Elsewhere (Chapter 6)

Chapter 6 (The Bridge)

“Why aren’t we going to see Roxy?” asked Holly as the Doctor parked up Bessie down a small alleyway a little way off from the town centre.

“You two are,” said the Doctor, as he stopped the engine and took out his TARDIS key.

“And you?”

“I’m going up to that thing,” said the Doctor, pointing back towards the swirling clouds above him.

“On your own?!” said Lilly, horrified. “Why?”

“I need to slip through to their world before they destroy it. I need some kind of idea. Some clue,” he said, unlocking the TARDIS.

“We’re coming with you,” said Holly.

“No,” said the Doctor, holding up a finger. “I can’t endanger the pair of you.”

“Then at least take me,” said Lilly.

“If you go then I go,” said Holly.

“Neither of you are going,” said the Doctor. “You need to stay here and make sure Roxy and your family are safe.”

“But, Doctor-”

“No,” said the Doctor, sternly. “Lilly, you can drive. Go start up Bessie. Get to Roxy. Holly, go with her.”

He unlocked the door as Lilly ran back to Bessie and got inside her.

Holly watched Lilly as she started the engine and then turned back to the Doctor as he disappeared inside the box and shut the doors.

“Come on, Dangerfield!” shouted Lilly. “He’ll be absolutely fine.”

“I can’t,” said Holly, scarcely believing herself. “I need to go and see.”

“What?!” said Lilly, over Bessie’s engine. “See what?”

“My granddad.”

“Holly, no!”

Holly turned, put her key in the TARDIS door just as the engines started and pushed her way inside. Lilly jumped out of Bessie and ran towards the TARDIS just as the blue box vanished.

She looked up to the sky, almost hoping to see the box somewhere, but it was nowhere to be seen.

“Holly, what are you playing at?” she said to herself.




The Doctor was staring at Holly, his face a picture of fury. Holly shuffled uncomfortably and stepped back a little to the doors.

“I’m sorry,” said Holly, quietly.

“How dare you disobey me,” said the Doctor. “You are a guest on board this ship. When I give an order I expect them to be followed.”

“I just…I just wanted to make sure you were safe.”

“No you didn’t” said the Doctor. She’d never heard him so angry before. “You wanted to come and see your granddad.”

“When I was at his grave all that time ago the earth moved beneath me. That means his alternate self is alive.”

“He’s not the same man, Holly,” said the Doctor, shaking his head and turning back to the controls.

“I know, but…”

“He’s not the same man!” he shouted, turning back to her. “It’s an alternate dimension. It’s not this place. You’d be better off just going and looking at a picture of him. That’d be more true to the man he was.”

“But don’t you wish-”

“Don’t I wish what? That I could go through to this world and see an alternate version of Caleb?” The Doctor shook his head. “Even if I thought I wanted to I couldn’t. That world is so very different from ours. I may not even exist in that dimension.” The Doctor looked upset with Holly, but relaxed a little. “Believe me I can understand how you feel. Imagine how I feel having a time machine and not being able to use it to save the people I care about. But there are some rules that have to be obeyed. I’ve learnt my lesson before. Help, but don’t interfere. Don’t change things. Become a part of it. Don’t change things to fit you.”

“That’s where we differ, Doctor. You have this magnificent machine. You should take advantage of that.”

“And that, my dear Miss Dangerfield, is why you won’t be coming on any more trips with me.”

“Maybe you should ask Lilly how she feels about that,” said Holly.

The Doctor turned back to Holly and walked over to her. For the first time ever she felt scared of him. “Lilly is not your responsibility. She stays with me until she’s better.”

“She’s better with me,” said Holly, “not with you.” Holly swallowed. “She’d be better off staying back on Earth with me.”

“She needs to be on the TARDIS where she’s safe.”

“You mean so you don’t feel alone? That’s the only reason. You’re frightened of being alone.”

The Doctor frowned, but there wasn’t time to reply. The TARDIS lurched violently forward, knocking Holly off her feet.

The Doctor raced to the console and flicked on the scanner. The screen only showed the swirling clouds of the vortex created by the Kro’Tenk.

“It’s too late to take you back now,” said the Doctor. The TARDIS continued to rumble and shake. “We’re caught in the updraft. We’re getting sucked it!”

The TARDIS shook again and Holly held on for dear life as the TARDIS was drawn up into the epicentre of the swirling clouds.

And the all the lights went out.




Lilly parked up Bessie in a car park outside a Tesco Express and stopped the engine. She sat there for a moment, staring ahead at the back of the building. A little old man was walking to his mobility scooter struggling with four bags of heavy shopping. He looked at her with hopeful eyes, but when she didn’t acknowledge him he sighed and continued his struggled walk to his vehicle.

She sighed and looked down at her hands. She didn’t know what to think. Usually it would have been her that would have tried to follow the Doctor, but something about Holly was making her want to stay here. She cared for her.

So why didn’t Holly care for her then?

Lilly shook those thoughts out of her head. Of course Holly cared, but there was always the loss of her granddad that was there at the back of her head. Holly needed to get this all straight in her head first before she could have any kind of relationship with Lilly.

Relationship….was that really what Lilly was after?

“Lilly?” came Roxy’s voice from across the car park.

Lilly looked up at her and managed a smile. “Hey, Roxanne.”

“Where’s Holly and the Doctor?” she said, looking around her.

“They both went on a bloody suicide mission into that thing up there,” said Lilly, pointing towards the swirling clouds.

“They’re insane,” said Roxy. “What the hell is Holly playing at?”

“You tell me,” said Lilly. She slumped back in the seat of the car and shook her head. “We may never see them again.”




Elsewhere…




When Holly opened her eyes she was face-down in wet, black mud. Her clothes were soaking wet and her ankle hurt. She turned onto her back. The TARDIS was a few feet away from her, its blue paintwork scorched black and steam rising from it. The doors were open and smoke was billowing out. The Doctor emerged from the box, wafting the smoke away and coughing, trying to clear his lungs.

“You alright?” he said, noticing that she was awake.

“What happened?” she said, sitting herself up.

She was sat on a blackened, ash-covered hill. In the distance was the ruins of Huxley and a beam of green light shooting up from the centre of it and creating the swirling mass in the sky above. She remembered this place from what she had seen in her visions before. It didn’t feel real then, but it felt too real now.

She shivered and pulled her arms around herself.

“We got dragged in and when we emerged on the other side I managed to steer the TARDIS away from the beam. The console’s overheated and is going to take a few hours to cool down before we can set off again.”

“My ankles hurting,” she said, rubbing at her red, right ankle.

“Yes, in my haste to get you out of harms way I may have thrown you further than I intended to do.” He crouched down beside her and began feeling her ankle. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. She hadn’t forgotten their argument on board the TARDIS.

“This place is a ruin,” said the Doctor, looking around him. “What a horrible world to live in.”

“It hardly seems real,” said Holly, looking across the vista with sad eyes. “The air’s so…I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like there is any air.”

“It’s the ash,” said the Doctor, grabbing a handful of the black-grey matter and letting it drop through his fingers. The Doctor got to his feet and ran his hand through his hair. “We need to get to the beam of light. That’s where the Kro’Tenk are channelling their energies.”

“So there’s all of those across the entire planet?” asked Holly, trying to get up and collapsing back to the ground.

“That’s right,” said the Doctor. “And they’re not far off getting ready to go through.” He pointed towards the beams. A number of Kro’Tenk were in the distance, riding their bikes and circling the beam as if waiting for the signal to go through. “You’re not well enough to walk. You’ll have to wait here.”

“I need to come with you.”

“It’s not safe.”

“Neither is staying here,” said Holly, raising his voice.

“Your friend is right,” came a gravely, rasping voice.

The Doctor span around and Holly craned her neck to look. Standing there was an eight-foot lizard-man dressed in dull, grey armour tied tightly onto it’s body with leather straps. On it’s head there sat a battered, metal helmet and it’s yellow eyes looked out through a visor.

“You must be one of the Kro’Tenk,” said the Doctor, cautiously edging forward and holding out a hand.

The Kro’Tenk looked down at the hand and drew his sword.

The Doctor pulled his hand away quickly. “There’s no need for that, chief.”

“You came through the bridge,” said the lizard-man. “You came from the other side. I was sent to investigate.”

“Indeed I did.”

“How? In this box?” it said, walking to the dirty-looking TARDIS and running his hand over the surface. “It feels….different.”

“It’s alive,” said the Doctor. “Do you know what I am?”

The lizard turned back to the Doctor. “It matters not.”

“I’m a Time Lord,” said the Doctor. “I don’t know if you have them in this universe, but I come form the planet Gallifrey.”

The Kro’Tenk’s eyes narrowed. “We do not concern ourselves with off-worlders. All we are bothered about is-”

“The conquest of innocents?” said Holly.

The Kro’Tenk looked down at her. “You are familiar.”

“Stay away from her,” said the Doctor.

The Kro’Tenk went to his side radio and spoke into it. “This is Azure. I have found the intruders. One is a young woman. The other is a man I haven’t seen before. He claims to be another Time Lord.”

“Another Time Lord?” queried the Doctor. “So you do have them this side.”

“Bring them to the departure area,” came a crackling voice on the other side of the radio. “We cannot delay for much longer.”

“Yes, Nekram.”

“Azure…that’s a nice name,” said the Doctor, smiling at the lizard.

Azure pointed his sword at the Doctor. “You will come with me.”

“Holly isn’t well enough to move,” said the Doctor.

Holly smiled sheepishly and rubbed her ankle.

“Then she will die now.”

“No, wait!” said the Doctor, leaping in front of her, his hands held up in defiance. “There’s no need for that.”

“She is injured.”

“And if I’m not mistaken you’re about to depart this dimension and destroy everything, right?”

“That is correct,” said Azure, edging a little closer to the Doctor.

“Then what do you want with us anyway?” asked the Doctor. “Why are you bothered about taking us down to the departure area?”

“Because Command Nekram ordered it.”

“But why? Why did Nekram order it?”

Azure continued to stare at the Doctor, his eyes bright-yellow. “Because we believe the other Time Lord is going to try and stop us.”

“So you do have another Time Lord here. One from this dimension I presume?”

“Do you think it’s the Master?” said Holly, trying to get to her feet again.

“No,” said the Doctor. “I don’t think the Master is involved this time.” The Doctor lowered his hands. “Who is he?”

“He calls himself Aldridge. Professor Aldridge, and he came to our world in a box identical to this one.”

To be continued...