The Girl in the Box (Doctor Who)

Army of Ghosts

Sorry for skipping ahead so much, it's just that Rose didn't help much with the Gemstone's personality. Comment whether or not you liked the chapter! Leave a vote!!!
-Rose Noble
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It had been seven months since I had seen the Doctor when the 'ghosts' started inhabiting Earth. The humans saw it as a spiritual awakening, believing that their loved ones had come back. I knew better, though the ghosts had an outline that looked human, a footprint doesn't look like a boot. Torchwood had split into two, it was a civil war between who wanted the ghosts gone from the public, and those that were ignorant of the dangers of the ghosts. Jack Harkness and his team were against the ghosts, and I sided with them, while the other side of our feud consisted of pompous, brainwashed idiots, controlled by the manipulative Yvonne. Our side was forced to hide and go undercover to infiltrate the other, to put a stop to the ghosts. I ended up playing a specialist in 'foreign' technology, also an expert in all Earth origin knowledge. My current human name was Emerald Alexandrite, Em for short.

I was brought to "Yvonne's" side to examine a sphere that they had in their possession. It had no mass, heat, life signatures, radiation, nothing. No one knew what it was, but I certainly did. The sphere was a void ship, built to withstand anything the universe could throw at you. In the sphere, a species could live through a millennium or be in the middle of an exploding star and not even have it touch the sides. It was designed to be able to travel through the Void, the hell between universes that had no up or down, left or right, light or darkness, and no time or life. I was sent to try and figure it out, but I had to hide behind my cover and dumb myself down to a world-class scientist. For any sign of the sphere's existence to be acknowledged, we needed to open it and release what was inside. It was the what was inside that bothered me, otherwise I would've opened it long ago. The sphere could hold anything, friends or enemies, and I didn't want to face something I couldn't deal with.

It had been a little over ten months since Kaster, and I had seen no signs of the Doctor on Earth for the present day since. I missed him terribly, and just to be able to be in touch with a small part of his world, I had even visited Rose Tyler's mum, Jackie, every weekend.

Every afternoon I would sit in my bedroom with a cup of tea, trying to make the whirring noise of the engines become real with my thoughts. I wasn't necessarily cross with the Doctor, I was furious. He left me to go flaunting around with Rose for at least ten months, and he promised me two or three weeks, but the Doctor lies. Jackie was a little bit of help, but after I told her that I was a Time Lord like the Doctor, she keep bugging me about how to talk Rose into coming back home. She constantly begged me to do something clever to get them back on Earth, and kick Rose out of the TARDIS.

Everyday there was no change, until around two months after the shift when the Doctor came back to Earth to visit. I had no idea of his whereabouts until Yvonne told one of the scientist with me that the Doctor was coming, that he would help us with the sphere, but really I knew that he was just going to care about the ghosts and throw in the Ark as an extra adventure.

The other scientists had immediately straightened up and awaited for the Doctor to come and save the day, while I relaxed and tried to hide my excitement so I could be properly angry with the Doctor.

The door's opened and Yvonne purred, "now, what do you think of that?"

The Doctor was in his usual pinstriped suit, and with him was Jackie Tyler, but no Rose. He stared at the black sphere in awe and confusion, I swear I could hear his protests against Yvonne.

"You must be the Doctor," a clever Earth scientist assumed and nervously confronted the Doctor, who still hadn't noticed me standing off to the side. "Rajesh Singh. It's an honor, sir." the scientist held out his hand, which was rudely ignored by the Doctor.

"Yeah," the Doctor breathed, not taking his eyes off of the sphere.

"What is that thing?" Jackie asked Yvonne and kept her eyes glued to the sphere.

"We've got no idea," Yvonne admitted in defeat and frowned.

"What's wrong with it?" Jackie muttered as the urge to flee must've gotten to her. The sphere has physic properties that encourages others to stay away from it, like it was a truely powerful and terrifying monster.

"What makes you think there's something wrong with it?" Rajesh asked her, being the only one without his eyes on the sphere besides myself.

"I don't know, just feels weird," Jackie told him and shook her head to bounce back from the horrific thoughts of the sphere's nature. The Doctor jumped up from his spot and up the stairs to inspect the sphere.

"Well, the sphere has that effect on everyone," I finally spoke and grasped the attention of the other Time Lord. "It makes you want to run and hide, like it's forbidden," I smirked as the Doctor realized who I was and ran up to me.

"Gemstone, it's been a while!" He picked me up and spun me, then gently pecked my lips since Rose wasn't in the room. I wanted to curl up against him for hours, to make up for the time I was alone. This time was worst than the eleven years after the Time War, because I knew the Doctor didn't have an excuse not to visit me.

"Don't think you're off the hook, Doctor. You left me again. Ten months I was alone, trying to figure out the ghosts for two of them. I had to fake being a bloody human scientist for god's sake. You could've ringed!" I shouted at him and slapped him a little more harsh than intended.

"Oi, that's not fair! I was travelling," the Doctor tried to reason, knowing that I was right in the long run.

"Then I should've been with you. Unless you were locked in a cell for nine months, I don't give a damn what you did," I yelled and turned away from him to avoid his sad eyes, that I knew would make me forfeit.

"I'm sorry," he whispered and hugged me from behind with his head snuggled into my neck. "But now's not the time, why've they got a Void ship?" he asked me under his breath.

"I didn't find out anything more than common knowledge of it since I got here," I replied back softly. The Doctor and I turned back to the humans and shrugged. "I'm a Time Lady, surprise!" I sarcastically cheered and watched Yvonne blank triumphantly.

"W-What? How?" Yvonne stuttered in amazement.

"He's not the last one, you can't be that thick, we are. See, I'm the Gemstone, I'm a Time Lady from Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. I'm 804 years old, and I'm very, very clever. So, Rajesh, give the Doctor the rundown," I smirked and properly greeted the Doctor with an embrace.

"Uh, we've tried analyzing it, using every device imaginable. But, according to our instruments, the sphere doesn't exist. It weighs nothing, it doesn't age, no heat, no radiation, and has no atomic mass," the scientist concluded as the Doctor and I ran up to the sphere again. He handed me a pair of 3D glasses and slipped on a pair himself.

"But I can see it," Jackie told off the scientist.

"Fascinating, isn't it?" I grinned to her giddily and 'accidentally' brushed against the Doctor. It's been so long since I've touched him, and I wanted to kiss him badly, but now wasn't the time. "It upsets people because it gives off. . . nothing. It is absent," I continued before Yvonne asked the Doctor for his thoughts.

"This is a void ship," he continued looking at the sphere up and down with his silly 3D glasses.

"And what is that?" Yvonnes urged for more information.

"Well, it's impossible for starters. I always thought it was just a theory, but," I trailed off gently. "It's a vessel designed to exist outside time and space, travelling through the Void," I explained quickly.

"And what's 'the Void'?" Rajesh interrupted my trail of thought.

"The space between dimensions," the Doctor answered and sat down on the steps. "There's all sorts of realities around us, different dimensions, billion of parallel universes, all stacked up against each other. The Void is the space in between, containing absolutely nothing. Can you imagine that, nothing? No light, no dark, no up, no down, no life, no time. Without end. Our people called it the Void," the Doctor explained and gestured to me to indicate the Time Lords. "The Eternals call it the Howling. But some people call it Hell," he continued on and stared into empty space.

"But someone built the sphere. What for? Why go there," Rajesh questioned logically.

"To explore, to escape. You could sit inside that thing, an eternity would pass you by. The big bang, end of the universe, start of the next. Wouldn't even touch the sides, you'd exist outside the whole of creation," I tried to answer his question after sitting down next to the Doctor and placing my 3D glasses back into my pocket.

"You see? We were right. There is something inside it," Yvonne smiled greedily at her petty accomplishment.

"Oh, yes," the Doctor ignored her sudden glee.

"So, how do we get in there?" Rajesh asked me calmly.

"We don't! We send that thing back into Hell," I shouted at Yvonne and Rajesh and stood up suddenly.

"How did it get here in the first place?" the Doctor tried to calm me down by wrapping his arm around my waist and letting me lean into him.

"Well, that's how it all started. The sphere came through into this world, and the ghosts followed in it's wake," Yvonne argued. So that's how the ghosts happened, they didn't tell me anything while I worked here.

"Show me," the Doctor demanded and turned on his heels while still clinging to me. This was far worse than I had imagined, than Torchwood could imagine. This was the end, unless we put a stop to it. The Void was seeping into our universe, and it wouldn't stop until it was powerful enough to swallow the universe whole.

The Doctor headed off in one direction, and I tugged him the other way, "no, Doctor," I muttered and dragged him off in the right direction. We walked to a new room on the top floor of the building, the room the ghosts were controlled from. The room was sterile and white, with Yvonne's office behind us being separated by glass. In front of us were a few rows of white desks with high-tech computers resting on top of them. A few people were stationed in front of them, all wearing sleek ear pieces, most of the workers did wear them. I refused to, knowing how easy it was to hack into the system and control a person with them. Also, that there was something bad enough at Torchwood that would be willing to do it. The room had an empty, white wall with two levers on each side, which I assumed was used to control the ghost shifts.

"The sphere came through here," Yvonne explained and gestured to the plain wall. "A hole in the world. Not active at the moment, but when we fire particle engines at that exact spot, the breach opens up," she continued.

"How did you even find it?" I asked as I put my ear against the wall and felt it gently, grabbing my 3D glasses from my lab coat after I imagined it would have the Void's background radiation on it. The Doctor followed me to the wall and started rubbing the wall and trying to listen to the other side. I noticed he had Void radiation on him, he'd have a lot of explaining to do after we finished with this.

"We've been getting warning signs for years. A radar black spot. So we built this place, Torchwood Tower. The breach was 600 feet above sea level, it was the only way to reach it," Yvonne told us as if it was obvious as the Doctor backed away from the wall and slipped on his 3D glasses again, making me chuckle at how mad we must've looked.

"You built a skyscraper just to reach a spatial disturbance, how much money have you got?" the Doctor mused.

"Enough," Yvonne simply answered and I returned to the wall.

"Hold on a minute, we're in Canary Wharf. Must be, this building, it's Canary Wharf," Jackie realized after staring out the window for a while.

"Well, that is the public name for it. But to those in the know, it's Torchwood," Yvonne joined Jackie at the window, overlooking tall buildings and winding roads.

"So, you find the breach, probe it, the sphere comes through, 600 feet above London. Bam! It leaves a hole in the fabric of reality. And that hole, you think, 'oh shall we leave it alone? Shall we back off? Shall we play it safe?' Nah, you think, 'let's make it bigger!'" I mocked Torchwood's arrogance, these humans were rubbish at common sense.

"It's a massive source of energy. If we can harness that power, we need never depend on the Middle East again. Britain will become truly independent," Yvonne tried to reasoned with me, but I shook my head and smiled at how thick she was. "Look, you can see for yourself. Next ghost shift's in two minutes."

"Cancel it," the Doctor demanded and grabbed my waist to calm both of us down.

"I don't think so," Yvonne showed her bossy self and walked from her office to her employees.

"I'm warning you, cancel it," I tried cautioning the arrogant woman.

"Oh, exactly how the legends would have it. The Doctor and the Gemstone, lording over us, assuming alien authority over the rights of man," Yvonne tried to guilt us into letting her activate the dangerous machine.

"Let me show you," the Doctor ran back over to one of the glass doors with me following his heels. He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and started demonstrating what would potentially happen. "Sphere comes through," the glass cracked after a whiz of the screwdriver's pulsing. "When it made the hole, it cracked the world around it. The entire surface of this dimension splintered, and that's how the ghosts get through. That's how they get everywhere, they're bleeding through the fault lines. Walking from their world, across the void, and into yours. With the human race hoping and wishing and helping them along. But too many ghosts . . . and," the Doctor explained and let the glass shatter.

"Well, in that case, we'll have to be more careful," Yvonne muttered quietly and stared at the broken glass. "Positions! Ghost shift in one minute," she ordered to the staff that were staring at the Doctor wearily.

"Ms. Hartman, I am asking you, please, don't do it," I begged her with the Doctor's hand locked in my grip.

"We have done this a thousand times," Yvonne rationalized.

"Then stop at a thousand!" the Doctor yelled at her.

"You lot, so bloody arrogant. Arrogance gets you killed," I shouted in her face, now seething with anger. She snickered at me and continued pleading her case.

"We're in control of the ghosts. The levers can open the breach, but equally, they can close it," Yvonne stood her ground against us. The Doctor and I stared daggers at her before he gently tapped my hand twice, indicating we should pretend to stand down.

"Okay," I relaxed and dragged him to Yvonne's desk. We both pulled up a chair and sat back in them, putting our feet up on the desk in unison.

"Sorry?" Yvonne asked, confused by our sudden 'change of heart'.

"Never mind. As you were," the Doctor smiled at her.

"What, is that it?" she quizzically questioned us.

"No, fair enough. Said our bit. Don't mind us. Any chance for a cuppa tea?" I smirked and held the Doctor's hand in my lap nervously as a worker reminded us that the ghost shift was in twenty seconds.

"Mhm, can't wait to see it," the Doctor raised his shoulders like he was excited.

"You can't stop us, Doctor, Gemstone," Yvonne tried to hold her ground.

"No, absolutely not. Pull up a chair, Rose," I smiled at Jackie and gestured beside me. "Come on, watch the fireworks."

"You two are meant for each other," Jackie commented at the Doctor and I's synchronization.

"Should be, we used to be engaged," the Doctor winked at me and waited for Yvonne to crack as the same worker announced there was ten seconds left and started to count down.

It had reached two when Yvonne shouted, "stop the shift." The workers didn't move from their computers immediately. "I said stop," Yvonne lost the silent battle between her and us.

"Thank you," I sighed gratefully.

"I suppose it makes sense to get as much intelligence as possible, but the program will recommence as soon as you've explained everything," Yvonne tried reasoning so she didn't look weak.

"We're glad to be of help," the Doctor beamed.

"Someone clear up this glass," Yvonne shouted to no one in particular. "They did warn me, Gemstone, Doctor. They said you two like to make a mess," she chastised and stalked off to her office.

"So where's Rose?" I whispered in the Doctor's ear with his hand still clasped in mine.

"Her mum was on board when we left for here, got a welcoming of lots of guns. They knew how I travel with a companion so I pulled Jackie out instead of Rose," he explained softly.

"Of course you don't notice her mum on board, you're so oblivious, no wonder she's cross with you," I laughed quietly.

"So these ghosts, whatever they are, did they build the sphere?" Yvonne asked us after returning from her office.

"Must have, aimed it at this dimension like a cannonball," I tried to compare the Void ship for human intelligence. Really it was more like a bad dimension skipper, even with the right technology, it's hard to find the correct dimension. You sort of aim it towards the right dimension, then it's trial and error from there.

"Yvonne, I think you should see this. We've got a visitor. Don't know who she is, but funny enough, she arrived at the same time as the Doctor," Rajesh called through Yvonne's laptop. I knew it was Rose, that girl was the definition of human, curious.

Yvonne turned her laptop towards us to show Rose Tyler in a lab coat, "she one of yours?" Yvonne asked us. Rose most likely used psychic paper and got caught by one of the many people with psychic training at Torchwood.

"Nope," the Doctor shook his head and pushed out his bottom lip a little.

"Never seen her before in my life," I agreed with the Doctor and slouched down in my chair a bit more.

"Good, then we can have her shot," Yvonne smiled chirpily.

"Oh, alright then. It was worth a try. That's. . . that's Rose Tyler," the Doctor admitted.

"Sorry," Rose apologized from the screen. "Hello, nice to see you two," she waved, and we waved back.

"Well, if that's Rose Tyler, who's she?" Yvonne asked, clearly confused.

"I'm her mother," Jackie answered and I heard the Doctor groan quietly.

"Oh, you travel with her mother," Yvonne teased and I started laughing uncontrollably.

"He kidnapped me," Jackie cleared up as the Doctor jabbed me in the ribs for making fun at his dignity loss.

"Please, when Torchwood comes to write my complete history, don't tell people I travelled through time and space with her mother," the Doctor pleaded as Yvonne and I laughed together at his new reputation.

"Charming," Jackie told him off, clearly hurt, and quickly stopping Yvonne and I's laughter.

"I've got a reputation to uphold," the Doctor whined as Yvonne got up quickly.

"Excuse me, everyone. I thought I said stop the ghost shift," Yvonne shouted at her employees, clearly baffled. "Who started the program? I ordered you to stop. Who's doing that?" Yvonne screeched as the levers started moving up. "Right, step away from the monitors, everyone. Gareth, Ade, stop what you're doing right now. Matt, step away from your desk. That's an order! Stop the levers!" Yvonne screamed at three incoherent workers typing away at their computers. "Andrew, stop the levers," Yvonne ordered a normal worker.

"What's she doing?" I muttered as I ran to the desk of a woman, named Ade, apparently, after hearing Yvonne shout for her to stop. I snapped my fingers in front of her face to get no reaction as Yvonne kept ordering her to step away from the desk.

"She can't hear you. They're overriding the system. We're going into ghost shift," the Doctor explained as the blank wall started to glow and brightness filled the room. "It's the earpiece controlling them. I've seen this before. Sorry, I'm so sorry," the Doctor apologized as he used the sonic to deactivate the earpieces, I thanked myself for being suspicious of them in the first place as the workers all screamed and collapsed.

"What happened? What did you just do?" Yvonne stuttered.

"They're dead," I explained as I realized the earpieces were of Cybermen origin.

"You two killed them," Jackie mumbled under her breath.

"No, someone else did that long before I got her," the Doctor told her and looked at the computer with me to try and cancel the program.

"But you killed them," Jackie cried and backed away from the Doctor and I slowly.

"Jackie, we haven't got time for this," I scolded her angrily.

"What are those earpieces?" Yvonne demanded an answer by holding her hand over the mouse the Doctor was using.

"Don't," the Doctor warned her as we tried to focus on cancelling the ghost shift program.

"They're standard comms devices. How does it control them?" Yvonne cried, desperate for an answer.

"Trust me, leave them alone," I cautioned and left the Doctor at the computer as I checked the bodies.

"But what are they?" Yvonne asked as she pulled an earpiece out with brain tissue connected to it. "Ugh, oh god. It goes inside their brain," she screamed and dropped the earpiece.

"What about the ghost shift?" I asked the Doctor and shifted to another one of the dead's monitors.

"90% there and still running," he called back to me. "They're still controlling it, they've hijacked the system."

"Who's 'they'?" Yvonne asked, still disgusted by the brain tissue on the earpieces.

"It might be a remote transmitter, but it's got to be close by. He can trace it," I shouted to her over the buzzing noises of the ghost shift as the Doctor pulled out his sonic from his suit.

"Gemstone, stay here with Jackie," the Doctor yelled to her as he ran out of the ghost room. I only obeyed his orders because I was actually needed in the ghost room, not just wandering about,

I watched him leave with Yvonne and sprinted to her office with Jackie on my heels. Rajesh was reporting that the sphere was active, of course, but the communications had been hacked by the CYBERMEN and I couldn't tell them what to do. Jackie stood next to me, worried about her daughter.

"She'll be fine, if the Doctor is going to save anyone, it'll be her," I tried to reassure the nervous woman as I hacked into the security cameras in the sphere room. We saw Rajesh running frantically about the room and checking equipment, while Rose and a man her age stood next to each other and watched the cube shake violently.

"Mickey?" Jackie gasped and pointed to the man next to Rose. "That's Rose's boyfriend, he disappeared with those two, and didn't com back with them. They said something about a parallel world," Jackie answered my question before I said it.

We were pulled away from the screen when the Doctor burst into the room with his hands behind his head in surrender, followed by Cybermen pointed guns at the workers. "Get away from the machines. Do what they say, don't fight them. Don't shoot," the Doctor shouted to the workers in the room. The Cybermen raised their guns and shot the humans with red lasers, instantly killing them.

"Jackie, you're going to have to trust me. Do what the Cybermen say, but don't let them assimilate you. They can't know I'm here, or else they'll kill the Doctor," I explained to her quickly, before looking out the window. The Doctor was their greatest enemy, they only needed him alive for his knowledge. Therefore, if they found me they would kill the Doctor off and use me as their intelligence instead. I found a window washer's lift three stories down, a large drop, but not lethal. I used my sonic ring and shattered the glass like the Doctor had earlier. I saw the Doctor watch me and shake his head, but I ignored his pleads and smiled at him happily, before jumping out of the window and falling to the lift.

"No!" I heard the Doctor shout and run towards the window, looking down and finding me on the window washer lift waving back at him. He ran away from the window as I could see ghosts materializing in the city below me, but much more of them than usual. After a few moments, they changed into Cybermen, congregating into formation and marching in sync. The humans screamed and ran to their homes or some sort of shelter, and those too late were killed. I adjusted my sonic to scan for alien life forms, taking only a few seconds to register all of the foreign aliens. There were two Time Lords, 5,000,023 Cybermen, and four Daleks. The Daleks must've come from the sphere, where Rose was.

There I was, on a window washer lift, left with the job of saving the world without being seen by any intelligent aliens. Just another day, then.