The Time of Change

The Moment

The room in which our group huddled has dissipated. Now I stand alone among layers of smoldering debris, panicked screaming surrounding me on all asides. Smoke barrages my lungs and eyes; flickers of flames creep into the edges of my vision. Blurry forms shoot past me as they flee, dragging people both young and old along with them. Fear fills the air with an electrical charge so volatile that everything could explode any moment. A small boy lies on the ground about four feet from me, tearstains on his cheeks and his mouth wide open in a petrified shout. A little girl runs forward and tugs at his hand, and he jumps to his feet. The horror is palpable in their young eyes as they sprint away.

Gallifrey is falling.

"Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!"

The monotone words hit my ears, and my insides writhe. As if on cue, something bursts into flames about a hundred feet to my left. I find my head whipping frantically from side to side in search of them, but the only sign of their presence is their ominous death chant.

"Message for the High Council, Priority Omega!" I hear a male voice shout. I spin around to see a young-looking soldier crouched by a smoking pile of brick, a walkie-talkie held close to his helmeted face. A gun hangs limply from the holster on his hip. "Arcadia has fallen," he says in defeat. "I repeat: Arcadia has fallen."

Suddenly, his eyes shift to me. I stiffen into a stone, eyes wide behind my glasses. I watch him with bated breath, but he doesn't move toward me. I take a nonthreatening step closer and notice how his gray eyes are focused. They look like they're seeing right through me. I follow his gaze, and behind me is something that makes my heart falter.

Against a wall twenty feet away sits the TARDIS in all her blue glory. On instinct, I expect my husband to come sauntering out, confident and cocky, but he doesn't. The elderly man who exits the box is one that I have not seen before in my life but who looks familiar nonetheless. His hair is gray and scarce. He wears a thick leather jacket and dirty pants, like an unorganized war outfit. His face is wrinkled, fingers a bit gnarled. I watch him approach the serviceman without hesitation.

"Soldier," he rasps, "I'm going to need your gun."

Bewildered, the man hands over his weapon. The other takes it, examines it momentarily, and points it at the wall directly behind the soldier. I jump back several feet as he blasts perfect holes into it with a single pull of the trigger. I cover my eyes as dust rains down in response but not before I see that he's begun carving a word.

"Exterminate" resounds all around us in a terrifyingly heartless and menacing screech. I turn upon hearing a man shout, "Please! Please, just don't!" Kneeling on the ground in front of two children and a trembling woman is a Gallifreyan man; his arms are flung wide to block those behind him. I cringe as a dalek approaches, screaming at him and his family. Though I know I can't possibly do anything to stop it, I take a bold step forward, but another dalek approaches, causing the first to stop.

"Alert! Alert!" the newcomer says loudly, much to the man's surprise. "The Doctor is detected!"

I whirl around, my eyes hungrily—if not naïvely—scanning the scene for the Doctor in his bowtie, but all I see is the man who is blasting lines into the wall.

The daleks shout at each other in their flat voices, and they move away from the Gallifreyan family, who still cower on the cobblestones. The father grabs them and pulls them to their feet, then scrambles in the opposite direction. I sigh, but the relief is brief because within the span of seconds, the daleks have somehow created a semicircle around me. Their metal outer coatings shimmer in the light from the fires. I stare at them, frightened to my core as I recall how painful death is at their hands. I feel myself shivering, but none of them seem to notice me. Collecting bravery I didn't even know existed, I shakily walk up to one. It does not react. I put my hand out to touch its thick, iron head, and as a part of me suspected, my hand fazes right through it. My terror diminishes, slowly but surely. I breathe and half-jog around a newly-fallen wreckage toward where the man stands with his stolen gun. His finished product looms unevenly over all our heads.