Well, technically, my idea, so my fault, but, it's she has put a lot into this - more than I have, in many, many ways. She researched it, and she helped me bash out the ideas; in fact, she CAME UP with a lot of the ideas. Without her it would never have been written.
I'm starting to think I should just dedicate all my stories to her. It'd be quicker, and easier!
Anyway, to those of you who don't watch Doctor Who, do it. Because David Tennant is amazing.
Sorry, rabid fangirlness just slightly got in the way of my sanity there. What I MEANT to say, was, don't worry, the Doctor Who stuff in the story is going to have to be explained for Alex's benefit, anyway, so nothing is going to remain a mystery forever; it will all be explained eventually. Obviously, not all of it will be explained immediately, because that would ruin the plot, but, nothing will stay a mystery forever. I promise.
DISCLAIMER: I own neither Alex Rider, nor any part of Doctor Who. Though, y'know, if anyone wants to give me David Tennant for Christmas...
Chapter 1
In the end, he'd done it. Rose had been in another universe, and he'd burnt up stars to say goodbye, crossed the barriers of reality to talk to her one last time, and had also, incidentally, saved the human race again, as a sort of after thought.
But that had been and gone, it had happened, in his past, and maybe in the future of whenever he was now, but it had happened, and he was tired. Between trying to find a supernova in order to have the energy to slide through that final, closing fault line between the universes, and saving the world from the Racnoss, with the very vocal help of Donna, he'd had no time to come to terms with the loss of Rose. Normally, he would have worked through it, distracted himself for long enough that the pain stopped being at the forefront of his mind every minute of most days; but Rose deserved more than that. He owed her – and, he sometimes thought, himself – the honour, or the luxury, of grieving over what he'd lost.
For once in his life, he wanted peace. He hated feeling vulnerable, and he felt it now; like someone had taken him and turned him inside out, putting everything that was the most precious and secret to him, and exposing it to the world, and he wanted peace, to heal. Rose had been something special to him, and he needed to get over losing her.
He wanted peace. A few days, at least, maybe a couple of weeks; hell, he probably had a couple of years to spare, but he wanted peace.
He got twenty five minutes.
The TARDIS shuddered gently as it materialised with it's usual whooshing sigh. At least with this journey, the Doctor knew that nothing could have gone wrong – he wanted peace, and his ship was also mourning Rose, in her own way. They both needed some peace and quiet. He wasn't about to step out into some war-zone, because his ship had hijacked him, deciding that he was 'needed' there.
Opening the door onto an impossibly quiet forest clearing, somewhere, some time, in England, he sighed. Peace.
After sitting in the tiny clearing for about ten minutes, the Doctor – who wasn't really designed to endure long periods of inaction – stood up, brushed himself off, and walked off, purposefully, with no real direction, just deciding to explore his surroundings a little. After all, it wasn't like he had to worry about losing the TARDIS; he was connected to it inside his head, so if he got really lost, she could guide him back.
He walked for maybe fifteen minutes, when a loud, hollow clunking sound caught his attention; whirling round, in the direction the sound seemed to have come, he frowned, lightly.
"That sounded – close." He said, thoughtfully, to himself.
Someone burst into the clearing behind him, and he spun to face him, immediately on his guard. The boy – whoever he was, blond, not tall, but not pathetically short, either, athletic-looking, maybe eighteen or nineteen – stopped for a second, his eyes going wide as they landed on him.
"Hallo!" the Doctor said, cheerfully. "What's going on here, then?"
The boy just nodded at him, apparently too breathless to speak and too preoccupied to be fazed by him, glancing over his shoulder anxiously. He panted for a couple of seconds more, seemingly trying to get his breath back, and finally opened his mouth to say something, when a metallic clunking sound behind him made him start slightly, and the Doctor looked behind him, trying to work out what it was.
"Well, that didn't sound normal." He said, thoughtfully. "Care to explain?"
"Not really." The boy panted out, finally. "I-I really… don't think it's… a good idea to wait here... Whatever those things are, they're….they're really not all that… friendly."
The Doctor reached for his sonic screwdriver, watching as another clunk made the boy flinch almost imperceptibly. He had to hand it to the kid – he was dealing with his fear far better than he, the Doctor, would have expected from someone so – young. Somewhere, not too far off, a tree fell, with a whistling 'thud'. The boy, whoever he was, looked at him, questioningly. The Doctor looked back at him, meeting his eyes for a second. There was no overt fright in the brown eyes that met his own; they were wary and anxious, unquestionably, but there was no terror, no blind panic. Whoever this boy was, he was used to dealing with fear.
Interesting, he thought, but filed the thought away for later examination, as an even nearer 'thud' reached his ears.
"We should probably be going." The boy had at least slightly caught his breath by now; enough that he could get his sentences out relatively fluently. He glanced back into the trees again – the Doctor saw a bloody lump on the back of his head, and frowned. The kid shouldn't be able to run. He should have been unconscious. But then, maybe he'd just come round, or something similar. There were all sorts of logical explanations.
"Don't worry." He said, finally. The boy raised an eyebrow at him, and he grinned lopsidedly, twirling his sonic screwdriver in one hand. "We should be safe, with this. They're machines, right?"
"How did you…?"
"They sound like machines. Big machines, if I'm right." He paused, as another, even closer-sounding 'thunk' reached his ears. They couldn't be more than a few metres away by now. "About six foot?" He glanced at the boy, who nodded. "But not, I think, human shape."
"No, they're all – rounded, I guess, plastic, and… but they don't break like normal plastic." He took a deep breath. "I've never seen anything like them."
"You wouldn't have." The Doctor murmured. "Don't worry."
"Oh, right then, I won't." The boy muttered. "Random stranger armed with an oversized metal pencil tells me not to worry about the huge murderous machines, I'll just do exactly that."
The Doctor spared him a quick grin, and then the metal creatures were appearing, and there was no time for anything else.
"Wow." He said, properly awed. "They're – they're quite something."
"Yeah, they're also quite trying to kill us." The kid – whoever he was – said, sharply. "Now would be the time to produce something a little more effective than what you've got there."
"This?" he said, gesturing with the screwdriver. "Works a treat. Use this on anything – locks, machines, whatever."
"Yeah?" he turned his head – the Doctor couldn't tell whether he was planning to run, or just checking behind, but had he been asked, he'd have gone for the first one. "Then, use it. Please. Quickly, preferably, there are more coming."
"Well, only if you insist." He said, with one of his trademark wild grins.
With a burst of sonic blue, the screwdriver put paid to the immediate problems; and the boy walked over to one of the now-lifeless fallen machines, squatting down to look at it. The Doctor watched as a frown appeared on the young face, and the boy said, with a faint tone of confusion in his voice,
"This is no human machinery like I've ever seen."
The Doctor raised an eyebrow at him. The answer to that was so obvious, it almost hurt to say it. "Well, maybe you haven't seen much machinery."
The boy shot him an annoyed look, and said, shortly. "Maybe. But, look here." He pointed to something within the clear plastic-like substance which cased some sort of tracking device, obviously designed so that the machines could be programmed to follow something – or someone. "This is what they must have used to track me, you can tell it's a tracking device," the Doctor took a couple of seconds to be impressed; apparently he'd underestimated the kid, if he could recognise a tracking device that easily, when it wasn't even created using human technology, "but a normal tracking device, unless it was controlled by a satellite, would never have been able to track me in a forest like this."
"Why couldn't it be controlled by satellite?"
"It hasn't got the right parts. Plus, I've got nothing on me that they could track." He said, absently, his mind obviously somewhere else, still staring down at the robotic creature at his feet. "Normal tracking devices like this one – well, to say that we don't have anything like it is an understatement. Without putting something electronic on me, to track, or to draw these things by some sort of signal or pulse, they wouldn't have been able to track me except by sonar, maybe – and the forest would destroy that as an idea, and I know for a fact that they didn't put anything electronic on me." He bit his lip for a second, then said, slowly. "The only idea I can come up with is that it must have – well, it must have either seen me… or smelt me. But – it's a machine." He shrugged, standing up with a grunt as he stretched his legs.
"Then, I guess you're just going to have to assume that it's not man-made." The Doctor said, quietly.
"I guess I am." The Doctor opened his mouth to continue, but the boy held up a hand. "Give me a second, please." He said, eyes thoughtful as he looked at the man. "Because, it's a lot to take in, OK? And, please bear in mind that I'm only tentatively accepting this, until I can find something else that disproves it. Right now, I'm not sure I have time to argue the point with you." He paused. "So, who are you, anyway?"
"I'm the Doctor." He looked the kid up and down as he answered. There was something – different – about him.
"Just the Doctor, I assume?" A lopsided, humourless grin accompanied the words.
"Just the Doctor." He agreed companionably. "You?"
"Alex."
"That'd be just Alex, then."
"For the moment, yeah." The boy glanced back the way he'd come. "Look, I've got to go, OK? Thanks for your help, and everything…"
"You're going to go back there?" The Doctor was surprised – something that only happened very rarely. He'd never known a human willing to go back into something like this – at least, not without him.
"I've got to get back home." The lie was said without pause, or much thought, even, as if it was totally true, and the brown eyes met his, but the Doctor could read the lie in those eyes nonetheless.
"Right." He said, companionably. "Well, d'you mind if I got along with you?" he was a little reluctant to let the boy go on his own. He was, after all, only about eighteen or nineteen.
Rose's age, a little voice reminded him, but he ignored it. After all, that had nothing to do with it.
The boy shrugged. "Yeah, sure, if you like." The Doctor almost applauded. This boy was a master at this – try to put someone off obviously, and they'd just get more determined to come with you; and he couldn't be too eager for the Doctor to come with him. It was a lie, after all. But, being indifferent – well, indifference was the quickest way to shake someone.
He walked over to the place where the boy had entered the clearing, cocked his head, and said, smiling lopsidedly, "Well? Are we go…"
He didn't get a chance to finish the sentence, as something hit him on the head, hard. He had a moment – literally a second – to wonder whether it was something the boy had thrown, or whether someone had sneaked up on him, so disorientated by the blow that he couldn't tell where he'd been hit. Then, his vision was swimming, and a frightening black blankness seemed to come down over his thoughts. His eyes shut; his last sight was the boy, grabbed by another one of these metal creatures.
He shouldn't have forgotten that there are usually back up troops.
Alex had been surprised to find into someone in the middle of a wood he knew was generally deserted – and doubly surprised to find that he'd managed to 'bump into' one of the few people who could actually help him. This man – The Doctor, whatever that was supposed to mean, possibly some sort of codename, just as 'Cub', or 'Wolf' were codenames – spoke perfect English, so Alex assumed he must be English, but after the incident with the pencil thing, he wasn't so sure – especially after the man had been so willing to believe that the machines which had been chasing him weren't human.
He'd have been lying if he said that he hadn't thought the same thing himself – but he'd thought maybe that was the childish side of him coming out to play. He was, after all, fourteen, and most fourteen year olds were allowed to be a little fanciful about these things. But logically, he knew it wasn't possible. So, until this admittedly rather strange man repeated what he'd been thinking, he passed the thought off as fancifulness, and tried to think which country could have developed something so advanced.
But then, the incident with the pencil-like object, whatever that was, convinced him that there was something very strange going on here, and it was as likely to be aliens as anything else. The brief glimpses he'd caught of the 'people' running around the underground base he'd managed to infiltrate had given him some suspicions, but nothing concrete; maybe this was all going to add up into something much bigger and weirder than he'd ever experienced before.
Which, after all he'd been through, was really saying something.
Alex had watched, in stunned horror, as this Doctor person was hit by another of the machines, dropping his pencil-weapon; his reactions were dulled by shock, but he managed to start forward, a couple of seconds too late, to try and help the man.
Looking back on it, it was that that saved his life. He had gone forwards and slightly to the side, which was the where the man had been standing. So the blow which had been meant for his head actually hit his shoulder. The force it hit him with made his vision blank out with pain for a couple of seconds, and he stumbled, and was grabbed by this second machine thing.
He felt a brief surge of triumph. Obviously these creatures, whatever they were, couldn't see him; they must have been able to 'smell' him, or something like that, or they would have known that he was still conscious. Making a split-second decision, he decided the best thing to do was to 'play dead'; that way, he could hopefully buy enough time to get out of whichever prison they put him in when they got back to that base. If, indeed they were taking him back to the base.
He went limp in the thing's grip, letting one arm trail along the ground, keeping one eye slitted open. There.
As they passed it, he managed to grab the metal pencil thing. It might come in handy.
Alex was thrown in the cell, with no further information as to what was to happen to him. He heard voices talking in some sort of foreign language, but not one that he recognised, nor one which seemed to bear any similarity to anything else that he'd ever heard.
He ignored that for a few minutes, keeping up his unconscious act for several minutes more, until he was sure there was no one coming. Then, he sat up, and pulled the pencil thing out of his sleeve, examining it for a few seconds. On consideration, he thought it looked rather more like a screwdriver than a pencil.
For a few seconds, he weighed it in his hand, thinking. That, there, looked like a button; maybe that would turn it on.
He pressed it; nothing happened. Remembering the torches he'd had as a kid, he tried sliding his thumb behind it, and pushing it forwards, and was rewarded, but a blue light, and a low humming noise. Quickly, he turned it off. He didn't want it to run out of battery, and the noise might bring someone. He doubted it, but he didn't fancy taking his chances with the machines again.
Speculatively, he eyed the door, then looked back down at the screwdriver. The Doctor, whoever he was, had said it would work on locks, after all…
Alex crept over to the door, and placed the screwdriver thing next to the lock, sliding the button until the blue light appeared again. The door vibrated, ominously, but nothing much else happened. Worried that this noise would bring someone, even if the relatively quiet noise of the screwdriver didn't, he flicked it off again, returning to sit against the wall.
For a few moments, he examined the screwdriver more closely, and eventually found that the ring around the top twisted. Maybe this thing had different settings…?
He twisted the ring until it would go no further, and tested it against the ground.
The blue light was blinding, and the piece of ground exploded silently – it was, after all, only soil – showering Alex with dirt.
"Maybe not…" he murmured, frowning, turning the ring again, this time right down. The light was dimmer now, and when he held it near the ground, nothing happened.
Deciding to test his luck again, he went back to the door, and tried it. Hearing the 'click' of the lock opening, he pushed the door open, and looked down the corridor.
No guards. Obviously, they weren't holding many people down here.
He'd seen them take the man into a room a few doors along for his; as silently as he could, he crept towards it.
The Doctor woke to someone shaking him, lay there for a few seconds, trying to remember what had happened, and where he was, then sat up, with a jerk.
"You're… Alex, right?" he asked, of the pale, dirt-smudged face that met his probing gaze with calm brown eyes.
"Yes." The boy nodded. "And you might want your screwdriver thing back."
Something was pressed into his hand, and he instinctively closed his hand around the sonic screwdriver, warm from being kept in the boy's hand.
"How did you know it was a screwdriver?" he asked, casually, thinking fast. Torchwood might have known about the sonic screwdriver. And if this kid was from Torchwood – after all, he didn't know when he'd landed, so Torchwood could still be up and running, for all he knew – if this kid was working for them, the people who'd got Rose killed, or at least, put into that alternate universe, he didn't know if he could keep himself from trying to hurt him.
"Looks like one." The kid shrugged, and there was no trace of a lie in his face this time – nothing that rang false in the Doctor's mind. "Look, they put you in one of their machines." he saw the Doctor's face. "Not the one of their strange soldier-machines! Something different – I've seen them do it before, with this one guy near where I'm staying…"
"I thought you lived here?"
"I'm staying with my uncle, I've had flu." The boy snapped, obviously irritated at being interrupted.
"You're not acting like you're recuperating." The Doctor pointed out, calmly.
"I've been here two weeks, of course I'm not. I'm bored stiff – or I was – and I want to go home. Can we get back to the point?" The Doctor nodded, ironically. "Thank you. This machine of theirs – it… it distorts people's minds, somehow. Makes them crazy."
"'Crazy' how?" he asked, quickly. This was starting to sound very, very bad.
"Crazy like they start worshipping these people."
"Right." He thought for a couple of seconds. "What do they call them? These 'people'? Do they ever name them?"
"Not that I've ever heard." Even in the semi-darkness of his cell, the Doctor could see the boy's shrug. "But – you're acting pretty normal. And they must have tried to – do whatever it is they do – to you."
"If it disrupts human brain patterns, it won't affect mine." The Doctor murmured, still thinking. If this was what he thought it was – they were going to need help. Much more help than they had at the moment. But, the machines, that was the problem. Unless they could destroy the machines, all the help on Earth, and, more to the point, all the fire power would be useless. But, if it was what he thought it was, there was one chance… "My brain works on different wavelengths to yours."
"I don't even want to know why that is." The boy stood up, and offered him a hand. "You're going to be pretty unsteady…" he warned.
The Doctor swayed, slightly. "Yeah. Thanks for that." He grinned suddenly. "I think you'd better take me to have a look at this mystery machine of theirs."
The boy led him down the earthy corridor to a door only a few rooms down from his own cell, and pushed it open.
"This is it?"
"Yeah."
"And, they don't lock the doors?" That would be typical behaviour for the people he thought were behind all this.
"Well, they did." The boy shifted slightly. "But you said that thing of yours could work on locks, so I…"
"You got the sonic screwdriver to work?" The doctor raised his eyebrows, looking down at the little probe. "Well…" he took a deep breath, "That's a first. Well, a first for someone who hasn't been told how to use it. Now, this machine…"
He stepped over to it. It was a strange looking thing, some sort of silvery metal, which bore a distinct similarity to brushed steel, but, when looked at from a certain angle, held the same weird sheen as an oil slick – blues and purples, and oranges would dance over it. It was, as most things had been today, unlike anything Alex had ever seen.
In other respects, it looked a lot like an MRI scanner, without the padding that went with something so civilized. It was simply a ring of metal, with a sort of metal plank, about six feet long, inside it. On the side was a metal box, with various buttons on, and a sigil, or seal, of some sort stamped on it. It was this box that the Doctor bent down to look closer. The sonic screwdriver was played over it, beeping occasionally. Finally, the beeping sped up, until it was almost one high, constant note.
"Ahah!" the Doctor said, triumphantly. "Gotcha. Now, just to check one more thing." He turned back to Alex. "Check something for me, would you?"
"Sure…"
"Look inside this thing, would you?" With a suspicious look, Alex ducked his head inside the metal ring. "Can you see the current in the metal?"
Alex frowned, pulling back out. "I don't know. What does 'the current' look like?"
The Doctor sighed, apparently with irritation. "Probably a sort of blue line, maybe in circles. Can you see that in the metal?"
Alex glanced back inside the machine again. "Yep." He looked back at the Doctor. "Why?"
"Because if you can see the current being passed through it, then it means that that metal," the man had obviously forgotten about Alex, and was gazing off into the distance, a thoughtful frown on his face. "That metal is Thirolium. And Thirolium is only found in one place – it's very specialised metal. Iron, copper, silver, gold, you'll find them anywhere – though," he mused, absently, "Earth is the only place where you can find Rutherfordium, prob'ly because everywhere else just calls it Ank. Anyway, yes. Thirolium."
He didn't seem inclined to continue, and Alex said, impatiently. "What about this Thirolium stuff? Where's it from? What's it do?"
"It gives off a – look, it's complicated." The Doctor said, shaking himself, and drawing his eyes back to Alex's.
Alex frowned. "Try me." He said, flatly.
The Doctor met his eyes squarely, then said, slowly, " It uses a specialised sort of wave to alter the thought processes; it changes – normally lowers – the frequency of your brain waves, makes you – quieter, more docile." He looked back down at the machine, and said, rather absently, "The metal itself is from Lehr – which means, that these are probably Lyorans. They're experts at this sort of thing."
"These creatures are… 'Lyorans', was it?"
"Yes."
"So – they're alien."
"Yes."
Alex thought about it for a couple of seconds before saying, carefully, "So – are they good aliens, or bad aliens?"
The Doctor gave him a sharp look, before replying, lightly, "Pretty bad, yeah. Arrogant bunch, the Lyorans – arrogant, but far from stupid. Mind you, it does works in our favour, to a certain extent." At Alex's slightly confused look, he clarified, "They won't be expecting anything less than an army to be able to do them any damage." Alex nodded, and stood watching silently, while the Doctor checked the machine over again. Finally, he straightened, and looked back at Alex. "So, this machine – do you know if they've got any others?"
"I don't think so. I don't know, though, they might have." He shrugged.
"Right. Well, we'll get rid of this one, and hope for the best." Alex watched as the Doctor turned the setting of the screwdriver up. The man grinned at him, suddenly. "You might want to stand back."
He flicked the button forward, and pointed it at the box. After a couple of seconds, there was a loud, metallic clunk, and after a few seconds, the outside shell crumpled inwards, denting the main ring of the machine. The Doctor stepped back, with a satisfied smirk.
"Well, that's that dealt with. Now, we've got to get out of this place. Quietly." Before he'd even finished saying it, an alarm blared through the corridor, making Alex jump. The Doctor glanced at him, quirked his lips into a small smile, shrugged and said, "Maybe quiet isn't quite so important?"
"Yeah. Maybe not." Alex agreed, and the pair of them ran for it.
So. There you have it. What d'you think?
Just to warn you - this is likely to turn into a sprawling epic of Doctor-Alex-ness. It's going to be a fun ride, folks. Hop aboard!
Lol, ami. xxx