR!” bellowed the leader. “YOU WILL COME WITH US TO THE COMMAND SHIP, OR BE EXTERMINATED!”
“I’ll come with you,” agreed the Doctor. “But on my own terms. You come with me, in my TARDIS.”
“Are you sure?” murmured Autumn. “I wouldn’t trust them with-“
“No arguments,” insisted the Doctor. “Daleks, so you know I’m true to my word, you first.” He pushed open the doors of the TARDIS carefully. He knew that he would be exterminated if he made any sudden movements, and if the Daleks got their hands on the Doctor’s body, survival was the worst outcome. He could even end up in a Dalek Camp, and that didn’t bear thinking about.
The first Dalek entered the TARDIS, its eyestalk scanning every feature. Autumn stood back, breathing slowly to calm herself. The worst part of being a psychologist was sensing the fear of others, and the Doctor was terrified. They followed into the console room.
“I’ll stay in this room, I promise,” assured the Doctor, taking Autumn by the hand and walking with her around the edges. He had to – the Daleks had already blocked the door to the corridor. He leant over the balcony, staring into the dark depths of the ship. Autumn tried not to look – they unnerved her. The Doctor gave her a shove.
“Careful!” she hissed. “You nearly pushed me over.”
“Whoops,” he replied. “Let me try again.”
And without a thought, the Doctor threw Autumn over the side, following, shortly after, himself.
But one ship avoided all of this, sailing in quickly and without a fuss. This was the Doctor’s TARDIS, its shields at maximum. It was invisible – partly down to its size, and partly because the Daleks arrogantly assumed that no one would be stupid enough to walk straight into their dominion.
They were wrong. The Doctor was stupid enough, and took one liberty which led to a sequence of events that would change him irreversibly.
Dalek Spaceship
The Doctor stepped out cautiously, keeping to the shadows. The scanner had told him that there were no Daleks on-board, but the Doctor doubted everything he heard about them. They were intelligent and experienced at deceit and manipulation. He suspected that even Autumn Rivers could slip up in front of the Daleks, and she sensed this, also staying within the immediate vicinity of the TARDIS.
“The Daleks can’t know I’m here,” the Doctor mumbled. “I’m just hoping to find some answers. Maybe I can hack the Pathweb…”
He craned his neck. The spaceship was massive, more like a temple with Dalekanium-lined columns and an impressive stained-glass window, showcasing the image of the Dalek: symmetrical, uniformed.
When the Daleks first came out of the shadows, the Doctor’s reaction time was slow. He thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, blurring the ship’s columns. It was only when their lights flashed that he realised the trap he had walked right into.
“DOCTOR!” bellowed the leader. “YOU WILL COME WITH US TO THE COMMAND SHIP, OR BE EXTERMINATED!”
“I’ll come with you,” agreed the Doctor. “But on my own terms. You come with me, in my TARDIS.”
“Are you sure?” murmured Autumn. “I wouldn’t trust them with-“
“No arguments,” insisted the Doctor. “Daleks, so you know I’m true to my word, you first.” He pushed open the doors of the TARDIS carefully. He knew that he would be exterminated if he made any sudden movements, and if the Daleks got their hands on the Doctor’s body, survival was the worst outcome. He could even end up in a Dalek Camp, and that didn’t bear thinking about.
The first Dalek entered the TARDIS, its eyestalk scanning every feature. Autumn stood back, breathing slowly to calm herself. The worst part of being a psychologist was sensing the fear of others, and the Doctor was terrified. They followed into the console room.
“I’ll stay in this room, I promise,” assured the Doctor, taking Autumn by the hand and walking with her around the edges. He had to – the Daleks had already blocked the door to the corridor. He leant over the balcony, staring into the dark depths of the ship. Autumn tried not to look – they unnerved her. The Doctor gave her a shove.
“Careful!” she hissed. “You nearly pushed me over.”
“Whoops,” he replied. “Let me try again.”
And without a thought, the Doctor threw Autumn over the side, following, shortly after, himself.
The Eighth Doctor Adventures
Series 1 - Episode 12
Bigger on the Inside
Written by The Genie
Autumn stood up, brushing herself down. She expected her bones to ache but they didn’t, and when she looked up, there was a close ceiling. She suspected teleportation, but recognised the place: it was a TARDIS corridor, though she had no idea which; the same rich golden walls as in the console room, but with roundels too. She found them claustrophobic when she didn’t know which she was in. The Doctor stood up next to her.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I had to think on the spot. Didn’t you ever wonder about that balcony? I put it in ages ago when universal security measures increased, for situations like this. We could jump over, assumed suicide, and work away discreetly. The TARDIS will have already started partial lockdown procedures. Oh.” He examined a screen on the wall. “Too late – one Dalek’s already lose. The others are trapped in the console room.”
“That’s where you control from!”
“The console room doesn’t have any power any more, don’t worry. The TARDIS can’t go anywhere the way it is right now until I give the vocal command.”
“Which is?”
“The third day of the week. It changes every day,” he clarified. “But for now, we’re on the run.” He started down a corridor, then turned back. “Wonderful, redirected. The TARDIS is malfunctioning. Just what I need. This way…” He pointed, uncertainly, much to Autumn’s horror, in the direction of Probably Not Death.
Turning a corner, they entered the library. That was some reassurance: Autumn remembered the library, having been a couple of times; once when she was meandering the corridors, and again for some cross-referencing. It was one of her favourite rooms – stately and infinite, with Gallifreyan symbols along the walls and columns.
“It’s nearby,” said Autumn, reading off her vortex manipulator, but the Doctor had already sensed it.
“I think there’s more than one of them,” whispered the Doctor.
The floor above them collapsed, the sound of a Dalek blaster just about audible over the explosion. Books hurtled in the Doctor’s direction and he ducked, pulling Autumn aside. One of the columns fell, crumbling, and the room shook. The Doctor took Autumn’s hand and led her out, as Daleks swooped above them, wrecking the place of learning. More floors and columns fell and the library was demolished, leaving a trail of destruction behind it.
The corridor passed Autumn in a flash, and the Doctor pulled her aside into a smaller room. The Daleks moved past, their shadows a step ahead of them. The Doctor gently closed the door and wiped the sweat off his forehead. They were in a sauna.
Under the red light, it struck the Doctor how beautiful Autumn was; perfectly-curved features, sharp but with an overall softness to them. She was so distinct-looking – not just conventionally attractive, but a unique specimen of humanity (or whatever species she was, but, as the Doctor was keen to recall, not Gallifreyan). It was a face he would never forget, and one which he could imagine himself either loving or hating at any given time.
“So is it the Daleks who want revenge?” she whispered.
“Maybe – this was definitely a trap – but I don’t know how they got into the TARDIS to write those messages. Maybe the Hunters of Andromeda were involved, and some survived. I don’t know, Autumn. I’m trying to put it all together in my head, and the pieces are beginning to join, but there’s something missing.” He moved closer to her, away from the door. It was too hot. Autumn unzipped her fleece slightly. “We need to go again. The Daleks should be behind us now. We move the other way, with the help of the TARDIS”.
They left the sauna, heading in the opposite direction to where the Daleks had gone, and briefly passing the archway to the library. The Doctor chose not to look, but discerned flames out of the corner of his eye.
The end of the corridor took them to a darkened room with luxurious red seats, which Autumn quickly realised was a cinema. The Doctor pulled out his sonic and the screen flicked on. “We shouldn’t be traceable in here.”
An image of the Daleks appeared, gathered around the console. Autumn felt a stab of anger when she saw the piano behind them, already developing a strong sense of ownership over parts of the ship.
“DOCTOR!” bellowed a Dalek, its cold blue light of a pupil staring at the camera.
“What do you want? Why are you doing this?”
“YOU ARE OUR GREATEST ENEMY, AND NOW YOU WILL AT LAST BE CAPTURED-“
“-and executed?” interjected the Doctor. “No thanks. I’m warning you, leave my ship.”
“BUT YOU HAVE NO MEANS OF STOPPING US!”
“But if I find those means, I will not hesitate to use them. I will have no mercy. The wrath of your greatest enemy. Would you risk that?”
The Dalek considered. “YOU WILL NOT FIND THE MEANS.”
The Doctor rolled his eyes. “Bored now,” he muttered, cutting the connection.
***
“What’s this?”
“This is the lobby!” said the Doctor, slightly proud. It was a marble room, like that of a hotel room, with doors in all directions. Pick your entrance – or exit. The Doctor calculated the outcome of each but headed for the door to the end. “This one is only accessible in emergencies, and I’ve no idea what’s on the other side. Shall we try it?”
“It can’t be any worse than back there.”
The Doctor turned the doorknob slowly and ventured through. He could feel the floor below him, and the walls beside him, and could hear Autumn stepping behind him, but other than that, his new environment was a mystery: blacker than a coal-shaft in deep space, even the faintest chance of home comfort was out of reach.
Through the darkness, the Doctor felt water vapour. Heavy fog. He continued onwards, now chasing the light at the end.
I’m sure I… know…
The ground beneath his feet changed. It was grass. Crouching down, he felt the morning dew.
“No, why take me here? Anywhere but here.”
“Where are we?”
“Huh?” The Doctor remembered Autumn. “Oh, we’re… nowhere. This isn’t safe. We need to leave.”
“It looks safe to me. It looks like an ordinary field.”
The Doctor turned back. “No argument, Autumn. We’re going. My ship, my rules.”
“No.” Autumn continued onwards, disappearing into the mist. The Doctor ran after her. “If you’ve got nothing to hide, then we carry on. You can’t make me turn away. You can go back, but I’m going.”
“Autumn… please…”
Autumn considered, looking right, then left, and shook her head sadly. “What could be so terrible that you couldn’t tell me?”
She walked on, and the field led them to the back of a house. The Doctor realised the TARDIS had offered a shortcut. He cursed her under his breath. Autumn walked around the outside of the house, arriving in a village square. All eyes were on her, as if they’d never seen another human being before.
“I don’t understand. Where did the TARDIS go?”
“This is the TARDIS.”
“What?”
“Right now, right here… we’re in the TARDIS.”
The Doctor approached a woman with medium-length brown hair, who stepped forward, wide-eyed, and held her hand out. “It’s you,” she whispered. The Doctor remembered.
“Valerie.”
“I remember…” Valerie clutched her head in pain. “Oh, God, I remember!”
Others in the village stumbled, confused, holding onto their heads.
“My presence has triggered their memories, probably because of the strength of the telepathic field when I’m around.”
“Who are they?” asked Autumn, feeling more trapped than she did back in the corridors.
“They’re my companions.” Autumn was blank. “Remember, Autumn, when I met you the first time, I rejected your proposal to travel with me. I’d travelled with other people, and it had gone wrong. Robin Moon as an example, but this was before then. I’d had so many companions, but I… had a way of changing them.” He looked at Valerie as if that was supposed to mean something. “Sometimes they’d become toughened to the world around them; angry and cruel, or worse, apathetic. Sometimes there were accidents. Some of my companions died…” Both the strength of the telepathic field and the Doctor’s conscience proceeded to trigger some memories he’d rather not have recalled. “I messed up their lives, and that was when I realised. I needed someone with me, but I couldn’t keep going on the way I was. So I created companions – androids. I made them myself. They were human in appearance, in… everything, really. Apart from memory. I could alter their memory. I gave them all fake lives, then if – when – I screwed up, I reset them, and took them here. A village; a place deep within the TARDIS, isolated by the ship’s geographic trickery. It was their reward.” He smiled. “A blissfully ignorant human life. I even made them their own children.”
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I had to think on the spot. Didn’t you ever wonder about that balcony? I put it in ages ago when universal security measures increased, for situations like this. We could jump over, assumed suicide, and work away discreetly. The TARDIS will have already started partial lockdown procedures. Oh.” He examined a screen on the wall. “Too late – one Dalek’s already lose. The others are trapped in the console room.”
“That’s where you control from!”
“The console room doesn’t have any power any more, don’t worry. The TARDIS can’t go anywhere the way it is right now until I give the vocal command.”
“Which is?”
“The third day of the week. It changes every day,” he clarified. “But for now, we’re on the run.” He started down a corridor, then turned back. “Wonderful, redirected. The TARDIS is malfunctioning. Just what I need. This way…” He pointed, uncertainly, much to Autumn’s horror, in the direction of Probably Not Death.
Turning a corner, they entered the library. That was some reassurance: Autumn remembered the library, having been a couple of times; once when she was meandering the corridors, and again for some cross-referencing. It was one of her favourite rooms – stately and infinite, with Gallifreyan symbols along the walls and columns.
“It’s nearby,” said Autumn, reading off her vortex manipulator, but the Doctor had already sensed it.
“I think there’s more than one of them,” whispered the Doctor.
The floor above them collapsed, the sound of a Dalek blaster just about audible over the explosion. Books hurtled in the Doctor’s direction and he ducked, pulling Autumn aside. One of the columns fell, crumbling, and the room shook. The Doctor took Autumn’s hand and led her out, as Daleks swooped above them, wrecking the place of learning. More floors and columns fell and the library was demolished, leaving a trail of destruction behind it.
The corridor passed Autumn in a flash, and the Doctor pulled her aside into a smaller room. The Daleks moved past, their shadows a step ahead of them. The Doctor gently closed the door and wiped the sweat off his forehead. They were in a sauna.
Under the red light, it struck the Doctor how beautiful Autumn was; perfectly-curved features, sharp but with an overall softness to them. She was so distinct-looking – not just conventionally attractive, but a unique specimen of humanity (or whatever species she was, but, as the Doctor was keen to recall, not Gallifreyan). It was a face he would never forget, and one which he could imagine himself either loving or hating at any given time.
“So is it the Daleks who want revenge?” she whispered.
“Maybe – this was definitely a trap – but I don’t know how they got into the TARDIS to write those messages. Maybe the Hunters of Andromeda were involved, and some survived. I don’t know, Autumn. I’m trying to put it all together in my head, and the pieces are beginning to join, but there’s something missing.” He moved closer to her, away from the door. It was too hot. Autumn unzipped her fleece slightly. “We need to go again. The Daleks should be behind us now. We move the other way, with the help of the TARDIS”.
They left the sauna, heading in the opposite direction to where the Daleks had gone, and briefly passing the archway to the library. The Doctor chose not to look, but discerned flames out of the corner of his eye.
The end of the corridor took them to a darkened room with luxurious red seats, which Autumn quickly realised was a cinema. The Doctor pulled out his sonic and the screen flicked on. “We shouldn’t be traceable in here.”
An image of the Daleks appeared, gathered around the console. Autumn felt a stab of anger when she saw the piano behind them, already developing a strong sense of ownership over parts of the ship.
“DOCTOR!” bellowed a Dalek, its cold blue light of a pupil staring at the camera.
“What do you want? Why are you doing this?”
“YOU ARE OUR GREATEST ENEMY, AND NOW YOU WILL AT LAST BE CAPTURED-“
“-and executed?” interjected the Doctor. “No thanks. I’m warning you, leave my ship.”
“BUT YOU HAVE NO MEANS OF STOPPING US!”
“But if I find those means, I will not hesitate to use them. I will have no mercy. The wrath of your greatest enemy. Would you risk that?”
The Dalek considered. “YOU WILL NOT FIND THE MEANS.”
The Doctor rolled his eyes. “Bored now,” he muttered, cutting the connection.
***
“What’s this?”
“This is the lobby!” said the Doctor, slightly proud. It was a marble room, like that of a hotel room, with doors in all directions. Pick your entrance – or exit. The Doctor calculated the outcome of each but headed for the door to the end. “This one is only accessible in emergencies, and I’ve no idea what’s on the other side. Shall we try it?”
“It can’t be any worse than back there.”
The Doctor turned the doorknob slowly and ventured through. He could feel the floor below him, and the walls beside him, and could hear Autumn stepping behind him, but other than that, his new environment was a mystery: blacker than a coal-shaft in deep space, even the faintest chance of home comfort was out of reach.
Through the darkness, the Doctor felt water vapour. Heavy fog. He continued onwards, now chasing the light at the end.
I’m sure I… know…
The ground beneath his feet changed. It was grass. Crouching down, he felt the morning dew.
“No, why take me here? Anywhere but here.”
“Where are we?”
“Huh?” The Doctor remembered Autumn. “Oh, we’re… nowhere. This isn’t safe. We need to leave.”
“It looks safe to me. It looks like an ordinary field.”
The Doctor turned back. “No argument, Autumn. We’re going. My ship, my rules.”
“No.” Autumn continued onwards, disappearing into the mist. The Doctor ran after her. “If you’ve got nothing to hide, then we carry on. You can’t make me turn away. You can go back, but I’m going.”
“Autumn… please…”
Autumn considered, looking right, then left, and shook her head sadly. “What could be so terrible that you couldn’t tell me?”
She walked on, and the field led them to the back of a house. The Doctor realised the TARDIS had offered a shortcut. He cursed her under his breath. Autumn walked around the outside of the house, arriving in a village square. All eyes were on her, as if they’d never seen another human being before.
“I don’t understand. Where did the TARDIS go?”
“This is the TARDIS.”
“What?”
“Right now, right here… we’re in the TARDIS.”
The Doctor approached a woman with medium-length brown hair, who stepped forward, wide-eyed, and held her hand out. “It’s you,” she whispered. The Doctor remembered.
“Valerie.”
“I remember…” Valerie clutched her head in pain. “Oh, God, I remember!”
Others in the village stumbled, confused, holding onto their heads.
“My presence has triggered their memories, probably because of the strength of the telepathic field when I’m around.”
“Who are they?” asked Autumn, feeling more trapped than she did back in the corridors.
“They’re my companions.” Autumn was blank. “Remember, Autumn, when I met you the first time, I rejected your proposal to travel with me. I’d travelled with other people, and it had gone wrong. Robin Moon as an example, but this was before then. I’d had so many companions, but I… had a way of changing them.” He looked at Valerie as if that was supposed to mean something. “Sometimes they’d become toughened to the world around them; angry and cruel, or worse, apathetic. Sometimes there were accidents. Some of my companions died…” Both the strength of the telepathic field and the Doctor’s conscience proceeded to trigger some memories he’d rather not have recalled. “I messed up their lives, and that was when I realised. I needed someone with me, but I couldn’t keep going on the way I was. So I created companions – androids. I made them myself. They were human in appearance, in… everything, really. Apart from memory. I could alter their memory. I gave them all fake lives, then if – when – I screwed up, I reset them, and took them here. A village; a place deep within the TARDIS, isolated by the ship’s geographic trickery. It was their reward.” He smiled. “A blissfully ignorant human life. I even made them their own children.”
“I had dreams of you for so long,” said Valerie, wobbling but steadying herself.
“You would have. That’s the TARDIS’ telepathic circuit. It’s strong. It’s what unites you all, and sometimes, maybe when I’m dreaming, it will reawaken memories, or give you visions.”
“They said the fields went on forever. But they didn’t, did they?” Valerie felt a tear in her eye. Everything was a lie.
“No. It was the same field,” the Doctor said darkly, “over and over and over again. It was just a magic trick.”
Alex stepped forward. The Doctor remembered him too; the one who’d ‘died’ sacrificing himself for the Doctor. “We went out to the fields, looking for my daughter, and we found a metal thing, shaped like a human torso.”
“That thing was you daughter. All her memories were contained in it. She must have died out on the field, deactivated because the telepathic circuit was too strong. The flesh would have decomposed, leaving behind what was underneath. I’m sorry, but none of you are real. I did what I could for you, but now you know…”
They stopped. Their faces turned neutral. Their backs were straight, their arms by their sides.
“I think that was the right button.” Autumn fiddled with her vortex manipulator. The Doctor examined it, confused.
Then the final piece of the jigsaw slotted into place. The Daleks knowing the Doctor’s location, the message on the vortex manipulator, the malfunctioning TARDIS, the notes and ‘Repent’, etched into the time rotor.
The Doctor remembered Autumn’s words the night before.
“You didn’t realise you were harbouring a weapon. Lily-Rose, I mean. How did you make that mistake so easily?”
He remembered all those times he’d had suspicions that he couldn’t explain and had blamed himself.
I was right.
In one swift motion, Autumn pulled her blaster out of her pocket and held it steadily to the Doctor’s head. He backed away, leaving a meter between them.
“I gave you so many chances,” she complained. “I really did. I even asked you if you’d blown up any planets; I thought that would be a clue. You thought I was blackmailing you, but I wasn’t.” She smiled sadly. “I really, really wasn’t. I was giving you a chance, because I liked you. I wanted to forgive you.”
“Oh, Autumn…”
The Doctor put the question forward, not worrying any more about how stupid it would sound.
“What exactly am I supposed to have done?”
Autumn Rivers
Summer was always the best time of year. When I look back, I realise it was eternal. I spent long, sunny nights playing on the field with Dad. I was about six years old, and the sunsets lasted forever. He’d take me out and we’d play sports; football or something. My mum would insist that I was a girl and that he was off his rocker, but I loved it. When I started school, of course, I hated it. But then, with Dad, it was the best thing in the world.
I never believed in Heaven apart from when I was really young. When I look back, that was the only Heaven I knew. The possibility of living, basking, in a perfect memory. If I could step back and relive that night over and over, until all I knew were the emotions, the sense of belonging, and the feeling of the sun beating down on me forever, then I would. I would never stop. I would embrace that eternity.
Then Mum would call us in for tea, I’d wipe the mud off my knees, and we’d sit outside by the plants and the animals. She’d have cooked something fit for gods, and then the experience was complete. Every sight, sound, smell, taste and sensation beneath my fingers was exactly as I wanted it.
***
As I grew up, my friends changed. Some left, leaving me heartbroken, until their insignificance in the greater picture occurred to me. With others I merely became distanced. I gained new friends as my school changed. The one I remember the most was Pandora. She was a musician, like me; a singer, though I preferred to brush my fingers across keys, as opposed to exercising my voice and straining my throat. Besides, I always despised the sound of my own voice played back to me. It always sounded to me like I was whining, although other people loved it. Apparently, most people think about their own voice like that. People who don’t, I guessed, were probably very annoying.
I was sitting with Pandora in the music studio. It was where we liked to go when school was over. I’d sit at the piano stool, eating biscuits; her at the computer, laughing about it.
“What do you want to do when you’re older?” she asked.
“Oh, you know, stuff. Something very me.” That response annoyed her.
“You never talk about yourself, Autumn. Why not?”
I wanted to tell her so much, about my investigations into academic radicalisation. I’d come across some of Dad’s work once, discovering that he worked in a special branch of secret services dealing with terrorism; threats posed by New Order Catholicism and Sjangri, and their various conflicts. It all started back on Earth, in the early days of civilisation. Now each planet had its own issues. But people had interested me – their unyielding faith – a concept that seemed impossible.
“I want to be a psychologist,” I said, half-revealing what I wanted to say. “A criminal psychologist. I think dangerous people, mad people, evil people, are the most interesting.”
“I thought you wanted to be a writer. But I guess you can be anything, with those grades you’re getting.”
“I’d need something to write about first.” She liked that remark. “And you?” I asked.
“Oh, you know… stuff…” She looked out of the studio window. I wondered whether she meant to imitate me.
***
Years later, I was living the life I’d always wanted to live. I discovered it was about both what you knew and who you knew; I approached the right person with my skillset and my Dad’s name, and from then on it was about rising to the top.
I was running down a side-street, gun in hand. Dad had taught me how to shoot a gun when I was fourteen, in case anyone came around with malicious intent. That was when I began to grow suspicious of his work. But now I was older, yet I felt so much younger. I thought I was dressed up in adult clothes, pretending to a grown-up, and someone would find me out. I did my best to disguise those feelings.
NKJ hit the wall, collapsing to the floor.
“I knew you’d find me…” He hit his bald head against the wall. “How did you do it?”
“It’s about the smaller details, N. You didn’t clean up your bin. I had a little look through, found a skyrail ticket. You’d obviously decided it wasn’t safe, realising we were onto you. What does one do when one’s direction is discovered?” I let the question hang in the air. “One turns the other way, N. I knew you’d try the ocean; that was your first mistake. Your second was purchasing essentials on the other side. You used fingerprint recognition to pay, and thought that wiping the records clean would stop us tracing you. I kept all the records open, and watched them as they were wiped. That took me here.”
NKJ reached for something in his pocket.
“Looking for this?” I held up his blaster. “I like it. Think I might keep it.”
***
I sat opposite NKJ, communicating through the glass. It was too dangerous to be alone with him in a room, apparently, but I needed to speak to him.
“After you killed the girls, you sent a tape to the police.” I looked into his eyes. Most people avoided my gaze when I wanted it to be intense, but he reciprocated it. “You told them that you would never reform, that you would always be a villain. Why?” He didn’t answer. I put it another way. “What makes you wake up in the morning and decide that you’re going to do something incomprehensibly bad?”
I continued trying, pushing a photograph across the desk of the interrogation room. “That was your wife. You had an argument twelve years ago and pushed her down the stairs. Then you became a criminal. What changed you? What was it about that moment?”
I began to change after NKJ spoke to me that day. I began to understand these people. I never sympathised with them, of course – I understood the implications of free will. Anything is a reason, but nothing is a justification. We all have the power to act in whatever way is appropriate. We all have the power to resist wrong, however weak it is in comparison to our desires. That possibility lies inherent within all of us.
***
I sat in my apartment, the curtains open so I could watch the sunset, snug in a blanket. The news came on and I turned the sound up. It was important to stay up to date with current affairs in my line of work.
“The government can confirm that the Plant has arrived on our planet, and that there have already been three cases of contamination.”
I sat up, suddenly alarmed.
“Scientists have stressed not to panic – the threat can be contained. But so far…”
My thoughts trailed off into the land of the unthinkable. Our world, my world, could never end. It couldn’t. The thought did not compute; the sheer concept was wrong. The Plant would be stopped, because my world would go on forever. It had to.
***
“The government can confirm that there are now ten cases reported across the United Continent and Isles.”
I looked out of my window at the landscape. The Capital of the Third Isle. Nothing happened here. It was sweet. But that sweet air was a threat, now. The Plants on Mrs Skittersberry’s balcony were a threat too. Everything was becoming corrupted. We were the next in a long line of planets. I knew the rest of the galaxy must have given up on us.
***
I knocked on the door. It took longer than I remembered. Dad’s silhouette was different to how I remembered it, too; shorter. The lights were dimmer. The paint on the walls was fainter. Even the air seemed tighter.
“How are you?” I asked, knowing the answer, and knowing that he knew I knew. The bags under his eyes said it all, and as I scanned the kitchen, I saw no alcohol. I gathered antidepressants. I could hardly blame him for feeling how he did.
“She’s upstairs,” he said. “She doesn’t move much anymore. She’s in too much pain.”
I nodded, my stomach throbbing in agony. I’d discovered it did that when I got nervous.
“I’ll make tea,” I said, filling the kettle. “Is she allowed to drink anything?”
“I give it to her straight out of the teapot,” he said. I made Dad the tea, bringing it into the living room and handing it to him. “I’m going to see her now,” I decided, and made my way slowly up the stairs with my equipment. “I’ll tell you when you can come up.”
“Good luck,” he said with a brave smile.
It was always Mum. If anyone got ill, it was her. If there was a stomach bug going around, she got it. If there was a new allergy, she was sneezing. If there was an accident, she was injured. Now she was the first person I knew to be infected by the Plant. I entered her room. The curtains were closed, but I could make out the Plant’s influence. A whole limb was covered in leaves and thorns, and her face wasn’t looking its best. I could hear her heavy, raspy breathing.
It was horrible – she was the woman I’d grown up with. At the end of everything, she called me in for dinner. That was the way it was. She was Mum. She did everything for me. She never got tired or old. She kept going on, being Mum, fulfilling her purpose. Anything else was wrong.
“Hi Mum,” I whispered.
“Autumn…” she murmured. “Is it you?”
“I’ve come to cure you, Mum,” I said. She smiled weakly back at me. It meant everything to know that she believed me. I got the injection out of my bag. It was fully prepared. “The compound contains a diluted pesticide,” I lied, knowing that science wasn’t her strong point. “It will make you tired. You’ll go to sleep and it will work its magic. When you wake up, the recovery is near-instant. We’ve tested this and although it’s not been legalised yet, it worked on 100% of patients.”
“Sounds pretty great,” Mum coughed.
“Are you ready?” I checked the needle.
She nodded.
“Okay. You can keep talking to me as I do this.” I fastened a band around her arm and rubbed at it until I could find a vein, then started the injection. I watched the solution disappear and enter her bloodstream.
“I’m so proud of you,” she said. “Getting me better like this. And your job. I never got to do anything so exciting. Dad’s proud of you too, but he doesn’t always show it…” She yawned. It was working already.
“Have a nice sleep,” I said, a tear in my eye. I kissed her on the forehead. “Love you, Mum.”
And then she was asleep.
Minutes later, she was dead.
I lived in the consolation that it was peaceful. More peaceful than being turned into a carnivorous Plant, which was inevitable at her stage. I applied the professional detachment I’d learnt in my days at work, as I went down the stairs and moved Dad’s tea. He hadn’t finished it, but he’d had enough for the sedative to take effect, so presumably, the ret-con had too. I moved Mum’s body, giving her a quick but heartfelt burial in the garden, as delicately as I could. I removed all photographs of her from the house and wrote the note by the sofa about Dad’s accident; that he’d been in a car accident and lost a large chunk of his memory, that he lived alone in this old house, but that he was a very happy man. He never knew that the love of his life was buried underneath his patio.
That was the last I ever saw of my family. No goodbyes, but as I walked away from the house, I offered them a salute for being responsible for the best days of my life.
***
“There was a meeting on-board the Epicurus,” said the chairman in the meeting room. The chairman had more power than anyone on the planet, though only a few people knew that. “They’ve agreed to destroy the planet. No care for us, because apparently we’ll be dead soon anyway. They’ve done this to countless other worlds.” There was an outbreak of noise across the table. Professionalism was lost. The chairman slammed his fist on the table. “Stop! Why do you think I called you here? I’ve got a solution. And it involves Miss Rivers.”
I sat up. I’d been heavily interested in the meeting, but fully unaware that I was to be involved.
“The Doctor,” he said, passing me a photograph of a man who looked old-fashioned enough to be from Earth. “He’s a Time Lord. He sanctioned the destruction of the planet. It was his signature that finalised it. In one week, we’ll be obliterated because of that signature.” He passed more photographs across the table. “Time travel. Not just unique to the Time Lords – we’ve been developing it too. We haven’t tested it yet, but this seems our only chance. We need someone to go back in time and stop the Doctor from signing that paper. Someone clever and manipulative. Someone who always gets her own way.” He pointed at me.
“Me?” I laughed. “Time travel? Shouldn’t I hear about the risks involved? This is my life on the line.”
“You’ll be dead in a week,” he answered bluntly. “At least this way there’s a chance you’ll survive in the long-term, even if the risks are high.”
I nodded. “I suppose it’s worth it.”
“You’re going to have to learn,” he explained. “Learn all about this man, about the planets around him. Enough to build a reasonable cover-story. We came up with the idea to disguise your ship as a prison. Say you’re a prisoner. Pass Planet Earth, he’ll hop on-board, and intrigued, he’ll take you with him. You can change his path. You can stop him even being there, or you can be there with him and tell him to say no.”
It was everything I’d ever wanted. Travel, Earth, and a mission. But I’d be drifting through space, alone, for months until I found him. I would have to find a way to cope with that.
Anyone else in my shoes would have turned to suicide. My suffocating fear of death saved my life, and I instead turned to learning.
I learnt carefully from my computer system as I travelled, hoping that they’d found me the right time-zone. I learnt how to pilot a Type-40 TARDIS. I learnt sixteen of the most commonly-used alien languages. They were obligatory for so many races to learn that I was hypothetically able to find my way around a lot of planets. I learnt how the TARDIS worked. I learnt about Earth culture. And in my sadder moments, when I needed more sentimental consolation, I played the piano, and watched the stars drift by. I watched civilisations from miles away. I was on the fringe of existence.
***
The day came conveniently, when time itself trapped my ship in the Earth’s orbit. Fate found me a reason to meet the Doctor. I garbed myself in leather, tied my hair back and played the piano. My heart fluttered when I heard the sound of the Doctor’s ship materialising. Something new at last. I composed myself, making sure my feelings were not apparent. I avoided his gaze as he stepped out but tried to study him in the reflection of the piano. I played the same chord again, trying to find something that would define him for me. Unsatisfied, I tried a different one.
“I don’t normally get visitors,” I said, still looking away.
“Well,” began the Doctor. I loved his voice. “I don’t normally make visits. Nice cell.”
“Thanks.” I stopped playing and shot him my trademark stare. “I like it.”
“You must be in here for something pretty bad,” deduced the Doctor as he scanned the room.
“What makes you say that? It’s beautiful in here.”
“Exactly. They must be terrified of you. Only an idiot would tighten up security – if you don’t want someone to escape, all it takes is to make them comfortable.” They were right. He fell for the prison trick, hook line and sinker. This would be easier than I anticipated.
“I’m very comfortable,” I said, sitting myself on the padded computer chair.
“What did you do?” interrogated the Doctor.
“I was a criminal forensic psychologist,” I replied. I’d prepared the conversation, and it felt so good to be having it.
“I didn’t mean your job. And you’re either a criminal psychologist or a forensic psychologist – I’d avoid the surplus words.” That was patronising. I was patronised already, and we were only discussing my lie.
“No, I think you misunderstood me,” I retorted, undercutting the Doctor’s deviousness, but trying not to show my anger. “I was a forensic psychologist who adopted criminal behaviour. I was a criminal psychologist. We’re the best.”
“I bet. All those years of criminal profiling – you must have played one helluva game.”
I nodded. “My name’s Autumn Rivers. What’s yours?”
“Call me the Doctor.”
“Oh, they’re sending up psychiatrists? What an unusual lot.” I clasped my hands together, enjoying the role. “That’s so sweet, but tell them I’m not interested.”
“Funny,” commented the Doctor sarcastically. “But I think you know why I’m here. Tell me what you know.”
“One condition.”
“Name it.”
“You release me.” I relaxed, stretching my arms. “It’s not much to ask.”
“It really is.” The Doctor turned back to his TARDIS. “I can cope without you, Autumn.”
“When I woke up this morning I felt different,” I started, with the killer line I knew would convince him. “Everything.” The Doctor stopped. “The world around me shivered and shook, and it felt like I’d been caught in the heartbeat of a dying man.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Something’s going to happen to the universe.”
“Thanks for the clichés.” The Doctor got in the TARDIS and slammed the door. I flexed my fingers, preparing to wait patiently. I knew what was coming next. He would be back.
***
“I knew you’d return. I made you a cappuccino.” I glanced to two cappuccinos on the table, chocolate sprinklings arranged in star-shapes on top. I had a lot of them.
“Thank you.”
“Who’s this?” I hadn’t expected another visitor.
The visitor stood awkwardly by the wall. There were only two chairs. It would have been the courteous thing to do to allow to two men to sit, but it was my home and I had no intention of relinquishing my authority.
“Professor Graves,” said the Doctor. “He’s an expert.”
“Is he now?” I raised my eyebrows. “So, have you come to let me out?”
“Yes,” answered the Doctor, reluctantly. “But you definitely know something about this?”
“Look at where I am. How could I not?” I pressed a button underneath the table and the wall by Graves gave way, moving smoothly sideways to reveal a panorama over the Earth. Graves pressed his fingers on the glass, hardly believing. As he breathed, the water vapour blurred the North American continent.
“Oh my God. We’re in space.”
“Yes,” said the Doctor, unsurprised. “Why else do you think I came? Autumn’s a prisoner, according to her, anyway. A criminal forensic psychologist who was imprisoned by her own people for…” He looked to me in the hope of elaboration. I realised how much I enjoyed being enigmatic. It was one of the things I most missed from my schooldays.
“…for something that’s none of your business,” I finished.
“They put her in here, gave her all this in the hope that she wouldn’t try to escape, and launched her off into space. How long have you been drifting across the universe for?”
“Eight years.” Well, it was three years, but I wanted to appear that bit more tired.
“She just happens to stop by Earth on the day that it stops turning,” stated the Doctor, blatantly unconvinced. I’d need to work on my story, and I figured the way to do that might to be returning his arrogance.
“Wow,” I remarked. “How quaint is that? You think this is just an Earth thing? Everything has stopped moving across space, here at least. Only your ship’s managing it.”
The Doctor muttered something about Time Lord technology.
“I’ve passed lots of planets,” I explained. “I drift through space quickly, and you wouldn’t have noticed me. Only, whatever is doing this has stopped my ship, too. I’m stuck orbiting your world, and I want to find out why.”
The Doctor got up, finishing his cappuccino and wiping off the froth from around his lips. “Come on, then. With me.”
***
“Nice!” I commented, running my hand along the console unit. “Kind of gloomy, though.”
“I prefer the word Gothic.”
“I prefer white.”
“I can tell.”
I ran my hand down my hair. “So – what next?”
“I’m one step ahead of you,” said the Doctor (ironically), then looking to Graves: “one step ahead of both of you. I know what’s stopped everything in its track. A signal. I’ve found it. I don’t recognise the wave, but it leaves behind a background radiation. That radiation is on every single object.”
“How can you see it?”
He pointed to his eyes. “Time Lord contact lenses. They see background radiation. Now…” He dialled something. The room shook and Graves stumbled. Lights flickered on and off. A madman would probably have said something about a strange presence. The Doctor, madder still, smiled.
“What was that?”
“Every signal has its source, and I’ve just locked onto it. I know exactly where we are, and it’s all beginning to make sense.”
He approached the door, both tentatively and eagerly, reaching out to the handle and preparing to embrace the impossible beyond.
“Are you ready to meet your masters?”
And that was it. I was with the Doctor, on an adventure in time and space.
***
“So what was it?” I asked, as the TARDIS appeared back on the London side-street. “That greater power that the Enlightened Ones were obsessed with.” To tell the truth, it had terrified me beyond belief.
“I don’t know,” said the Doctor, embarrassed. “But they showed me a cube, with its atoms rearranged into a random formation using their equation, and it became spherical. That was impossible.” There was a glimmer of fascination in his eyes. “There was a miracle in the end.”
“They thought this was a miracle,” I argued, gesturing to the sky. Night had fallen now. “It was just the effects of a greater science.”
“Well then,” said the Doctor, shaking it off. “I’d better go now. Goodbye, Autumn. Thank you for your help. I’m trusting you here because you saved my life. I think that counts for some community service.”
I laughed.
“But no getting into trouble.” He gave me a swift handshake.
“Can I come with you?” I requested. “I’d love to do more of this.”
“No. Sorry.”
My face fell. It was not the reaction I was after. “Why?”
“You’re a criminal. I don’t travel with criminals.”
“And you’re a hypocrite,” I retorted, realising I’d lost my temper. That was it. I cursed in my mind; I’d lost my first chance. I’d have to find another way. So I glared and walked off down the side-street into the shadows, my mind changing. I realised now that the Doctor was an easy man to hate.
I began my next plan quickly. I broke into UNIT and stole a vortex manipulator, then found the Epicurus. They were fighting the Plant. I signed up for every expedition there was, in the hope that my planet would be one of them, and the Doctor would be there. I’d read about his links with the Epicurus. He was one of them, sitting comfortably up there, a supposed pioneer, using his authority to decide our fates.
Soon, I found him again.
***
“Right, er, Autumn,” murmured the Doctor, catching up with me. I’d left the other two purposefully a few steps behind. “So, a bit of an explanation maybe?”
I rolled my eyes. One minute he didn’t want to know, the next he was back, invading my privacy. “I got bored on Earth. Such an angry planet. So I stole a vortex manipulator from the UNIT Black Archives and journeyed back out into space. Found myself here, and I wanted to do something for the community – like, you know, community service.” I mirrored the last joke he’d told me.
“Oh, I see,” said the Doctor, nodding. “I release you from prison and you feel guilty?” I wanted to punch him. Whenever I heard the word ‘guilty’ I thought about my parents, about the injustice and my involvement. Then I distracted myself with thoughts about how guilty he was.
“No, not guilty,” I chuckled. “Not for a minute. I have no guilt about what I did to this day.”
“And what exactly is it you did? You didn’t tell me last time. Why were you in prison?”
I stared onwards, unable to look the Doctor in the eye. My tongue hovered at the back of my mouth, considering the risk. Don’t tell him, I thought. I wanted to come clean. He was a reasonable man, he might understand. But at the same time, anything could compromise the operation. I was reaching breaking-point.
“Doctor!” came a voice from behind us. Rosie was calling. The Doctor slowed up for her, but I continued at my hasty pace. After all the time I’d spent in that ship, I enjoyed walking.
Andy caught up with me, as we strolled a few paces ahead of the Doctor. “Do you think we’ll do it?” he said, starting conversation.
“I know we will. We have to.” I studied the horizon thoughtfully. There was still a risk that I couldn’t save my own world, and I had seen it destroyed. I’d seen the devastation caused.
“Positivity,” remarked Andy. “I like it.”
“You can go to Rosie for that,” I joked. “There’s a difference between positivity and determination. I’ve done this mission before and it’s failed. I’ve seen civilisations destroyed because of our inability to fight the Plant and I’m not going to let it happen again. I’m not going to let that thing take any more lives.”
I ended ambiguously, leaving him wondering whether by ‘thing’ I meant the Plant, or the ship Epicurus, resting peacefully in the sky, unaffected and primed to destroy anything which could compromise its integrity. In truth, I meant both.
***
I charged at the forest as it lashed out, almost knowing. The blasts from the Rosie-gun were effective, knocking down trees, as others got angrier. The landscape looked ordinary – until it emerged.
It was the first time the shape of the Plant itself had appeared; a lumbering, towering monster like some gigantic, tentacled brain. I recognised it, as the unsavoury memories returned. Hatred bubbled deep inside me, its molecules expanding and escaping. I cried out in anger and fired at it, whilst trying to not imagine that it was once a part of my Mum.
It resisted, attempting to thrash me with a tentacle, but I ducked.
“Get out!” I yelled to the Doctor.
“I am not leaving you here!” he argued back.
“Listen to me!” I shot him a glare. I seemed to be able to see into his soul. “I’m in charge this time. I’m your leader and this is my mission.” I shouted to be heard over the commotion. “You will do what I tell you now!”
The Doctor considered, then, respecting my authority, nodded. “Thank you.” At that moment, I questioned all my judgements about him.
I turned back to fight the Plant. I lost my focus, but kept fighting. My mind and soul were drifting as I stared on into the forest, which became, inside my mind, something else – an expression of a million things. You can’t die here. You’re scared of death. My mind willed me to move, but I remained fixed to the spot. I considered the possibility of ending it all here, because the mission hardly seemed to matter now I was facing the creature responsible for all of this. I decided to go for it. The mission would go ahead, but only if I could beat the Plant here and now, just to show that I was worth it.
I’m going to beat them this time. I’m going to do it.
Something tapped me on the back, causing me to flinch.
“I told you to leave!”
“We’re both leaving.” The Doctor pulled me back but I resisted. That man would not listen, and he seemed to think the same of me. “Just listen, I’ve programmed the explosion, but I’ve strengthened the planet’s force-field. The core will explode but neither the explosion itself nor the debris will escape the force-field. The Plant will be destroyed, but so will we if we don’t leave!”
I took his hand. With his other hand, the Doctor raised his screwdriver.
“I’ve tuned it to the planet’s frequency. It’s a remote control now.”
I stumbled, feeling dizzy. The Doctor held me up.
“Sorry – I’ve tried to isolate us but you might get a bit dizzy.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m messing with the gravity. Enough of a force and we can generate…”
I looked on as anything not rooted to the ground flew past us; tables and chairs from the control area, leaves and logs. As they flew up, behind them I could make out the crimson, circular shape of something fluctuating. I understood.
“A portal…”
A second chance.
***
“Was it you or him, in the end?” asked Andy, opening the doors to his balcony. He had an optimum view of the Eiffel Towers. “You were both so determined not to let that planet get destroyed.”
I thought about my answer. “It was my determination and his intellect working together, I think.”
“Really?” Andy leaned over the railing, watching the street below. “I thought it would’ve been the other way around.” He swallowed, contemplating. “Are you going to take Russell home?”
“I think so. Wherever ‘home’ is.”
“He lost touch with his son. I was talking to him while I changed. If you can do anything…”
I nodded. “Consider it looked after.” I patted him on the shoulder. I’d taken to Andy; seen so much potential in him. I hoped we’d meet again. “I’m sure you could have done well. There’ll be plenty of opportunities in the future for you. Just try not to be turned into a carnivorous plant next time.”
Andy laughed.
“What about you now? Are you going to go with the Doctor?”
I considered, looking back to the TARDIS; a bulk of blue in the cream-coloured room.
“Do you think I should?”
“Yes,” he responded. “You both suit each other, in a strange way. And he can make you better.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, you said you’ve seen planets like that destroyed, and he said he’d destroyed them, and you worked together to…”
It hit me more than I ever expected it to. After everything, after all my efforts and elaborate plans, I had failed. The time travel had gone wrong. I knew as soon as Andy said it that the planet the Doctor had destroyed was mine. The signature was there, printed, and my planet was rubble drifting through space. I couldn’t think about it anymore. I didn’t know what to do. My mission was to save my home. That was justice. Perhaps that was still my mission: justice.
My home needs justice, I thought. Mum needs justice. Dad needs justice. Pandora needs justice, and the chairman, and all the others. And I need justice.
I just didn’t know what justice would entail.
***
“You must never get used to this.”
I circled around the TARDIS, stepping down the stairs to the console unit.
“No,” answered the Doctor, leaning sceptically against the wall. “I suppose not.”
“I’d like to see some more of this planet first,” I requested, flicking a couple of buttons which adjusted the lights. It was amazing. He had completely missed the fact that I knew how to pilot his ship. Whatever reason had justified it, this was a major advantage for me. “It seems like an interesting place.”
“Most people don’t have a destination in mind,” remarked the Doctor. He approached the other side of the console, staring at me through the glass of the time rotor. The glass blurred his eyes. “Yet here you are, ready to go. All the gadgets, all the knowledge, and all the ideas.”
“You gave me time to think,” I replied, making it up as I went along. There was no preparation now. Everything was spontaneous. “So I thought. That day we first met left me a lot of time to think. When it happened, they said it gave everyone time to think.”
“Time,” emphasised the Doctor. “Exactly. Everything froze, a single moment, captured in time. Thoughts became words.”
“That was the effect that slowing time had. We got to savour a single moment.” I wandered over to the bookshelves, running my fingers along the edge of the Doctor’s collection. “Just imagine what it’s like to go back. To see it all again. It must be a gift.”
“It can be a curse,” disputed the Doctor. “Because you’re not allowed to interfere. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“It’s important.” The Doctor turned away. “It’s important that I know what you’re so keen to get out of this experience.”
“I hate time,” I explained, plonking myself down on the armchair. I was telling the truth. “I hate living in the knowledge that time will kill me, slowly. I hate it controlling me. I hate how it runs alongside me, even when I’m sitting still. I hate how it’s my executioner.”
“I don’t stop the passing of time.” The Doctor re-adjusted the lights. “I just choose which bits to live. Time travel isn’t a cure, it’s a distraction. And now for the important part.” He turned back to face me and rested his hand on the console. His face sparkled in the gold-and-red hue of the TARDIS’ light. “I need you to make a promise.”
“Anything.”
“Promise me you’ve got nothing left. Because I’ve done this before, and…” He looked to the floor guiltily. “I’ve taken people away, and I’ve destroyed everything they’ve left behind. If you have something you love, I’ll take it away from you. I-I… I can’t help it. I can’t stop it. So promise me this. Promise me I can’t take anything away from you.”
The irony was, he already had. The memory flashed across my face, draining it of colour, but I shook it off. He was asking if there was anything in my life that he might risk, when he’d already risked it. It was too late. I was one of those people.
“Nothing.” I didn’t move my body; didn’t take my eyes of the floor. “It’s all gone now. All of it.”
“Time travel.” The Doctor smiled darkly. “Nothing’s ever gone.”
I hoped all night that he was right.
***
“No sign of forced entry,” the Doctor remarked, stepping over the threshold. “Professor Ricker knew the killer?”
“Depends who the killer was,” I was already crouching, again, by the chair, “and whether they had one of your sonic things.”
“I could’ve done it and forgotten. I haven’t the best memory.” I wondered if the Doctor had forgotten about my planet too, but I decided that one could not forget such a decision.
“Care to share what you’re talking about?”
“Not particularly, Detective Reed,” I stood, and faced the window. “You said one would need a car to crack this window.”
“One would. And yet I don’t see any tire marks.”
“Did someone use a gun, perhaps?” The Doctor moved across to the window, fingers hovering near the spiked remnants of the glass, but not quite touching. “Something with a lot of velocity. Did you find a bullet in the street?”
“Not as of yet. And there wasn’t a casing in the room. Someone theorised it might have some kind of pressure weapon. Seems a little far-fetched to me.”
“There you are, Doctor: sonic again.”
“Agent Rivers,” Reed stepped into my line of view, inches from my face, making use of the extra height the Detective had over me. “This investigation might go a lot quicker if you could end the petty, non-professional torments.” It was like being told off by a teacher again.
“You are quite right, Detective Reed,” the Doctor moved in-between the two of us, placing his hand defensively on my shoulder, acting more concerned I would be the arbiter of any conflicted over Reed. “Please forgive Autumn, she was a poor stray orphan I found and raised as my protégé. She’s excellent, but etiquette hasn’t rubbed off on her. In fact, I’m rather worried she might turn on me, and become my deadliest enemy.”
I shivered. It was as if he knew.
“You’re rambling, Doctor.” I removed the Doctor’s hand, passive-aggressively, but with less emphasis on the passive.
***
The TARDIS was quiet. Neither the Doctor nor I had spoken since the apartment, instead we had simply sat in heavy, oppressive silence, that not even the comforting sound of the time rotor could break.
“You want to say it,” I finally said, standing and looking the Doctor directly in the eye. “So say it.”
So he did: “You murdered him, Autumn. You made that Hunter kill him. Now other people will die because of the deal you made – no, you planned. Do you think it was worth it?” Again, I felt anger and an urge to resort to physical violence. The man’s hypocrisy was astounding. I wanted to tell him at every moment, and the desire was starting to eat away at me. It consumed every waking moment.
“Men like Ricker, things like the Hunters, they’re all dangerous. And so am I. I’ve killed for less noble reasons than tonight, Doctor, and I can see in your eye that you have too.” I rubbed my injured shoulder, the pain finally breaking through to me. With all the psychological experience I’d gone through, physical pain was side-lined. “I compromised. But I did to weaken everyone against me – against us – as much as possible.”
“You really do not trust the world at all, do you?”
“Only myself, Doctor,” I walked away from him, heading towards the corridor that held the medical bay. But before I left, I turned to the Time Lord, and said: “Someone has to watch the watchmen. And don’t think I’ve taken my eye off you.”
***
Lily-Rose angered me. To believe in a kind Creator, after all the suffering I’d endured, seemed like the most ignorant thing in the world. Of course, I did not hate religious people. That would have been one prejudice too far, even by my standards. What I hated were people who risked the lives of others because of their faith. I was getting closer to the Doctor, understanding him better, calculating my next move. And I was not going to have this insignificant, brainwashed idiot stop me from reaching the end. I applied the tiniest pressure in the right places. Lily-Rose cried out.
“Deactivate the bomb now,” I ordered.
“No.”
I was so angry; angrier than I was at the Doctor. I had to be in control. She had to do as I said. And I could not die; even the thought of death sent me into meltdown.
I applied more force. Lily-Rose winced.
“I have got this far,” I said, losing control of what I was saying. “You think your mission is important? Mine is more important, one hundred times more, a million times… I’m going to get justice, and I’m not going to let you stop me.” I pushed slightly too hard, risking causing physical damage. I heard something crack.
The Doctor walked back in with the Captain and Dennie, and I stopped. The way he was looking at me, I knew he understood. He could see and understand so much. How did he miss the most important thing?
***
“Tell me,” I questioned, turning to Lily-Rose. “How do you have faith through all of this? How can you ever imagine that someone kind is doing this?”
“The Creator revealed himself to us, far in the future.” Lily-Rose perched on the wall, staring out at the forming cosmos. “We were given conclusive evidence of his existence. I’ve seen miracles.”
“Science.”
“Miracles. They were miracles. Science would never be that kind, but the Creator would. We saw a justice in everything, a natural moral order.” I chuckled at that, but wondered if mine might be fulfilled. That would be enough to give me faith. “Even now, there will be justice. Those things will be cast down to hell, and we will be rewarded in Elysium for allowing that.”
The Captain looked at his watch. “It’s nearly a new day. When we first met you, Doctor, you said everything would be finished by now.”
“The seventh day,” realised Lily-Rose. “It’s time for a rest.” She held her finger over the button.
“NO!” I exclaimed, my heart pounding so loudly it blocked out all other sounds. I felt light; strange. In the three years I’d spent drifting through space, I hadn’t experienced one panic attack, but this was it. The prospect of death – enough to drive me insane. After everything, staying alive still seemed like the only way. “Lily, don’t you dare. Lily, don’t!” I wanted to pull the device away, but realised that any rash movement would lead to the button being pressed. I was terrified. “Lily, please, I’m begging you. Lily!”
Lily pressed the button.
I ran for the door but slipped and fell on the stair. As I climbed up, I realised – nothing was happening.
***
“They’re inside your ship,” observed Lily-Rose, her passion returning. “Now they’ve got control of time. I should have destroyed this place while I had the chance!”
The Doctor smiled.
I watched the smile curiously. He’d smiled many times before. Sometimes it was sadly, accepting his failures. Sometimes it was jokily, sharing some whimsical past experience. But this smile was something worse – it was almost evil. I imagined him smiling that way as he signed the warrant for my planet’s destruction, not caring in the slightest. No. He didn’t see my father’s face. He didn’t know what he was destroying.
“My move,” he whispered. “I’ve been preparing for this one.”
The ship shook, and the lights went out – the only source of light now was the cosmos out of the window. Then another appeared, from within the TARDIS. It was a pure, heavenly white light that burned as it touched the skin. I screamed, not sure what emotion I was feeling. I just felt the urge to run away, banging on the window to find a way out of it. As I turned around, squinting, the Doctor’s silhouette eclipsed it. I thought he was going to kill me, and in that moment, he was terrifying. I thought he knew. That feeling of paranoia that had plagued me for so long was returning.
Then he was gone, following a series of shadows. The shadows were clawed, bent over and desperate, moving like demons in the night. The door slammed shut. The buzz of the generator got louder and higher-pitched, until it screamed, and the ship continued to shake; lights flashed on and off, and booms sounded in the distance. I realised I’d fallen onto Lily-Rose, who was now unconscious.
It was a minute before the screaming generator stopped, until it turned off for good, and the ship drifted silently through the night, dead, as the Doctor walked back through its corridors. They were inside a corpse.
“What… happened…” I coughed and stood up, steadying myself up.
“The Hunters unlocked the heart of the TARDIS. It’s connected to me, because of the TARDIS’ psychic abilities. We’re kind of attuned to each other. I was in pain and desperate, and they were breaking the TARDIS. The connection snapped and bounced back onto them. My feelings and the TARDIS’ feelings – hatred on both accounts – was reflected through the time vortex. The TARDIS used time to put the fear of God into them, and they fled.” I understood now. I’d hacked into the TARDIS’ telepathic circuit and removed myself from it, so that she was not able to hear my thoughts and somehow warn the Doctor. The heart of the TARDIS reaching out to touch me was a threat.
“They fled because of you,” I corrected him. “I saw you and the way you chased after them. You were terrifying. Did you have any mercy?”
“Did you?” The Doctor pointed at some debris tumbling through space. I realised I didn’t. “A bit of wreckage from this ship. The Hunters left a bit of a dent behind.”
“Where did they go?”
“They went further back, the only direction they could. They trapped themselves before time, in the never-space. They’ll be stuck there forever. Or for-never, if you like.”
“Justice,” I said, looking down at Lily-Rose who was still sleeping. The Doctor had a sense of justice too. I wondered whether, if I explained now, he’d understand. “But the Hunters? Scared?”
“The heart of the TARDIS has the power to change minds and hearts together.”
“So do you.”
I noticed that the Captain had gone, probably to clear up some of the mess and inspect the ship. “So everything is doomed to collapse in the end?” I watched a cloud of pink gas passing by the window, and wondered if my mission was doomed for the same end. Doomed to go wrong, to bring justice to both of us. We were both criminals now – I would go as far as saying that we were both a kind of moral evil.
“I suppose it is. But even then, there are so many possibilities. There’s an endpoint of death, but look out there. Anything could happen.” The Doctor and I were reflected back at ourselves through the glass, but the cosmos also shone through. Our faces were a part of the forming universe. Two opposing forces, in union, at the beginning of time; a prophecy of things to come. “It’s all in flux here. Our lives could go in different ways. Maybe that’s how infinity works – all those alternatives.” He lowered his voice sadly. “All the things I could have done differently.”
“You didn’t realise you were harbouring a weapon. Lily-Rose, I mean. How did you make that mistake so easily?” I was trying to force it out of him now. I kept wondering if he knew. This would be the way of telling.
“I was ignorant,” admitted the Doctor. “I didn’t give her enough thought. I can see anything if I want to – I’m just too self-absorbed to bother, sometimes.” That was my answer. He’d admitted it. “And speaking of flaws, you went to some lengths today. I almost expected better. Why?”
“Why was I so harsh on the Captain? Why was I so ruthless? So cold? Why did I go as far as torture? Do you really want to know?”
“Yes,” said the Doctor, sotto voce.
“I was scared.” I collected myself. “I was so scared, Doctor. Not of suffering, or of being morally-corrupted, or any of the complex things you experience. I was just so scared of dying. Does that make me a bad person?”
“I don’t know,” replied the Doctor diplomatically. I wondered if he meant it, or if he was trying not to offend me. We both made mistakes, and I made my decision. I wouldn’t punish him without complete conviction. We were similar, as much as I hated to admit it, and I was starting to admire him. He deserved a chance. He deserved a lot of chances, as many as I could give, but I settled on three. The Big Three. Three chances. He deserved the chance to repent. So I wrote the word ‘Repent’ in red lettering as I entered the TARDIS, and placed it on the console. A message for him. If my planet was the mistake he had made, he would remember.
“What’s that?” I asked innocently, when he found the note.
“Nothing.” The Doctor put it quickly on the bookshelf. Guilt, fear or confusion? Maybe all three were possible at once. “Just something from the Hunters, I think.” I hoped that wasn’t what he thought, but here we were, onto Chance Two.
The Church of St Ava flashed off the monitor, replaced randomly by the ship.
“Are we back?”
“No, I think the TARDIS is just malfunctioning. She has just been ripped open, after all.” The Doctor tried to calm her, but the monitor image changed again, this time to a snow-capped hill under a red-hue, and the edge of a mighty dome. That image flashed away too, and it was blank, for a moment, before another flashed up. This one was ordinary, but in a frightening, calm-before-storm way.
It was a village. A green field, and at the end of it, some cottages and a pathway. The whole thing was covered by a layer of mist.
“Why is there a village there? Doctor?”
The Doctor turned off the monitor, avoiding my gaze.
“I’ll give her time to adjust.” He left in hurry, heading down a corridor and slamming the door behind him. I remembered the place the Doctor had left the note and reached up, pulling it out from on top of the books it was balanced on. I unfolded it, studying it carefully.
Repent…
He’s got to understand, I thought. It won’t be much longer now.
***
The Doctor walked into the console room with a plate of toast and sat back on the sofa, as I recited a Ludovico Einaudi piece. I’d been up all night preparing. I’d sent a message to the Daleks, warning them that the Doctor would be on his way. This was the second chance. Then there would be a third. If he didn’t confess the third time – and I was ready to give him that opportunity – I would hand him over to his worst enemies; the creatures he’d spoken about many a time.
“Repent,” I said, holding up a piece of paper to remind him straight away. “Why did you hide this from me?”
“I didn’t want to worry you,” he said, taking a bite of toast. “It’s probably nothing. Just something the Hunters left behind.”
“If someone’s blackmailing you-“
“They’re not.” The Doctor spoke softly and reassuringly, as if I needed reassuring. “No one else could get in this ship.”
“Russell was a stowaway.”
“Autumn, you’re paranoid. Stop. It’s fine.”
I continued playing, and the Doctor finished the slice he was eating. It wouldn’t be fine for much longer. I was onto Chance Three, the Final Chance. I knew exactly how it was going to work.
***
“Tea?” I asked. “I’m getting myself a coffee.”
“Why not.” I left, walking down the corridor. “And don’t go so heavy on the biscuits this time!” he called. I laughed to myself. I hoped he would confess. It was what I wanted. I was ready to forgive him, to say sorry. If I knew he was honest, that was all that mattered. But if he was a liar, I was done with him. If he was a liar, there would be other secrets. Liars keep the best secrets, as I understood from my own experiences.
I re-entered with a tray carrying a tea, a coffee and a plate of biscuits. I picked up a Jammie Dodger and dunked it in the coffee. He glared, trying not to giggle. I took a bite out of it and closed my eyes, savouring the taste with a silent ‘Mmm’. A humorous way to start the conversation. He wouldn’t suspect the sedative in his drink.
He dozed off fairly quickly, and I got to work, using all my strength a few tools from the TARDIS garage to inscribe ‘Repent’ into the console unit. I was going big this time.
I put the tools away and came back. The Doctor was waking up.
“How long’s that been there?” I asked.
“Hmm?” The Doctor focused.
“I said how long’s that been there?”
“What…”
The Doctor stood up to get a closer look, stepping down the stairs to the console unit. He put his finger against it.
“Did you see who did it?” he asked.
“You were supposed to!” I rolled my eyes. “I ran out of biscuits, so I left to get some. I opened three different packets. That took about four minutes, from here to the kitchen and back. Someone did that in four minutes. Why didn’t you see?”
“I was… asleep…” The Doctor scratched his head.
“Someone hates you that much,” I remarked. “What the hell have you done, Doctor?” I backed away from him. “Am I safe?”
“I don’t know.”
“I know you might not trust me, but now is the time to come clean. If you’ve done something, I can help you. And trust me, I can forgive an awful lot.” There it was – the offer of absolution. “But if I find out you’ve lied to me about something - that you’ve, I don’t know, blown up some planet…” I let that one settle. The Final Chance: I stated it. He couldn’t forget now. He must know. He must remember. I decided in my mind that he had remembered, but continued. “…and whoever did this finds you, I can’t guarantee that I’ll help you, and if your life is on the line, that I’ll safe you.” That was a promise to myself too. “Unless you tell me now. You have to start trusting me, Doctor. We have to start trusting each other.”
“Okay,” agreed the Doctor. “But I haven’t blown up any planets. Cross my hearts.”
That was it. The lie. It was so obvious when I knew what it was, and I decided at last what his punishment would be. I’m going to give him to his enemies. And if I see him again, I’m going to kill him.
***
“Doctor, I’ve just got this through on my vortex manipulator.” I showed the Doctor my wrist device. The message I’d set up flashed continuously in red lettering. “It’s locked. It’s not letting me do anything else.”
The Doctor examined the message closely.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW THE TRUTH ABOUT THE DOCTOR, FOLLOW THESE COORDINATES
“The coordinates have been saved automatically,” I explained. “I was going to just go, but with that conversation we had about trust – well, I thought you might need me.” The Doctor smiled. I felt no guilt. “So do you recognise the coordinates?”
“Yes. If I go, I could be risking everything. We need to play this carefully, Autumn. Subtly.”
“Why?”
He grimaced.
“Because we’re about to enter Dalek-Space.”
***
“No, why take me here? Anywhere but here.”
“Where are we?”
“Huh?” The Doctor remembered me. “Oh, we’re… nowhere. This isn’t safe. We need to leave.”
“It looks safe to me. It looks like an ordinary field.”
The Doctor turned back. “No argument, Autumn. We’re going. My ship, my rules.”
“No.” I continued onwards, disappearing into the mist. This was all new, but it was more secrets. What other awful things has he done? What other sides has he got? “If you’ve got nothing to hide, then we carry on. You can’t make me turn away. You can go back, but I’m going.”
“Autumn… please…”
I considered, looking right, then left, and shook my head sadly. “What could be so terrible that you couldn’t tell me?” I was playing a game now, relishing the most important moment of my life.
I walked on, and the field led me to the back of a house. I walked around the outside of the house, arriving in a village square. All eyes were on me, as if they’d never seen another human being before.
“I don’t understand. Where did the TARDIS go?”
“This is the TARDIS.”
“What?” Now he really had confused me.
“Right now, right here… we’re in the TARDIS.”
The Doctor approached a woman with medium-length brown hair, who stepped forward, wide-eyed, and held her hand out. “It’s you,” she whispered. The Doctor remembered.
“Valerie.”
“I remember…” Valerie clutched her head in pain. “Oh, God, I remember!”
Others in the village stumbled, confused, holding onto their heads.
“My presence has triggered their memories, probably because of the strength of the telepathic field when I’m around.”
“Who are they?” I asked, feeling more trapped than I did back in the corridors.
He explained that they were androids, created to be his companions. The creations of an evil genius, I realised.
“I had dreams of you for so long,” said Valerie, wobbling but steadying herself.
“You would have. That’s the TARDIS’ telepathic circuit. It’s strong. It’s what unites you all, and sometimes, maybe when I’m dreaming, it will reawaken memories, or give you visions.” And I wasn’t a part of it. I felt lucky.
“They said the fields went on forever. But they didn’t, did they?” Another woman disillusioned by the Doctor.
“No. It was the same field,” the Doctor said darkly, “over and over and over again. It was just a magic trick.”
Another man stepped forward. “We went out to the fields, looking for my daughter, and we found a metal thing, shaped like a human torso.”
“That thing was you daughter. All her memories were contained in it. She must have died out on the field, deactivated because the telepathic circuit was too strong. The flesh would have decomposed, leaving behind what was underneath. I’m sorry, but none of you are real. I did what I could for you, but now you know…”
I realised I could control the telepathic circuit from my vortex manipulator, and pressed a couple of buttons. It froze it. I froze, too. My moment had come. The moment that everything else was building up to, and now I had my own army. “I think that was the right button.”
I watched the Doctor’s face understanding, remembering, realising. He hadn’t known, after all. But now he did.
In one swift motion, I pulled my blaster out of my pocket and held it steadily to the Doctor’s head. He backed away, leaving a meter between us.
“I gave you so many chances,” I complained. That was the thing I was most angry at him for. I was ready to forgive him, and he’d refused that. I hated him more than I had before. “I really did. I even asked you if you’d blown up any planets; I thought that would be a clue. You thought I was blackmailing you, but I wasn’t.” I smiled sadly. “I really, really wasn’t. I was giving you a chance, because I liked you. I wanted to forgive you.”
“Oh, Autumn…” The next thing he said made me aware of what an idiot he was. Still inconceivably ignorant. Maybe he had killed people and forgotten about it. Maybe there’s a list of the dead, somewhere, with a million names that he wouldn’t recognise, but all had him in common.
What exactly am I supposed to have done?”
So I told him.
***
“You would have. That’s the TARDIS’ telepathic circuit. It’s strong. It’s what unites you all, and sometimes, maybe when I’m dreaming, it will reawaken memories, or give you visions.”
“They said the fields went on forever. But they didn’t, did they?” Valerie felt a tear in her eye. Everything was a lie.
“No. It was the same field,” the Doctor said darkly, “over and over and over again. It was just a magic trick.”
Alex stepped forward. The Doctor remembered him too; the one who’d ‘died’ sacrificing himself for the Doctor. “We went out to the fields, looking for my daughter, and we found a metal thing, shaped like a human torso.”
“That thing was you daughter. All her memories were contained in it. She must have died out on the field, deactivated because the telepathic circuit was too strong. The flesh would have decomposed, leaving behind what was underneath. I’m sorry, but none of you are real. I did what I could for you, but now you know…”
They stopped. Their faces turned neutral. Their backs were straight, their arms by their sides.
“I think that was the right button.” Autumn fiddled with her vortex manipulator. The Doctor examined it, confused.
Then the final piece of the jigsaw slotted into place. The Daleks knowing the Doctor’s location, the message on the vortex manipulator, the malfunctioning TARDIS, the notes and ‘Repent’, etched into the time rotor.
The Doctor remembered Autumn’s words the night before.
“You didn’t realise you were harbouring a weapon. Lily-Rose, I mean. How did you make that mistake so easily?”
He remembered all those times he’d had suspicions that he couldn’t explain and had blamed himself.
I was right.
In one swift motion, Autumn pulled her blaster out of her pocket and held it steadily to the Doctor’s head. He backed away, leaving a meter between them.
“I gave you so many chances,” she complained. “I really did. I even asked you if you’d blown up any planets; I thought that would be a clue. You thought I was blackmailing you, but I wasn’t.” She smiled sadly. “I really, really wasn’t. I was giving you a chance, because I liked you. I wanted to forgive you.”
“Oh, Autumn…”
The Doctor put the question forward, not worrying any more about how stupid it would sound.
“What exactly am I supposed to have done?”
Autumn Rivers
Summer was always the best time of year. When I look back, I realise it was eternal. I spent long, sunny nights playing on the field with Dad. I was about six years old, and the sunsets lasted forever. He’d take me out and we’d play sports; football or something. My mum would insist that I was a girl and that he was off his rocker, but I loved it. When I started school, of course, I hated it. But then, with Dad, it was the best thing in the world.
I never believed in Heaven apart from when I was really young. When I look back, that was the only Heaven I knew. The possibility of living, basking, in a perfect memory. If I could step back and relive that night over and over, until all I knew were the emotions, the sense of belonging, and the feeling of the sun beating down on me forever, then I would. I would never stop. I would embrace that eternity.
Then Mum would call us in for tea, I’d wipe the mud off my knees, and we’d sit outside by the plants and the animals. She’d have cooked something fit for gods, and then the experience was complete. Every sight, sound, smell, taste and sensation beneath my fingers was exactly as I wanted it.
***
As I grew up, my friends changed. Some left, leaving me heartbroken, until their insignificance in the greater picture occurred to me. With others I merely became distanced. I gained new friends as my school changed. The one I remember the most was Pandora. She was a musician, like me; a singer, though I preferred to brush my fingers across keys, as opposed to exercising my voice and straining my throat. Besides, I always despised the sound of my own voice played back to me. It always sounded to me like I was whining, although other people loved it. Apparently, most people think about their own voice like that. People who don’t, I guessed, were probably very annoying.
I was sitting with Pandora in the music studio. It was where we liked to go when school was over. I’d sit at the piano stool, eating biscuits; her at the computer, laughing about it.
“What do you want to do when you’re older?” she asked.
“Oh, you know, stuff. Something very me.” That response annoyed her.
“You never talk about yourself, Autumn. Why not?”
I wanted to tell her so much, about my investigations into academic radicalisation. I’d come across some of Dad’s work once, discovering that he worked in a special branch of secret services dealing with terrorism; threats posed by New Order Catholicism and Sjangri, and their various conflicts. It all started back on Earth, in the early days of civilisation. Now each planet had its own issues. But people had interested me – their unyielding faith – a concept that seemed impossible.
“I want to be a psychologist,” I said, half-revealing what I wanted to say. “A criminal psychologist. I think dangerous people, mad people, evil people, are the most interesting.”
“I thought you wanted to be a writer. But I guess you can be anything, with those grades you’re getting.”
“I’d need something to write about first.” She liked that remark. “And you?” I asked.
“Oh, you know… stuff…” She looked out of the studio window. I wondered whether she meant to imitate me.
***
Years later, I was living the life I’d always wanted to live. I discovered it was about both what you knew and who you knew; I approached the right person with my skillset and my Dad’s name, and from then on it was about rising to the top.
I was running down a side-street, gun in hand. Dad had taught me how to shoot a gun when I was fourteen, in case anyone came around with malicious intent. That was when I began to grow suspicious of his work. But now I was older, yet I felt so much younger. I thought I was dressed up in adult clothes, pretending to a grown-up, and someone would find me out. I did my best to disguise those feelings.
NKJ hit the wall, collapsing to the floor.
“I knew you’d find me…” He hit his bald head against the wall. “How did you do it?”
“It’s about the smaller details, N. You didn’t clean up your bin. I had a little look through, found a skyrail ticket. You’d obviously decided it wasn’t safe, realising we were onto you. What does one do when one’s direction is discovered?” I let the question hang in the air. “One turns the other way, N. I knew you’d try the ocean; that was your first mistake. Your second was purchasing essentials on the other side. You used fingerprint recognition to pay, and thought that wiping the records clean would stop us tracing you. I kept all the records open, and watched them as they were wiped. That took me here.”
NKJ reached for something in his pocket.
“Looking for this?” I held up his blaster. “I like it. Think I might keep it.”
***
I sat opposite NKJ, communicating through the glass. It was too dangerous to be alone with him in a room, apparently, but I needed to speak to him.
“After you killed the girls, you sent a tape to the police.” I looked into his eyes. Most people avoided my gaze when I wanted it to be intense, but he reciprocated it. “You told them that you would never reform, that you would always be a villain. Why?” He didn’t answer. I put it another way. “What makes you wake up in the morning and decide that you’re going to do something incomprehensibly bad?”
I continued trying, pushing a photograph across the desk of the interrogation room. “That was your wife. You had an argument twelve years ago and pushed her down the stairs. Then you became a criminal. What changed you? What was it about that moment?”
I began to change after NKJ spoke to me that day. I began to understand these people. I never sympathised with them, of course – I understood the implications of free will. Anything is a reason, but nothing is a justification. We all have the power to act in whatever way is appropriate. We all have the power to resist wrong, however weak it is in comparison to our desires. That possibility lies inherent within all of us.
***
I sat in my apartment, the curtains open so I could watch the sunset, snug in a blanket. The news came on and I turned the sound up. It was important to stay up to date with current affairs in my line of work.
“The government can confirm that the Plant has arrived on our planet, and that there have already been three cases of contamination.”
I sat up, suddenly alarmed.
“Scientists have stressed not to panic – the threat can be contained. But so far…”
My thoughts trailed off into the land of the unthinkable. Our world, my world, could never end. It couldn’t. The thought did not compute; the sheer concept was wrong. The Plant would be stopped, because my world would go on forever. It had to.
***
“The government can confirm that there are now ten cases reported across the United Continent and Isles.”
I looked out of my window at the landscape. The Capital of the Third Isle. Nothing happened here. It was sweet. But that sweet air was a threat, now. The Plants on Mrs Skittersberry’s balcony were a threat too. Everything was becoming corrupted. We were the next in a long line of planets. I knew the rest of the galaxy must have given up on us.
***
I knocked on the door. It took longer than I remembered. Dad’s silhouette was different to how I remembered it, too; shorter. The lights were dimmer. The paint on the walls was fainter. Even the air seemed tighter.
“How are you?” I asked, knowing the answer, and knowing that he knew I knew. The bags under his eyes said it all, and as I scanned the kitchen, I saw no alcohol. I gathered antidepressants. I could hardly blame him for feeling how he did.
“She’s upstairs,” he said. “She doesn’t move much anymore. She’s in too much pain.”
I nodded, my stomach throbbing in agony. I’d discovered it did that when I got nervous.
“I’ll make tea,” I said, filling the kettle. “Is she allowed to drink anything?”
“I give it to her straight out of the teapot,” he said. I made Dad the tea, bringing it into the living room and handing it to him. “I’m going to see her now,” I decided, and made my way slowly up the stairs with my equipment. “I’ll tell you when you can come up.”
“Good luck,” he said with a brave smile.
It was always Mum. If anyone got ill, it was her. If there was a stomach bug going around, she got it. If there was a new allergy, she was sneezing. If there was an accident, she was injured. Now she was the first person I knew to be infected by the Plant. I entered her room. The curtains were closed, but I could make out the Plant’s influence. A whole limb was covered in leaves and thorns, and her face wasn’t looking its best. I could hear her heavy, raspy breathing.
It was horrible – she was the woman I’d grown up with. At the end of everything, she called me in for dinner. That was the way it was. She was Mum. She did everything for me. She never got tired or old. She kept going on, being Mum, fulfilling her purpose. Anything else was wrong.
“Hi Mum,” I whispered.
“Autumn…” she murmured. “Is it you?”
“I’ve come to cure you, Mum,” I said. She smiled weakly back at me. It meant everything to know that she believed me. I got the injection out of my bag. It was fully prepared. “The compound contains a diluted pesticide,” I lied, knowing that science wasn’t her strong point. “It will make you tired. You’ll go to sleep and it will work its magic. When you wake up, the recovery is near-instant. We’ve tested this and although it’s not been legalised yet, it worked on 100% of patients.”
“Sounds pretty great,” Mum coughed.
“Are you ready?” I checked the needle.
She nodded.
“Okay. You can keep talking to me as I do this.” I fastened a band around her arm and rubbed at it until I could find a vein, then started the injection. I watched the solution disappear and enter her bloodstream.
“I’m so proud of you,” she said. “Getting me better like this. And your job. I never got to do anything so exciting. Dad’s proud of you too, but he doesn’t always show it…” She yawned. It was working already.
“Have a nice sleep,” I said, a tear in my eye. I kissed her on the forehead. “Love you, Mum.”
And then she was asleep.
Minutes later, she was dead.
I lived in the consolation that it was peaceful. More peaceful than being turned into a carnivorous Plant, which was inevitable at her stage. I applied the professional detachment I’d learnt in my days at work, as I went down the stairs and moved Dad’s tea. He hadn’t finished it, but he’d had enough for the sedative to take effect, so presumably, the ret-con had too. I moved Mum’s body, giving her a quick but heartfelt burial in the garden, as delicately as I could. I removed all photographs of her from the house and wrote the note by the sofa about Dad’s accident; that he’d been in a car accident and lost a large chunk of his memory, that he lived alone in this old house, but that he was a very happy man. He never knew that the love of his life was buried underneath his patio.
That was the last I ever saw of my family. No goodbyes, but as I walked away from the house, I offered them a salute for being responsible for the best days of my life.
***
“There was a meeting on-board the Epicurus,” said the chairman in the meeting room. The chairman had more power than anyone on the planet, though only a few people knew that. “They’ve agreed to destroy the planet. No care for us, because apparently we’ll be dead soon anyway. They’ve done this to countless other worlds.” There was an outbreak of noise across the table. Professionalism was lost. The chairman slammed his fist on the table. “Stop! Why do you think I called you here? I’ve got a solution. And it involves Miss Rivers.”
I sat up. I’d been heavily interested in the meeting, but fully unaware that I was to be involved.
“The Doctor,” he said, passing me a photograph of a man who looked old-fashioned enough to be from Earth. “He’s a Time Lord. He sanctioned the destruction of the planet. It was his signature that finalised it. In one week, we’ll be obliterated because of that signature.” He passed more photographs across the table. “Time travel. Not just unique to the Time Lords – we’ve been developing it too. We haven’t tested it yet, but this seems our only chance. We need someone to go back in time and stop the Doctor from signing that paper. Someone clever and manipulative. Someone who always gets her own way.” He pointed at me.
“Me?” I laughed. “Time travel? Shouldn’t I hear about the risks involved? This is my life on the line.”
“You’ll be dead in a week,” he answered bluntly. “At least this way there’s a chance you’ll survive in the long-term, even if the risks are high.”
I nodded. “I suppose it’s worth it.”
“You’re going to have to learn,” he explained. “Learn all about this man, about the planets around him. Enough to build a reasonable cover-story. We came up with the idea to disguise your ship as a prison. Say you’re a prisoner. Pass Planet Earth, he’ll hop on-board, and intrigued, he’ll take you with him. You can change his path. You can stop him even being there, or you can be there with him and tell him to say no.”
It was everything I’d ever wanted. Travel, Earth, and a mission. But I’d be drifting through space, alone, for months until I found him. I would have to find a way to cope with that.
Anyone else in my shoes would have turned to suicide. My suffocating fear of death saved my life, and I instead turned to learning.
I learnt carefully from my computer system as I travelled, hoping that they’d found me the right time-zone. I learnt how to pilot a Type-40 TARDIS. I learnt sixteen of the most commonly-used alien languages. They were obligatory for so many races to learn that I was hypothetically able to find my way around a lot of planets. I learnt how the TARDIS worked. I learnt about Earth culture. And in my sadder moments, when I needed more sentimental consolation, I played the piano, and watched the stars drift by. I watched civilisations from miles away. I was on the fringe of existence.
***
The day came conveniently, when time itself trapped my ship in the Earth’s orbit. Fate found me a reason to meet the Doctor. I garbed myself in leather, tied my hair back and played the piano. My heart fluttered when I heard the sound of the Doctor’s ship materialising. Something new at last. I composed myself, making sure my feelings were not apparent. I avoided his gaze as he stepped out but tried to study him in the reflection of the piano. I played the same chord again, trying to find something that would define him for me. Unsatisfied, I tried a different one.
“I don’t normally get visitors,” I said, still looking away.
“Well,” began the Doctor. I loved his voice. “I don’t normally make visits. Nice cell.”
“Thanks.” I stopped playing and shot him my trademark stare. “I like it.”
“You must be in here for something pretty bad,” deduced the Doctor as he scanned the room.
“What makes you say that? It’s beautiful in here.”
“Exactly. They must be terrified of you. Only an idiot would tighten up security – if you don’t want someone to escape, all it takes is to make them comfortable.” They were right. He fell for the prison trick, hook line and sinker. This would be easier than I anticipated.
“I’m very comfortable,” I said, sitting myself on the padded computer chair.
“What did you do?” interrogated the Doctor.
“I was a criminal forensic psychologist,” I replied. I’d prepared the conversation, and it felt so good to be having it.
“I didn’t mean your job. And you’re either a criminal psychologist or a forensic psychologist – I’d avoid the surplus words.” That was patronising. I was patronised already, and we were only discussing my lie.
“No, I think you misunderstood me,” I retorted, undercutting the Doctor’s deviousness, but trying not to show my anger. “I was a forensic psychologist who adopted criminal behaviour. I was a criminal psychologist. We’re the best.”
“I bet. All those years of criminal profiling – you must have played one helluva game.”
I nodded. “My name’s Autumn Rivers. What’s yours?”
“Call me the Doctor.”
“Oh, they’re sending up psychiatrists? What an unusual lot.” I clasped my hands together, enjoying the role. “That’s so sweet, but tell them I’m not interested.”
“Funny,” commented the Doctor sarcastically. “But I think you know why I’m here. Tell me what you know.”
“One condition.”
“Name it.”
“You release me.” I relaxed, stretching my arms. “It’s not much to ask.”
“It really is.” The Doctor turned back to his TARDIS. “I can cope without you, Autumn.”
“When I woke up this morning I felt different,” I started, with the killer line I knew would convince him. “Everything.” The Doctor stopped. “The world around me shivered and shook, and it felt like I’d been caught in the heartbeat of a dying man.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Something’s going to happen to the universe.”
“Thanks for the clichés.” The Doctor got in the TARDIS and slammed the door. I flexed my fingers, preparing to wait patiently. I knew what was coming next. He would be back.
***
“I knew you’d return. I made you a cappuccino.” I glanced to two cappuccinos on the table, chocolate sprinklings arranged in star-shapes on top. I had a lot of them.
“Thank you.”
“Who’s this?” I hadn’t expected another visitor.
The visitor stood awkwardly by the wall. There were only two chairs. It would have been the courteous thing to do to allow to two men to sit, but it was my home and I had no intention of relinquishing my authority.
“Professor Graves,” said the Doctor. “He’s an expert.”
“Is he now?” I raised my eyebrows. “So, have you come to let me out?”
“Yes,” answered the Doctor, reluctantly. “But you definitely know something about this?”
“Look at where I am. How could I not?” I pressed a button underneath the table and the wall by Graves gave way, moving smoothly sideways to reveal a panorama over the Earth. Graves pressed his fingers on the glass, hardly believing. As he breathed, the water vapour blurred the North American continent.
“Oh my God. We’re in space.”
“Yes,” said the Doctor, unsurprised. “Why else do you think I came? Autumn’s a prisoner, according to her, anyway. A criminal forensic psychologist who was imprisoned by her own people for…” He looked to me in the hope of elaboration. I realised how much I enjoyed being enigmatic. It was one of the things I most missed from my schooldays.
“…for something that’s none of your business,” I finished.
“They put her in here, gave her all this in the hope that she wouldn’t try to escape, and launched her off into space. How long have you been drifting across the universe for?”
“Eight years.” Well, it was three years, but I wanted to appear that bit more tired.
“She just happens to stop by Earth on the day that it stops turning,” stated the Doctor, blatantly unconvinced. I’d need to work on my story, and I figured the way to do that might to be returning his arrogance.
“Wow,” I remarked. “How quaint is that? You think this is just an Earth thing? Everything has stopped moving across space, here at least. Only your ship’s managing it.”
The Doctor muttered something about Time Lord technology.
“I’ve passed lots of planets,” I explained. “I drift through space quickly, and you wouldn’t have noticed me. Only, whatever is doing this has stopped my ship, too. I’m stuck orbiting your world, and I want to find out why.”
The Doctor got up, finishing his cappuccino and wiping off the froth from around his lips. “Come on, then. With me.”
***
“Nice!” I commented, running my hand along the console unit. “Kind of gloomy, though.”
“I prefer the word Gothic.”
“I prefer white.”
“I can tell.”
I ran my hand down my hair. “So – what next?”
“I’m one step ahead of you,” said the Doctor (ironically), then looking to Graves: “one step ahead of both of you. I know what’s stopped everything in its track. A signal. I’ve found it. I don’t recognise the wave, but it leaves behind a background radiation. That radiation is on every single object.”
“How can you see it?”
He pointed to his eyes. “Time Lord contact lenses. They see background radiation. Now…” He dialled something. The room shook and Graves stumbled. Lights flickered on and off. A madman would probably have said something about a strange presence. The Doctor, madder still, smiled.
“What was that?”
“Every signal has its source, and I’ve just locked onto it. I know exactly where we are, and it’s all beginning to make sense.”
He approached the door, both tentatively and eagerly, reaching out to the handle and preparing to embrace the impossible beyond.
“Are you ready to meet your masters?”
And that was it. I was with the Doctor, on an adventure in time and space.
***
“So what was it?” I asked, as the TARDIS appeared back on the London side-street. “That greater power that the Enlightened Ones were obsessed with.” To tell the truth, it had terrified me beyond belief.
“I don’t know,” said the Doctor, embarrassed. “But they showed me a cube, with its atoms rearranged into a random formation using their equation, and it became spherical. That was impossible.” There was a glimmer of fascination in his eyes. “There was a miracle in the end.”
“They thought this was a miracle,” I argued, gesturing to the sky. Night had fallen now. “It was just the effects of a greater science.”
“Well then,” said the Doctor, shaking it off. “I’d better go now. Goodbye, Autumn. Thank you for your help. I’m trusting you here because you saved my life. I think that counts for some community service.”
I laughed.
“But no getting into trouble.” He gave me a swift handshake.
“Can I come with you?” I requested. “I’d love to do more of this.”
“No. Sorry.”
My face fell. It was not the reaction I was after. “Why?”
“You’re a criminal. I don’t travel with criminals.”
“And you’re a hypocrite,” I retorted, realising I’d lost my temper. That was it. I cursed in my mind; I’d lost my first chance. I’d have to find another way. So I glared and walked off down the side-street into the shadows, my mind changing. I realised now that the Doctor was an easy man to hate.
I began my next plan quickly. I broke into UNIT and stole a vortex manipulator, then found the Epicurus. They were fighting the Plant. I signed up for every expedition there was, in the hope that my planet would be one of them, and the Doctor would be there. I’d read about his links with the Epicurus. He was one of them, sitting comfortably up there, a supposed pioneer, using his authority to decide our fates.
Soon, I found him again.
***
“Right, er, Autumn,” murmured the Doctor, catching up with me. I’d left the other two purposefully a few steps behind. “So, a bit of an explanation maybe?”
I rolled my eyes. One minute he didn’t want to know, the next he was back, invading my privacy. “I got bored on Earth. Such an angry planet. So I stole a vortex manipulator from the UNIT Black Archives and journeyed back out into space. Found myself here, and I wanted to do something for the community – like, you know, community service.” I mirrored the last joke he’d told me.
“Oh, I see,” said the Doctor, nodding. “I release you from prison and you feel guilty?” I wanted to punch him. Whenever I heard the word ‘guilty’ I thought about my parents, about the injustice and my involvement. Then I distracted myself with thoughts about how guilty he was.
“No, not guilty,” I chuckled. “Not for a minute. I have no guilt about what I did to this day.”
“And what exactly is it you did? You didn’t tell me last time. Why were you in prison?”
I stared onwards, unable to look the Doctor in the eye. My tongue hovered at the back of my mouth, considering the risk. Don’t tell him, I thought. I wanted to come clean. He was a reasonable man, he might understand. But at the same time, anything could compromise the operation. I was reaching breaking-point.
“Doctor!” came a voice from behind us. Rosie was calling. The Doctor slowed up for her, but I continued at my hasty pace. After all the time I’d spent in that ship, I enjoyed walking.
Andy caught up with me, as we strolled a few paces ahead of the Doctor. “Do you think we’ll do it?” he said, starting conversation.
“I know we will. We have to.” I studied the horizon thoughtfully. There was still a risk that I couldn’t save my own world, and I had seen it destroyed. I’d seen the devastation caused.
“Positivity,” remarked Andy. “I like it.”
“You can go to Rosie for that,” I joked. “There’s a difference between positivity and determination. I’ve done this mission before and it’s failed. I’ve seen civilisations destroyed because of our inability to fight the Plant and I’m not going to let it happen again. I’m not going to let that thing take any more lives.”
I ended ambiguously, leaving him wondering whether by ‘thing’ I meant the Plant, or the ship Epicurus, resting peacefully in the sky, unaffected and primed to destroy anything which could compromise its integrity. In truth, I meant both.
***
I charged at the forest as it lashed out, almost knowing. The blasts from the Rosie-gun were effective, knocking down trees, as others got angrier. The landscape looked ordinary – until it emerged.
It was the first time the shape of the Plant itself had appeared; a lumbering, towering monster like some gigantic, tentacled brain. I recognised it, as the unsavoury memories returned. Hatred bubbled deep inside me, its molecules expanding and escaping. I cried out in anger and fired at it, whilst trying to not imagine that it was once a part of my Mum.
It resisted, attempting to thrash me with a tentacle, but I ducked.
“Get out!” I yelled to the Doctor.
“I am not leaving you here!” he argued back.
“Listen to me!” I shot him a glare. I seemed to be able to see into his soul. “I’m in charge this time. I’m your leader and this is my mission.” I shouted to be heard over the commotion. “You will do what I tell you now!”
The Doctor considered, then, respecting my authority, nodded. “Thank you.” At that moment, I questioned all my judgements about him.
I turned back to fight the Plant. I lost my focus, but kept fighting. My mind and soul were drifting as I stared on into the forest, which became, inside my mind, something else – an expression of a million things. You can’t die here. You’re scared of death. My mind willed me to move, but I remained fixed to the spot. I considered the possibility of ending it all here, because the mission hardly seemed to matter now I was facing the creature responsible for all of this. I decided to go for it. The mission would go ahead, but only if I could beat the Plant here and now, just to show that I was worth it.
I’m going to beat them this time. I’m going to do it.
Something tapped me on the back, causing me to flinch.
“I told you to leave!”
“We’re both leaving.” The Doctor pulled me back but I resisted. That man would not listen, and he seemed to think the same of me. “Just listen, I’ve programmed the explosion, but I’ve strengthened the planet’s force-field. The core will explode but neither the explosion itself nor the debris will escape the force-field. The Plant will be destroyed, but so will we if we don’t leave!”
I took his hand. With his other hand, the Doctor raised his screwdriver.
“I’ve tuned it to the planet’s frequency. It’s a remote control now.”
I stumbled, feeling dizzy. The Doctor held me up.
“Sorry – I’ve tried to isolate us but you might get a bit dizzy.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m messing with the gravity. Enough of a force and we can generate…”
I looked on as anything not rooted to the ground flew past us; tables and chairs from the control area, leaves and logs. As they flew up, behind them I could make out the crimson, circular shape of something fluctuating. I understood.
“A portal…”
A second chance.
***
“Was it you or him, in the end?” asked Andy, opening the doors to his balcony. He had an optimum view of the Eiffel Towers. “You were both so determined not to let that planet get destroyed.”
I thought about my answer. “It was my determination and his intellect working together, I think.”
“Really?” Andy leaned over the railing, watching the street below. “I thought it would’ve been the other way around.” He swallowed, contemplating. “Are you going to take Russell home?”
“I think so. Wherever ‘home’ is.”
“He lost touch with his son. I was talking to him while I changed. If you can do anything…”
I nodded. “Consider it looked after.” I patted him on the shoulder. I’d taken to Andy; seen so much potential in him. I hoped we’d meet again. “I’m sure you could have done well. There’ll be plenty of opportunities in the future for you. Just try not to be turned into a carnivorous plant next time.”
Andy laughed.
“What about you now? Are you going to go with the Doctor?”
I considered, looking back to the TARDIS; a bulk of blue in the cream-coloured room.
“Do you think I should?”
“Yes,” he responded. “You both suit each other, in a strange way. And he can make you better.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, you said you’ve seen planets like that destroyed, and he said he’d destroyed them, and you worked together to…”
It hit me more than I ever expected it to. After everything, after all my efforts and elaborate plans, I had failed. The time travel had gone wrong. I knew as soon as Andy said it that the planet the Doctor had destroyed was mine. The signature was there, printed, and my planet was rubble drifting through space. I couldn’t think about it anymore. I didn’t know what to do. My mission was to save my home. That was justice. Perhaps that was still my mission: justice.
My home needs justice, I thought. Mum needs justice. Dad needs justice. Pandora needs justice, and the chairman, and all the others. And I need justice.
I just didn’t know what justice would entail.
***
“You must never get used to this.”
I circled around the TARDIS, stepping down the stairs to the console unit.
“No,” answered the Doctor, leaning sceptically against the wall. “I suppose not.”
“I’d like to see some more of this planet first,” I requested, flicking a couple of buttons which adjusted the lights. It was amazing. He had completely missed the fact that I knew how to pilot his ship. Whatever reason had justified it, this was a major advantage for me. “It seems like an interesting place.”
“Most people don’t have a destination in mind,” remarked the Doctor. He approached the other side of the console, staring at me through the glass of the time rotor. The glass blurred his eyes. “Yet here you are, ready to go. All the gadgets, all the knowledge, and all the ideas.”
“You gave me time to think,” I replied, making it up as I went along. There was no preparation now. Everything was spontaneous. “So I thought. That day we first met left me a lot of time to think. When it happened, they said it gave everyone time to think.”
“Time,” emphasised the Doctor. “Exactly. Everything froze, a single moment, captured in time. Thoughts became words.”
“That was the effect that slowing time had. We got to savour a single moment.” I wandered over to the bookshelves, running my fingers along the edge of the Doctor’s collection. “Just imagine what it’s like to go back. To see it all again. It must be a gift.”
“It can be a curse,” disputed the Doctor. “Because you’re not allowed to interfere. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“It’s important.” The Doctor turned away. “It’s important that I know what you’re so keen to get out of this experience.”
“I hate time,” I explained, plonking myself down on the armchair. I was telling the truth. “I hate living in the knowledge that time will kill me, slowly. I hate it controlling me. I hate how it runs alongside me, even when I’m sitting still. I hate how it’s my executioner.”
“I don’t stop the passing of time.” The Doctor re-adjusted the lights. “I just choose which bits to live. Time travel isn’t a cure, it’s a distraction. And now for the important part.” He turned back to face me and rested his hand on the console. His face sparkled in the gold-and-red hue of the TARDIS’ light. “I need you to make a promise.”
“Anything.”
“Promise me you’ve got nothing left. Because I’ve done this before, and…” He looked to the floor guiltily. “I’ve taken people away, and I’ve destroyed everything they’ve left behind. If you have something you love, I’ll take it away from you. I-I… I can’t help it. I can’t stop it. So promise me this. Promise me I can’t take anything away from you.”
The irony was, he already had. The memory flashed across my face, draining it of colour, but I shook it off. He was asking if there was anything in my life that he might risk, when he’d already risked it. It was too late. I was one of those people.
“Nothing.” I didn’t move my body; didn’t take my eyes of the floor. “It’s all gone now. All of it.”
“Time travel.” The Doctor smiled darkly. “Nothing’s ever gone.”
I hoped all night that he was right.
***
“No sign of forced entry,” the Doctor remarked, stepping over the threshold. “Professor Ricker knew the killer?”
“Depends who the killer was,” I was already crouching, again, by the chair, “and whether they had one of your sonic things.”
“I could’ve done it and forgotten. I haven’t the best memory.” I wondered if the Doctor had forgotten about my planet too, but I decided that one could not forget such a decision.
“Care to share what you’re talking about?”
“Not particularly, Detective Reed,” I stood, and faced the window. “You said one would need a car to crack this window.”
“One would. And yet I don’t see any tire marks.”
“Did someone use a gun, perhaps?” The Doctor moved across to the window, fingers hovering near the spiked remnants of the glass, but not quite touching. “Something with a lot of velocity. Did you find a bullet in the street?”
“Not as of yet. And there wasn’t a casing in the room. Someone theorised it might have some kind of pressure weapon. Seems a little far-fetched to me.”
“There you are, Doctor: sonic again.”
“Agent Rivers,” Reed stepped into my line of view, inches from my face, making use of the extra height the Detective had over me. “This investigation might go a lot quicker if you could end the petty, non-professional torments.” It was like being told off by a teacher again.
“You are quite right, Detective Reed,” the Doctor moved in-between the two of us, placing his hand defensively on my shoulder, acting more concerned I would be the arbiter of any conflicted over Reed. “Please forgive Autumn, she was a poor stray orphan I found and raised as my protégé. She’s excellent, but etiquette hasn’t rubbed off on her. In fact, I’m rather worried she might turn on me, and become my deadliest enemy.”
I shivered. It was as if he knew.
“You’re rambling, Doctor.” I removed the Doctor’s hand, passive-aggressively, but with less emphasis on the passive.
***
The TARDIS was quiet. Neither the Doctor nor I had spoken since the apartment, instead we had simply sat in heavy, oppressive silence, that not even the comforting sound of the time rotor could break.
“You want to say it,” I finally said, standing and looking the Doctor directly in the eye. “So say it.”
So he did: “You murdered him, Autumn. You made that Hunter kill him. Now other people will die because of the deal you made – no, you planned. Do you think it was worth it?” Again, I felt anger and an urge to resort to physical violence. The man’s hypocrisy was astounding. I wanted to tell him at every moment, and the desire was starting to eat away at me. It consumed every waking moment.
“Men like Ricker, things like the Hunters, they’re all dangerous. And so am I. I’ve killed for less noble reasons than tonight, Doctor, and I can see in your eye that you have too.” I rubbed my injured shoulder, the pain finally breaking through to me. With all the psychological experience I’d gone through, physical pain was side-lined. “I compromised. But I did to weaken everyone against me – against us – as much as possible.”
“You really do not trust the world at all, do you?”
“Only myself, Doctor,” I walked away from him, heading towards the corridor that held the medical bay. But before I left, I turned to the Time Lord, and said: “Someone has to watch the watchmen. And don’t think I’ve taken my eye off you.”
***
Lily-Rose angered me. To believe in a kind Creator, after all the suffering I’d endured, seemed like the most ignorant thing in the world. Of course, I did not hate religious people. That would have been one prejudice too far, even by my standards. What I hated were people who risked the lives of others because of their faith. I was getting closer to the Doctor, understanding him better, calculating my next move. And I was not going to have this insignificant, brainwashed idiot stop me from reaching the end. I applied the tiniest pressure in the right places. Lily-Rose cried out.
“Deactivate the bomb now,” I ordered.
“No.”
I was so angry; angrier than I was at the Doctor. I had to be in control. She had to do as I said. And I could not die; even the thought of death sent me into meltdown.
I applied more force. Lily-Rose winced.
“I have got this far,” I said, losing control of what I was saying. “You think your mission is important? Mine is more important, one hundred times more, a million times… I’m going to get justice, and I’m not going to let you stop me.” I pushed slightly too hard, risking causing physical damage. I heard something crack.
The Doctor walked back in with the Captain and Dennie, and I stopped. The way he was looking at me, I knew he understood. He could see and understand so much. How did he miss the most important thing?
***
“Tell me,” I questioned, turning to Lily-Rose. “How do you have faith through all of this? How can you ever imagine that someone kind is doing this?”
“The Creator revealed himself to us, far in the future.” Lily-Rose perched on the wall, staring out at the forming cosmos. “We were given conclusive evidence of his existence. I’ve seen miracles.”
“Science.”
“Miracles. They were miracles. Science would never be that kind, but the Creator would. We saw a justice in everything, a natural moral order.” I chuckled at that, but wondered if mine might be fulfilled. That would be enough to give me faith. “Even now, there will be justice. Those things will be cast down to hell, and we will be rewarded in Elysium for allowing that.”
The Captain looked at his watch. “It’s nearly a new day. When we first met you, Doctor, you said everything would be finished by now.”
“The seventh day,” realised Lily-Rose. “It’s time for a rest.” She held her finger over the button.
“NO!” I exclaimed, my heart pounding so loudly it blocked out all other sounds. I felt light; strange. In the three years I’d spent drifting through space, I hadn’t experienced one panic attack, but this was it. The prospect of death – enough to drive me insane. After everything, staying alive still seemed like the only way. “Lily, don’t you dare. Lily, don’t!” I wanted to pull the device away, but realised that any rash movement would lead to the button being pressed. I was terrified. “Lily, please, I’m begging you. Lily!”
Lily pressed the button.
I ran for the door but slipped and fell on the stair. As I climbed up, I realised – nothing was happening.
***
“They’re inside your ship,” observed Lily-Rose, her passion returning. “Now they’ve got control of time. I should have destroyed this place while I had the chance!”
The Doctor smiled.
I watched the smile curiously. He’d smiled many times before. Sometimes it was sadly, accepting his failures. Sometimes it was jokily, sharing some whimsical past experience. But this smile was something worse – it was almost evil. I imagined him smiling that way as he signed the warrant for my planet’s destruction, not caring in the slightest. No. He didn’t see my father’s face. He didn’t know what he was destroying.
“My move,” he whispered. “I’ve been preparing for this one.”
The ship shook, and the lights went out – the only source of light now was the cosmos out of the window. Then another appeared, from within the TARDIS. It was a pure, heavenly white light that burned as it touched the skin. I screamed, not sure what emotion I was feeling. I just felt the urge to run away, banging on the window to find a way out of it. As I turned around, squinting, the Doctor’s silhouette eclipsed it. I thought he was going to kill me, and in that moment, he was terrifying. I thought he knew. That feeling of paranoia that had plagued me for so long was returning.
Then he was gone, following a series of shadows. The shadows were clawed, bent over and desperate, moving like demons in the night. The door slammed shut. The buzz of the generator got louder and higher-pitched, until it screamed, and the ship continued to shake; lights flashed on and off, and booms sounded in the distance. I realised I’d fallen onto Lily-Rose, who was now unconscious.
It was a minute before the screaming generator stopped, until it turned off for good, and the ship drifted silently through the night, dead, as the Doctor walked back through its corridors. They were inside a corpse.
“What… happened…” I coughed and stood up, steadying myself up.
“The Hunters unlocked the heart of the TARDIS. It’s connected to me, because of the TARDIS’ psychic abilities. We’re kind of attuned to each other. I was in pain and desperate, and they were breaking the TARDIS. The connection snapped and bounced back onto them. My feelings and the TARDIS’ feelings – hatred on both accounts – was reflected through the time vortex. The TARDIS used time to put the fear of God into them, and they fled.” I understood now. I’d hacked into the TARDIS’ telepathic circuit and removed myself from it, so that she was not able to hear my thoughts and somehow warn the Doctor. The heart of the TARDIS reaching out to touch me was a threat.
“They fled because of you,” I corrected him. “I saw you and the way you chased after them. You were terrifying. Did you have any mercy?”
“Did you?” The Doctor pointed at some debris tumbling through space. I realised I didn’t. “A bit of wreckage from this ship. The Hunters left a bit of a dent behind.”
“Where did they go?”
“They went further back, the only direction they could. They trapped themselves before time, in the never-space. They’ll be stuck there forever. Or for-never, if you like.”
“Justice,” I said, looking down at Lily-Rose who was still sleeping. The Doctor had a sense of justice too. I wondered whether, if I explained now, he’d understand. “But the Hunters? Scared?”
“The heart of the TARDIS has the power to change minds and hearts together.”
“So do you.”
I noticed that the Captain had gone, probably to clear up some of the mess and inspect the ship. “So everything is doomed to collapse in the end?” I watched a cloud of pink gas passing by the window, and wondered if my mission was doomed for the same end. Doomed to go wrong, to bring justice to both of us. We were both criminals now – I would go as far as saying that we were both a kind of moral evil.
“I suppose it is. But even then, there are so many possibilities. There’s an endpoint of death, but look out there. Anything could happen.” The Doctor and I were reflected back at ourselves through the glass, but the cosmos also shone through. Our faces were a part of the forming universe. Two opposing forces, in union, at the beginning of time; a prophecy of things to come. “It’s all in flux here. Our lives could go in different ways. Maybe that’s how infinity works – all those alternatives.” He lowered his voice sadly. “All the things I could have done differently.”
“You didn’t realise you were harbouring a weapon. Lily-Rose, I mean. How did you make that mistake so easily?” I was trying to force it out of him now. I kept wondering if he knew. This would be the way of telling.
“I was ignorant,” admitted the Doctor. “I didn’t give her enough thought. I can see anything if I want to – I’m just too self-absorbed to bother, sometimes.” That was my answer. He’d admitted it. “And speaking of flaws, you went to some lengths today. I almost expected better. Why?”
“Why was I so harsh on the Captain? Why was I so ruthless? So cold? Why did I go as far as torture? Do you really want to know?”
“Yes,” said the Doctor, sotto voce.
“I was scared.” I collected myself. “I was so scared, Doctor. Not of suffering, or of being morally-corrupted, or any of the complex things you experience. I was just so scared of dying. Does that make me a bad person?”
“I don’t know,” replied the Doctor diplomatically. I wondered if he meant it, or if he was trying not to offend me. We both made mistakes, and I made my decision. I wouldn’t punish him without complete conviction. We were similar, as much as I hated to admit it, and I was starting to admire him. He deserved a chance. He deserved a lot of chances, as many as I could give, but I settled on three. The Big Three. Three chances. He deserved the chance to repent. So I wrote the word ‘Repent’ in red lettering as I entered the TARDIS, and placed it on the console. A message for him. If my planet was the mistake he had made, he would remember.
“What’s that?” I asked innocently, when he found the note.
“Nothing.” The Doctor put it quickly on the bookshelf. Guilt, fear or confusion? Maybe all three were possible at once. “Just something from the Hunters, I think.” I hoped that wasn’t what he thought, but here we were, onto Chance Two.
The Church of St Ava flashed off the monitor, replaced randomly by the ship.
“Are we back?”
“No, I think the TARDIS is just malfunctioning. She has just been ripped open, after all.” The Doctor tried to calm her, but the monitor image changed again, this time to a snow-capped hill under a red-hue, and the edge of a mighty dome. That image flashed away too, and it was blank, for a moment, before another flashed up. This one was ordinary, but in a frightening, calm-before-storm way.
It was a village. A green field, and at the end of it, some cottages and a pathway. The whole thing was covered by a layer of mist.
“Why is there a village there? Doctor?”
The Doctor turned off the monitor, avoiding my gaze.
“I’ll give her time to adjust.” He left in hurry, heading down a corridor and slamming the door behind him. I remembered the place the Doctor had left the note and reached up, pulling it out from on top of the books it was balanced on. I unfolded it, studying it carefully.
Repent…
He’s got to understand, I thought. It won’t be much longer now.
***
The Doctor walked into the console room with a plate of toast and sat back on the sofa, as I recited a Ludovico Einaudi piece. I’d been up all night preparing. I’d sent a message to the Daleks, warning them that the Doctor would be on his way. This was the second chance. Then there would be a third. If he didn’t confess the third time – and I was ready to give him that opportunity – I would hand him over to his worst enemies; the creatures he’d spoken about many a time.
“Repent,” I said, holding up a piece of paper to remind him straight away. “Why did you hide this from me?”
“I didn’t want to worry you,” he said, taking a bite of toast. “It’s probably nothing. Just something the Hunters left behind.”
“If someone’s blackmailing you-“
“They’re not.” The Doctor spoke softly and reassuringly, as if I needed reassuring. “No one else could get in this ship.”
“Russell was a stowaway.”
“Autumn, you’re paranoid. Stop. It’s fine.”
I continued playing, and the Doctor finished the slice he was eating. It wouldn’t be fine for much longer. I was onto Chance Three, the Final Chance. I knew exactly how it was going to work.
***
“Tea?” I asked. “I’m getting myself a coffee.”
“Why not.” I left, walking down the corridor. “And don’t go so heavy on the biscuits this time!” he called. I laughed to myself. I hoped he would confess. It was what I wanted. I was ready to forgive him, to say sorry. If I knew he was honest, that was all that mattered. But if he was a liar, I was done with him. If he was a liar, there would be other secrets. Liars keep the best secrets, as I understood from my own experiences.
I re-entered with a tray carrying a tea, a coffee and a plate of biscuits. I picked up a Jammie Dodger and dunked it in the coffee. He glared, trying not to giggle. I took a bite out of it and closed my eyes, savouring the taste with a silent ‘Mmm’. A humorous way to start the conversation. He wouldn’t suspect the sedative in his drink.
He dozed off fairly quickly, and I got to work, using all my strength a few tools from the TARDIS garage to inscribe ‘Repent’ into the console unit. I was going big this time.
I put the tools away and came back. The Doctor was waking up.
“How long’s that been there?” I asked.
“Hmm?” The Doctor focused.
“I said how long’s that been there?”
“What…”
The Doctor stood up to get a closer look, stepping down the stairs to the console unit. He put his finger against it.
“Did you see who did it?” he asked.
“You were supposed to!” I rolled my eyes. “I ran out of biscuits, so I left to get some. I opened three different packets. That took about four minutes, from here to the kitchen and back. Someone did that in four minutes. Why didn’t you see?”
“I was… asleep…” The Doctor scratched his head.
“Someone hates you that much,” I remarked. “What the hell have you done, Doctor?” I backed away from him. “Am I safe?”
“I don’t know.”
“I know you might not trust me, but now is the time to come clean. If you’ve done something, I can help you. And trust me, I can forgive an awful lot.” There it was – the offer of absolution. “But if I find out you’ve lied to me about something - that you’ve, I don’t know, blown up some planet…” I let that one settle. The Final Chance: I stated it. He couldn’t forget now. He must know. He must remember. I decided in my mind that he had remembered, but continued. “…and whoever did this finds you, I can’t guarantee that I’ll help you, and if your life is on the line, that I’ll safe you.” That was a promise to myself too. “Unless you tell me now. You have to start trusting me, Doctor. We have to start trusting each other.”
“Okay,” agreed the Doctor. “But I haven’t blown up any planets. Cross my hearts.”
That was it. The lie. It was so obvious when I knew what it was, and I decided at last what his punishment would be. I’m going to give him to his enemies. And if I see him again, I’m going to kill him.
***
“Doctor, I’ve just got this through on my vortex manipulator.” I showed the Doctor my wrist device. The message I’d set up flashed continuously in red lettering. “It’s locked. It’s not letting me do anything else.”
The Doctor examined the message closely.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW THE TRUTH ABOUT THE DOCTOR, FOLLOW THESE COORDINATES
“The coordinates have been saved automatically,” I explained. “I was going to just go, but with that conversation we had about trust – well, I thought you might need me.” The Doctor smiled. I felt no guilt. “So do you recognise the coordinates?”
“Yes. If I go, I could be risking everything. We need to play this carefully, Autumn. Subtly.”
“Why?”
He grimaced.
“Because we’re about to enter Dalek-Space.”
***
“No, why take me here? Anywhere but here.”
“Where are we?”
“Huh?” The Doctor remembered me. “Oh, we’re… nowhere. This isn’t safe. We need to leave.”
“It looks safe to me. It looks like an ordinary field.”
The Doctor turned back. “No argument, Autumn. We’re going. My ship, my rules.”
“No.” I continued onwards, disappearing into the mist. This was all new, but it was more secrets. What other awful things has he done? What other sides has he got? “If you’ve got nothing to hide, then we carry on. You can’t make me turn away. You can go back, but I’m going.”
“Autumn… please…”
I considered, looking right, then left, and shook my head sadly. “What could be so terrible that you couldn’t tell me?” I was playing a game now, relishing the most important moment of my life.
I walked on, and the field led me to the back of a house. I walked around the outside of the house, arriving in a village square. All eyes were on me, as if they’d never seen another human being before.
“I don’t understand. Where did the TARDIS go?”
“This is the TARDIS.”
“What?” Now he really had confused me.
“Right now, right here… we’re in the TARDIS.”
The Doctor approached a woman with medium-length brown hair, who stepped forward, wide-eyed, and held her hand out. “It’s you,” she whispered. The Doctor remembered.
“Valerie.”
“I remember…” Valerie clutched her head in pain. “Oh, God, I remember!”
Others in the village stumbled, confused, holding onto their heads.
“My presence has triggered their memories, probably because of the strength of the telepathic field when I’m around.”
“Who are they?” I asked, feeling more trapped than I did back in the corridors.
He explained that they were androids, created to be his companions. The creations of an evil genius, I realised.
“I had dreams of you for so long,” said Valerie, wobbling but steadying herself.
“You would have. That’s the TARDIS’ telepathic circuit. It’s strong. It’s what unites you all, and sometimes, maybe when I’m dreaming, it will reawaken memories, or give you visions.” And I wasn’t a part of it. I felt lucky.
“They said the fields went on forever. But they didn’t, did they?” Another woman disillusioned by the Doctor.
“No. It was the same field,” the Doctor said darkly, “over and over and over again. It was just a magic trick.”
Another man stepped forward. “We went out to the fields, looking for my daughter, and we found a metal thing, shaped like a human torso.”
“That thing was you daughter. All her memories were contained in it. She must have died out on the field, deactivated because the telepathic circuit was too strong. The flesh would have decomposed, leaving behind what was underneath. I’m sorry, but none of you are real. I did what I could for you, but now you know…”
I realised I could control the telepathic circuit from my vortex manipulator, and pressed a couple of buttons. It froze it. I froze, too. My moment had come. The moment that everything else was building up to, and now I had my own army. “I think that was the right button.”
I watched the Doctor’s face understanding, remembering, realising. He hadn’t known, after all. But now he did.
In one swift motion, I pulled my blaster out of my pocket and held it steadily to the Doctor’s head. He backed away, leaving a meter between us.
“I gave you so many chances,” I complained. That was the thing I was most angry at him for. I was ready to forgive him, and he’d refused that. I hated him more than I had before. “I really did. I even asked you if you’d blown up any planets; I thought that would be a clue. You thought I was blackmailing you, but I wasn’t.” I smiled sadly. “I really, really wasn’t. I was giving you a chance, because I liked you. I wanted to forgive you.”
“Oh, Autumn…” The next thing he said made me aware of what an idiot he was. Still inconceivably ignorant. Maybe he had killed people and forgotten about it. Maybe there’s a list of the dead, somewhere, with a million names that he wouldn’t recognise, but all had him in common.
What exactly am I supposed to have done?”
So I told him.
***
“No. Oh, no…” The Doctor wiped his brow, defeated, more by his own ignorance than by Autumn. “I am so sorry, Autumn. I had no idea. I am so sorry.”
“So you did it.” Autumn sniffed, holding back tears of anger, sorrow, relief – any of the emotions she was feeling at that complicated moment. “I was really starting to wonder, but you did it, then. No doubting that anymore.”
“Let me explain,” started the Doctor. “It wasn’t like you-“
“Shut up,” hissed Autumn, her quiet words carrying more weight that shouting ever could. She lifted her vortex manipulator and held her finger over it. “You’ve got ten seconds to run.”
“Autumn-“
“Ten seconds.”
The Doctor sighed but did as instructed, running across the field and feeling the wind in his face. Ten seconds passed and Autumn pressed the button. The Doctor turned around and saw the villagers walking towards him in one uniformed line, eyes glowing red like zombies. Autumn had taken control.
The Doctor realised they had been ordered to kill him.
He sprinted back into the darkness, then into the lobby, and ran over to a screen, flicking down to find the options. There must be a way…
There it was. He found the interface. Kill them or let them kill you. He considered, trying to make another awful decision with less time than he needed. Kill or be killed. But it was the consequences for Autumn that made his mind up, as he selected ‘Deactivate’ with only a moment’s hesitation.
He returned through the darkness and back onto the field. They were closer now, approaching the passage to the lobby, but fell, one by one, the light in their eyes going out. Parents, children and all other figments. In the distance, Autumn watched, suddenly seeing what was happening.
“No!” she cried. “You can’t do this. What have you done? Doctor! No, no, no!” She ran across the field, trying to help the villagers, but they all fell as she moved towards them. “No!” The desperation in her voice pained the Doctor, and he closed his eyes. Autumn was so far away from him but it felt like she was right in front of him.
“I’m sorry,” called the Doctor, across the field, for once being honest. “I’m so sorry… but I could never let you kill.”
Autumn fell to the ground, crouching over one of the bodies, and let out a scream; a tortured, awful howl that would never leave the Doctor. The scream was the embodiment of every supressed emotion she’d hidden since she met the Doctor; every doubt, every sentiment, every regret, every aim, and now, every failure.
And there was nothing the Doctor could do apart from listen.
It was Valerie, quite fittingly, who’d fallen down closest to him, and he crouched down to comfort her, holding her body in his arms. She felt so human that it deceived him.
“Doctor,” she murmured.
“Valerie, I’m so sorry.” The Doctor stroked her face with his thumb, supporting her head. “It was never meant to go this far. It was never meant to end like this. The village was your reward, and you were meant to be happy.”
“I can see it all now you’ve opened the psychic field up to full.” Valerie stammered, losing her breath. “Doctor, you’ve made mistakes, but you can make it up… save Autumn…”
With that she faded away. The Doctor rested her head on the grass gently, leant over and kissed her on the forehead. He wished he could change time, but all his own actions were fixed. That was the way justice worked.
Autumn approached the Doctor, standing over him. The Doctor stood up, matching her.
“The Daleks will be here by now. All I have to say is the code-word you told me, and the ship powers back up.”
“Autumn…” The Doctor tried his best to look her in the eye. “I know I made mistakes, but we had something so special. We can work through this. I can do anything, anything, to make this up.”
She looked back at him, raising her hand to his face. “We were special,” she whispered, showing more affection than the Doctor had ever seen. “Oh, Doctor…”
The Doctor bowed his head, preparing to accept the absolution she was going to offer him, and promising to himself that he would make it up to her.
“…did you ever think I would be weak enough to fall at the hands of sentiment?”
The Doctor looked up to see Autumn shaking her head, her cold eyes now drained of hope or curiosity. All they kept was their natural authority; an authority which the Doctor now bowed down to. She raised her blaster to his head again. “Back into the lobby.”
TARDIS – Console Room
The Doctor walked between the guidance of two Daleks, out of the corridor and up to the main doors, passing the console and bidding it farewell.
“YOU WILL BE TAKEN TO OUR PRISON CAMP!”
The Doctor didn’t care anymore. Torture, labour and execution had nothing on his regret.
Autumn worked the console; an authority beyond the Daleks, as ‘Wednesday’ slipped carelessly off her tongue, and the TARDIS kicked into action.
“I’m sorry,” said the Doctor, as he reached the door. “Be careful, Autumn. If you stay in this ship, you’re in danger. I’m leaving now and you’ve won, but I really mean it. Autumn Rivers, I am so sorry for your loss.”
The Daleks pushed the Doctor out of his ship and he was gone. The doors slammed closed and Autumn looked around. She had no aims, no ambitions, and blocked out all feelings. But there was something exciting about this new freedom.
“Where am I going to start?”
“So you did it.” Autumn sniffed, holding back tears of anger, sorrow, relief – any of the emotions she was feeling at that complicated moment. “I was really starting to wonder, but you did it, then. No doubting that anymore.”
“Let me explain,” started the Doctor. “It wasn’t like you-“
“Shut up,” hissed Autumn, her quiet words carrying more weight that shouting ever could. She lifted her vortex manipulator and held her finger over it. “You’ve got ten seconds to run.”
“Autumn-“
“Ten seconds.”
The Doctor sighed but did as instructed, running across the field and feeling the wind in his face. Ten seconds passed and Autumn pressed the button. The Doctor turned around and saw the villagers walking towards him in one uniformed line, eyes glowing red like zombies. Autumn had taken control.
The Doctor realised they had been ordered to kill him.
He sprinted back into the darkness, then into the lobby, and ran over to a screen, flicking down to find the options. There must be a way…
There it was. He found the interface. Kill them or let them kill you. He considered, trying to make another awful decision with less time than he needed. Kill or be killed. But it was the consequences for Autumn that made his mind up, as he selected ‘Deactivate’ with only a moment’s hesitation.
He returned through the darkness and back onto the field. They were closer now, approaching the passage to the lobby, but fell, one by one, the light in their eyes going out. Parents, children and all other figments. In the distance, Autumn watched, suddenly seeing what was happening.
“No!” she cried. “You can’t do this. What have you done? Doctor! No, no, no!” She ran across the field, trying to help the villagers, but they all fell as she moved towards them. “No!” The desperation in her voice pained the Doctor, and he closed his eyes. Autumn was so far away from him but it felt like she was right in front of him.
“I’m sorry,” called the Doctor, across the field, for once being honest. “I’m so sorry… but I could never let you kill.”
Autumn fell to the ground, crouching over one of the bodies, and let out a scream; a tortured, awful howl that would never leave the Doctor. The scream was the embodiment of every supressed emotion she’d hidden since she met the Doctor; every doubt, every sentiment, every regret, every aim, and now, every failure.
And there was nothing the Doctor could do apart from listen.
It was Valerie, quite fittingly, who’d fallen down closest to him, and he crouched down to comfort her, holding her body in his arms. She felt so human that it deceived him.
“Doctor,” she murmured.
“Valerie, I’m so sorry.” The Doctor stroked her face with his thumb, supporting her head. “It was never meant to go this far. It was never meant to end like this. The village was your reward, and you were meant to be happy.”
“I can see it all now you’ve opened the psychic field up to full.” Valerie stammered, losing her breath. “Doctor, you’ve made mistakes, but you can make it up… save Autumn…”
With that she faded away. The Doctor rested her head on the grass gently, leant over and kissed her on the forehead. He wished he could change time, but all his own actions were fixed. That was the way justice worked.
Autumn approached the Doctor, standing over him. The Doctor stood up, matching her.
“The Daleks will be here by now. All I have to say is the code-word you told me, and the ship powers back up.”
“Autumn…” The Doctor tried his best to look her in the eye. “I know I made mistakes, but we had something so special. We can work through this. I can do anything, anything, to make this up.”
She looked back at him, raising her hand to his face. “We were special,” she whispered, showing more affection than the Doctor had ever seen. “Oh, Doctor…”
The Doctor bowed his head, preparing to accept the absolution she was going to offer him, and promising to himself that he would make it up to her.
“…did you ever think I would be weak enough to fall at the hands of sentiment?”
The Doctor looked up to see Autumn shaking her head, her cold eyes now drained of hope or curiosity. All they kept was their natural authority; an authority which the Doctor now bowed down to. She raised her blaster to his head again. “Back into the lobby.”
TARDIS – Console Room
The Doctor walked between the guidance of two Daleks, out of the corridor and up to the main doors, passing the console and bidding it farewell.
“YOU WILL BE TAKEN TO OUR PRISON CAMP!”
The Doctor didn’t care anymore. Torture, labour and execution had nothing on his regret.
Autumn worked the console; an authority beyond the Daleks, as ‘Wednesday’ slipped carelessly off her tongue, and the TARDIS kicked into action.
“I’m sorry,” said the Doctor, as he reached the door. “Be careful, Autumn. If you stay in this ship, you’re in danger. I’m leaving now and you’ve won, but I really mean it. Autumn Rivers, I am so sorry for your loss.”
The Daleks pushed the Doctor out of his ship and he was gone. The doors slammed closed and Autumn looked around. She had no aims, no ambitions, and blocked out all feelings. But there was something exciting about this new freedom.
“Where am I going to start?”
|
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Next Time
Extermination of the Daleks
With the Doctor trapped inside a Dalek Camp, Autumn is free to roam the universe, finishing her quest for justice. But what she doesn't know is that she's in even more danger than the Doctor... Episode list: 1. The Time Museum 2. The Adulteress and Her Doctor 3. Peacepoint 4. Earthstop 5. Sunset Forever 6. The Planet Makers 7. Who Watches The Watchmen? 8. The Anger Games 9. Extinction 10. The Quest Through Time 11. A Village Called Nothing 12. Bigger on the Inside 13. Extermination of the Daleks |