Doctor Who Fan Fiction ❯ Donna and Ten - The Inbetweens and backstories ❯ Chapter Nineteen ( Chapter 19 )

Torchwood started working on the Dimension Cannon, and it went quickly, due to having already covered most of the technology in the previous Dimension Button project. Six months later, and with all the test data in and verified, the team declared the cannon was safe and ready for use.

 

Rose was wearing her new leather jacket that Jackie had given her for Christmas. Her old black jacket brought back memories of that beach in Norway and she'd stopped wearing it. This new one was blue, a great fit and she loved it.

 

'Okay Rose, now remember you're a Special Operations Agent and you have a mission to complete. Remember your training and stay focussed.' Pete hugged her and kissed her forehead. 'Good luck soldier.'

 

'Thanks Dad, I'll see you in 30 minutes.'

 

'Alright Rose, we're up to full power and locked onto the Artron energy signature. You can launch when ready.' Malcolm told her.

 

'OK, here we go!'

 

`WHOP!'

 

She pressed the disk and disappeared from the top of TorchwoodTower, and staggered forwards onto a dark, London street, with police cars, blue flashing lights, the sound of helicopters, and crowds of people.

 

'I see he's been up to his usual tricks then,' she said out loud, her spirits raised by the scene of chaos. This was just the kind of thing he would be in the middle of . . . whatever this was. She went into field agent mode as she started investigating the area, and gathering information. She spoke to witnesses and bystanders at the barricade, and to a friendly constable, whose job it was to stop people walking down the street to the Adipose Industries offices where "an incident" had occurred.

 

Apparently, little cuboid aliens had been erupting from peoples bodies, and rising into the sky, to be collected by a giant spaceship that had hovered overhead. "Bingo", she thought, this is definitely his kind of thing; he must be around here somewhere. She went back to the barrier to have another scout around, she was running out of time and she needed to see him, she was desperate to see him.

 

A red haired woman came up to her. 'Listen, there is this woman that's going to come along, a tall blond woman called Sylvia,' she started to tell her. Why did all the nutters in London make a beeline for her? 'Tell her that bin there, all right? It'll all make sense. That bin there,' the woman said, and ran off around the corner.

 

Rose felt the Dimension Disk in her pocket vibrate with the ten second countdown for automatic recall. It was too late, she'd missed him. She walked away from the crowd so that she wouldn't cause a scene when she disappeared; this lot had seen enough weirdness for one night.

 

When she returned, it was time for a debrief, and the conference room at Torchwood contained section heads from technical, scientific, and field operation departments, Mickey was there because it was his home world.

 

'So Rose, there had been an incident with an alien ship and people having the fat `sucked' out of them to make alien babies?' Pete asked her for the benefit of the meeting.

 

'That's what the police officer said at the barricade. I can't believe that I missed the Doctor, it's the kind of thing he would have been right in the middle of,' Rose replied, a hint of sadness in her voice.

 

'Our scans showed that you were right on top of the Artron energy. Is there anyone else that could have that amount of energy? Did anyone interact with you?' Dr. Stansfield asked.

 

'There was one woman, red hair, preoccupied with a rubbish bin, just before the transporter brought me back.'

 

Roger checked the data log on his laptop. 'Yes, that would be it. Do you know who she was? Could she have been the same species as the Doctor?'

 

'No, the Doctor was the last of his kind. I don't understand this,' Rose told them.

 

'Hmm. The internet data on your phone indicates that the Doctor thwarted a star shaped alien craft from invading the Earth in 2007, by their calendar, and prevented an alien ship from crashing on London in 2008, so he's certainly still active on Earth,' Chrissie Anderson, the Technical Lead Specialist announced.

 

'Oh my God! That first one must have been just after the CanaryWharf incident!' Rose exclaimed.

 

'We'll have to try another jump. If we can't find the Doctor, this mystery red head may know where he is,' Malcolm added.

 

'Malcolm, from the data we gathered from the phone, I think I might be able to set up a video link through the cannon. If the Doctor is near any kind of media screen then we should be able to talk to him,' Chrissie said.

 

'Good work Chrissie. I think that may be a way to proceed,' Malcolm replied.

 

Pete tapped his hands on the table. 'Right then, lets get up to the lever room and get started.'

 

In the lever room, they were using video imaging equipment to try and contact the person who was literally `crackling' with Artron energy.

 

'Where is he?' Rose asked Malcolm as she stood in front of the camera, looking at the blank video screen.

 

'We're not sure at the moment. Ah, it's the TARDIS, quick, try and lock it down.' On the screen, Rose could see the familiar roundels of the TARDIS. Oh God she'd missed that ship.

 

She saw someone briefly on the screen. 'DOCTOR!' she shouted, but the image was gone.

 

'Was that the red haired woman?' Chrissie asked. It had only been a fleeting glimpse.

 

'Recalibrating,' Malcolm announced, 'He's not on Earth, er, parallel Earth anyway, he seems to be in some sort of passenger transport vehicle which is shielded against some form of intense radiation.'

 

'Can you open a channel to the on-board communication system?' she asked.

 

'We are just establishing a carrier wave through the cannon now.' Malcolm walked over and looked at the video screen in front of Rose. 'Ah, there we are, just a bit of fine tuning and . . .'

 

The view of a small flight cabin appeared on the screen. Rose immediately recognised the back of the Doctor's oh so fantastic sticky up hair.

 

'DOCTOR! DOCTOR!' she called out.

 

The image flickered and faded as they lost the lock on the signal. Rose looked desperately at her Dad.

 

'That was him. He was there. Get him back, quick,' she pleaded.

 

'I'm sorry Rose,' Malcolm said. 'The intense radiation is interfering with the signal. We'll have to wait until he leaves the planet so that we can get a stronger lock on him.'

 

Rose had tears of disappointment stinging her eyes. 'I was so close to talkin' to him.'

 

Pete came over and hugged her. 'Don't worry Sweetheart, we've proved it works. It's only a matter of time before we have you two together again.'

 

He wasn't crazy about the idea of losing his new daughter, and he knew Jackie would be hell to live with for a long time. But Rose's happiness was also important to him, and if that meant her moving to another universe to be with the man she loved, then so be it.

 

'Okay everybody, go grab some lunch and then we can try again,' Pete said.

 

After lunch, the team reassembled back in the Lever Room. Malcolm was really excited about the search results from the cannon. The Artron energy source was back on the alternate Earth, in London and was strong and stable.

 

'WHOP!'

 

Rose staggered forwards into a night time street once again. "Why do these things keep happening at night?" she thought to herself. There was an explosion in the sky over to her right, which made her flinch and duck.

 

'Here we go again,' she said, and started running in the direction of the explosion. As she ran down the street, she saw a woman with red hair walking towards her, and she was sure it was the woman she'd seen at the Adipose incident, the woman with the Artron energy, what were the chances of that?

 

'What happened? What did they find? I'm sorry, did they find someone?' she asked the red head.

 

'I don't know. A bloke called the Doctor, or something.'

 

Oh yes! At last, she'd found him. 'Well, where is he?'

 

'They took him away. He's dead.'

 

Rose's heart missed a beat, she couldn't breath, and she felt sick. This wasn't happening, it couldn't be, after all this time of being apart, to finally find him and find that he'd been killed.

 

'I'm sorry, did you know him? I mean, they didn't say his name. Could be any doctor,' the woman said sympathetically.

 

'I came so far,' Rose said, close to tears. The woman touched her forearm.

 

'It . . . it could be anyone.'

 

Rose's training started to kick in after the initial shock, and she took a good look at the woman. This woman was supposed to know the Doctor, how else could she get Artron energy on her if she hadn't travelled in the TARDIS. Something was wrong, very wrong, and if she was going to fix it, she needed information.

 

'What's your name?' she asked her.

 

'Donna . . . And you?'

 

Rose was distracted, she was sure she could see something over the woman's shoulder. 'Oh, I was just . . . passing by. I shouldn't even be here. This is wrong. It's wrong.'

 

The Donna glanced at her shoulder where Rose kept staring; trying to see what she thought was there.

 

'This is so wrong.' Donna glanced again.

 

'Sorry, what was it, Donna what?' She realised that she would need a full name for Torchwood to identify her.

 

'Why do you keep looking at my back?'

 

'I'm not,' she said, deliberately looking away, which only emphasised the fact that she was.

 

'Yes, you are. You keep looking behind me. You're doing it now,' Donna said angrily. 'What is it? What's there? Did someone put something on my back?'

 

'WHOP!'

 

The room was filled with a flash of light and Rose ran forwards, tears running down her cheeks, she looked devastated.

 

'Dad?' She ran forwards towards Pete. He enveloped her in his arms.

 

'What is it Sweetheart? What's the matter?'

 

Her breathing was erratic with sobs; she could hardly speak.

 

'He's . . . dead. The Doctor, he's dead. It's all wrong Dad; it's all gone wrong over there.'

 

Pete shut down the project for the meantime while the `dream team' worked on the time anomaly and how to navigate it, and Chrissie correlated the new data. Rose had calmed down and was in Pete's office with Mickey, giving a report. She was a Special Operations agent after all, and she put her emotions to one side while she recalled the events of her mission.

 

'She was there again, the red head. She said her name was Donna, I didn't get her last name.'

 

'Good work agent Tyler,' Pete said with a proud smile.

 

'There was something else Dad. She had something on her back. I couldn't see it when I looked at it, but it was there when you glanced away. I've seen something like it before; the Doctor called it a perception filter.'

 

A week later, Pete called another meeting in the conference room for a progress report from the team leaders.

 

'We've found her!' Chrissie announced. 'While the physics guys were working on the time travel, I was surfing their 3G network via the cannon. I checked all the news footage of the alien `fat' babies and the star shaped ship. I ran everything through the facial recognition software and it found her on a social network.'

 

Chrissie turned her laptop around on the table to show the face of the mystery woman. 'Ladies and gentlemen may I introduce, Donna Noble. In this timeline she has no Artron energy and works as a secretary for Chowdry Photocopiers.'

 

'Great work Chrissie,' Pete said. 'Now we can track her on the other side. Malcolm any advances on the time travel control?'

 

'Yes Director! We called in Professor Hawking and his team, and we can now navigate through time,' he announced.

 

'OK, so where do we go from here? The world over there is falling apart without the Doctor. Rose believes that something alien has attached itself to this Donna Noble and is altering the timeline.' Pete looked around the table. Rose was looking out the large window, watching a contrail inch its way across the sky. Then half inch, then quarter inch, then eighth, sixteenth and so on, until it stopped. The sky had a golden hue.

 

She was inside St Paul's church.

 

'But it's not fair,' she protested, tears filling her eyes.

 

Pete stroked her cheek. 'I've had all these extra hours. No one else in the world has ever had that. And on top of that, I got to see you. And you're beautiful. How lucky am I, eh? So, come on, do as your dad says. You going to be there for me, love? Thanks for saving me.'

 

He ran out of the church, down the street and into the path of the oncoming car.

 

'Rose?' Pete called her name, it was distant, an echo. She was startled back into the room. Suddenly she understood everything; it was one of those moments that the Doctor had all the time.

 

'Dad, I know what's going on and I know what I've got to do,' she told him.

 

There were murmurings from the scientists in the room, but Pete leapt to her defence.

 

'Hands up anyone in the room who's been a time traveller,' he said.

 

Rose and Mickey raised their hands. 'I reckon that makes them the most experienced people here.' Pete smiled and nodded at Rose. 'What you got for us Sweetheart?'

 

'OK, there are a number of things we have to achieve. We have to get the Doctor unkilled. To do that we have to get Donna Noble to change the time line.'

 

Captain McNab, the Special Operations Commander interrupted her. 'Whoa, that's a leap faith, how can you know that?' he asked.

 

'Donna should be the new travelling companion of the Doctor. She has a perception filtered alien on her back. You don't pick them up in your local supermarket; you get them on an alien planet travelling with a Time Lord.'

 

McNab raised an eyebrow; he wasn't convinced.

 

'Why can't we just go back an' do it ourselves?' Mickey asked her.

 

'Because messin' with history can destroy it, and can cause reality to collapse. Trust me I've tried it. The Doctor told me there are fixed points in time and fluxed points.' Rose grinned at a memory.

 

'I thought he said fuc . . . Never mind. Fixed points happen to you without your knowledge, like running in front of a car because you are late and you don't look.' Pete shot her a look; he remembered what Mickey had told him about her original father.

 

'Fluxing points allow you to make a choice; you can stand on the pavement and wait for the car to pass. Whatever this thing is on her back, it's changing Donna's choices and feeding off the resulting Artron energy.'

 

Rose looked at Chrissie. 'What happens on Christmas day 2008 in this new timeline?'

 

'Chrissie checked her data. 'The alien passenger ship crashes into London and explodes killing millions, including Donna Noble and her family.'

 

'We have to get her out of London, she has to live. Can the Psychology Department come up with a way that will entice them away?' She asked. One of the psychologists nodded.

 

'Finally we have to find out which decision was changed, and get Donna to change it back. I can give her a message for the Doctor before she changes the timeline so that he will come back to Earth. It will be sometime before the alien star appeared, as she had Artron energy then and she doesn't now.'

 

Dr. Stansfield spoke up. 'When we were studying the navigation of the timeline, we noticed that time and reality seemed to be bending around an individual. It appears Donna Noble is that individual. If we wind up the power and increase the resolution we may be able to see where the distortion originates.'

 

'Okay people, we have tasks to perform, let's get to it and form a plan. All departments report back to me and I'll convene another meeting when we have all the answers.'