Until We Burn | Dr Who

Chapter Thirty-Two: War Tactics

I feel a gentle pull inside me. In just a blink, we materialise in the exact same spot, only this place is much brighter. The lights flicker and the sky outside is a perfect blue, unobstructed by the hum of air traffic that I have become so accustomed to.

I'm back.

The Doctor dashes through the glass doors, into an office that is certainly not mine. The jar of sporks is missing, as are the pictures of Mickey and Jake, and one of Rose that I had managed to print from my old phone — the only thing I had to remember her, unsure if I would ever see her again. I hadn't realised how much I'd miss all of it. This place is far too formal and cold, lacking the personal touch I had tried to add so that it truly felt like my space.

"First of all," he shouts, "I need to make a phone call. You don't mind?"

Jake gestures to two of the guards that had been waiting for us. "You two, guard the door."

I watch the Doctor expectantly as he waits for an answer on the landline. "Jackie, you're alive!" Unable to stop my relieved grin, I try to speak. He cuts the unintelligible cries from the other line and my own response off with hurried shushes. "Listen, tell me, where are you?" Whatever her answer is, he rolls his eyes at it. "Yeah, which one? Is there any sort of sign, anything to identify it? Yeah, that helps," he sarcastically remarks after a pause. Then, eyes widening, he says, "North corner, staircase three. Just keep low, we're trying our best. I've got to go, I'm sorry."

I repeat it as he turns back to us, "N3. We're already in the north corner, it's not far."

He nods, looking to Pete with a hint of triumph in his eyes. "Jacqueline Andrea Suzette Tyler."

"She's not my wife," the man protests, although his resolve is waning now.

"I was at the wedding. You got her name wrong." Rushing back to them, the Doctor takes Jake's gun. "Now, if I can open the bonding chamber on this thing, it could work on polycarbide."

Frowning, he eyes him warily. "What's 'polycarbide'?"

"The skin of a Dalek."

My thoughts race now, my head filling with all sorts of ideas. Positively beaming with excitement, I stride over to the others. "'Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat'."

Pete sighs, "That one of Minerva's, then?"

"Sun Tzu. Clever bloke. Look, what I'm saying — or what he's saying, I guess — is that weapons aren't going to fix everything in this fight. If we want to win, we have to make plans. Sometimes you have to take advantage of what you have, turn to unlikely forces for help."

—

"I hope you're right about this," Pete whispers. The four of us wait around the corner, the rest of our team close behind. The heavy thuds of Cybermen footsteps can be heard nearby.

I grimace. "Me too." The Doctor walks past us with a childish grin plastered across his face. He winks at me, holding up a makeshift flag of a letter opener threaded through a piece of paper for me to see. "Oh Gods."

He pokes his head around the corner before any of us can stop him, waving the handmade signal. "Sorry! No white flag, only had a sheet of A4. Same difference."

With a series of clicks, the three Cybermen raise their gun-mounted arms and stomp towards him. "Do you surrender?"

"I surrender... unto you... a very good idea."

—

The lab is close now, close enough for us to hear the harsh voices of creatures I had hoped I'd never see again. But another voice can also be heard. I recognise it immediately and the hope it creates pushes me further down the corridor. "If you, um... escaped the Time War, don't you want to know what happened?"