38Sitting here listening to Avenged Sevenfold! Good band. Anyhow, the chapter… might add another cliffhanger if I'm feeling mean, maybe, maybe not…
*Come back to me, it's almost easyyyyy…*
LOL! Read, read…
The first thing he registered was pain, blunt and throbbing, in the region of his skull. He blinked, and remembered that he had been fighting. Fighting? What for? Rose! His eyes snapped open suddenly, and focused on the room around him. It was large, square, and the walls were made of some dark grey stone, that dripped in the moist air, and upon which grew algae, green and slimy. Flickering lights were scattered across a ceiling made of the same material, buzzing as the light dipped and flared. On the wall opposite him, chains hung, but to his relief they were unused. He looked around, his eyes searching for Rose and Zoë. He found them, huddled in the corner, maybe five metres from him. He shook his throbbing head, and walked carefully over to them. Zoë looked fine – if a little shaken – and was clinging to Rose fiercely, glaring at the sodden wall. Rose wasn't doing so well. He lip was bleeding, and she had a long scratch down her face. The Doctors hearts went out to her, and he could feel himself getting angry. Why was it Rose that always got hurt? He pulled the pair of them off the floor, lifting Zoë up, and hugging Rose to his chest, wiping blood gently from her lip.
"What happened," he asked, hugging her possessively, and feeling rage bubble in his chest.
"Well," Rose shook her hair out of her face, and took Zoë from him, so she could look at him "I was trying to get to Zoë – I managed to take out one guy – and then it was all a bit of a blur. I saw them get you down, and that was pretty much all they needed. It was horrible, you were bleeding and everything, I was distracted, and they dragged us up this place, and left us." She shrugged. "That's it." Her eyes flicked to his head, and she pressed her lips together. The Doctor mirrored her gaze, and reached his fingers up to touch it. Ouch.
"You need to get something on that," Rose whispered.
"I bet this is where whatever's controlling Dwoorth is," Zoë interjected suddenly, wriggling out of her mothers arms, and looking at the Doctor. "We've been causing trouble, so where else would they take us?"
Both the Doctor and Rose stared at her, mouths open. Slowly, the Doctor's mouth curved into a grin.
"Yes!" He spun away from Rose and Zoë, pulling his sonic screwdriver from his pocket, eyes darting round the room "So what we need is to get it to come out!" the screwdriver whirred, and flashed blue, and the Doctor darted across the room, until it was flashing like a strobe. There was a loud 'clunk!' and the scraping of stone on stone. A large crack appeared in the opposite wall, slowly getting wider and wider. Zoë almost skipped towards it, peering at it from behind the Doctor, and Rose followed after her, taking his hand, and also looking towards the growing gap in what had appeared to be a solid wall.
At first it seemed like a gaping mouth, a black hole of nothingness. Then, when their eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, indistinct shapes could be seen. A large, cuboid shape that could possibly be a massive control system, a figure lying motionless on the floor, and a huge indistinguishable shape that was throwing an immense shadow over the whole scene. Blinding lights flared, and the three jumped back in horror.
A huge creature was sat on what looked vaguely like an operating table. This room was clinically clean, but the air was still almost unbearably damp. The creature had an amphibian look about it, which was probably why. It had a head like a dragon, scaled, but twisted and knarled, like an ancient tree. Vicious spines ran down its back, ending in a short tail, like some kind of grotesque caricature of a frog. Its body bulged unpleasantly, and was secreting some kind of yellow pus, which ran down onto the table. Its legs were scaled, like the rest of it, and were curled underneath the flabby skin of the stomach. It looked at the three travellers, opened its mouth, and snarled.
A corner of the room that had been still been in a dense shadow suddenly burst into light. There was a spinning office chair there, and as is spun around to face them, Rose sucked in her breath, colliding with the Doctor as she stumbled back. A horribly familiar face was looking at her, the face of a jolly grandmother, but twisted with evil intent. Her eyes flicked to the figure on the floor, and instinct told her what her brain hadn't yet realised. It was Pete.
A wordless scream flew from her lips as she flew at the figure, not caring about anything, just wanting to hurt her, to kill her, to punish her for trying to destroy everything she loved. She didn't hear the Doctor yelling her name, she broke free of his restraining arms, she barely saw the huge beast leering down at her: all she saw was the twisted, sick, woman who had killed her father. She was a few inches from her, when she felt herself thrown backwards, hit the floor with a crunch, and looked up, to see the face she hated smiling placidly at her. She could feel the Doctor's hands on her face, but couldn't care, didn't care. She moved away from him, and felt him retreat, unsure of what to do. She rolled over, crawling over to where Pete lay.
The Doctor was having a huge amount of difficulty not reacting like Rose had. All he wanted to do was scream and hurt and cry, cause as much damage to whatever was causing Rose's world to fall apart. He felt Zoë leave his side, and saw her kneel down next to Rose. He, however, marched straight up to the woman and the monster, chin up, rage emanating from every part of his body like a force field.
"Why are you doing this?" he asked, his voice deadly calm, eyes flashing as they bored straight into the Manager's own. She smirked, and he very nearly lost control completely. Slowly, she stood up, walking slowly towards him, until she was straight in front of him. She looked up into his face, raised one long taloned finger, pressing it hard into his chest, and pushing him back.
"And why?" she paused, looking pointedly at the huge creature behind her "would I do what you say – Doctor – when you are at my mercy? Why should I even speak to you?"
By this time, poor devastated Rose had managed to scramble to her feet, and although tears still coursed down her cheeks, she stood defiantly by the Doctor's side, chin up, glaring at the Manager.
"Well someone clearly wanted us here, didn't they? Fine, so this is some kind of sick alien racist society, whatever. He's an alien, so's Zoë, but if that was why you wanted them, you'd've just locked them down in the cells, like before. Somone wants to see us, maybe it's you, maybe not, but stop lying and acting like you weren't expecting us! Why else would you have kil-" her voice broke, and she held onto the Doctor "Why else would you have killed Dad! You wanted us, so just bloody well do what you wanted to, cause we're here!"
The Manager sighed, dropping her superior airs for a moment. Her face fell, and for a moment, she looked like the crumpled old lady she should have been, sad and broken. Rose started forward, her heart going out to her despite herself, only to jump back as her face twisted again, her eyes lit up, and her normal grin spread across her face.
"I do whatever the Lidrako wants me to. How could I not when it has promised me eternal life? When it has promised to save me from the doom that will befall the human race and every single other race in the whole of reality. Just me and it, ruling the whole universe forever. Would you have refused that?"
"Always." The Doctor's response was immediate, his voice cold. "Eternity is a curse, and nothing is worth that amount of destruction, not ever."
"Rose?" the Manager's voice became sweet, as her gaze switched to the blonde woman sobbing still, at the Doctor's side, trying to comfort her little girl.
"Don't talk to her." The Doctor spat.
"Would you do that? If it meant you could stay with him forever?"
Rose was taken aback. Right now, no matter how devastated she was, she knew that the one thing she wanted to keep forever was the Doctor. Would she kill to do that? No. But was that true? She could feel his eyes on her, could almost see the smug smile forming on that vile woman's face, as she proved to the Doctor that she, Rose Tyler, was just as weak and just as – it was hard to think the word – evil as she was. No! She wouldn't do that, the Doctor was right, nothing was worth that.
"Never."
And that was around the time that Pete woke up.
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