The New Adventures of the Shalka Doctor

by Chameleons_Siona

Summary:

After a mysterious regeneration which The Doctor has no memory of, this new and darker incarnation crashes into the home of an old friend

Chapter 1: Cressida’s Monsters - Part 1

Near Troy; 1141 BC:

The TARDIS flew through the kaleidoscopic spiralling colours of the Time Vortex, spinning chaotically out of control, a slight trail of smoke trailing behind it. As it sped along it began to hum its rhythmic hum, the sign it was about to materialise.

The TARDIS materialised, flying across a reddish sandstone courtyard, and crashing against a wall.

An older woman sat in her bed, white hair hanging around her face, with her granddaughter, a woman of around 18, with shoulder-length, curled, orange-blonde hair, both wearing tan dresses, stained by the sand of the desert, which were light enough to protect from sunburn, but strong enough to cover their bodies. The grandmother sat bolt upright in her silken bed as she heard the coarse hum of the TARDIS’ materialisation. “It’s him!” she whispered, “It’s The Doctor!”

She and her granddaughter ran down the orange stairs, into the open courtyard, to see the very familiar site of the Blue Police box, like seeing a very old friend. The doors of the box opened, letting out a slightly green smoke, which burned at the two women’s eyes. It clearly burned the lungs of the box’s inhabitant, because he stumbled out, coughing heavily. The older woman pulled out her late husband’s sword, and pointed it at the coughing man.

 

The Doctor climbed out of the TARDIS. His new face felt strange, his mouth was all out of proportion. He suddenly found a mirror in his face, and made use of it. A thin, pale face, with perfectly cropped greying black hair. “Hmm,” he muttered to himself, “looks a bit posh, but the hair’s good…” He looked up at the two women, only now realising they were there. “Speaking of faces… I never forget one, Vicki Pallister.”

Vicki pointed her sword at The Doctor’s throat. “Get back Victoria” she said firmly to her granddaughter. She looked back at the strange, suited man, “Where is The Doctor, and what have you done with him?”

“He’s right here” The Doctor pointed at himself, and pushed the sword out of the way. “You aren’t The Doctor!” Vicki insisted, “You’re just another of his people, like The Monk! Where is he!”

The mysterious man stood there briefly, perplexed, before turning around and running into the TARDIS. From within the Blue Box, Vicki and Victoria heard a shout of “Why won’t you work!”

He emerged, surrounded once again by smoke, and carrying a small grey mechanical device. He carefully placed the device in the sand, and it began to glow. A translucent image of an older man, with white hair and a black coat, holding a walking stick. “The Doctor!” Vicki exclaimed, and dropped the sword, clattering on the rocks beneath the sand.

“My dear Vicki,” The Older Doctor began to say, “I am sorry that I did not get to say goodbye to you properly, we were all in such a rush to leave. It will probably be a very long time before you see this message, and as such I would like you to know that I may have changed my face. If the person who gave this is not me, please trust them. Even if I have changed my face then I am still The Doctor, and you can still trust me. Goodbye Vicki Pallister.”

The hologram faded, and Vicki looked at The Other Doctor. “What did we do in Ancient Rome?” A slight smile came over the Doctor’s Face, as he responded “I pretended to be that musician, Pertulian I think, and infiltrated the court of Nero, whomst I inspired to start the Great Fire of Rome.”

“It is you, Doctor!” she exclaimed, and ran over and hugged him.

A massive tremor shook the entire area, with piles of sand falling off of surfaces everywhere, and The Doctor pulled himself out of Vicki’s embrace and looked around.

He pulled out a small electronic device, the Sonic Screwdriver and waved it around, making a dull clicking sound, “Earthquakes are common here,” he looked back at the two women, “but that wasn’t natural.”

Chapter 2: Cressida’s Monsters - Part 2

An earthquake shook the courtyard, and The Doctor pulled out the Sonic Screwdriver. “Earthquakes are common here, but that wasn’t natural.”

The Doctor ran through the front doors of the house, overlooking a massive desert. He ran across the sand flats, waving the clicking Screwdriver, whilst Vicki and Victoria ran behind, trying to keep up.

Suddenly, at the sides of a large brown monolith, across from the house, the rate of the Sonic Screwdriver’s clicking increased rapidly. The Doctor stopped, waiting for the other two to catch up.

“Now, I should just-” he pointed the Screwdriver at the sandy ground, which collapsed into a massive tunnel. On each side was a cylindrical black void, the curved walls were formed of a warped reddish sandstone stone that looked as if they had been carved out with a chisel.

The Doctor realised the ground that he was standing on was uneven and looked down, seeing a wedge of silver, coved in dials and switches, “Some kind of control panel. How odd.” A slight rumble came from one of the open abysses on each side.

A large creature began to emerge from the darkness, an Earthworm, but with a diameter of 2 metres. The monstrous worm began to writhe and his, as a greater rumble began, and the Earth began to quake, and all around sand began to shake and fall from the ceiling.

A much larger earthworm appeared from the gloom. “Aha!” The Doctor exclaimed, “This is what carved these tunnels” He started approaching the pink titan cautiously.

He grabbed onto one of the large creases on its side, “You aren’t seriously going to ride a giant worm, Doctor?” a concerned Vicki asked. “I don’t see why not,” he replied, with a wry smile, “if they weren’t supposed to be ridden, why would they have saddles?”

He clambered onto the massive beast, grabbing onto its folds for stability, and pulled back, directing the massive creature upward, propelling through the roof of the tunnel, as a bewildered Vicki and Victoria watched. Suddenly a rhythmic thrumming filled the tunnels, echoing all around, and a blue box appeared from thin air.

It was bigger on the inside, but not by much. A dimly lit room, with four branches of metal in the corners, reaching toward an orange-glowing console, surrounded by a small octagonal deck. At the far end of the room, flanked by black vault-like doors with a large bronze knob at the centre of each, was a beaten up looking couch, holes in the leather patched with various fabrics. The doors swung shut, on the back of each was a row of white glowing circles, slightly cut into the shape.

The TARDIS dematerialised again, with Vicki and Victoria inside, and rematerialised in the air. The doors opened with a creak, and The Doctor leapt from their worm, landing perfectly in the TARDIS doorways. “It’s, it’s, it’s bigger on the inside…” Victoria stood in disbelief, her eyes full of shock.

The Doctor ran over to the TARDIS’ Central Console, and began to pull on switches. The Police Box flew through the air, eventually stopping, and unnaturally floating above the two worms.

He grabbed a large switch and pulled it toward him. Blue glowing lights surrounded the pair of worms, and they faded, before returning to opacity, which repeated several times, before fully disappearing. “I’ve captured them in a room in the TARDIS. I can return after I drop you two off.”

 

The TARDIS materialised again in the courtyard. “Very well, this is goodbye again” The Doctor said, as the two women returned home, “Umm, Doctor?” Victoria spoke up, “Would it be alright if I joined you?”

The Doctor raised a single silver eyebrow inquisitively, and looked down on the red-haired girl. “I’d be happy to take you.” He opened the doors wide, and Victoria ran in.

The TARDIS dematerialised, its groaning hum echoing through the valleys, into the tunnel. In the tunnel a small bulb began to light up, a bulb on the centre of a fragment. A fragment of the TARDIS Console.

Chapter 3: Nightmare in the Depths - Part 1

“Well Victoria, first proper trip in the TARDIS. Where would you like to go, anywhere in time and space. Except, of course, Trenzalore. And the thirteenth century.”

“I’m, I’m not sure…” she stood there, overwhelmed at the infinity of choices open to her.

“Very well,” The Doctor picked up a small and battered book off the TARDIS Couch, which read on the cover ‘HALF MILE DOWN’, “You know,” The Doctor considered, “I have not visited William Beebe in a while.” He turned to face Victoria, holding the book out, “He’s an old friend”. “You might want to put on something a bit heavier, it’ll be cold out there,” he pointed to one of the vault-like doors, “the wardrobe’s just through there.”

 

As the TARDIS materialised she returned to the central control room, now wearing a beige sweater and jeans over her Trojan dress.

The bulky doors opened, revealing not, as The Doctor had expected, a Caribbean coastline, but instead a pile of crates. He stepped out and inspected a large red one next to the blue box, “We appear to be in a storeroom. 2030s by the looks of it.” He looked up at Victoria perplexedly.

“Are you sure you can control this thing Doctor?” she asked, half-mockingly. An odd look came over The Doctor's face, as if he had suddenly realised something. With that he dashed into the TARDIS, through the doors, into the endless corridors.

Minutes later the doors opened again and he appeared, holding a small needle. He stopped before Victoria, briefly catching his breath, and looked her in the eyes. “This won’t hurt a bit.” He jabbed her hand with it, and she flinched back, “Ouch! You said it wouldn’t hurt!”

“I lied. Don’t worry, it’s good for you. An injection to stop you contracting and spreading all common diseases. I’ve had these lying around in the TARDIS for years, and I never thought to use them.”

He pocketed it and continued to look around. Suddenly a major tremor shook the room, and a crack appeared in the floor, intersecting beneath the TARDIS.

“The TARDIS!” he shouted, and wheeled around, facing his blue box, before another tremor caused the crack to expand, and the TARDIS fell through.

The waters began to rise through the cracks, and The Doctor turned and ran toward the door, discovering it was locked.

He pulled out the Sonic Screwdriver from his pocket and activated it, its clicking filled the room, as the water lapped up to his and Victoria’s ankles.

The door opened, and The Doctor, who had been leaning against it, fell through into a metal corridor, with large windows showing the depths of the ocean, outside this building.

Before them stood two people, a woman wearing a black jumpsuit and orange pants as well as a white helmet with a dark visor, as well as a man with short cropped black hair and vest over a black suit and a red tie. The woman pulled out a gun and pointed it at The Doctor, and speaking in an Eastern European accent asked “Who the hell are you?”

The Doctor stood up and faced the mysterious people, and brushed dust off his coat, “I am The Doctor. Who are you, and where are we?”

“How…? What..?” the man sputtered, bewildered “How did you get here? How do you not know where you are?” He stood there, simply shocked, and another tremor shook the base. The storeroom door closed behind Victoria with a hiss.

The Doctor looked around, out at the ocean floor nearby. “We’re on the ocean floor, somewhere near the Caribbean by the flora. Some kind of base, obviously. So, where are we?”

“Well, this is Beebe Station, the first completely submarine scientific base on Earth. I am Dr. Jackson Floyd, UNIT Scientific Advisor and Chief Station Scientist, and this is head of security, Captain Lucile Petrov, and we are also joined by-” Another tremor shook the Station, with a large crashing sound.

“Has that been happening more often than usual?” The Doctor asked aggressively. Dr. Floyd nodded in agreement. “You humans. You’re filled with curiosity, but with no caution. You wander blindly into the dark and suffer the consequences. Snowcap Base, 1986? Have you heard of it?” Floyd backed away from the angered Doctor and nodded in fear, “The first attack of the Cybermen.” “I was there. I saw humanity go wrong, but you never learned from it. This is why this keeps happening, this is why you end up like this.”

“You were there? 1986? But you can’t be more than fifty years old, and that was fifty years ago?” The Doctor ignored him.

“Is there anyone else on the base?” The Doctor rounded on him. “There’s Mr. Hart, our mechanic.” Floyd replied.

“Take me to your central control centre. We can set up base there and locate Mr. Hart.” Captain Petrov quickly ran back down the holiday they had come from, whilst the less fit Dr. Floyd jogged behind, and The Doctor and Victoria swiftly walked behind.

“How can a woman be a soldier?” Victoria asked. The Doctor looked down at her, “When you get home I am going to have a talk to your grandmother about what she’s teaching you? In more progressive times than your own, people have taken a more enlightened opinion on women, and women are recognised as being equal to men, and able to do anything a man can.”

“Ok,” she nodded, looking overwhelmed by the knowledge he had imparted, and they began to run to catch up.

 

The centre of the base was a large transparent observation dome. In the darkness outside a single red light flashed, barely visible in the gloom.

The Doctor pointed at it, “What, is that?”

“We don’t know,” Floyd looked worried. “it just appeared one day. After that the hydrothermal vents and tremors began.” His voice lowered to a whisper, “We haven’t verified it, but before the evacuations people claimed to have seen monsters in the gloom.”

One of the doors opened with a hiss, and Captain Petrov ran through. She began to wheeze, and Victoria ran over to help her. All of the rooms’ lights turned red and a screaming alarm began to go off.

Dr. Floyd ran over to a small control panel with a flashing red screen and pressed a small touch-screen button, “The North Wing! It’s, it’s gone…” Captain Petrov wheezed again, “That’s-” she managed to get a single word out, “That’s where- where Hart is!”

Chapter 4: Nightmare in the Depths - Part 2

“Reel me in my precious girl,” Mr. Hart, a tall thin man, with scruffy greying hair under a red cap, matching his red coat and pants, sang to himself quietly as he repaired a control panel in the North Wing.

Behind him in the gloom, a monster stirred. The only sign of its presence, a large glowing orb approached Beebe Base.

Out of the gloom a set of massive fangs appeared. Mr. Hart looked around too late, as the reinforced glass shattered, and the entire North Wing imploded within seconds.

 

“Dr. Floyd, prepare a submersible” The Doctor announced, “we’re going to investigate.”

The submersible was a small yellow mostly spherical contraption, with a glass dome at the front. It could supposedly fit three people, but The Doctor thought two was a tight squeeze. The small vehicle travelled towards the red light, searchlights illuminating tubeworms on the ocean floor, which quickly retracted into their carbonate homes.

As they neared upon the light a thud sounded against the submersible, and it shook. Dr. Floyd jumped in fear, turning the ship controls so they could see whatever monster had attacked them…

But there was not a monster. There was only a blue 20th Century Police Box, floating in aimlessly. “The TARDIS!”

“We’re on a mission Doctor! We can come back for your box later.” Floyd turned the submersible back to face the red light, and continued his approach.

They approached the light, discovering a strange tendrilous mass, with a glowing red orb hovering above. “Those are wires…” The Doctor leaned against the glass to look at the mass, “But much more advanced than anything you have on Earth at this point in time. It’s almost like pseudo-organic, familiar to me, but I don’t know where from.”

He turned to face the scientist, “Well we’ve found your problem, Doctor.” Floyd looked simply bemused. “It’s simple, man. A spaceship so advanced it is beyond your human understanding, from a civilisation billions of years ahead of yours, crashed here on Earth. Some form of force field or electromagnetic projection has interfered with the environment around here. That has caused the eruptions. That has caused the attacks.” He stood triumphantly, the viewing dome behind him.

Dr. Floyd pointed at the dome behind The Doctor. Behind him had appeared a bright white orb, approaching rapidly. The owner of the orb appeared, a short rounded black fish face, with massive eyes and large fangs. “Of course.” The Doctor muttered to himself, “Get us out of here!”

Floyd turned the submersible with a jolt, sending The Doctor falling to the ground. “I should have guessed!” He called, climbing up and leaning against the vehicle’s side “Those are Bathysphaera intacta, the Giant Dragonfish. Named by William Beebe, you all thought they were fake, but they weren’t!”

The submersible pulled into the parking bay. Its inhabitants exited through the port at the top, finding Victoria and Captain Petrov waiting. Dr. Floyd told the pair of them about the spaceship and the Bathysphaera.

A loud, thumping footstep behind them shocked everyone. The Doctor walked out, wearing a blue wetsuit and a scuba suit. “What the hell are you wearing?” Captain Petrov probed.

“One of your old Scuba Suits. Don’t worry, it’ll protect me from the pressure.I’m going out there to get the TARDIS.” He slowly marched towards the primitive force field which stopped the entire base being crushed by several tonnes of water. As he passed through the field he felt the pressure. Maybe it isn’t so pressure-resistant, he thought to himself, but it's too late now. He activated the boosters and watched as the base faded into the gloom.

 

Victoria assisted the base crew with packing their gear onto a submersible for evacuation. Whilst carrying a small red box they heard a loud whirring, hissing sound, and the blue police box known as the TARDIS materialised.

The doors opened up, and The Doctor poked his head out. “Come on. Get in!”

Nobody moved from their spots. “We’re not leaving.” Petrov spoke up, “We need to deal with that spaceship.”

She turned and matter-of-factly walked over to the original, empty submersible. “What are you doing, woman?” The Doctor shouted, but she ignored him as the hatch closed with a hiss.

She drove the vehicle out into the depths. A pair of glowing orbs appeared from the gloom and pursued her, as she sped toward the red flashing light.

Soon the submersible faded into the gloom, and all that remained were the chin lights of the Bathysphaera.

 

Captain Petrov had piloted these submersibles before, thousands of times, but never like this, never with such purpose. She turned back, and saw the flat faces of the Dragonfish still following her. Excellent.

As she approached the red orb the water around her vehicle seemed to get thicker, but the pursuing fish kept pace. I just have to get this much closer. Just this much, she thought to herself. The searchlights illuminated the wires, looking like metallic blood vessels. She drove into the mass; Goodbye Lucille, she thought to herself.

But she didn’t collide. She found her sub floating in a massive void of water. “What?” she asked aloud. “Where am I?” It was like a room, but it went on forever, in every direction. Suddenly it didn’t and the wires slithered out of the gloom, walls made of wires. And it was all over, she didn’t even have time to think I’m doomed.

Watching from the station, The Doctor saw the submersible strike where the spaceship had been. Then the orb had begun to expand, and contract. There’s something familiar about this. What am I missing!

He looked at the only other two inhabitants of the base, as the Bathysphaera swam away. Dr. Floyd looked at him, “You’re wrong, Doctor.” He looked down for a second then clarified, “About curiosity. Without curiosity we wouldn’t be here. Science is curiosity guided, and sometimes it comes before caution.”

The Doctor raised a single eyebrow. “Impressive” he simply said, then he closed the TARDIS doors. Floyd hadn’t even noticed Victoria getting in.

Impressive he thought to himself, staring without seeing at the vanishing Police Box. Impressive. “What did he mean by that?”

Chapter 5: World of Angels - Part 1

London; 2024:

The small red car pulled into the driveway, next to a small brick house. A tall woman, with a long black ponytail, stretching down to her hips jumped out. Behind her her young daughter stepped out.

Kira Blanche rushed into the house, whilst her young daughter waddled behind.

“Mama!”

“What is it Lily?” she spun on her shoe’s short heel. Lily was holding a piece of paper, and on it was a crayon drawing of a statue, the statue of an angel, all in greys. She didn’t know why, but it unnerved her, and she felt a deep ominous feeling in her gut.

“What is it?”

“It’s one of the Angels. The Angels that live under the school.”

“What!? What do you mean, under the school?”

“The Angels that live in the tunnels under the school.”

Kira stood there, in shocked silence, and soon Lily left, taking the drawing into her room.

In her room, as she stuck the crayon drawing up on the wall, she didn’t notice a statue of a taller woman, with a longer ponytail and stone wings, standing behind her bed.

 

Kira was cutting vegetables in the kitchen, when she heard a loud cracking sound emerge from her daughter's bedroom.

Arriving in the room Kira found her daughter gone, and near the doorway stood the statue, moved from its earlier position behind the bed. “What the-!?”

She barely even noticed, but for a singular second she blinked, and when her eyes opened, barely a second later, the statue of the Angel was right in front of her, face-to-face.

She stepped back, keeping her eyes directly on the ominous statue, its face giving her an unfamiliar and ominous sense of familiarity. “Lily?” she managed to squeeze out, her voice sounding uncomfortably deep.

Taking another step back, she felt her eyes starting to water from not blinking. She quickly slammed the door towards the Angel and leaned against it.

She felt a thumping on the door, and heard a slamming behind her. How is this possible? She thought to herself, what is this thing, and what did it do to Lily?

Directly to the left of her head a hand smashed through the wooden door, a stone hand.

Having fully caught her breath, she ran down the corridor to her open lounge room, leaning against a wall and watching the corridor entrance, hearing the echoes of the breaking door.

The sound of breaking wood stopped, and she sat, the seconds of complete silence feeling like hours. After these hours a stone hand came around the corner, and the Angel froze.

Kira stared at it, and she knew what she had to do. She leapt off the wall and jumped, through one of the massive windows of her lounge room, landing in a roll on her front lawn.

 

The force of hitting the ground knocked Kira unconscious for a matter of seconds. By the time she awakened and opened her eyes the Angel was standing above her.

She pushed herself to her feet and suddenly realised the mavity of the situation. She was covered in cuts from the glass shards, and the knees of her brown cargo pants torn. She began to back away from the malevolent statue.

Slowly backing away and keeping her eyes on the Angel, she was able to get to her motorcycle, and climb on.

She sped down her street, through identical suburban homes, feeling the wind against her face, blowing her ponytail in the wind behind her, like a tail.

As she turned a corner she saw the menacing statue, for only a second, but it was only a few metres behind her. This isn’t the time to follow the law, and she increased her speed to the max.

As she sped toward Lily’s school she would turn back, seeing the Angel maintaining a constant distance behind her. If only the damned school were closer.

 

She rounded a corner, and looked back but noticed shockingly, horribly, terribly that the statue was gone.

Turning to face ahead again, she discovered it was exactly ahead of her, at a crossroad. She jerked to the right, and her motorcycle fell beneath her, as the Angel watched her with stone eyes.

Keith Grond was driving his BMW down the roads, trying to get home. Thirty miles per hour is basically the same as twenty he thought to himself. At a crossroads ahead of him a woman crashed her motorcycle. “Not my problem” he muttered to himself. He was so preoccupied excusing himself that he didn’t notice the statue in the centre of the road.

Luckily the BMW was a car designed for arseholes who had things to compensate for to drive, so it was heavily enough built to not be damaged by the statue. The driver’s temper on the other hand, was much more fragile.

Keith Grond was a bulldog of a man, with a wide square chin, and a face like a brick. He had short black hair, underneath a cap with the logo of some obscure local football team on it. “Is tha’ yer statue!?” he bellowed.

“No…” she groaned, picking herself up. “Then ‘ho’s is i’!? Wha’ kin’a person leaves a sta’ue righ’ in the middla tha road!?”

He stepped toward her with one foot, but before he could again a loud crack, like the one from Lily’s room, and Keith Grond  vanished. Where his other leg had been a stone hand reached out from below the BMW.

Keeping her eye on the hand, Kira winced her way over to the BMW, and got into the driver’s seat.

 

By the time she had reached the school her injuries had healed up. She got out of the stolen car, saw the statue still following her. It’s toying with me she thought, it could have caught me ages ago.

She limped into the empty school, checking behind her occasionally, seeing the angel still there.

Exhausted, she sat on a wooden bench, giving herself time to heal her leg, and keeping an eye on the statue.

Out of nowhere she heard a crack, and the world was filled with a bright light, beyond anything that she had ever seen, it completely blinded her. I have died, she simply thought to herself.

Suddenly instead of sitting on a wooden bench in a primary school, she was sitting in a pile of straw and mud in a slum street. “Mama!”

“Lily!?”

Her young daughter ran over to her, and she curled around her in a hug. The air began to be filled with a modulating hissing groan.

Chapter 6: World of Angels - Part 2

A navy blue wooden box marked “POLICE” landed in the muddy street.

The front doors opened, and two people emerged, a tall regal-looking man, and a scruffier red-haired woman. The man was holding a small walkie-talkie like device, which he pointed the antenna at Kira and Lily. “What year is this?” he asked. “2024, of course…”

“See,” he turned to look at his companion, “I told you this device worked, they’ve been time displaced.”

“Come with us, we’ll take you home.” When Kira looked skeptical the man responded jovially, “You can trust us.”

Kira slowly stood up, and the red-haired woman’s smile turned into fear and shock, and she withdrew quickly into the box.

The man pulled in after her, pulling the door to ajar behind him.

 

“We can’t take her with us!” Victoria whispered.

“Why not?” The Doctor’s tone in response was cold and angry.

“Because she.. he… it is a man!”

“If you are going to be bigoted like that, I will not allow you to travel with me!” he was barely containing his anger by this point. “You will have to understand that things are different and more progressive in other times.”

“You are born in the body of a woman and you feel like a woman, but some people, like our friend here, are born in the body of a man but feel like a woman, or are born in the body of a woman and feel like a man, and that’s ok. If you keep that attitude up I will drop you back at your grandmother’s as soon as I possibly can.”

“Alright. I’m very sorry”

The Doctor opened the doors again, and stuck his head out, “Sorry about my friend, she’s a little old-fashioned. Oh, and I’m The Doctor.”

Lily stood up and stepped into the Police Box. “Do you want to go home, Ms. …uh-”

“Kira.”

 

With a whooshing, hissing groan the TARDIS rematerialised in the school from which Kira had been sent back in time.

Around it was a large grey concrete room, with a shabby oil-stained kiosk building in the corner. The only part of the room that was not made of this concrete was the floor, composed of planken wood.

The inhabitants of the TARDIS all climbed out, and The Doctor began to investigate the room.

He picked up a scrap of paper, “No! No! This can’t be!”

On the scrap was a drawing, just a sketch, but detailed enough to make out what it depicted. “A Weeping Angel.”

“Is that what that thing was?” Kira asked. The Doctor turned to face her, violently enough to break his neck, “Describe this thing.”

“Statue of an angel. Moves when you’re not looking, chases you persistently. Lily claims they’re ‘under the school’.”

“That’s the Weeping Angels. The deadliest species in the universe, they turn to stone as soon as you look at them, and they send you back in time, feed on your time energy.”

“So Lily, where are these Angels under the school?”

“In the tunnels, down there” she pointed at an area of differently coloured wooden floorboards.

The Doctor viciously pulled out the planks, and light filled the tunnels, which were filled with masses of winged statues.

He pointed the Sonic Screwdriver in, which made a deep repeating thrumming.

“ANGELS! I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE! AND I WANT YOU TO KNOW! THIS PLANET IS UNDER MY PROTECTION!” The Doctor's angry shout echoed through the tunnels.

“Hold this, and keep that button pressed” he handed his Screwdriver over to Victoria, and slid down the ladder into the tunnel.

He wandered around, between the ominous statues for a few minutes, before returning to the ladder.

“Identical. Every single one is identical. But. No two Angels are the same, so how can they be identical? Anyone?”

Only Lily spoke up “They’re all the same Angel?”

“Exactly! Because, you see, the image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel. Therefore there has been one Angel, and many, many images of this Angel, creating all of those.”

He turned around to investigate more and saw in the doorway a Weeping Angel, looking as if sketched on paper, not completely formed.

“It’s still forming. And I have the source of the image.” The Doctor pulled the sketch out of his pocket and tore it in half. A massive gash appeared through the Angel.

He pulled out his Sonic Screwdriver and pointed it at the torn pieces of paper, which burst into flame. The forming Angel was swallowed by fire immediately.

“If we all turn away we would be the first people to ever hear the dying screams of a Weeping Angel.”

Kira turned to him with disgust, “I don’t know what kind of doctor you are, but not any want to associate with. The fact you would do that to a living creature.”

“This is not just a living creature” he hissed, “the Weeping Angels are pure evil.”

“I don’t believe in pure evil.”

“You clearly haven’t met a Weeping Angel” he sneered, and walked out of the canteen.

 

Minutes later The Doctor returned with a school laptop. “If there are this many here, then someone else must have seen them and posted them on social media.”

He opened it up, and upon the screen appeared a logo, taking the form of a silver angel, covering its eyes, with the text “ANGELWARE” emblazoned in silver below, something that caused him to drop the laptop in shock.

“What is this Angelware!?”

“It was this new AI system, it was so revolutionary that they installed it on every computer in the world.”

“WHAT!?” The Doctor ran over to the TARDIS, opening the door, “Come on! Let’s go!” Victoria, Lily and Kira ran into the Blue Box, which began to materialise.

Chapter 7: World of Angels - Part 3

Texas; 2008:

A fifteen year-old boy, Steven Herald was sitting around in the woods, thinking about how much he hated everyone else, dressed in a black jacket and jeans. He heard a voice in his head, a woman’s voice. “Help me… Help me help you…”

He turned and saw a statue of a tall beautiful woman, “If you help me… I will give you that which you most desire…”

“How? How can I help you?”

“Bring me to your home… I will make you a billionaire…”

 

Angelware Tower, Houston, Texas; 2024:

In a comfortably furnished, high roofed corridor on the 72nd floor of the tower, a wailing, rhythmic groan began to emerge from thin air, and a blue police box materialised, with the sound of a bell.

Suddenly the halls were filled with a red flashing light and an alarm went off. A team of armoured Security Guards ran into the corridor, forming a circle around the TARDIS. The box opened up and a regal looking man dressed in a black coat over a purple shirt stepped out. “Thank you all for coming here. It has made it so much easier for me.” He pointed a small device at the ceiling, and it made a few clicking noises.

Shutter doors at each end of the corridor slammed to the floor, and suddenly gunfire filled the corridor, but the bullet bounced off the box, which began to dematerialise.

 

Steven Herald was in his office, a massive glass cube projecting from his tower. In the corner sat that statue that had come to him so many years ago, and was the fuel that powered the Angelware software. As he looked over Houston Texas a blue police box appeared behind him disturbing the cluttered papers on his desk.

A gaunt, black haired man stepped out. “Hello, I’m The Doctor. Codename Doctor Who, but you’d probably know me as,” he paused  “The President of the World.”

“What?” Steven had a scruffy beard and moustache, under a mop of unkempt hair. He wore a dirty dark blue jacket over a badly-ironed white shirt, with fading red jeans.

“Oh, and I’ve called my friends at UNIT. You can see them just down there.” He pointed through the windows at an amassing military force on the street below.

 

“Alright men, we don’t know what we’ll face in there, so be cautious.” Alexander Turner, a UNIT Captain led a team, armed with batons and fibreglass shields, and in black armour. They broke down the door, spreading glass around the lobby, and causing everyone inside to begin to flee in panic.

They began making their way toward the elevators, when a loud static filled the ears of all of the soldiers, drowning out the sounds of everything else.

The static turned into a chain of four notes of music playing everywhere. Alexander didn’t know why, but it filled them with a deep sense of fear. Looking around they saw it was having the same effect on their subordinates. “Keep moving! We have to keep moving!”

Nobody reacted, the ominous music was tuning out the radio signal. The air in front of Alexander began to buzz, a vaguely human shape forming out of what looked like solid television static. Am I hallucinating?

The static rapidly began to coalesce, becoming more solid, turning into a statue. “What the hell?”

The statue became fully solid, a woman with a long ponytail. Alexander turned to look around, seeing that the lobby was filling with the statues. Suddenly a bright light exploded into their eyes, blinding them.

After what felt like it could have been anywhere between a second and a billion years, the light faded and the lobby was replaced with a sweeping forest.

 

“All around the world, my system has activated. Our children will colonise the Earth.”

“You are insane!” The Doctor shouted, “Why are you doing this, serving an Angel to wipe out your own species.”

“She promised me my greatest desire!” he pointed insanely at the Angel “Money.”

“You blithering idiot! You’ve been tricked! And now you’ve made an infinite Angel farm, billions more people in the past means more people in the present, means more technology, means more Angels, means more people in the past and so on!”

Herald fell to the floor. He felt a pair of burning wounds on his back and began to writhe and scream.

“What’s happening to him!?” Victoria asked, concerned. The Doctor kneeled down, looking at the agonised man.

“He’s got some form of tumours on his back. That’s very strange, they appear to be made of stone” he looked up at his compatriots bemusedly.

“Look at his hands!” Kira called out, they too were covered in stone.

“You fool. You’ve made a deal with the Angel and look what’s happened to you now. It’s turning you into one of them.” The Doctor pointed his Sonic Screwdriver at Herald. He pressed the button on the side. With nothing but a repeated click the man on the floor went limp, the life gone from his eyes.

A long period of complete silence followed, nobody even daring to move after what had just happened.

The Doctor stepped forward, inspecting the Weeping Angel chained up in wires, taking a close look at its face. “No. Oh no” he muttered, “Everybody get back!”

Victoria, Lily and Kira backed away, toward the door.

A powerful thudding struck the door, which broke down, filling the room with dust, blinding everyone within.

A UNIT Team entered, torches cutting like searchlights in the dust. The leader of the team saluted “Mr. President, we have captured the Tower, and Doctor Stewart is on her way.”

“Good job soldier”

“Lily!? Lily, where are you!?” in the smoke the girl had vanished. As Kira was looking for her daughter she realised that the Weeping Angel had vanished from where it had been wired up. “The Angel got her!”

“I’m right here.” One of the UNIT soldiers took her helmet off, her brown hair tied up in a bun. “Lily!? What!?”

“That thing got to me, sent me back about fifteen years, and I had to grow up then. When I grew up I knew I had to join UNIT to try to stop all this before it happened, but nobody listened to me, and I couldn’t change anything, so I had to make sure that I was on this team.”

“Of course, you’d need more power than a Weeping Angel to create a paradox that powerful.”

“You!” she pointed at him accusatively and shouted “You have a Time Machine! You could have saved me, but you left me to spend fifteen years in the past!”

“If I didn’t do that then I must have had a good reason to, I would have helped you unless I did.”

She pointed her large gun at him, “I’ll shoot you!”

“Do it, then”

 

Whilst everyone was watching this stand-off, Kira felt a tapping on her shoulder, she looked back and saw a familiar face, the Weeping Angel. Fear suppressed her exclamation.

“I can give you that which you most desire…” she heard the Angel in her head, No, I won’t listen to you!

She suddenly collapsed to the ground, her face burning.

“What did you do!?” The Doctor ran over to her, keeping his eyes on the Weeping Angel, “Oh, no no no”

Kira’s face was covered in a burning, glowing light. “Why did you listen to it!?”

“I.. It.. inside my head… Couldn’t… stop it” she sobbed, her voice sounded different, still hers but with a higher pitch.

“What did it promise you? Please tell me?”

“It told… It told me I… I could be a… A, a real woman…”

 “You fool, you are a real woman! Now look at its face. It is you, it’s going to send you back and start all of this again, with you as the Angel!”

“I’m so… so sorry!” she sobbed.

“Sorry isn’t good enough. I need to break the cycle.” He stood and turned to face the adult Lily. “I’m very sorry”

He grabbed Lily’s gun, and attempted to wrest it from her hands. “What the hell are you doing!?”

“If she dies before the Angel sends her back then none of this would have happened! Everything would go back to normal!”

“You have no right to erase my life!!”

“Do you really want this to be your life!? Wasting it trying to prevent this, but at the crucial moment choosing not too!? Would you really rather that than having a normal life!?”

“Fine. But I’ll do it.” She pulled the gun out of The Doctor's grip, and pointed it at Kira, whose lower half was now composed of stone. “I’m sorry mama.”

A bright light filled the room, the world, the universe.

 

The tower room, with the glass cube window was gone, instead they all stood in a park, the TARDIS standing on a nearby footpath.

Kira and Lily Blanche, now restored to their previous selves, approached The Doctor and Victoria. “Do you happen to know where we are?” Kira asked, “And how we got here?”

“We appear to be in a park in Houston Texas, uh my friend will arrive here soon, and will take you back to Britain.” He turned around, returning to the TARDIS.

The Doctor boarded the TARDIS, followed by Victoria. “Very well, I must say that went better than it could have. Where would you like to go next?”

When she did not respond he turned around, finding her standing there, arms crossed and looking deeply displeased. “Take me home.”

“Alright…?” The Doctor was confused, What have I done wrong?

Reading his face, Victoria retorted, “Don’t ask what you’ve done wrong! You convinced Lily to kill her own mother!!” He attempted to rebut, “Don’t argue that it was all erased, that it’s all better now, it doesn’t matter, you were still willing and able to do that. So take me home, right now.”

“Alright”

Chapter 8: The Trenches - Part 1

“Alright, let’s get you home” The TARDIS began to dematerialise, flying through the psychedelic spirals of the Time Vortex.

As it flew, the ship shuddered to a halt, with a loud clang. “What happened?” Victoria called from the couch where she was sitting.

“I don’t know. I didn’t do this!” he slammed his hand on the console.

A hologram appeared on the deck, a hologram of a shorter woman, about a head shorter than The Doctor, her straight brown hair tied up in a bun. “Adelphi.”

“Doctor.” The hologram said. “You have been-” she transformed into a staticy blur, “-by the Time Lords, return the- - to Colonel- -the Allies, your TARDIS will be- -1915.”

The TARDIS materialised again, in the middle of a muddy, devastated plain. A small decahedronic black box appeared on the TARDIS console, and The Doctor picked it up, putting it in his pocket.

“I can’t get it to work” The Doctor called, “The Time Lords have locked me out!”

He approached Victoria and put a small pin on her shirt. “That’s a psychic courier pin. It means that they won’t kill you as an enemy spy.”

“Which way is the Allies?”

“Not sure. We’ll just have to go over and check each.”

A hissing scream filled the battlefield, as a shell flew overhead. “Run!”

Victoria and The Doctor ran in separate directions, Victoria following the path that the shell had taken, and The Doctor in the other way.

Running for what felt like forever, the muddy plain around him a blur The Doctor tripped over a fence post, mostly embedded in the ground. He heard machine gun fire in the distance, and lay in the muck, catching his breath.

“Vell, vell, vell,” a scrawny man, with a stubble-covered face, wearing a grey cap with a spike atop it, “vhat have ve here? English; offizer, looks like”

The thin pale man pointed a gun “Alright Brit, give me vone reason vhy I should not just shoot you right now”

“I’m a courier! I’m a courier!” He pulled psychic paper out of his pocket. “Gefreiter!” the German Soldier called “Ve’ve got some Brit here claiming to be a courier. Vhat should ve do viz him?”

A second man with very short black hair and a small moustache covering his lip grabbed The Doctor's hand and pulled him up. “Ve vill take him to ze Major, who vill authenticate him, and if he is a British spy,” he smiled maliciously at his subordinate, “ve feed him to ze dogs.”

 

Victoria ran too, her legs getting scratched on fragments of barbed wire. In the fog she saw two human figures, “Oh thank the Gods!” She collapsed into the mud.

“We go’ a civ! Get ‘er a mask! Get ‘er a mask!” One of the soldiers called, and his comrade ran over.

The second man put a mask with transparent eye holes on her face. Both men had similar masks, with tubes leading to boxes on their chests.

“Lucky we were able to get to you in time,” the second man’s voice was muffled by his gas mask, “there’s still a residue of Chlorine gas in the air, not enough to kill without long-term exposure”

A rumbling sound filled the battlefield, as a plane passed overhead. “Run!” the first soldier shouted, as a rapidly increasing whistling sound came from the skies.

A bomb landed in a patch of mud, and in the bright flash of light Victoria felt herself being thrown through the air, hitting the mud hard, and falling quickly unconscious.

 

Victoria woke up. She was in a brown-grey tent, in a dirty-white bed, or at least that’s what she could see through her sleep-encrusted eyes. She was feeling incredibly groggy. “Urghhh,” she groaned.

“Oh, you’re awake!”

Victoria saw a beautiful woman, of about her age, wearing a white dress and apron, with a red cross on the chest.

She had black hair, tied up in a small bun. “Are you alright? Would you like some tea?”

Victoria groaned in the affirmative. “I’ll get to making you some. I’m Margaret Lilac, by the way”

“Where… Where am I?” Victoria coughed groggily

“You’re in a British medical tent, you must have hit your head hard?”

“Are… Are the British the Allies?”

“Yes, of course! Did you hit your head? How could you not know that?”

“I’ve been… been abroad. Texas, Texas I think…”

“Ah, I see, what brought you here?”

“My friend, he has, has a, a, a something or other, for your colonel, but we got separated out there,” she gestured wildly

Margaret approached her bed with the cup of tea, and Victoria saw her face clearly for the first time. “You… You are very pretty” Victoria collapsed, falling back asleep.

 

“Major von Essen, ve have captured zis man in no-man’s-land. He claims to be a Courier”

“Very vell, Gefreiter, bring him in,” the soldiers flanked The Doctor as he entered the Major’s room. “I am perfectly capable of speaking to him on my own,” the Major said to his subordinates, who left. The major was a well-built man, but with the look of a fighter, something uncommon among the officer classes. His hair, once black was now mostly white, and his jaw was littered with stubble. He had a small grey moustache, and a well-worn, wrinkled brow. The Doctor found him very familiar, but it took him a few seconds to realise where from, in which time he had sat down in a small chair across from the major.

“Vell sir, vhat’s your name?”

“Call me The Doctor, just The Doctor.”

“Ze Doctor you say?” he looked at The Doctor's face, with intense scrutiny.

“Would you happen to be Major Christian von Essen?” The Doctor took satisfaction in the shock on the Major’s face.

“It, it is you? You are Ze Doctor?” Major von Essen remembered The Doctor, nearly thirty years ago, in the jungle, a man with brown spikes of forward pointing hair, wearing a brown suit and coat, with a magic wand, “From New Guinea?”

“The very same”

“You look very different…?”

“A lot has changed”

“Vell zen my old friend, vhat is zis courier situation. Vhat brings you to ze Vestern Front?”

“Mission, very important. I need to deliver something to some colonel with the allies”

“Not a social visit zen?”

“Unfortunately not”

“Very vell zen, I guess you vill be on your vay. My Gefreiter, sorry, lance corporal, can escort you, if you vant.”

“Thank you Major. I hope to see you again”

“Gefreiter! I need you,” the young soldier approached his commanding officer, who gave him the orders.

“Very vell zen mister, uh, Doctor, it looks as if I vill be escorting you across to the Allies’ trench,” The Doctor nodded, and they proceeded out of the major’s room, “you might as vell get to know me a bit if ve are doing zis. My name is Adolf Hitler”

Chapter 9: The Trenches - Part 1

“Alright, let’s get you home” The TARDIS began to dematerialise, flying through the psychedelic spirals of the Time Vortex.

As it flew, the ship shuddered to a halt, with a loud clang. “What happened?” Victoria called from the couch where she was sitting.

“I don’t know. I didn’t do this!” he slammed his hand on the console.

A hologram appeared on the deck, a hologram of a shorter woman, about a head shorter than The Doctor, her straight brown hair tied up in a bun. “Adelphi.”

“Doctor.” The hologram said. “You have been-” she transformed into a staticy blur, “-by the Time Lords, return the- - to Colonel- -the Allies, your TARDIS will be- -1915.”

The TARDIS materialised again, in the middle of a muddy, devastated plain. A small decahedronic black box appeared on the TARDIS console, and The Doctor picked it up, putting it in his pocket.

“I can’t get it to work” The Doctor called, “The Time Lords have locked me out!”

He approached Victoria and put a small pin on her shirt. “That’s a psychic courier pin. It means that they won’t kill you as an enemy spy.”

“Which way is the Allies?”

“Not sure. We’ll just have to go over and check each.”

A hissing scream filled the battlefield, as a shell flew overhead. “Run!”

Victoria and The Doctor ran in separate directions, Victoria following the path that the shell had taken, and The Doctor in the other way.

Running for what felt like forever, the muddy plain around him a blur The Doctor tripped over a fence post, mostly embedded in the ground. He heard machine gun fire in the distance, and lay in the muck, catching his breath.

“Vell, vell, vell,” a scrawny man, with a stubble-covered face, wearing a grey cap with a spike atop it, “vhat have ve here? English; offizer, looks like”

The thin pale man pointed a gun “Alright Brit, give me vone reason vhy I should not just shoot you right now”

“I’m a courier! I’m a courier!” He pulled psychic paper out of his pocket. “Gefreiter!” the German Soldier called “Ve’ve got some Brit here claiming to be a courier. Vhat should ve do viz him?”

A second man with very short black hair and a small moustache covering his lip grabbed The Doctor's hand and pulled him up. “Ve vill take him to ze Major, who vill authenticate him, and if he is a British spy,” he smiled maliciously at his subordinate, “ve feed him to ze dogs.”

 

Victoria ran too, her legs getting scratched on fragments of barbed wire. In the fog she saw two human figures, “Oh thank the Gods!” She collapsed into the mud.

“We go’ a civ! Get ‘er a mask! Get ‘er a mask!” One of the soldiers called, and his comrade ran over.

The second man put a mask with transparent eye holes on her face. Both men had similar masks, with tubes leading to boxes on their chests.

“Lucky we were able to get to you in time,” the second man’s voice was muffled by his gas mask, “there’s still a residue of Chlorine gas in the air, not enough to kill without long-term exposure”

A rumbling sound filled the battlefield, as a plane passed overhead. “Run!” the first soldier shouted, as a rapidly increasing whistling sound came from the skies.

A bomb landed in a patch of mud, and in the bright flash of light Victoria felt herself being thrown through the air, hitting the mud hard, and falling quickly unconscious.

 

Victoria woke up. She was in a brown-grey tent, in a dirty-white bed, or at least that’s what she could see through her sleep-encrusted eyes. She was feeling incredibly groggy. “Urghhh,” she groaned.

“Oh, you’re awake!”

Victoria saw a beautiful woman, of about her age, wearing a white dress and apron, with a red cross on the chest.

She had black hair, tied up in a small bun. “Are you alright? Would you like some tea?”

Victoria groaned in the affirmative. “I’ll get to making you some. I’m Margaret Lilac, by the way”

“Where… Where am I?” Victoria coughed groggily

“You’re in a British medical tent, you must have hit your head hard?”

“Are… Are the British the Allies?”

“Yes, of course! Did you hit your head? How could you not know that?”

“I’ve been… been abroad. Texas, Texas I think…”

“Ah, I see, what brought you here?”

“My friend, he has, has a, a, a something or other, for your colonel, but we got separated out there,” she gestured wildly

Margaret approached her bed with the cup of tea, and Victoria saw her face clearly for the first time. “You… You are very pretty” Victoria collapsed, falling back asleep.

 

“Major von Essen, ve have captured zis man in no-man’s-land. He claims to be a Courier”

“Very vell, Gefreiter, bring him in,” the soldiers flanked The Doctor as he entered the Major’s room. “I am perfectly capable of speaking to him on my own,” the Major said to his subordinates, who left. The major was a well-built man, but with the look of a fighter, something uncommon among the officer classes. His hair, once black was now mostly white, and his jaw was littered with stubble. He had a small grey moustache, and a well-worn, wrinkled brow. The Doctor found him very familiar, but it took him a few seconds to realise where from, in which time he had sat down in a small chair across from the major.

“Vell sir, vhat’s your name?”

“Call me The Doctor, just The Doctor.”

“Ze Doctor you say?” he looked at The Doctor's face, with intense scrutiny.

“Would you happen to be Major Christian von Essen?” The Doctor took satisfaction in the shock on the Major’s face.

“It, it is you? You are Ze Doctor?” Major von Essen remembered The Doctor, nearly thirty years ago, in the jungle, a man with brown spikes of forward pointing hair, wearing a brown suit and coat, with a magic wand, “From New Guinea?”

“The very same”

“You look very different…?”

“A lot has changed”

“Vell zen my old friend, vhat is zis courier situation. Vhat brings you to ze Vestern Front?”

“Mission, very important. I need to deliver something to some colonel with the allies”

“Not a social visit zen?”

“Unfortunately not”

“Very vell zen, I guess you vill be on your vay. My Gefreiter, sorry, lance corporal, can escort you, if you vant.”

“Thank you Major. I hope to see you again”

“Gefreiter! I need you,” the young soldier approached his commanding officer, who gave him the orders.

“Very vell zen mister, uh, Doctor, it looks as if I vill be escorting you across to the Allies’ trench,” The Doctor nodded, and they proceeded out of the major’s room, “you might as vell get to know me a bit if ve are doing zis. My name is Adolf Hitler”

Chapter 10: The Trenches - Part 2

Victoria awoke again, still in the medical tent. Oh, it wasn’t a dream, I really am here.

“You’re awake again. Do you want me to warm tea?”

“Mhm,” she croaked “Did I say anything stupid?”

“Do you still think I’m pretty?”

“Oh Gods,” Victoria shoved her face into the barely filled pillow. “I do think you’re pretty though!” she said quickly, looking back at Margaret.

Margaret pulled up a wooden chair beside Victoria’s bed.

Margaret pushed strands of Victoria’s red hair out of her eye. The woman on the bed flinched, “Sorry about that”

“Don’t, don’t apologise, I liked it, I just didn’t…” she blushed slightly and paused for a second, “I didn’t realise I’d like it that much”

“Oh?”

“I just want to talk to you a bit,” she blushed again, then quickly said, “ifthat’sokaywithyou-”

 

No-man’s land was filled with the echoes of shells and machine guns. The Doctor and Gefreiter Hitler trudged through the muddy wastes.

The Doctor took a step, but was met with not the squelching sound of mud, but rather a metallic clang.

“Lance Corporal, I don’t want you to freak out, but I’ve stepped on a landmine”

“Vhat, vhat do you vant me to do!? Vhat can I do?”

“Use this!” The Doctor handed him the Sonic Screwdriver, “Press that button,” Hitler pressed the button, and it began to click. “Now point it at the mine,” the soldier knelt down, pointing it at the metal disk, “Alright,” he carefully stepped off, “now give it back!”

“Bitte,” the Gefreiter spat to himself.

 

“I’ve got your cup of tea,” Margaret approached Victoria, who was now sitting on the bed

She sat beside the red-haired woman, and looked over her slender form.

“Back… back in my home,” Victoria began, “...I was always told that I would like boys, but then, then I never did. I had never experienced that feeling before, before today.” She looked at the black-haired nurse.

“I, I’ve felt the same, I feel the same way, to… towards you,” Margaret stared into Victoria’s eyes.

“But, but yeah, I was always told that I was supposed to like boys, and not to like girls, but I do, I do like girls, I like you, Margaret”

She put her arm around Margaret’s shoulder.

“Come, come with me,” Margaret pleaded to her, “leave this friend of yours, after the War come back to Britain and live with me. We can fight for the rights of women, and for people like us!”

An excited look came across Victoria’s face, “The Doctor, he could take us to some other place and time where women like us are accepted, and we can live there!”

“No. We shouldn’t just run away. We need to stay here, and fight for our rights!”

“Ok, just as long as I’m with you…”

I’m about to do something stupid, Victoria thought to herself, and she began to lean in toward the nurse.

Their lips met, and Victoria felt absolute bliss through her body, and felt a deep connection, both physical and spiritual. She wrapped her arms around Margaret. I hope this never ends, she thought to herself.

 

After what felt like hours of trekking, The Doctor and the Gefreiter reached a gun emplacement.

A British Soldier stepped out from behind the sandbag wall, pointing his gun at them. “Put your hands up!”

The Doctor and Hitler quickly complied. “What are you doin’ here!?”

“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! I’m a courier, I have something to give to your Colonel! This man is escorting me”

“Do you have any identification? You don’t expect me to just believe you?”

“I do, let me just,” The Doctor reached into a pocket on the inside of his cloak, pulling out the psychic paper, “There!”

“Ah I see, I assume you’re with that woman we found then?”

“Ah good, you found her.” He paused then clarified, “Yes, she was with me”

“She’s in the medics’ tent, just over there,” he pointed to a section of the trench that was built up with wood and stone, and had a cloth covering.

The Doctor proceeded toward the medical tent, turning back to the soldiers at the gun, “If you hurt that German I will bring the full force of the British Empire upon you!”

He opened the door of the medical tent, only to find Victoria sitting on one of two white beds, deeply engrossed in kissing a black-haired woman in a nurse’s uniform.

He closed the door, as quietly as possible, but Victoria heard the sound, and jumped in fright, pulling away from the woman she was kissing. The nurse looked mortified, staring at The Doctor in sheer terror. After a second he realised why, “It’s alright, it’s alright. I’m accepting of relationships like these.”

Victoria, blushing heavily and avoiding meeting The Doctor’s eyes, patted her on the shoulder, and reassured her, “It’s okay, he’s cool with this”

“Doctor, this uh Margaret; Margaret, this is The Doctor”

“Good to meet you!” The Doctor stepped forward and shook her hand.

Margaret held back for a second, before quickly shaking his hand, “You too,” she responded, her voice barely above a whisper.

A firm knocking came on the tent’s wooden door, “Mr. uh, Doctor, the Colonel will see you now!” A soldier called from outside.

Victoria embraced Margaret, and whispered in her ear, “I’ll see you again”

She then walked over to The Doctor, and both exited the room. Outside was another soldier, a pale-faced man with a greying moustache and sideburns. He silently escorted them through the network of trenches, and into a hatch built into the muddy walls, as the furthest part of the trench from the actual fighting.

Behind the hatch was a ladder, leading down to a small room. It too was built of wood and stone, but it was filled with finery, medals and awards on one wall, a collection of guns and deer heads on another.

At the centre was a large desk, with two chairs on one side, and a single one on the other. On that solitary chair sat a man dressed in a navy blue uniform, with many medals upon his left chest. He wore a perfectly clean bowl-like hat, under which he had perfectly groomed orange hair, and a well kept beard and moustache of the same colour.

“So you’re this Doctor, eh?” he spoke with an aristocratic English voice, and looked at The Doctor with what almost seemed disappointed. “But you’re not The Doctor,” he muttered to himself.

“So, they say you’ve brought me something? Let’s see it.”

The Doctor pulled the small dodecahedron out of his pocket, and placed it in the Colonel’s hand. The second it touched his skin it began to disintegrate, leaving a small golden pentagon, with letter ‘W’ encrusted upon it in rubies. His face suddenly transformed, full of anger and spite. “It is you!” he spat with great venom. He waved his hand, seemingly flippantly.

The last thing The Doctor experienced as he was knocked out was the brief feeling of a rifle butt striking the back of his head.

 

His head was still throbbing from where it was struck when he awoke. He was sitting in the same chair, but he was tied down, and Victoria was gone. The Colonel caught him looking to where Victoria had been. “Your little pet is safe; for now. She woke up earlier than you, but had no useful information, so we threw her into our prison. You, on the other hand, are exactly who I want.” He sneered

“I… I still don’t know what you want from me, how you know of me?”

“Of course you wouldn’t know, of course you wouldn’t remember!” he hissed through his teeth, “YOU KIDNAPPED MY MOTHER!”

“Your mother?”

“You probably don’t even remember her name! VICTORIA WATERFIELD!!” He slammed his hand on the desk.

“Oh!? Victoria was your mother!? I didn’t realise she had a child, I’m so, so sorry!”

“What did you do to her!?” He spat, great venom in his voice

“She’s alright! She’s safe!”

“Where is she!?”

“It’s hard, it’s hard to explain, but I promise to you that she is safe”

“Prove. It.”

“I will, I will, but I can’t do it here and now. I promise you will see your mother again. But you need to let me go.”

“And how do I know you won’t just run off and leave? How do I know that I can trust you?”

“In my pocket is a small metal device, it looks kind of like a lighter,” Colonel Waterfield pulled the Sonic Screwdriver out of one of The Doctor’s pockets. “That is very precious to me. I will return at some point, with your mother, and then you can give it back to me. I promise.”

“Fine.” Waterfield pulled out a small knife and cut ropes tying The Doctor to the chair.

 

The soldiers had let Victoria out of her cell, and brought her out to meet with The Doctor. “They’ve let us go. Now we need to get back to the TARDIS”

“I need to say goodbye to Margaret first,” and she ran toward the medical tent. But when she went inside it was empty. “Margaret? Margaret!? MARGARET!?” she shouted for the nurse but to no avail.

By the time she left the tent she could feel tears in her eyes. They burned, and yet she held them in, because she knew she had to be strong. The Doctor had seen her and he rushed over to her. She had expected him to tell her to strengthen up, that they had things to do, but he surprised her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice not like Victoria had heard it.

“Margaret-” she whispered between sobs, “she’s gone- she, she just disappeared.”

“I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do. We need to get back to the TARDIS.” She began to cry even harder, “Look at me, please. I am genuinely so sorry” she looked at him, saw his face, upset. She had never seen him like this before, he had been angry, but the sadness and fear on his face was worse.

She noticed that they had already gotten to the edge of the trench. “We’ll be going now,” The Doctor had said to the British Troops, and another soldier had joined them, the walk back to the TARDIS had been a blur to her.

The Doctor had walked her there, he had held her stable under his arm, and Gerfreiter had lagged behind them. Upon reaching the TARDIS he had helped Victoria and turned to speak to Hitler. “This is where I leave you, Gerfreiter.”

“Very vell,” and he reached out his hand to shake The Doctor’s hand. Instead The Doctor had punched him in the face, knocking him to the ground. As he got up he saw the blue Police Box begin to fade. “Vhat?”

Victoria sat on the sofa inside. “Who was that German soldier?”

“That, is a long story. Do you want me to take you home now?”

“No thanks. I’d like to stay with you…”

“Alright. Let’s go, I’ve got a promise I have to fulfil…

Chapter 11: The Tank - Part 1

The TARDIS materialised inside a large room. It was built entirely of black stone, and lightly furnished, a couple of sofas and a coffee table in one corner.

“Infernal machine!” The Doctor shouted, as he kicked the central column of the TARDIS console. “It won’t show the bloody coordinates!”

“I guess we’ll have to find out where we are the old fashioned way,” Victoria said to him, stepping outside.

He quickly followed her .”Hmmm. I’ll try scanning,” he pulled out the Sonic Screwdriver, the device clicking furiously as he wandered about the room with it, “Nothing. This stupid stone is blocking all signals. We’ll have to check it out the old fashioned way, as you said.

The Doctor wandered through a doorway, into another black stone room. This one was smaller, and had a kitchen countertop, made of course of polished black stone. On the countertop was a microwave, a bar fridge and a black kettle. Beside the kettle was a cup of coffee. Cautiously The Doctor dipped his finger into it. It was stone cold. The kettle on the other hand. That could be useful. He scanned it with the Sonic. “Last used, one billion fifty-five million minutes ago. But that’s over two-thousand years.” And if it’s been two-thousand years, then how come the coffee’s not gone off. “There’s something odd about this place.” He said, loud enough for Victoria to hear in the other room, “I don’t like it.”

“Doctor, look at this!” she called back. The Doctor came running into the living room. In the corner opposite the kitchen door was another doorway, this one walled off. “I wonder why this is here?” She leaned against the wall, and fell through as it opened, catching herself before she hit the floor. “This is new!”

The room beyond the door was not built of black stone. Rather it was a tubular room, made of silver metal.

“Be careful in there!” He approached, but the second he entered the doorway the wall slammed back into place. “What the-! Victoria! Victoria!!”

“Doctor? Doctor!?” Victoria could not hear The Doctor’s calling for her on the other side of the door. The room she was in shuffled slightly, and she felt an odd feeling, like there was more weight on her than there had previously been. She had felt this before, but where? Of course, she thought to herself, an elevator.

The elevator’s door opened, and she found herself in another silver walled room, but this one had two consoles, a large one on the left, and a small one, with only a couple of buttons and a turn-dial on the right. The smaller was below a large window, which looked out, and showed a vast expanse of stars. You can admire the sights later, now you have to get back to The Doctor.

Looking at the turn-dial again she saw it had symbols on it, numbers; 0, 1, 2, and 3. “Maybe it’s the elevator controls. Can’t help to try.” She turned the dial from 0, where it sat, to 1. Nothing happened. Ok, let’s try again. She turned it to 2. Again nothing. Last chance. She turned it again. This time something happened, the window turned opaque. A loud rumbling creaking noise groaned through the room, like a giant turning in his sleep.

The now opaque window became a screen, and it showed the lounge room below. In the room stood The Doctor, attempting to dislodge the stone of the door. “Doctor!” she called out, I hope he can hear me. Apparently he could, as he turned to face the screen. “Victoria! You’re safe!”

“There’s no point going at those stones, there’s a metal wall behind”

“Well that was a waste of a couple of hours!”

“Hours? It’s only been ten minutes, max”

“Hmmm…” The Doctor wandered about the lounge room, scratching his chin as he thought, occasionally speaking aloud, saying things like, “no, it can’t be,” or “almost, but the coffee”. Eventually he turned and looked at Victoria, through the screen. “I’ve got it.” He announced, “It’s time dilation, it must be”

“Time dilation?”

“Time dilation. Time is moving slower for me than it is for you,” when she still looked confused he expanded, “basically what feels a minute for you could feel like an hour for me. Time is subjective.”

“I’m not sure I get it fully, but I can kind of understand”

“You don’t need to properly understand it. What you need is to get back down here, so we can get out of here. Is that a console behind you?” She looked back briefly, then nodded, “mess with the controls a bit, but keep the screen on. Try to get that elevator working.”

She turned, running toward the large control panel. Aha, a big red button. Here goes nothing. She pressed the button. A sound began to come from the speakers, a loud clanging sound. “Isn’t that the sound the-”

“What did you do!?” The Doctor shouted in anger. Behind him the TARDIS began to dematerialise.

“Wha-? What happened?”

“Something you pressed triggered the HADS!”

“HADS?”
“Hostile Action Displacement System. If the TARDIS senses extreme danger she’ll dematerialise, and go somewhere safe until the danger’s clearer. But the real problem is that we’re now stuck here with something dangerous!”

“I’m sorry!”

“It’s alright, you couldn’t have known. But we should assess the situation. Is there a clock on the console behind you?”

“Yes”

“Excellent. Turn the screen off for exactly one minute. There should be a button with a symbol that looks like an O with a gap in the top, and in that gap is a line.”

“I see the button”

“That will turn it off, and on again. Now exactly one minute.”

“One minute.”

She pressed the button, and the screen returned to a window. The loud groaning returned, but differently, like it was in reverse. She watched, agonisingly slowly, as the seconds counted up. 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, on and on and on. Exactly one minute.

Finally the clock ticked up to 55. Five seconds, she thought to herself. 56, 4 seconds, 57, three seconds, she rested her finger on the button, 58, two seconds, 59, one second; she held her breath. 00, she pressed the button, the millisecond it ticked over.

The rumble returned, and the screen jumped back to life. The Doctor was sitting there, on a couch he had moved, holding a pocketwatch. “Exactly one minute?” Victoria nodded once. “Exactly thirty minutes for me.” Victoria’s heart dropped. That had been the longest, most painful minute of her life, but for The Doctor it had been half an hour. Half an hour spent watching the empty wall, waiting patiently for the exact moment she would return.

“While I was waiting I did some investigating, and I found this, a map,” he held out a map of the structure they were in. It was shaped like a cone, and had three layers, the habitation zone on the bottom, the control room on top, and in between the laboratory. “Be careful. It’s possible that whatever was in the lab could get to you.”

Something stirred behind Victoria, and emitted a strange distorted noise.

She turned and saw a very irregular creature. It had a grey body, with two small legs at the bottom. Its arms were much larger, giving it a hunching back. On its snout sat a single grey horn, above which floated a swirling dark blue orb.

It hissed at Victoria, despite its not appearing to have a mouth. “Doctor?”

The creature made a strange screeching sound, and a black sphere flew out of its nose, crossing the room at an unnaturally slow pace, until striking the screen, which folded in on itself. As the groaning creak began again, she noticed that a ridge had appeared in the floor, following the projectile’s path, and that the window now curved inward, its vertex just outside where the sphere had vanished, taking the screen with it.