Time Storm

"Huh?" the Bachelor said. "You're in a box that's bigger on the inside and you want to know how it works?" Well, that was super hot.

"Well, yeah," Sara said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

"It's just that...most people get all wobbly and have to sit down just by looking at it," the Bachelor said. He hoped that she would maybe suddenly realize and fall into his arms again. That was fun.

"Uh huh. What's this do?" She rapped her knuckles on the console a few times.

"Don't touch that!" said the Bachelor, to whom TARDISs were strange and mysterious objects (he'd only stayed in school for two years, after all).

"Quit messing around, Bach!" the Doctor snapped, giving the Bachelor the serious-business face as the Bachelor tried to pull Sara away from the console. "I've got to get the magnatomic neutrino inversion up and running or we'll never get a temporay stabilized. If we hurry we can transport everyone into the TARDIS and then shut down the experiments. Nikki, hand me those yellow cords, please, and plug them into those ports there. Sara, do you know how to work a flux nutation? Never mind, it's fairly straightforward--just turn those dials there until the intensity reads at .0005 or less. If we're lucky that will just "

"What can I do?" the Bachelor and Jamie said at the same time.

"It's alright," the Doctor said, in a suspiciously condescending voice, "We'll have this up and running in a moment."

This bit of news did not seem to surprise Jamie, who continued to cling to the Doctor as he flipped switches and pushed buttons on the console. It disheartened the Bachelor though, who just now remembered that the Doctor expressly forbade him from ever touching his TARDIS's console after that rather raucous stag party. Sure, he may have spilled a few Exelsior screwdrivers on a few important components, but that was a long time ago (or a long time coming, depending on how you looked at it). And now he was letting *them* play with it?

The Bachelor sat down on his overturned TARDIS in a huff, watching the girls and the Doctor work at the console as he muttered, "Sexist."

"Got it!" Sara shouted.

"Everything's ready to go," Nikki said.

"Everyone hold on! Geronimo!" the Doctor shouted, and the Bachelor just barely managed to hold onto his TARDIS as the Doctor's TARDIS lurched to one side.

"What happened?" Sara asked. "Did you transport everyone aboard the TARDIS?"

"I think so." the Doctor turned on one of the monitors as he fixed his bowtie, and tsked. "Oh, dear, I meant to transport them into the library, not the swimming pool. There must be a crossed wire somewhere..."

“Right, there’s some frozen people needing fished out of the swimming pool. And a universe to save. You know I’m not sure if I’ve ever dealt with that combination before.” The Doctor gave a stupid grin before dashing down a corridor.

“I need something from the wardrobe first,” he called back as he ran. “You lot find the swimming pool and do some fishing. We’ll meet back in the console room.”

“Where’s the swimming pool,” the Bachelor asked Jamie, who gave a small shrug in reply.”

“It used tae be this way,” Jamie pointed unsurely towards a door.

“Good as any.” They set off through the door and along the corridor, hurrying but checking through every door they past.

“I don’t like this,” Nikki’s AI whined in her ear.

“Deal with it,” Nikki tersely replied.

“You don’t understand, all my systems are going haywire in this place.”

“Actually I kinda like it here.”

“And you’re badly damaged, you need to find somewhere to repair yourself.”

“I am not a machine,” Nikki replied with a dangerous tone in her voice, “and there’s still these experiments. If what happened to the scientists could happen to everyone else we need to shut them down. Now be quiet.”

“You can’t go back out there. It’s not safe, and you can’t risk damaging your systems anymore”

“I don’t have any systems to damage. And I’m going out whether you tell me to or not. Now shut up.”

“I question your terminology, as you are no longer huma…”

“I SAID SHUT UP!” Nikki screamed.

(I know this should be an NPC account post, but I couldn’t remember the password!)

Weaving through the corridors the Doctor wasn’t even paying attention to where he was. Instinct had long ago learned the path to the Wardrobe room, though more through the feel of the room rather than the actually corridors of the TARDIS, given its internally malleable nature. His mind was more occupied with the problem ahead. In theory, at least, it should be simple to sort. But that same theory meant charging into a maelstrom of temporal energy’s, more than even a Time Lord could stand. At best, it meant a regeneration. At worst, well, he only had a few more lives left. Maybe not enough. It would be ironic if, having almost brought the universe to the brink of destruction to avoid dying, his final adventure would be mere hours later.

The Wardrobe Room was vast, and occupied several levels of the TARDIS. The Doctor almost slid instead of ran down the stairs, towards the very bottom of the cavernous room. Continuing hurriedly to a far corner of the room, his feet starting to leave footprints on the thickening dust. Robes and clothes from Gallifrey were stored and hung reverently here, looking new and ancient at the same time. At least under the dust.

Ignoring the prangs of guilt and bitter memories that welled up the Doctor frantically searched through the suits. Normally he didn’t wait to take precautions such as these, but in this case without them he probably wouldn’t even make it close enough. With a cry of triumph he pulled out what he was looking for. It resembled a cross between a radiation suit and a set of ornate robes, bedecked with Gallifreyian symbols. A Time Suit, designed to protect the wearer from the ravages of uncontrolled, unleashed Time. Just what was needed for this emergency. Probably not enough. The Doctor yanked it off the rack and scrambled to put it on. With its strange appearance he looked more like one of the monsters he spent so much time fighting and running from.

The suit was a few sizes to large, but the Doctor still moved as fast as he could in its bulk. Trying not to trip up in the oversized suit, the Doctor returned to the control room. Where was everyone else? They should have been back by now.

"Ey, look, here! Gie me yer hand!" Jamie cried, kneeling at the pool's edge and flailing dangerously forward. The TARDIS seemed to be...rocking?

A huge wave crashed over him, sending a woman in a labcoat into his arms. Spluttering, he threw her behind him a little unceremoniously and went for another hand.

"Bach!" he called, shaking water out of his eyes as he looked around. The Bachelor was running up, his arms full of brightly colored floating toys, one of which looked amusingly like a giant yellow duck. "We need rope! Find some--ahh!"

The world blurred and tipped, and as the TARDIS shifted Jamie pitched forward and with a huge splash! landed belly-down in the pool.

Nikki arrive a few minutes after everyone else. She saw the Bachelor gathering as many inflatables as he could, looking like a kid who had grabbed every toy in the store. Sara was at the side of the pool, trying to untangle the lane ropes into something usable. The base’s personnel in the pool weren’t frozen, but there was a lethargy in their movements that made them unable to save themselves as the ship rocked back and forth.

And Jamie had decided to go for a swim.

As the TARDIS shook again Nikki realised that Jamie wasn’t in the pool to help the scientists out, but was struggling against the violent waves to stay afloat. Gingerly Nikki approached the side, dropping to hands and knees. She’d never learned to swim, and each shake threatened to dump her in the pool with everyone else.

“Give me your hand,” she cried. Jamie’s reply was lost as a wave crashed over his head, but he managed closer despite the current. One hand on the pool steps she reached out to try and grab Jamie.

With a yelp she withdrew her arm. The exposed circuits from where the monster had cut her earlier sparked with the water splashed. Swapping arms, keeping the hurt arm out of the water, Nikki lunged down. The TARDIS shook again at the same moment, and her hand just brushed against Jamie’s arm as the tide pulled him away. Pausing for a moment or two until he was in reach again, Nikki grabbed out. This time they were able to grab each other, Nikki guiding Jamie to the side, even as he pulled another scientists out at the same time. A few seconds later the improvised inflatable chain whizzed over their heads and splashed down into the pool. Though, at this stage it almost seemed as if there was more water outside the pool than in.

The Bachelor was just grabbing the only floatation device he could find (some water wings, which raised a whole new set of questions in the Bachelor's mind), when Nikki somehow managed to get everyone out of the pool. He stood there holding the water wings sheepishly. Thankfully the TARDIS had finally stopped shaking. He ran to the control room and peeked inside to see if the Doctor had fixed whatever problems in the space-time continuum there were. "Is everything alright?" he asked tentatively. He crossed cautiously over to his TARDIS and extracted a six-pack. "I don't know about you, but I could definitely use a drink right now."

Leaving a trail of damp footprints behind her, Nikki entered the console room, cradling her right arm in her left. She couldn’t move it below the elbow, except for her fingers making occasional involuntary flexes. The sound of compressed gas escaping caused her to look up and see the Bachelor waving a can towards the Doctor.

“Not now Bach. There’s still the small matter of the universe to save.” The Doctor’s voice was slightly muffled under the hood. The Bach’s expression went from hopeful to disappointed to worried.

“I’ve taken the TARDIS as close as I could to the centre of the distortions. That’s what’s caused the rough ride. Now we need to get out there and shut it down.” The Doctor ran towards the entrance, almost tripping in the bulky suit.

“Wait Doctor, ye haven’t opened the…” Jamie began, then stopped as the Doctor swung the doors open and stepped outside. Everyone followed suit, quickly catching up with the Doctor. They headed down a few more corridors, until they arrived at the main reactor room. The room itself was massive, but the sleek, advance computers surrounding the reactor had been cannibalised. They no longer looked profession, more jury-rigs with large leavers and dials everywhere. The Doctor studied the readouts intensely.

“They used the power of the reactor to twist Space-Time, and now its breached. No wonder they were having so many problems,” the Doctor muttered to himself, then spoke up. “We’re going to have to shut down the reactor, but the breach inside needs to be regulated while we do so or it will jam open. I’ll go in, and when I give the signal, start the shut-down process.” Without waiting for a reply, the Doctor stepped into the airlock.

Nikki looked around the room wildly, trying to figure out the controls. She had seen reactors like this before, it was just a question of working out which control did what.

“Ok, ok, ok. Sara, those dials, use them to keep all the needles in the blue area. Jamie, Bachalor, when we get the signal, move those series of leavers slowly until the green light goes on. I’ll work the lock out sequence and…” Nikki stopped as she realised the job would need two hands. “Umm, can someone help me?”

As Sara went to follow after everyone tagging along after the Doctor out the door and to… well, to wherever he was leading him in this wonderfully illogical maze of a spaceship, she stepped past the Bachelor and the cans he’d retrieved from his own TARDIS. It wasn’t that she wanted one of them to drink, but they looked cold.

“Not quite five o’clock, yet, I take it?” she asked as she reached out and snagged one with a bright grin, quickly transferring it to her burned hand. The cold of it took away the initial sting of anything at all touching the burned skin and she made a face briefly, stretching her legs to catch up with Jaime, the Doctor, and Nikki.

When they reached the reactor room, her hand was pretty much numb from gripping the cold can and she set it down with a thunk in a very out-of-the-way corner, giving the variously disassembled and patched-together machines a look that implied she’d have liked to sneak into the room and fix them- all of them. There were levers and dials scattered all over the place and connected to various wires coming from the cannibalized machines, and she immediately started trying to make sense out of them.

But then the Doctor was talking, and then he… ran off with really very little in the way of direction given to the rest of them. Luckily, Nikki seemed to have things more or less under control, immediately giving orders to see to levers and dials and computers. Sara went to where the other woman indicated and gave the dials and needles a sweeping look before fiddling with one to see what the corresponding needle would do. It dipped alarmingly and she quickly fiddled the dial back the other direction until the needle bobbed back into the blue area Nikki had indicated. She was about to do the same thing with all the other dials, but looked up instead at Nikki’s request for help. Before she could even begin to figure out a way to be of assistance while still watching her own dials, Jamie had abandoned his levers and bounded over to Nikki.

“Bach, y’reckon you can take those, and I’ll watch all this?” she asked the Timelord, waving a hand vaguely at what amounted to roughly half of the levers Jamie had been standing around in front of. She could keep an eye on the other half and on her own dials, she hoped, if nothing got too very exciting.

The Bachelor blinked in abject horror at the aforementioned levers, caught in the agony of indecision as well as mid-gulp of his beer. On the one hand, the Doctor generally told him to steer clear of any kind of electrical or mechanical equipment. On the other hand, Sara was asking him to help and that was a great sign! On the other hand, he was terrified. On the other hand, he desperately wanted to impress her.

On *both* hands, of course, he was carrying beers. He clutched them like a security blanket, fairly certain that no amount of nice girls would get him to touch a single switch on any console in the world. "Er--don't you think--" he began, trying not to sound as nervous as he felt, but Nikki cut him off with a shout.

"Look, it's really simple," she said, making him drop the cans. "Come on, get into position--once I start the countdown we won't have much time..."

Sara clicked her tongue at him like she was coaxing a horse forward, apparently enjoying herself immensely at the Bachelor's expense. He pouted and stepped forward out of hurt pride. After all, it couldn't be too hard. It should be easy. Just pushing a few levers. Maybe he could actually be useful for once.

"Alright," Nikki shouted, "Here we go--three, two...NOW!"

Taking a power-stance, the Bachelor carefully slid the levers into the green position, watching Sara for guidance. The Bachelor was not known for being able to fix problems. On countless occasions throughout the universe, his sickly-green refrigerator had dematerialized seconds before the Doctor showed up in his police box of healing-blue. He wasn't good at fixing problems. Any second now he'd accidentally push one of the levers too fast, or too slow...

"Okay, that's good! Hold it steady!"

The Bachelor realized that he had been scrunching his eyes shut and opened them quickly, to find that he had not, in fact, blown anything up. That was a new record.

He didn't know if anyone noticed, but he did a small victory dance to celebrate.

"Okay, I'm here," Jamie said as he stepped up behind Nikki, trying to contain his anxiety and sound cool and calm and collected and like someone who could be trusted to help. He also tried not to look at her wounded arm, which was still sparking and making him nervous (because Cybermen were beasties he wasn't keen on encountering again). He swallowed thickly. "What do you want me to do?"

"Hold this panel up while I--" he obeyed, revealing a keypad, which she began pounding numbers and things into. "And keep an eye on that readout to the left, let me know if it's gets higher than 9 kilowatts. Aaaand...flick all those switches to 'negative'."

Apparently this job required more than two hands. Jamie did his best to follow her instructions. She spent some time talking to herself, but he tried to ignore that, too.

"Good," she said, after a minute. "Now all we have to do is tug this lever down and--"

While Jamie was trying not to think about and not notice a lot of things, he found his attention wandering. It was a lucky thing, too, because as he flicked the last of the switches to 'negative' and she reached out to take hold of the giant lever, a few things began to spark and act up. Nikki, so focused on her task, didn't seem to notice, but Jamie did.

So when the sparks became explosive fire, Jamie was on it.

"Nikki, get down!"

Which meant he was on her, on the ground, as the wall burst into flames outward above them. Nikki screamed. Jamie might have screamed, too.

As they crawled away, Jamie still hovering protectively over Nikki until they were out of harm's way, he was glad he was soaked to the bone, because the bits of shrapnel that struck him did not set his clothes or skin on fire.

"We need to get to that lever!" Nikki shouted, wheeling around and pointing at the wall of flame. Jamie hoped he wasn't the only one looking at her like she was daft, but she insisted: "That's the only way to shut it down!"

At first Nikki seemed to be trying to outstare the fire, then she turned to Jamie. Whatever she was about to say was lost when she saw the cuts and burn marks from the explosion.

“Are you ok?”

“Aye, I’m fine,” replied Jamie with seeming nonchalance. “What about you?”

“Don’t worry about me but… Wait, where are the others?” Nikki looked around but couldn’t see them. Which meant, maybe, they were on the other side of the wall of fire.

“Sara, Bach? You’ve got to pull that leaver. I can’t reach it and we can’t shut down the reactor if you don’t pull it. Can you hear me? Are you there?” A note of panic began to creep into her voice, a combination of the fact that they were seconds away from being blown to kingdom come, and the realisation that Sara and the Bach might not have survived the explosion. She grabbed Jamie’s arm, partially for comfort, partially to pull herself up from the floor.

Then, finally, through the flames she heard a reply, albeit a not encouraging one.

“Which one?”

Sara did catch the little victory dance out of the corner of her eye, but all she did was qurik a small grin at the Bachelor and turn to check another of the dials. Jamie and Nikki seemed to have everything else under control, flipping levers and switches and things. Sara tried to figure out what exactly they were doing for exactly five seconds before she decided that, on the other side of the room from them, there was no way that was happening. So she turned her back on them to pay attention to her own task, and the Bachelor’s task out of the corner of her eye. Just in case something broke.

Then she smelled smoke, and then as she turned to find the source of the smell, something exploded. She threw a hand up in front of her face and curled in a matter of milliseconds into a ball against the panel where she’d been working, feeling as little scraps bounced harmlessly off her sleeves and hair. Well, mostly harmlessly. Some of them were still on fire, and these she shook off hurriedly before they could light her clothes on fire. Some nicked her right through her sleeves and trousers, but it was certainly nothing serious, so she simply ignored them.

When it was clear there would be no more explosions, she lowered her arm and looked uneasily at the fire, distinctly uncomfortable with it just burning there.

“Do you see a fire extinguisher or anything?” she asked, turning to the Bachelor to check that he was also alright, before Nikki’s voice came to her from the other side of the fire. Ah, so they were alright too. Her eyes darted around what was left of her’s and the Bachelor’s half of the control room and she found the lever. No, multiple levers.

“Which one?” she asked.

“Second one from the left! Pull it down, hurry!” Nikki’s voice called from across the fire. Without thinking, Sara reached out and grabbed the second one from the left- with the hand she’d already burned once- and then yanked her hand away, shaking it. Metal near a fire was hot, hello, Sara. And the fire was… well, it was only a few feet away. She could feel the heat uncomfortably close through her clothing.

“Blast it!” she cursed, and looked for something to wrap around her hand so she could grab the lever. The Bachelor, who’d picked himself up from the floor, came to see what she was trying to do. When she looked at him, he dug in a pocket and then held out a handkerchief.

“Will this do?” he asked smugly, and she took it, winding it around the unburned hand and then grabbing the metal lever. She yanked it down and listened as a sudden absence of a noise she’d not even noticed crashed down around them. It wasn’t that all sound stopped, but certainly something large, somewhere, had just shut off.

“That it? Can we please put this fire out?” she asked, retreating from the levers to as far from the hot fire as possible.

With a leap the Doctor reached the centre of the reactor, which was spinning round wildly. One hand holding on for dear life, the other wielding his sonic screwdriver, the Doctor fumbled through the mass of connections which powered the Time experiments. Time Energy swept round and through him, threatening to sweep him away. Finally working out the sequence, he recalibrated them back in line to the power of the reactor. Once the reactor was powered down, the storms should cease.

Provided he could keep his grip.

“Come on, come on,” the Doctor muttered to the air, hoping that somehow his companions would still act upon it. Then, suddenly, the lights dimmed and the whirring stopped. It took a moment or two for the Doctor to regain his footing after been spun like a top. A quick glace told him that the reactor had been powered down, the Time Storms with it. But that same glance told him something else. He headed for the door.

The Doctor emerged from the reactor, seeing his companions dousing a jet of flame with fire extinguishers. As the door sealed behind him, the Doctor removed his hood with a flourish, expecting a few gasps of surprise. Instead they just seemed confused that he was simply standing there. He sidled over to the Bachelor.

“Bach,” The Doctor whispered, “Has my face changed?”

“No.”

“Funny. I was sure I’d end up regenerating.” The Doctor practically leapt from next to the Bachelor to address the rest of the group. “The good new is, the universe is safe. The bad news…”

Behind the Doctor there was a loud explosion from inside the generator from.

“Is that this base isn’t. Everybody, RUN!”

There was a mad dash back along the corridors as the base rocked and echoes of explosions rumbled in their ears. Finally, they made it back to the TARDIS, almost jamming the doors as they swarmed in. Leaping past them the Doctor charged to the console, dancing around it slamming controls with reckless abandon.

Nikki braced herself on one of the stair railings a the grinding whining noise began, the TARDIS shuddering as it began its dematerialisation. The was a massive explosion from outside, and the TARDIS rocked slightly, but then it all went quiet.

*****

“Here we are,” the Doctor said, indicating towards the open doors, “back home safe and sound. It might take a little explaining to your bosses, but you can always blame time travel.”

The personnel from the base headed thankfully towards the open door, as the Doctor looked on grinning. Nikki watched them go, saying goodbye to those she recognised, and waving a thank you to Kembel. As Williams exited she should an angry glance at the whole TARDIS crew.

Behind Nikki and Sasa the Doctor approved them as the scientists continued to process out. “Well then, I suppose I should be seeing about getting you two back where you came from.”

“Do I have to go home?” Nikki asked earnestly.

“No, of course not,” The Doctor replied, still grinning. “It’s a big wide universe out there and there’s plenty to see. The question is, where to do you want to go? How about Earth? Have you seen Earth yet?”

Nikki shook her head as the Doctor jogged up the stairs towards the controls. The last few scientists were leaving, and Nikki leant out to wave goodbye. As the doors closed Nikki turned back to the central console, and let out a gasp.

Whoever the man standing there was, he wasn’t the Doctor.


TO BE CONTIUNED…