Chapter Text
Prologue Part Two
Suzanne Prentice moved briskly through the streets of the Verbellion capital, carrying a large basket with scissors, hair pins, dye and other necessary items. The newly appointed vice commander of the Verbellion space fleet would be giving a party this evening, and his wife wanted to show off with a new hairstyle, so her housemaid had called to make an appointment – which was where Suzanne was heading.
Even though Suzanne wasn’t her real name she made a point of using it even in her thoughts, so she wouldn’t accidently slip up. She couldn’t afford to attract attention to herself, so she had left work at a plausible time, a couple of minutes earlier than she absolutely had to, but not enough to rouse suspicion, and she always arrived on time. She walked quickly, like any other slave who feared to be sent to the factories, but whenever she was out of the sight of the ever-present guards she left subtle signs on lampposts or collected messages other rebels had left in dead drops - a task that had become much more dangerous since the successful attack against the energy supply of the weapons factories last month.
The government didn’t want to admit it, but the attack had definitely struck a nerve. They tried to suppress speculation, but they were worried enough to have tightened security not only at the factories, but also in the government district and in the residential areas of the Verbellion elite. As expected, the law enforcement authorities suspected that the slaves were behind every action directed at the government, not only the explosion at the factory. They were turning every stone, looking for suspects and evidence. And to keep the slaves from causing more trouble, the authorities had increased the workload for everyone, but especially for those who had been sent to the factories, including the children. Because if people were overworked and underfed, they didn’t have the energy for revolution. It made Suzanne incredibly furious, and she was determined to prove the government wrong.
And then there were the rumours. During the last two weeks or so, Suzanne herself had overheard at least three conversations about the stars disappearing, blinking out of existence, and a few of the other rebels had heard the same thing. There were just too many different sources that told exactly the same story of the stars going out for the rumours not to be true, including the one about the military planning to bring the fleet back to Verbellion. While that would mean a breather for Earth, she had no idea what it meant for the humans already on the planet. She knew, however, that whatever was going on made the government feel even more on edge than their attacks already did, and that was several kinds of bad.
The vice commander and his wife lived in a gated community reserved for the most important members of the warrior cast. The area was guarded by Verbellion soldiers, overseen by an officer who was a member of the warrior caste. However, the guards themselves belonged to the fourth caste and therefore had barely more rights than a random alien slave, which played right into the hands of the small rebel movement. A soldier who was not valued or even was openly distrusted, tended to question his loyalty, something the upper castes didn’t seem to understand. As a result, quite a few common soldiers had joined the rebellion movement in the last few weeks - which meant the rebels suddenly had access to weapons, because some of these underestimated, undervalued soldiers had let them into the weapons storages they had been guarding. Unfortunately that also meant that quite a few members of their little movement were itching to use those weapons. Suzanne still wasn’t entirely sure what to do about that - if they really should turn this into a full-fledged armed revolution, or if there was another way to get the government to see reason. She hoped it would be the latter; but she doubted it, now even more than when all of this had begun.
“Halt!” The voice of a guard interrupted her musings.
Suzanne had finally reached her destination, with just enough time left for the security check. She stopped in front of the guardhouse and held up her identification mark. “Hairdresser P/S/86933 for Lady Thorgard.”
The officer briefly glanced at her mark, then at her face, and looked into the book on his desk. “Proceed to examination,” he declared eventually, without as much as giving her a second glance. With him being a member of the warrior caste, and her being an alien slave, he probably thought her less than the dirt under his fingernails.
The examination room looked a lot like the security check at an airport on Earth, well, the Earth she had grown up on. Not that she’d ever had enough money to go on vacation, let alone by airplane, but she’d seen enough films to know what they looked like. Suzanne put her basket on the counter and walked through the metal detector, as always with a trace of fear, even though she knew it wouldn’t show anything. But then she’d had the same feeling whenever she’d used one of the zeppelins which were the main form of air transport on her second Earth.
She stepped over to the counter, where the guard had already begun to examine the items in her basket.
“What’s that?” He held up a plastic bottle.
“Hair dye.” It wasn’t a lie, as such, but her basket contained more than one bottle, and even if each of them held a form of hair dye, they could be used as explosives as well, in the correct mix ratio. Gerard was a genius like that, and sometimes she wondered what he had been up to before. She doubted he had only been a simple chemist.
Another bottle. “And that?”
“Hair dye. All those bottles contain hair dye or hair lacquer.”
“And why so many?”
Suzanne shrugged. “Lady Thorgard’s housemaid said something about highlights when she called, but didn’t give us any specifics.” She glanced at the clock on the wall, hoping that the guard wouldn’t notice. She had only a couple of minutes left until she would be late, but if the guard thought she was nervous, the security check would take even longer. And if she was late, she might get sent to the factories, if the commander’s wife was in an especially bad mood.
The guard opened one of the bottles, sniffed at the contents, grimaced at the chemical odour and quickly replaced the lid.
“Do they all smell that bad?”
“Yeah.”
“But why would someone put something with such a horrid smell in their hair?” the guard asked, sounding curious. He was young, and as a member of the fourth caste, he’d probably never seen a woman dye her hair before, because the chemicals were extremely expensive on Verbellion. Everything went into the war efforts, and things that were considered luxury were unaffordable by the general public.
Suzanne shrugged, as if she couldn’t possibly understand that either. “Well, a new hair colour or highlights make them look different or interesting. For some people that’s more important than for us.” It couldn’t hurt to hint at their similar social standing, could it? “And the smell evaporates after some time. So if Lady Thorgard wants highlights, she’ll get them.”
The guard nodded eventually. “You can pass.”
She bowed her head. “Thank you.”
Five minutes later, right on time, Suzanne knocked at the personnel entrance of the villa where Commander and Lady Thorgard lived.
After another four hours Suzanne left the villa again, her basket lighter than before, the bottles with dye having ended up in the bins, along with the hair lacquer. On her way from the premises, she nodded at the gardener who returned the gesture. That evening, Lady Thorgard showed off a new hairstyle, her long curls highlighted in several different colours and piled on her head in a complicated hairdo held together by dozens of hair pins and generous amounts of hair lacquer. Two days later, when the vice commander and his wife were visiting a new battleship, their empty villa exploded in a rather impressive fireball.
~o~o~o~
Rose stormed past Pete’s assistant and right into his office. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked without preamble. “It should have been me.”
She’d just come back from one of those charity events she was supposed to visit in order to distract the general public from the stars going out, only to find out that they had tested the dimension cannon without her.
Pete looked up from the report he had been studying. “Close the door and take a seat, Rose,” he said calmly.
“Not until you tell me why you sent Mickey instead of me.” She glared at him.
“Close the door and take a seat,” he repeated, this time with a touch of steel in his voice, and once again Rose saw why the man who made fun of himself in the Vitex commercials was the leader of an important (and mostly independent) government organisation and at the same time a successful businessman. And that was even after the economy had been disrupted for over a year by the latest alien invasion and the subsequent fallout.
Without another word she turned around, closed the door in the face of his assistant and returned to his desk, taking a seat. That didn’t stop her from being angry, however.
“I come back from the opening ceremony of that children’s home the Vitex trust founded and the next thing that happens is Mickey telling me that he just got back from his first trip to another universe. Care to tell me why you sent him instead of me?”
She’d thought they were friends, considered him family, even though her dad would always be the man she had only known for such a short amount of time, when the Doctor took her back to see him. But this, him sending Mickey, felt like a betrayal, on so many levels. She had spent so much time on the project, not even counting the hours she had spent in the archives looking for a way back to the Doctor, and when the cannon was finally ready he just picked someone else?
“A couple of reasons, really,” Pete gave back calmly. “One, we don’t have time to waste, and you know that. Two, as you pointed out correctly, the Vitex trust founded that children’s home, and the press expected at least one of us there, especially since it was one of Jacks’s projects.”
Rose winced inwardly. Pete was right. Her mum had started that particular project, because she thought they needed to do something for all those children in the zones who had lost their parents, who had nobody who cared about them. She’d always said that even if they couldn’t get rid of the zones immediately, they could at least do something, now that they had the money. And now it was even more important, because the zones had been hit hardest during the invasion. So many children had lost their parents during the first few waves, and her mum would have been the first in line to help them.
“But the most important reason I decided it should be Mickey and not you,” Pete continued, getting up and walking round the desk so he could take her hand, “is that you and Tony are all that I have left. I...” He didn’t finish the sentence, but Rose understood him anyway. Her anger evaporated.
“I’m sorry,” she said, getting up to look him in the eyes. “I mean, I know we don’t have time, and I know we can’t have the public find out what’s going on, but I’d still hoped it would be me.”
“I know how much you miss him, Rose, believe me, I do. I just didn’t want to risk your life like that the first time we used that cannon.” He gave her a crooked grin. “What use is it to be the Director if you can’t bend the system to your will on occasion?”
Despite herself, Rose found herself grinning back. “In that case, Director, let’s go find Tony and annoy the janitors by knocking over a couple of those ugly vases in the lobby with a football.”
Pete smiled. “Sounds like a plan.”
~o~o~o~
“Exploding their houses is all good and well, but we need more,” Isabelle Leclerc said. She was a young woman from Marseille who had been taken with her son during the second wave, and the small boy sometimes reminded Suzanne so much of her own little man that it physically hurt.
For a few brief seconds her thoughts wandered to her family, wondering if they were alright. It had been almost a year, and even though the Verbellions had constantly brought new slaves to the planet, she had never been able to find out what had happened to her family. She couldn’t very well go about and outright ask, not without drawing unwanted attention to herself; so she had to rely on whatever stories she managed to overhear. She clung to the thought that since they hadn’t ended up here they were fine, not even wanting to consider the alternative. If something happened to her husband, daughter or her little boy...
“I agree,” Teradoc added, interrupting her thoughts. He was Teraxian and had already been on Verbellion for five years before the first human slaves had come to the planet. He had been assigned to the factories right from the start, and seen everything: the power plant, the assembly lines, even the scrap yards, which had made him an invaluable source when they had planned their first attack. “If we stop now or if we just attack empty houses they’ll think we’re weak and ignore us.”
Derisa nodded. “He’s got a point. The Verbellions are warriors, and they’ll only take us seriously if we act accordingly.”
Suzanne looked around in the small room. It took up the main part of an abandoned house Derisa had discovered in one of the poorer parts of the city. People here were too busy struggling with life to care about a couple of random people entering an empty house. Something her daughter had told her: Just behave as if you own the place, and nobody will question you.
“Anyone else?” she asked the few people gathered around her, but they kept silent.
Suzanne sighed. She had hoped it wouldn’t come to this and didn’t like it, but the truth of their situation was that they had no choice. The political system on Verbellion needed to change, in order to improve the lives of all those people who were suffering on this planet. Unfortunately everything they had done so far hadn’t made any difference, had probably even made things worse.
The pressure on the slaves increased every day, because the government was still looking for the leaders of the small rebel movement. And even though the fleet being back should have led to a reduction of the war efforts, the opposite was the case. More and more people were forced into the factories. To make things worse, there were rumours that the fleet was preparing for an invisible enemy, while at the same time stopping refugees at the outer rim of the star system. Everything about this was wrong, on many levels. But the only thing she might possibly be able to change was the political system on Verbellion, therefore she would try, even though she had no idea if she was doing this right. All she could do was make it up while she went along.
“You’re right,” she said eventually. “We need to do more. But we can’t just go about and kill random people. That wouldn’t make us any better than them. And if innocent people are caught up in the blast, it will cost us the support of the lower castes.”
“So, what do you suggest?” Teradoc asked. “Blow up their houses while the owners are still inside?”
Suzanne shook her head. “That’ll only make things worse and put more pressure on everyone. Besides, concealing the explosives as hair dye won’t work again, not after the last two times. One day someone will put two and two together, and then...” She didn’t finish the sentence, instead continued with, “But what if we took hostages to force the government to listen to us?” She wasn’t entirely sure if it was a good idea, but the others were right: they needed to do something.
“That could work,” Isabelle mused. “But who?”
“What about Supreme Commander Wisgard?” Derisa suggested. “She is the highest ranking military officer on the entire planet.”
Teradoc shook his head. “She alone won’t be enough. She’s a warrior, and they don’t make good hostages, because they’re not supposed to get caught alive.”
“And even though she is dedicated to the government, she is not the one running the show,” Isabelle added. “We need more than just her.”
“The president,” Aang suggested. The old Chinese man had been silent until now, always more of a silent observer in their meetings, but his words had weight, not only because he was the leader of the biggest resistance cell, but also because his plans were usually well thought out.
“But can we even get to him?” Gerard asked.
“No idea. But we won’t find out if we don’t try,” Suzanne said. “And if it works... Either we can convince him to change things for the better, or we can force them.”
“I don’t think that’ll work,” Gerard gave back. “The government is mostly dangling on the strings of the owners of the large factories. If we take the president, they’ll just write him off and elect someone else, and everything will get worse.”
“In that case... What if we take one of the factory owners as well?”
“What about Emporios?” Teradoc suggested. “He runs the largest weapons factory on Verbellion, and he almost single-handedly founded the election campaign of the reigning party. He owns the government.”
Derisa nodded. “And he employs more children than everyone else on the planet, and treats them the worst,” she said disgustedly. “Unfortunately he is almost as well protected as the president.”
“But that means if we can get to them, we can get to everyone. That should send exactly the message we want,” Aang concluded. “I guess we’ve found our targets.”
“And what if the government doesn’t listen?” Gerard asked.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Suzanne said. Gerard had only voiced the same doubts she’d been harbouring. But even though she didn’t particularly want this to become an armed revolution, she also knew that they might have no choice.
~o~o~o~
“Where are we?” Daniel asked once he had gotten over the dizziness that came from crossing into another universe, looking around with wide eyes.
Rose took in her surroundings as well. By the looks of it, they had landed in the outskirts of a small town, but beyond that she just didn’t know. “No idea. But it’s definitely not Earth.” She pointed at the two moons barely visible on the bright sky. “Even though it is the right universe.”
“How do you know that?”
Rose shrugged. She had no idea how she knew that, but something told her she belonged here. “I just do.”
She reached for the return button to check the readings, only to discover that at least three circuits had been fried. She cursed under her breath. If the Doctor wasn’t here and if they didn’t manage to repair the return button, they were stuck here. Indefinitely.
“And what do we do now?” Daniel stared at the device that had been their way out of a tight spot or two during the last few weeks but was currently about as useful to them as a bottle opener.
“Find the right spare parts, repair the return button, and while we’re at it, find out if the Doctor is here,” Rose gave back, sounding a lot more certain than she actually felt, but she wasn’t going to voice her concerns to Daniel. Not until she absolutely had to.
“And how do you suggest we pay for those spare parts?” Daniel asked acridly.
Unfazed, she rummaged through her jacket and produced a few gold coins and an old PCI card. “We try trading these. If it doesn’t work we come up with something else.”
“I get why you have the gold coins, but what about the PCI card?”
Rose grinned. “For some unfathomable reason, traders throughout the entire universe are incredibly fond of old PCI cards from the nineteen-nineties; and after we ended up on another planet for the first time, I stashed one in my pocket.”
“You’re having fun with this,” Daniel said, sounding almost accusatory.
Rose considered him. He had been partnered with her after he had finished his training, only a week before the Nameless had appeared. After the fleet had vanished, they had gone on a couple of missions, but most of them had been just weather balloons or cloud formations someone had taken for an alien space ship and panicked. And when the dimension cannon last had sent them to another planet, they had had been in the wrong universe, so she had immediately pressed the return button and sent them back. She knew Daniel was a good man. He had covered for her after that incident with Tony, and he had saved her life in the tunnels; but even though he had been with Torchwood for over a year, he’d never really met aliens. She hoped he’d come around, but she doubted it. Deep down, Daniel was a ‘stick to the rules’ guy, which was not bad, per se, but she wasn’t sure he was cut out for the kind of life she had lived with the Doctor for more than two years.
“Come on, let’s see if there is some kind of market or bazaar or maybe a shop somewhere where we can look for parts,” she said, deciding against the Doctor’s infamous ‘visiting Paris’ speech, fairly certain Daniel wouldn’t take it well, and wandered out of the alley, hoping he would follow her.
Three days later, when they had repaired their return button, run all necessary tests and Rose was about to press the button, Daniel stilled her hand.
“I’m gonna apply for a transfer,” he said, looking her in the eyes. “I can’t keep doing this. I mean, I get that it is important, and somebody has to do this, but I can’t. And...” He trailed off.
Rose nodded. For the last three days she had waited for the moment when he would finally get there, get over the ‘they’re all so alien’ feeling, but he hadn’t. Plus, she knew what he hadn’t said. The Nameless had taken his older brother and his dad, and his mum was struggling. “I understand. Do what you have to do. You are a good man, Daniel, and Torchwood needs more of those, in any capacity. But now... Let’s go home, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
She pressed the button, and in the millisecond before they were pulled back, she thought she had seen the Doctor, running towards her, but it was already too late. They were gone.