Doctor Who BBCN02 - The Monsters Inside Read online

  The TARDIS takes the Doctor and Rose to a destination in deep space

  – Justicia, a prison camp stretched over six planets, where Earth colonies deal with their criminals.

  While Rose finds herself locked up in a teenage borstal, the Doctor is trapped in a scientific labour camp. Each is determined to find the other, and soon both Rose and the Doctor are risking life and limb to escape in their distinctive styles.

  But their dangerous plans are complicated by some old enemies. Are these creatures fellow prisoners as they claim, or staging a takeover for their own sinister purposes?

  Featuring the Doctor and Rose as played by Christopher Ecclestone and Billie Piper in the hit series from BBC Television.

  The Monsters Inside

  BY STEPHEN COLE

  Published by BBC Books, BBC Worldwide Ltd,

  Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane, London W12 0TT

  First published 2005

  Copyright c Stephen Cole 2005

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Doctor Who logo c BBC 2004

  Original series broadcast on BBC television

  Format c BBC 1963

  ‘Doctor Who’, ‘TARDIS’ and the Doctor Who logo are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  ISBN 0 563 48629 5

  Commissioning Editors: Shirley Patton / Stuart Cooper Creative Director and Editor: Justin Richards Doctor Who is a BBC Wales production for BBC ONE

  Executive Producers: Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner and Mal Young Producer: Phil Collinson

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Henry Steadman c BBC 2005

  Typeset in Albertina by Rocket Editorial, Aylesbury, Bucks Printed and bound in Germany by GGP Media GmbH

  For more information about this and other BBC books, please visit our website at www.bbcshop.com

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  ONE

  5

  TWO

  9

  THREE

  17

  FOUR

  25

  FIVE

  31

  SIX

  39

  SEVEN

  47

  EIGHT

  57

  NINE

  67

  TEN

  75

  ELEVEN

  85

  TWELVE

  97

  THIRTEEN

  107

  FOURTEEN

  117

  FIFTEEN

  127

  SIXTEEN

  137

  SEVENTEEN

  147

  EIGHTEEN

  157

  NINETEEN

  169

  TWENTY

  183

  TWENTY-ONE

  193

  TWENTY-TWO

  203

  TWENTY-THREE

  211

  Acknowledgements

  219

  About the author

  221

  Wherever it was, it wasn’t Earth.

  Rose Tyler threw open the TARDIS doors and stood looking out, a massive grin on her face. The sky was a shimmering green. Three suns shone through the haze, their heat prickling her skin. The muddy ground was the colour of olives and sloped up sharply, while beyond it a range of pale mountains, perfect pyramids, stood like pitched tents on the far horizon.

  It wasn’t Earth. She was, officially, Somewhere Else.

  ‘Another world. . . ’ Rose closed her eyes, opened her arms and leaned out a little. She felt giddy for a moment as a gentle breeze blew up and ruffled her long blonde hair about her shoulders.

  ‘You did it, then,’ she called to the man who’d brought her here.

  ‘Huh?’ He sounded preoccupied. ‘Oh, yeah, right. The alien planet thing.’

  ‘And about time. We’ve done space stations. . . space-ships. . . ’

  ‘We’ve done your planet so often we should get T-shirts made up.’

  Rose heard him crossing to join her and smiled to herself.

  ‘What, you mean, like, I saved the Earth and all I got was –’

  ‘Aggro?’

  He gave Rose a gentle shove in the small of her back and she stumbled outside. The alien soil squidged beneath her white trainers. ‘Oi!

  Doctor, I was building up to that!’

  The Doctor grinned at her. He was a tall, imposing man with heavy features and dark, close-cropped hair. His leather jacket, jeans and T-shirt lent him a casual, unassuming air. If you passed him on the street 1

  you wouldn’t look twice. But up close, there was an intensity about him that crackled through every movement, each lingering look.

  ‘What were you gonna do?’ he said. ‘Plant a flag? Make a speech?’

  He stepped out after her, looking all about. ‘Nah. Take a giant leap for humankind, and nine times out of ten you squash whatever’s beneath you. The best things are always just stumbled upon.’

  ‘The way you stumbled on me, you mean?’ she asked cheekily. That had been back on Earth, in the middle of an alien invasion. They’d beaten it together; he’d shown her she could make a difference to things. Now she travelled with him, and felt a sense of belonging she’d never dreamed possible.

  ‘Look,’ he said softly, pointing to something just the other side of the TARDIS. A single flower.

  Rose went over to see. It was a scraggly specimen, but smelled sweet, and its red petals were the only splats of colour in the muddy desert.

  ‘There you go,’ the Doctor murmured. ‘Your first contact with alien life on its own turf.’

  ‘Literally.’ Rose picked up a fallen petal. It felt velvety between her fingertips, made them tingle.

  ‘This could be the rarest flower in the universe, the last of its kind.’

  The Doctor’s eyes fixed on hers suddenly, clear and unnervingly blue.

  ‘Or it could be one of billions. Common as daisies. Just the first to poke its head through the soil to greet the three-sunned springtime.’

  She smiled. ‘Doesn’t matter, does it? It’s here, and so are we!’ He grinned back.

  ‘But where are we?’

  He shrugged. ‘Dunno. Edge of the galaxy somewhere.’

  She got up. ‘TARDIS not telling?’ TARDIS stood for ‘Time And Relative Dimension In Space’. This was supposed to explain how come you could disguise a massive control room inside a poky police box and travel anywhere and any time in the universe, but it left Rose little the wiser.

  ‘Might be on the blink. We landed quicker than normal, like something in the area drew us down. . . ’ The Doctor looked bothered for 2

  a moment. Then he started glancing all about again. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘You’re the 900-year-old alien, you tell me!’

  ‘I mean, what do you think of all this? Strange air in your lungs.

  New suns in the sky.’

  ‘That’s a point – three suns up there, we’ll burn really quickly.’ Rose was wearing jeans, a red T-shirt and a white jacket, but her face was still exposed. ‘Maybe we should get some cream.’

  The Doctor considered. ‘Let’s have a poke about before we crack open the Ambre Solaire.’ He set off up the muddy rise. ‘See if i
t’s worth sticking around.’

  ‘Speaking of sticking,’ she said, ‘how come the ground’s so soggy when it’s so hot?’

  He shot her a sideways glance. ‘This isn’t Earth. Earth rules don’t apply.’

  ‘That’s true. I feel lighter,’ Rose said, taking a balletic leap after him.

  ‘Less gravity,’ he agreed.

  ‘So I weigh about half a stone less, and I’ll tan three times as fast.’

  She smiled as she fell into step beside him, bouncing along. ‘We have to stay here for ever, you know that, right?’

  ‘Tell you what. If we like the view from this hilltop, I’ll dig out the deck chairs.’ He offered her his hand. ‘Deal?’

  ‘Deal,’ she said, taking it.

  They were still hand in hand when they reached the lip of the rise.

  Rose found they were far higher up than she had realised. And whatever view she had been expecting, it couldn’t have been more gobsmacking than this.

  ‘No more flowers, then.’ She felt she was overlooking the set of some incredible Hollywood epic. ‘I thought those things in the distance were mountains shaped like pyramids –’

  ‘But they’re the real thing,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘And are those real Egyptians?’

  In the valley far below, tiny figures were building a pyramid right now. The ground area had to be twice the size of Trafalgar Square, though Nelson’s column would barely peep over the second of the 3

  five steep steps cut cleanly into the pyramid’s sides. These baked-mud plateaux were a seething, sweating mass of activity as workers toiled to disguise the steps and create a true pyramid. Overseers watched, massive arms folded across their well-oiled chests, as scores of sweating men in loincloths heaved huge bricks up ramps of rubble to add to the massive construction. A hundred more were struggling with ropes and pulleys to lower the finishing blocks into position.

  ‘Built the same as your pyramids on Earth,’ the Doctor informed her.

  ‘Buttress walls built up around a central core. Fourth dynasty, maybe.’

  ‘And not what you’d expect to find the other side of the galaxy.’

  Rose watched as a man stumbled and fell while struggling to push a sledge full of rubble down one of the many ramps. An overseer strode forwards at once with a vicious-looking whip, started laying into him.

  The man screamed as the leather lashed him.

  ‘There’s no need for that,’ Rose said fiercely. ‘What’s going on? I mean, space-travelling ancient-Egyptian chain gangs?’

  ‘Doubt it.’

  ‘They look human.’

  The Doctor stared on as a further whipcrack scored through the air.

  ‘Yeah. They act human, too.’

  The man, his back burned now with four thick red stripes, was dragged to his feet by two more workers and shoved back towards the sledge. Weakly, he struggled with it once more.

  ‘This is horrible,’ said Rose. ‘Can’t we do something?’

  ‘No.’

  She looked at him sharply. ‘Oh, yeah? More of your posh alien morality?’

  ‘Oh, no, I’m well up for it.’ He was looking back the way they’d come. ‘But I don’t reckon they’re keen.’

  Rose turned back from the lip of the precipice. Four of the overseers had crept up behind them, swarthy, bare-chested, massive and mean-looking. Each held a heavy whip in one hand.

  And a futuristic space gun in the other.

  4

  ‘OK, so what’s the charge?’ asked the Doctor, grinning as he raised his hands above his head. ‘Trespassing on sacred land? Nicking secrets so we can build bigger pyramids down the road?’

  Rose raised her hands too. ‘Trust me, whatever you take us for, you’re wrong.’

  ‘Put down the guns, and we’ll explain why,’ said the Doctor.

  The four men ignored them, took a threatening step closer. Then one of the whips cracked out. Rose gasped as the leather bit into her ankle.

  ‘Too far, mate,’ the Doctor snapped. He kicked the whip handle from the overseer’s hand, freeing Rose. Then he tried to wrestle the man’s gun away.

  Rose took her cue. As the overseers brought their guns to bear on the Doctor, she shoulder-charged one and knocked him flying. Another guard lunged for her but she dodged aside with a speed that surprised even her – lower gravity, she realised. She wrestled the gun from his grip but he swiped it aside, shoved her backwards towards the lip of the precipice.

  5

  Rose tried to duck past him but his thick, slippery fingers clamped around her wrists, digging in hard.

  ‘You OK?’ the Doctor shouted. One of his opponents lay sprawled in the mud.

  ‘Never better,’ she gasped, squirming in the big man’s grip. Then, instead of struggling against her attacker, she plonked herself down on her bum, bent up her legs, shoved her feet against his oiled-up gut and pushed with all her force. That broke his hold and he fell backwards.

  ‘Leg it!’ yelled the Doctor, two of the overseers lying at his feet.

  ‘Back to the TARDIS!’

  But now the one who’d whipped her was blocking Rose’s way. He lunged for her and she backed off. It would be OK, the Doctor was racing towards them and –

  The ground started to crumble underfoot. Rose looked back wildly and with a sick feeling found she’d reached the very edge of the precipice. She wavered on the brink, losing her balance. It was like everything was happening in slow motion.

  Then a bellow from the guard and the sharp crack of a whip cut through the moment. Her arm burned with a sudden, galvanising pain.

  The Doctor was holding the other end of the whip, his face frantic.

  Rose’s fingers curled round rough leather as the lip of the ledge gave way beneath her and she fell.

  The scream had barely built in her throat before she was pulled up short, dangling from the whipcord. She caught crazy, spiralling glimpses of sheer rock, green sky, of tiny figures on the giant stone anthill far below.

  ‘Hold on!’ the Doctor gasped, thrusting into view over the crumbling precipice.

  ‘You too,’ she told him, her feet flailing for purchase in the side of the mud cliff, trying to pull herself up the length of leather. Low gravity or not, she felt heavy as lead. She focused on the Doctor’s face; he was helping her, he was going to drag her to safety.

  Then one of the overseers loomed into view behind him, gun raised.

  6

  ‘Look out!’ Rose shouted.

  The Doctor didn’t turn, kept hauling her up, hands moving mechanically, faster and faster. At last her elbows mushed into the soft mud at the precipice’s edge, took her weight. His hand clutched her forearm and he gave her an enormous grin.

  Then the contact was snatched away. The Doctor was dragged to his feet by two of the overseers and a gun was pressed to the back of his head. Rose was helpless as slablike hands reached for hers, pulled her up, jammed gun barrels into her neck.

  ‘Get off me!’ She struggled angrily. ‘If you’d just try talking instead of –’

  Rose broke off as, with a weird whirring of alien engines, two small vessels rose up over the edge of the rise. They were shaped a bit like helicopters, but in place of rotor blades there blazed a vortex of blue light. One was landing close to the TARDIS. Rose thought fleetingly of the single straggly flower caught beneath it, its life and colour crushed into the earth. The other craft landed beside her, and the shadow it cast was black and cold.

  With a sick feeling, Rose found herself being frogmarched towards it.

  ‘Doctor!’ she yelled. The gun jabbed in her throat as she stared back frantically over her shoulder. ‘Doctor, I can’t stop them!’

  He was straining to get to her, eyes wide and unbelieving. But the other craft was touching down now, and the overseers were dragging him off in its direction. ‘Don’t struggle, don’t let them hurt you!’ he shouted. ‘I’ll find you. I promise, I’ll find you.’

  A door buzzed open in the
side of the silver ship. Rose dug her heels into the spongy mud but they simply lifted her up, bundled her inside the cold, metal hole that had sprung open.

  ‘Wherever they take you,’ she heard the Doctor yelling, ‘I’ll get you back.’

  She kicked and swung at her captors, wild now, not caring about their guns in the cold darkness. Then she gasped as her body stiffened. She couldn’t move. The door in the side of the ship was closing.

  ‘Doctor!’

  7

  ‘No –’

  The door buzzed shut and she could hear nothing at all in the blackness.

  The ship lurched. The air seemed to thicken. There was a pressure in her ears as if she was underwater. She was being taken someplace to face God knew what.

  Alone.

  8

  The Doctor stared as the silver ship with Rose on board whizzed away through the hazy sky. He almost broke the overseers’ grips in his haste to get inside the other vessel.

  The darkness was oppressive inside the machine. He guessed it was meant to be intimidating. His ears popped as the craft climbed steeply, smoothly outstripping the planet’s pull.

  It didn’t matter what they did to him. He would get her back.

  Maybe two hours passed before the ship doors snapped back open.

  The Doctor scrambled out and found himself in a square room, grey and dull. He studied it first for any sign that Rose had been there, then for any clue to his captors. He struck out on both counts. One sealed door, no windows.

  Nothing else.

  The lights in the room dipped for a few moments. The Doctor’s skin tingled as some invisible force played over it. He knew he was being scanned.

  ‘I’m not armed,’ he announced gruffly. ‘What have you done with Rose?’

  No answer.

  9

  The Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver and held it to the door. A blur of blue energy appeared at the tip. But the door stayed shut. He frowned. Doors didn’t usually stand a chance against this. . .

  Finally, it slid open. But the Doctor’s smile soon faded. A crowd of armed guards in grey uniforms were clustered in the corridor outside.

  Their leader raised his gun, an ugly look on his florid, doughy face.

  ‘Get back!’