Touch The Sky: Doctor Who/Studio C [Book 3]

No Such Thing as 'Everybody Lives'

No Such Thing as 'Everybody Lives'

(Original Story: Part 9)

Breathless quiet echoed through the room. "Mal," Matt finally started, the word seeming to expand against all four walls.

He was cut off by an angry, half-muffled cry in Cyndi's throat. "I trusted you!"

"I gave you fair warning," Mallory said. "I did ask if the woman who walked the Earth was someone you really wanted to go up against." Her gaze flicked over to Matt. "There are two groups of people in the universe you really don't want to mess with: the Doctor's friends and my family. Be very afraid when those two groups overlap."

There was another moment of silence. "At least keep the distortion field the same size," Cyndi finally said desperately. "People come from all over the planet for Quinix, if any of them are infected it could spread over the entire world when they leave. We haven't got the resources to control an outbreak of that size!"

"She's right about that," Eglon put in, a wild look starting to come to his eyes.

"One planet," Mallory said. "Better than interstellar war, isn't it, Cyndi?"

"My plan didn't involve either," Cyndi shot back.

"Your plan sacrificed my husband," Mallory said. "My child's father, or some planet twenty-five hundred years in my future that will never affect me again. What did you really think I'd choose?"

Cyndi lunged then—not at Mallory, but at Eglon, sending his sword flying across the room and pressing a short dagger to his throat just as he had to hers.

He blinked twice, wide-eyed. "Who are you?" he murmured. She only smirked.

"But—you didn't—the guards checked you for weapons," Mallory said, taking an extra step backwards.

"The guards checked the traditional spot where ninety percent of people would keep a weapon," Cyndi corrected. "And when I say ninety percent, I mean right-handed people." She gestured with her free, empty right hand. "You may have noticed I'm not right-handed."

"Well played, girl," Eglon muttered. "Not quite good enough, though." He flung himself backwards, towards the distortion device, a smirk lighting up his face as his hands hovered over it.

"No!"

The Doctor's cry echoed through the room in the split-second it took for Mallory to realize the king had wrestled away their control of the situation. Before she could even think about carrying out her threat to drop the bottle, he was at the controls and slamming a button.

And disappearing.

There was a terribly long moment where no one spoke. "Sorry, what the hell just happened?" Cyndi finally said, carefully lowering her dagger.

The Doctor stepped forward, examining the device. "He didn't... Oh. Oh." He pulled on his specs. "He was going to use the field on us, specifically. Creating a pocket universe, or, or a sort of—"

"English please, Spaceman," Donna put in, cutting him off.

He looked at her over the top of his glasses. "He was going to send us one second out of sync with the rest of the universe. A waking half-life, cut off from everything and everyone from the universe. Except each other, of course, we'd have been in the same place."

Mallory's eyes widened. "But he—but we—is that why he disappeared?" she asked with sudden panic.

"No. Well, yes. Ish. Eglon got the calculations wrong," the Doctor explained. "It backfired. He did it to himself."