Contents

Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Title Page
The Changing Face of Doctor Who
Dedication
Prologue

1. Descent into Terror

2. Enter the Doctor
3. Life at No.143
4. Plastic Attack
5. The Turn of the Earth
6. Life at No.90
7. The Mysteries of Juke Street
8. Shed of Secrets
9. The Pizza Surprise
10. Inside the Box
11. War Stories
12. The Living Statues
13. The Lair of the Beast
14. The Never-Ending War
15. The Army Awakes
16. The Battle of London
17. Rose Says No
18. Death Throes
19. Aftermath
20. The Journey Begins

Copyright
 About the Book

“Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!”

In a lair somewhere beneath central London, a malevolent alien intelligence is

plotting the end of humanity. Shop window dummies that can move – and kill –
are taking up key positions, ready to strike.

Rose Tyler, an ordinary Londoner, is working her shift in a department store,

unaware that this is the most important day of her life. She’s about to meet the
only man who understands the true nature of the threat facing Earth, a stranger
who will open her eyes to all the wonder and terror of the universe – a traveller
in time and space known as the Doctor.
 About the Author

Russell T Davies is one of the UK's foremost writers of television drama,

creating ground breaking shows such as Queer As Folk, Bob & Rose, Casanova,
Cucumber, The Second Coming, and in 2018, A Very English Scandal for BBC
One. He has been Head Writer and Executive Producer of Doctor Who since it
returned to the BBC in 2005 and has written many of the new series’ most
memorable episodes. He was awarded an OBE in 2008 for services to drama. He
divides his time between Cardiff and Manchester.
 THE CHANGING FACE OF DOCTOR WHO

The cover illustration portrays the ninth DOCTOR WHO.

Dedicated with love to Phil Collinson and Julie Gardner
 Prologue

Bernie Wilson was a guilty man.

It had all started out so well. He’d been a good, loyal worker all his life. He’d
joined Henrik’s department store in 1968, starting as a lad in Kitchenware, then
rising to Household Appliances, until an unfortunate incident with Miss Forsyth
at the 1973 Christmas party resulted in his demotion to the basement as Junior
Subordinate Caretaker.
It was a dark, windowless warren down there, a low-ceilinged world of
corridors and pipes, weighed down by the oppressive hum of the boilers and the
whine of hydraulics from the lift-shafts. Above, Henrik’s greeted the shoppers of
London with smiles, music and perfume. Below, a subculture bristled, seethed
and muttered, with cleaners, maintenance staff and security guards waging bitter,
pointless wars in a dozen different languages.
But over the years, Bernie had made this world his own. He used the cleaners
to smuggle in cigarettes and booze from abroad, to sell in the local pubs. He
used the maintenance crews to pilfer from the stocks upstairs, a black market of
LPs, then VHS tapes, then DVDs. He fed the suspicious security guards enough
false information to keep them permanently spinning, like magician’s plates, so
they didn’t notice little Bernie Wilson slowly taking charge of the entire
kingdom.
His rise to power became official in the summer of 1989 when he was
elevated to Senior Caretaker. ‘Bernie, the Troglodyte King,’ said Miss Forsyth,
that day. The same day she found her car vandalised with an elaborate scratch.
And that would have been fine. He liked his subterranean empire. He should
have stopped there.
But Bernie went too far.
‘It could be you!’ cried the brand-new Lottery in 1994. The staff upstairs
formed syndicates, and within a year, £120 was leaving Henrik’s every week.
When the Lottery introduced a Wednesday draw in 1997, the money doubled. So
when Bernie suggested taking charge, everyone agreed, and it became his
responsibility to buy the tickets twice a week.
Except he didn’t. He kept the money instead.
Not all of it. Bernie wasn’t a fool. Anyone relying on fixed numbers had to be
guaranteed a ticket, in case of a win. But the invention of the Lucky Dip allowed
Bernie a dangerous freedom. If people didn’t know their own numbers, he
thought they deserved to be robbed for being so trusting.
He didn’t make a fortune. The money declined over the years. And he was
clever enough to invent wins every so often, £10 here, £50 there, and one
Christmas he pretended Bedding had won £300, just so he could share a
celebratory cup of wine with the Head of Department, Miss Forsyth. But mostly
the con was a steady trickle of cash, enough to supply Bernie with whisky and
Sky and the odd little trip to Thailand every few years.
But he’d grown careless. Last month, February 2005, he’d spotted a silver
Mazda 323 Hatchback on sale, so he’d started hoarding the cash a little more
fervently. And this week, Bernie had secured the sale, so what the hell, he’d kept
all the money and paid the deposit.
And then Lydia Belmont won.
Lydia. Daft, dyed-blonde Lydia Belmont, a cook in Henrik’s Third Floor
Green Glade Café. She was in charge of the Catering syndicate and had used the
same numbers for years, a combination of her house number and various
birthdays, including Chris Rea’s, the fourth of March.
She’d won on the Wednesday draw. But no one had noticed. Everyone
assumed Bernie would have told them if there was good news. But bad luck is
ingenious; that Friday was Chris Rea’s birthday, so Lydia’s thoughts had
naturally turned to her Lottery numbers, and she’d dug yesterday’s paper out of
the bin to check the results …
Uproar in the Green Glade! Tears! Hugs! Envy! An impromptu little party was
held in the food preparation area, to which Bernie was summoned. He was told
that Lydia Belmont had won the rollover jackpot of £16.2 million.
‘Amazing!’ said Bernie. ‘Blimey! Wonderful!’ And then, ‘Goodness me!’ He
added that he hadn’t got round to checking the ticket because there’d been that
leak, in the basement, of oil, which was tricky, obviously, but never mind, her
ticket was safe and sound, locked away, in his office, don’t you worry. ‘Let’s go
and get it!’ cried Lydia, but Bernie said no, it was actually inside the safe and
that was the best place for it, because if she had it in her hand now, oh, she’d
wave it about and rip it and get it wet and lose it, and anyway, he added, with a
sudden burst of inspiration, the safe was on a timer and wouldn’t open till 8
o’clock tomorrow morning, so that left her free tonight to get drunk and be
merry, and then on Saturday, at 8.01 a.m. precisely, he could hand over the
ticket, perhaps in a little ceremony of sorts, and then Lydia’s new life could
begin, how did that sound?
A string of lies, to buy Bernie Wilson one more day. And he would use that
day well.
 He’d burn down the shop.

Friday night. Bernie was alone. He knew what to do; like any British employee,
he’d spent many hours working out how to raze his workplace to the ground.
First, he had to get his story exactly right, and one thing kept bugging him.
Would a ticket inside a safe survive a fire? Would the metal melt? If not, would
the temperature inside become high enough to ignite paper? Or merely bake it?
And what did baked paper look like, would the numbers still be legible? Hmm.
Interesting. Okay, he’d have to burn some papers and place the ashes inside the
safe, and then lock it, so that, if the safe survived, it would look as though the
lottery ticket had disintegrated. That worked, didn’t it? Yes, thought Bernie, he
was getting good at this! What next?
Staff. The basement corridors were crawling with his troglodyte citizens. He’d
need to hide from witnesses, but once the fire started, he didn’t want anyone to
die—well, he could think of one or two people he could toss onto the flames,
three or four perhaps, plus Big Eric from the car park, of course. But this was
only the start of his criminal career, and he was not quite ready for murder, so
he’d have to sound the fire alarm and hurry everyone out. Bernie realised he
could be a hero. He imagined Miss Forsyth seeing his face in the papers, the
saviour of the store. She might congratulate him. She might kiss him. She might
finally succumb and become his Troglodyte Queen.
But to his surprise, there was no one around. The corridors were deserted.
Strange, thought Bernie, maybe there was some sort of training course tonight.
Maybe he’d missed a memo, he’d been so busy plotting, he hadn’t checked his
inbox or pigeonhole. But hey, good news, this would make arson so much easier.
So what else did he need?
Kindling. Plenty of it. The whole basement was stacked with cardboard, wood
and plastic. An electrical fault, that’s what his Health & Safety courses had
taught him, fires were often started by electrical faults, so he would stack the
kindling underneath the junction box in Storage B then rip out a few fuses to
make it look like the box had blown. Not that forensics would find much; the
low concrete walls would turn this place into an inferno. He imagined air being
sucked down the lift-shafts to make the flames boil and roll, soaring upwards to
engulf the store above. The racks of clothing billowing like burning ghosts,
bottles of perfume popping in the heat to release a thousand scents, the fire
spreading up, up, up towards Miss Forsyth’s beloved Bedding, where duvets and
pillows and sheets would ignite, white feathers spiralling in the toxic black
smoke …
Bernie was grinning. Lips wet. This was fun!
 Then he heard a creak.
He looked around.
No one.
Only a wall of abandoned, half-dressed shop-window dummies, staring at him
with blank eyes.
So Bernie turned back to the fuse box. He prised open the grey metal
covering. And then his entire life changed, shortly before its end.
The inside of the box was … alive.
The fuses couldn’t be seen, buried beneath … fingers. A thousand long, thin,
writhing, pink fingers. They swayed and poked the air as if someone had spread
a sea anemone across the box with a knife. Bernie leaned closer and the
protuberances moved en masse, shrinking back from him. He realised they were
growing somehow, visibly thickening as they began to spill over the edge of the
metal. Bernie reached out to poke the centre of the mass …
And then he knew something was very wrong, because he had never felt
anything like it before. The squirming mass felt hot and cold, dry and wet,
smooth and spiky, fleshy and yet sort of … plastic.
It felt like nothing from this world.
He pulled his hand back in shock, and his mind was thundering now, taking in
many things at once. The feel of that thing on his fingers. The slurp of the
tendrils as they surged out of their nest. That he’d never sent that letter to Erica
Forsyth, the one in his bedroom drawer, written and hidden 20 long years ago.
And that someone was now standing behind him, far too close.
He turned around to see some bloke dressed as a shop-window dummy, with a
plastic mask over his face, wearing 501s and a bright yellow T-shirt. He was
raising his hand up above Bernie, his palm flexed wide open as though preparing
for a karate chop.
Nothing in that moment made sense. The fuse box. The fingers. The dummy.
And yet, in the last seconds of his life, Bernie Wilson gained a sort of wisdom,
as he realised something that very few people ever know. He saw that our stories
are only part of bigger stories, and that the stories around us are so vast, we will
never know our place in them, or how they end.
Then the arm swung down.
 1

Descent into Terror

Rose Tyler woke up on the most ordinary day, not knowing that her life was
about to change forever.
She would often wonder, many years later, standing on the shore of a different
universe, whether she had missed any signs on that day, long ago. Presentiments
of the dangers and joys to come. A lowering sky, perhaps. Distant lightning.
Dogs barking at thin air. A fearful old woman staring at her from across the
street.
But no. It was simply a Friday. Her alarm went off at 07.30. She got up.
Showered. Had a yogurt. Argued with her mum about the electricity bill. Went to
work.
She was a retail assistant at Henrik’s department store, at the western end of
Oxford Street. Rose had joined Female Clothing 12 months ago. All of her
friends thought the job was amazing. ‘£6 an hour!’ said Shareen. ‘That’s £1.20
more than me. And they put you up to £6.90 when you’re 21!’
But right now, at 19 years of age, 21 felt a long way off. Rose was grateful for
the job. Lots of her mates had worse, or none. But it was stultifying. Henrik’s
made her cover the teenage range, but no one of Rose’s age bought clothes in a
shop like this. At best, your rich aunty came here once a year to buy you a
Christmas blouse you’d never wear.
So Rose waited. She waited as she waited every day. She folded jumpers and
arranged the jeans in order of waist size and waited some more. She waited for
her boyfriend Mickey to come and buy her a sandwich for lunch. Then she
waited for the end of the day. And she waited for so much more, except she
never knew what.
She felt as if she’d gone wrong. Life had taken a detour when she was 16.
She’d abandoned her exams and chucked in Mickey to go out with a lad called
Jimmy Stone. Tall, sly, slim Jimmy, two years older with lovely stubble and his
own car. It had taken her so long to see what an idiot he was that she’d never got
back on track. She’d dropped out of Sixth Form College and mooched about on
the dole for six months. When the Henrik’s job came along, it looked like the
opportunity of a lifetime.
 Now here she stood. Folding jumpers.
Waiting.
There was a flurry of action late in the afternoon, as a woman from the Green
Glade Café passed through, hurried along by giggling mates. Rumour had it,
she’d won the Lottery. But she scampered along the far end of the floor, by the
lifts, so Rose only caught a glimpse of her, then the woman was gone, her
laughter echoing down the stairwell. Typical, thought Rose, all the fun is over
there, far away from me.
‘Fantastic,’ she muttered.
She’d been promised this year would be better. A promise made on New
Year’s Eve. She’d been heading across the estate when a man, some drunk, had
called out to her from the shadows, by the bins. He’d asked her what year it was.
It had just chimed midnight, so she’d told him it was 2005. His face was lost in
darkness and snow but somehow she heard him smile. He said, ‘This year is
going to be great.’
Yeah. Sure.
Never trust a drunk in the dark.
But the funny thing was, she did trust him. That stranger. There was
something about his voice, the way he said it, like he was saying it only for her.
Somehow, out of all the nonsense she had ever heard from drunken men, she
remembered his words.
So Rose Tyler kept waiting.

Six o’clock! Freedom. Rose signed off at the till, stuck her time sheet into the
blue folder and headed for the door. She could have a pint with Mickey—it was
football night, so she’d lose him to the lads later in the evening, but there might
be time for a quick drink and some chips. Those lovely big fat chips from the
Olympus Bar, heavy with the salt—
‘Your turn!’ said Lee Lin. He’d caught her, just two metres from the door to
the outside world. He held out a brown paper envelope filled with £1 coins.
The Lottery money.
Every week, the staff in her department chipped in £2, a quid for the
Wednesday, a quid for the Saturday. And every week, it was someone’s turn to
brave the Henrik’s basement where Bernie Wilson, the Troglodyte King, lived.
He had a reputation for getting too close, for grinning too much, for breathing a
little too hard. But Rose could handle him. She’d been to Sweeney Street
Comprehensive; any trouble from Bernie and he’d be fundamentally extracting
those pound coins for the next fortnight.
 She got into the lift and pressed B for Basement. As the doors closed, she
knew her mission was pointless. That woman from the Green Glade had already
won the Lottery, making it statistically impossible for Henrik’s to have two wins
in the same week.
What a waste of time, thought Rose.
And the lift went down, down, down.

She called out Wilson’s name but there was no reply. She tried again: ‘Wilson,
are you there?’
She’d knocked on his door, then checked the smoking room, but there was no
sign of him. He could be anywhere, this place was a labyrinth, and dark, thought
Rose. Why were so many lights off? And where was everyone else? The
cleaners, the maintenance guys, the bolshy security guards?
‘Wilson, I’ve got the Lottery money!’ she called, as she looked into Storage A,
but no one was there. She walked down the west link corridor. Far off, a tinny
radio was playing, some Irish comedian’s voice echoing in the dark. Then there
was a crunch. As though the radio had been dropped or punched or stamped
upon, leaving only silence, save for the low hum of pressure from the pipes.
‘Wilson?’ called Rose, as she walked into Storage B.
Oh God, the dummies.
Here they stood, the shop-window dummies, frozen in a display no one could
see. They always seemed to be waiting, paused, poised, anticipating a next
moment that never came. Rose shivered. They were unsettling enough in the
glare of a tableau upstairs but down here, in the dark, they were creepier than
ever.
She called out, ‘Wilson, where are you?’ as she walked further into the long,
low room. So many dummies. This was the main storage area for the design
department, so dozens of dummies were stacked in the dark, standing three or
four deep. Some were in the latest fashions. Some were naked. Some had been
bisected, a top-half plonked on the concrete floor next to its own legs. Some
were male, some were female, some were …
Moving.
A dummy moved.
A dummy turned and looked at her.
A plastic dummy turned its head to look at Rose, and as her heart surged and
hammered, she laughed, in shock, she said, ‘Wilson! Is that you? Don’t be so
stupid, you scared me to death!’
Wilson said nothing, just taking a single step forward, a lurch, in his
mannequin disguise. Rose thought, This is offensive, tricking a female member
of staff, all alone, here in the dark, except, hold on, Bernie Wilson’s short, he’s
about five foot three and this mannequin is six foot tall, so how …?
Another dummy moved. And another. And another.
They jerked as if they had never moved before. Creaking with the sound of
plastic joints being tested for the first time. Five dummies, six dummies, seven,
all their heads turning to face Rose. Eyes blank, not eyes at all, just curves in the
plastic. And yet somehow …
They could see her.
Rose was scared, and furious. ‘All right, that’s not very funny, whoever you
are, now stop it!’ But her voice seemed to provoke them, activating a wave of
movement across both walls, a crowd of dummies jerking into life. Her mind
was racing, trying to rationalise this; there must be, what, 30 people dressed as
dummies, 40, but even if the entire downstairs staff had ganged up on her, they
still couldn’t gather a flashmob on this scale, so how, and why, and who …?
The top-half turned its head to look up at her.
The naked female bisected top-half. Three feet tall, punky black wig, lips
painted scarlet. It looked at Rose. It craned its head to one side as though
considering her.
And then the legs. The separated legs tottered, steadied, then turned in Rose’s
direction.
Remote control, thought Rose. Whoever had planned this, they had remote
control, and strings, and wires, and levers, they’d spent money on this. Okay,
this would make a great display upstairs for Hallowe’en. But why here, why
now?!
Blood was thundering in her head, fear and fury and the shame of being
tricked, and she went to storm out of Storage B—
But a gang of dummies lurched into action, with a surge of creaks and clicks
and clacks, coordinated now, as though rapidly learning how to move. They
blocked the way out.
This wasn’t a joke. This was intimidation.
‘You’re in so much trouble. All of you. If you’re doing this, Wilson, I can tell
you right now, I’m reporting you.’
One of the dummies stepped forward. The ringleader. A male dummy, in 501s
and a bright yellow T-shirt.
It walked towards Rose.
‘Okay, so who are you? Come on, stop kidding around. I told you, you’re in
so much trouble.’ But as she spoke, it kept advancing and she shrank back
against the wall. Trapped.
 The dummy came closer. Behind it, the ranks of mannequins stepping in the
same direction. The bottom-half legs tip-toeing with a delicate tac-tac-tac on the
concrete floor.
As the dummy advanced, it raised one arm. Its hand flexed open, as if
preparing for a karate chop. Rose saw a glint of light on the hand, a reflection of
dark liquid, perhaps oil, perhaps …
Blood?
She looked up in horror as the hand reached its full height, and the dummy
stared down with its terrible blank face.
Then a man reached out of the darkness and took hold of her hand and said,
‘Run.’
 2

Enter the Doctor

They ran!
Rose found herself being pulled along a long, dark corridor by a tall man in a
leather jacket.
Behind them, the dummies were learning to run. Jerking, creaking, lurching,
lolloping, but gathering speed, they began to give chase.
The man cannoned into the goods lift, pulling Rose with him, and stabbed the
close-door button. The dummies were getting closer. He stabbed the button again
and again and the doors began to slide shut. But the foremost dummy, a tall
tennis-outfit male with a skull shaped into a yellow crest, ran faster, reaching
out. The doors closed on its outstretched arm.
The doors should have re-opened but Rose heard a shrill whirring; the man,
the stranger, was holding a thin metal device, making it vibrate against the lift’s
control panel. He seemed to have jammed the doors. The dummy was stuck, its
arm still inside the lift, thrashing and grasping at the air, trying to reach her. To
strangle her. Behind the tennis player, a crowd of dummies pushed forward,
filling the gap in the doors with their impassive plastic faces.
The man stepped forward.
Grabbed hold of the dummy’s arm.
Yanked, with such force, Rose thought he was going to break the man-
dressed-as-a-dummy’s arm.
She cried out. ‘Don’t,’ but he heaved again and—
Pop!
The arm came off.
He’d pulled a man’s arm off.
As the doors closed, he threw the arm at Rose. Still in shock, she caught it,
expecting a horror-show of blood and bone, but …
The end of the arm was a flat, solid oval. Like the detached arm of an actual
mannequin. But it had been moving, she’d seen it; the fingers had been flexing.
She felt them now, as the man pressed the ground floor button and the lift began
to rise, but the fingers were stiff, fixed, solid, plastic.
 And now Rose felt overwhelmed. She was scared and furious but most of all
she felt ashamed of herself. She’d always imagined that she’d cope in a crisis,
that she’d be clever and calm and insightful. She’d even had a secret hope that
she would be magnificent. Instead, she’d been cowed and stupid and helpless.
‘Okay then,’ she said, ‘very funny, who are they, students?’
‘Why would they be students?’ said the man—what was that, a northern
accent?
‘Because only students would be stupid enough to dress up and think that was
funny. And you’d only get students in that many numbers, what is it, Rag Week
or something?’
He looked at her as though seeing her for the first time. ‘That makes sense.
Well done. They’re not students.’
God, this man was condescending! ‘Whoever they are,’ Rose said, ‘when
Wilson finds them, he’s gonna call the police.’
‘Who’s Wilson?’
‘The caretaker.’
‘Wilson’s dead.’
The lift doors opened and the man ran into the ground floor maintenance
corridor, Rose following. He spun around on the spot and applied that little
whirring stick to the lift controls. The panel burst into flames with a cascade of
sparks. The lift doors stayed open, locked, blocking any pursuit from the
basement.
‘That’s not even funny,’ said Rose.
‘What isn’t?’
‘Saying that about Wilson.’
‘Why are we still talking about him?’ said the man, mystified, as he darted
over to a junction box on the wall. He whirred his device against it, and the
hinges popped off, the cover clattering to the floor, revealing …
Fingers? Rose stared. Fronds? Tentacles?
The wiring inside the box had been swamped by a thick, pink, molten mass,
extruding its surface into a thousand waving fingers. Like someone had melted a
bucket of plasticine into the pipes, except … this was alive, surely?
‘We’ve uncovered a nest,’ said the man, delighted. He leaned in, the waving
fingers reaching towards him. ‘I thought this shop was just a relay. But it’s more
than that. They’ve advanced! The invasion must be close.’
She stared at him, this man. His glee. He was about 40 years old, tough, hard
as nails, she reckoned, lean and fit, with a brutal buzz-cut, dressed in a battered
brown leather jacket, tight black clothes and big sturdy boots. And now he
turned to face her, his blue eyes glittering with delight, strong cheekbones
hollow in the steep fluorescent light, his head bracketed by two splendid ears. He
said, ‘That’s living plastic,’ and even though he spoke nonsense, Rose found
herself transfixed. ‘It’s worse than I thought, it’s infested the infrastructure of
this entire building, which means I’ll have to blow the whole place up. With
this.’
And he reached into his pocket and took out a bomb.
At least, it looked like a bomb, it was literally like a bomb from 24, a metal
box with a red digital number counting down: 80, 79, 78 …
Rose felt numb now, too many shocks rendering her speechless and passive as
the man shoved open the fire door onto Vere Street, propelled her out, then
stepped back inside to stand on the threshold of the shop, holding up his bomb as
if this happened every day and saying quite matter-of-factly, ‘I might well die in
the process but don’t you worry about me, you go home and have your lovely
beans on toast, off you go, and don’t tell anyone about this or you’ll get them
killed, bye!’
And he pulled the door shut—slam!
Rose stood there, bewildered.
What the hell?
Then the door opened again. And now the man was beaming. ‘I’m the Doctor,
by the way, what’s your name?’
‘Rose.’
‘Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!’
And, slam! He was gone again.
Rose turned around, finding herself on a cold night in a perfectly ordinary
London. Specks of rain in the air. Very little traffic, just the sound of a bus
rumbling through Cavendish Square. She walked towards the main road,
thoughts spinning. That was a trick, obviously. A trap, a con, a stunt. But in a
basement where no one could see it? What for? And those special effects, like
the top-half dummy, and the little waving fronds, that must’ve cost a fortune, let
alone paying all those people to dress up and act the goat, why would anyone
waste money like that?
She thought of many things as she walked onto Oxford Street. Above all, she
thought of the man’s bright blue eyes. She was so lost in thought that it took her
a moment to realise she was still counting under her breath: 29, 28, 27, 26 …
The bomb!
Rose broke into a run, hurtled to the other side of the road, dived around the
corner of New Bond Street and turned to look back round at the shop as—
Henrik’s exploded.
 All five storeys expanded for a split-second, like a concrete balloon, then the
surface tension broke as every single window shattered and the walls flew
outwards, powered by a vast ball of fire swelling to fill the entire street. Rose
ducked as huge slabs of concrete smashed into the shops opposite and enormous
tumbling flanks of burning brickwork cascaded down New Bond Street, inches
from where she was standing. She crouched into a ball as rubble and blackened
white goods and shards of glass rained down. She could hear screams, alarms,
the screech of brakes, the night on fire.

Rose stayed for an hour, watching the ruin of Henrik’s burn. She phoned her
mother, said ‘I’m fine,’ then hung up. She’d thought herself trapped in her
alcove, stuck behind a brand new hillside of metal, stone and junk. But there
were gaps. She slipped through a doorway—it had once been the entrance to
Henrik’s first floor men’s changing room, now lifted up and dropped down
across the street and yet still standing, at an angle—and climbed over the rubble
to see her former workplace looking like footage of the Blitz, skeletons of walls
silhouetted against bright yellow flames. The contents of the store had been
scattered in all directions. Shirts and trousers and dresses draped across far-off
lampposts, on fire, boxes of burning curtains, broken sofas, tables and chairs, a
row of battered washing machines with their doors hanging open in a startled
‘O’. And from the depths of the fire, Rose could hear glass bottles popping, the
smoke laced with the smell of musk, amber and patchouli.
She saw the police arrive, and the fire engines. They sealed off the street, but
Rose stood behind cross-hatchings of broken rebar and went unnoticed. She
watched from her barricade, thinking of Wilson, the security guards, the
cleaners, the sheer number of people who must have died in there. Killed by that
man, she thought, the Doctor.
After a while, she saw that Lottery woman from the Green Glade Café being
held back by police. The woman was drunk, furious, yelling, ‘We’re having a
ceremony! At 8.01 precisely!’ Then she sank to her knees, sobbing. Two
policemen lifted her to her feet and led her away. Rose thought she should run to
the police, she should tell them what she’d seen. And yet …
Don’t tell anyone about this or you’ll get them killed.
She watched the wall that had once separated the Food Hall from Cosmetics
collapse into flames and dust. And then, dazed, tired, starving, bursting for a pee,
she stepped down from the rubble and became aware that all this time, ever since
the lift, she’d been holding the dummy’s arm. She should get rid of it, she should
throw it away, she should chuck it onto the flames, but …
She held on to it. And Rose went home.
 3

Life at No.143

Voices rang out across the Powell Estate. ‘She’s back!’ ‘She’s alive!’ ‘She’s
here!’ Neighbours stood in their doorways to look over the railings as Rose
wandered home, their cries echoing up and down the concrete gullies and
canyons. Rose smiled, embarrassed but delighted, gave a little ta-daa gesture as
she reached the central square and laughed out loud as five or six people
applauded her. She gave them a wave with the plastic arm. Questions hailed
down: What happened? How are you? Who’s to blame? But they sank into
background noise as a woman in double-denim burst out of the Enoch Tower and
raced towards Rose like a little blonde missile. Rose flinched, wondering if she
was going to get a hug or a slap—
A hug, of course, whoomph! Her mum grabbed hold of her and squeezed her
tight. Jackie Tyler, five foot nothing, age not relevant, karaoke champion of the
Spinning Wheel, life and soul of the party but a monumental lightning storm
when angry, now sobbing and laughing and then, somehow, finding a reason to
give Rose a punch on the arm.
‘You stupid girl!’
‘Why am I stupid?’
‘You just are!’
And then she hugged Rose again. She wrapped an arm around her daughter
and led her inside. More neighbours clapped and cheered and Jackie waved as
though she had singlehandedly rescued Rose and brought her home to safety.

The Powell Estate had been built in 1973. Two towers of sixteen floors, with six
flats per storey, rising above a squat quadrant with shops on the ground level; a
chemist, a newsagent, Dev the Bookie’s, Chicken Shack & Rack and a shop
which failed and changed every six months, currently cards and gift-wrap. One
tower was unofficially called Enoch, the other Powell, in the mistaken belief that
the MP Enoch Powell had christened the estate, when in fact it had been named
after the developer’s wife’s mother, Mary Jane Powell, a socialite and drunk who
died falling off a balcony in 1951. The Tylers lived in Enoch, on the fourteenth
floor, No.143. A bright red door opened into a narrow hallway lined with photos
of Rose’s father, leading to a lounge with a big TV in one corner opposite a
hatch and doorway which separated off the tiny, cluttered kitchen.
The flat was never quiet at the best of times, but tonight it was open house.
‘Wartime spirit!’ cried Jackie. People came to and fro to hug and kiss Rose, as if
to convince themselves she was truly alive. Jackie kept the kettle boiling and the
beers flowing, and when Mickey arrived—a huge hug for Rose, ‘I thought I’d
lost you, baby, don’t ever do that to me again!’—he was dragooned into
providing refreshments, Jackie giving him £5 to go and buy crisps. Mrs
Jayasundera came round with a tray of baked apples. Ru and Bau from No.136
knelt on the floor in front of Rose and wept, holding her hands in prayer.
Howard from the market brought round a bag of Cox’s Pippins, and even two of
the Corcoran kids—no one liked the Corcoran kids—came round to check that
Rose was okay. In the background, on the television, Friday night programmes
had been suspended, the BBC carrying live news from the site of the terrorist
atrocity in Central London. Footage of Henrik’s, all rubble and flames, glowed
on the screen.
Rose watched it all with a faint dazed smile, thanking everyone politely,
eating both an apple and a baked apple. Then she shushed everyone as the TV
news reported a miracle of sorts. It turned out that a series of fake memos had
been sent that afternoon, dispatching security guards, cleaners and basement
staff to the Henrik’s depot on Armitage Lane West, so they weren’t inside the
building when it blew up. Whoever had planted the bomb had taken care to
evacuate the site, although there was still no sign of the Senior Caretaker,
Bernard Wilson.
The babble went on around Rose—Jackie on the phone declaring to cousin
Sue, ‘She’s here now! She looks a wreck! Skin like an old bible, I swear, if you
walked in here now you’d think I was her daughter,’ while Mickey asked if
anyone minded, switched off the news and channel-surfed to find the football—
but she sank into her own thoughts. So the Doctor wasn’t a murderer, after all.
He’d said that poor old Wilson was dead, and he’d sounded heartless, ruthless …
but not guilty.
And yet. What about the other people? Dressed as dummies? Surely the police
would have found their bodies? Unless they’d found … well, plastic. Cold, hard
plastic, lying in the ruins. But those mannequins had moved, they’d walked,
they’d run. Living plastic, the Doctor had said, but how can plastic be alive …?
Enough, she thought, enough, and she slapped the dummy’s arm into
Mickey’s hands. ‘Take that. Take it and get rid of it.’
‘Well, good thinking, yeah,’ said Mickey, with that gleam of an idea in his
eye. ‘Cos what you need is a good drink inside you. My treat.’
 ‘I’ve got a cup of tea.’
‘No, you need something stronger, let’s go down the pub, you and me, right
now.’
She smiled, knowing Mickey all too well. ‘You want to see the match, don’t
you?’
He looked horrified. ‘No way! It’s finished, it’s over, we missed it, this is all
about you, babe. Although …’ He couldn’t help breaking into a grin; Mickey
Smith had the most disarming smile. ‘I could still catch the highlights.’
‘I knew it. You daft sod. Go on then, go, don’t worry about me, I’m
knackered, I’m gonna go to bed,’ said Rose, and she tapped the plastic arm. ‘Just
make sure you get rid of that thing.’
He leaned in, kissed her, said quietly, ‘D’you want me to stay the night?’ But
she smiled at him, no thanks, and he stood up and crossed the room. He paused
in the doorway to pretend the plastic hand was strangling him—Rose could’ve
bet ten quid he’d do that—and then he gave a goodbye wave with the arm and
sauntered off with a cheery, ‘See ya!’
Jackie cupped Rose’s face and said, ‘Oh look at you, you’re exhausted.’ Then
she added ‘And your roots need doing too.’ She began shooing everyone out of
the flat.
Rose heaved herself out of the chair, exhaustion hitting her now. She sloped
into her bedroom. She couldn’t even be bothered brushing her teeth, she just
yanked off her clothes, threw them on the floor and crawled under the duvet.
Even then, sleep wouldn’t come. The whole night kept replaying, churning
behind her eyes. Dummies. Flames. Blue eyes. But most of all, the shame that
she had felt earlier grew stronger now, gaining in power in the darkness. The
feeling that she’d let everyone down; most of all, herself. She wondered, is this a
girl-thing? Would a boy be down the pub with Mickey, laughing, burning off the
adrenalin with football and beers, while she lay here feeling embarrassed? She
was astonished that she’d surrendered, and allowed that man to push her around.
She had expected so much better of herself, and maybe that was the real
problem. No one else expected better of her, ever. School never had. Mum
didn’t. Jimmy Stone had told her she was thick. Even Mickey, who adored her,
knew he didn’t need to try very hard. But secretly, tucked away in her heart,
Rose had always thought herself better than anyone else could see … until
tonight. Now she knew that the others were right. She was plain, dumb, slow
Rose Tyler, no good in a fight, no help in an emergency, no use to anyone.
It is an enormous blow, to be what everyone expects you to be. She drifted off
to sleep, borne there by defeat, dismay and disappointment.
3 a.m. Rose surfaced, hearing the swish and sway of the cat flap swinging to and
fro. They’d never had a cat; Jackie was always promising to nail the flap down
to stop strays getting in, but she’d never got round to it.
Rose propped herself up on one elbow, listening. A shuffle of noise in the
hallway, at floor level. And then she heard a tiny tap, low down on her bedroom
door. Then a scrabbling. Then stronger, tic-tic-tic against the wood.
She called out, ‘Go away!’
A pause.
Then the scrabbling retreated. Rat-a-tat-tat on the laminate floor. She waited,
listening hard, but the flat had fallen back into silence.
Bloody cats, thought Rose.
She curled the duvet around her and sank back into darkness. In her deep,
dreamless sleep, she didn’t hear the soft, slow tap from the living room.
Like a finger, tapping, waiting.
 4

Plastic Attack

7.30 a.m., the alarm bleeped, and Rose rolled out of bed to begin her Saturday
shift. But then her mother’s voice carried through. ‘No point in getting up,
darlin’, you’ve got no job to go to.’ A pause, then, ‘Although if you want to
make me breakfast, I won’t complain.’
Rose had a shower then microwaved some porridge for the two of them.
Jackie was in full flow; possibly, on some level, in the eternal and mysterious
war between mothers and daughters, she reckoned she’d been too kind to Rose
the night before, and now she was restoring the balance by going on the attack.
‘That job was giving you airs and graces,’ said Jackie. ‘Let’s face it,
sweetheart, you’re many things, but you’re not West End. Now Martin & Heath
said they needed someone, that’s right up your street.’
‘D’you mean the butcher’s?’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘They’re not even proper, they sell scrag ends.’
‘There you go,’ said Jackie, victorious. ‘Airs and graces! And don’t tell me
you’re too grand to apply for compensation. They owe you, Henrik’s, you’ve
had genuine shock and trauma. It’s easy to apply, I’ve seen the form, it’s three
pages long, 20 minutes’ work, that’s your lot. I know for a fact, Arianna got two
thousand quid off the council because the man at the desk said she looked Greek.
I know she is Greek, but that’s not the point, it was a valid claim.’
‘Well, look, I suppose, yeah, but give it a day or two,’ said Rose. ‘They’re still
searching the wreckage. I don’t want to look ghoulish.’
‘Oh I’m ghoulish, am I?’ said Jackie, seizing offence out of thin air. ‘That’s a
lovely thing to say to your own mother!’ And she grabbed her mug of tea and
marched off to her bedroom. ‘Thank you very much indeed!’
Rose sighed. She needed a new job, as fast as possible. Not just for the money,
but to get away from her mother.
Then she heard that scrabbling again. The tic-tic-tic of claws on flooring. The
bloody cat! Where was it, behind the settee? She’d forgotten about waking at 3
a.m., only remembering now, with a rush of anger. Her mother again! Always
promising to nail down that cat flap, except …
 A promise to fix the cat flap had been one of the last things Rose’s father had
said, on the day he died, or so the story said. It was part of the family lore, the
day Pete and Jackie Tyler were due to go to Stuart and Sarah’s wedding, back in
1987. He’d popped out to buy a wedding present. And never came home. Killed
by a hit-and-run driver on Jordan Road. Life went on in No.143 but his promises
went unfulfilled. To fix that cupboard door. To glue down that lino. To replace
those polystyrene tiles and nail down the cat flap. Over the years, other people
stepped in to help, replacing doors and carpet and light bulbs. Everything except
the cat flap. ‘I’ll do it!’ insisted Jackie, a little bit too shrill, every time, and yet
she left it undone. Like she was still waiting for him to come home.
Rose swallowed her anger. She’d go and give her mum a great big hug and
say sorry, as soon as she could find the cat. She looked behind the settee, but tic-
tic-tic, the noise scattered away into the corner of the room. Funny sound,
thought Rose. Too light for a cat, too … busy. The noise came again, scrabbling,
scratching, scraping from behind the armchair, a dark corner enclosed by stacks
of Jackie’s old magazines. Now I’ve got you, thought Rose.
She stepped towards the chair.
The scrabbling intensified.
She was holding her breath, as she crept closer.
Behind the chair, the noise became a drumming on the floor. That thing was
furious. Or maybe drawing her in. On purpose. Like it wanted a fight. Rose took
hold of the arms of the chair, ready to yank the entire thing away to reveal the
intruder …
But then she heard the cat flap.
Not another one! She abandoned the chair and stormed down the hall. Passing
the framed photographs of her father, blond, watery-eyed Pete, a nervous smile
on his face, like he was always about to be found out. Dad, this is your fault,
thought Rose, and she could see the cat flap swinging, something nudging it
from the other side. She knelt down, ready to grab the little swine, and as she
lifted up the flap—
There was a face!
His face.
The Doctor. On his hands and knees outside, staring through the cat flap with
a big, silly smile.
‘Hello!’ he said.
Rose stood up, determined to take control this time, as she swung open the
front door. But before she could say, ‘What are you doing here?’ he said it first:
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I live here!’ protested Rose.
 ‘Well, what do you do that for?’
She spluttered. He was always one sentence ahead. She found herself reaching
for words, saying hopelessly, ‘Because I do.’
The Doctor held up his little metal device. ‘I must’ve got the wrong signal. I
was scanning for plastic. You’re not plastic, are you?’ And he tapped her on the
head. ‘Nope, bonehead. Bye then!’
He turned to go but she grabbed hold of his leather jacket and yanked him
back. ‘Oh no you don’t,’ she said. ‘Inside. Right now.’
She pulled him into the hallway and slammed the door shut. But Rose had
barely hauled the Doctor five steps inside before Jackie interrupted.
‘Who are you then?’ she called out from her bedroom, leaning back from her
dressing-table to see.
‘Hello,’ said the Doctor in that blunt way of his, and he gave Jackie a little
wave as he stood in her bedroom doorway, looking around as though every
single detail of No.143 fascinated him. Jackie stood up and Rose’s heart sank as
she saw her mother’s familiar little glance up-and-down, registering the presence
of a man in the flat. Jackie cinched the belt on her dressing gown a little tighter
and shifted her weight, making herself shorter so she could look up and blink
more helplessly. Mascara as subtle as a potato print. ‘Hello stranger.’
‘He’s from the council,’ said Rose. Lying to her mother came easily. ‘Leave us
alone, you get dressed, I’ll deal with it.’ She walked ahead into the living room
but then looked back to see that the Doctor had stayed behind, staring down at
her mother.
‘She deserves compensation,’ said Jackie. ‘We’re talking millions! I’d happily
talk you through it. At length. Except here I am. In my dressing gown.’ She
moved a little closer to him. ‘And there’s a strange man in my bedroom.’
‘So?’ said the Doctor.
‘Well,’ said Jackie. ‘Anything could happen.’
‘No,’ he said, and walked on.
Rose burst out laughing. Maybe he wasn’t so bad, this man. He had a tough-
guy swagger, clumping into the living room in his heavy boots, but his eyes
caught the morning light and glittered, like he was much more fun than he first
appeared. And then Rose thought: God help me, I’m turning into my mother.
Don’t fancy him!
She checked to see that Jackie had gone back into her bedroom, then said in a
low voice, ‘Listen, seriously, we need to go to the police, both of us. And if you
won’t, I’m going on my own and I’m telling them all about you.’
He was ignoring her, picking up a copy of Heat magazine. He glanced at the
double-spread celebrity wedding.’That won’t last. He’s gay and she’s an alien.’
 ‘Excuse me,’ said Rose, ‘I’m not kidding. I don’t know who those dummy
people were, and I don’t know what that stuff was in the pipes, but it’s not funny.
Wilson’s still missing, and you said he was dead.’
But now he was looking at himself in the mirror. Ducking to and fro to study
his face from different angles. ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Could’ve been worse. Nice
ears. I’m never ginger, though, why is that?’
Rose was getting fed up. ‘Doctor,’ she insisted, then adding, ‘Doctor who is
it? What’s your name?’
But he looked up, alert, as they both heard the tic-tic-tic noise. That scrabbling
again, from behind the chair. ‘Have you got a cat?’
‘No, it must be a stray, they come in off the estate. Anyway! Will you listen to
me? I need to know what happened to Wilson. And what entitles you to go
around blowing up buildings? There’s, like, 300 of us unemployed, thanks to
you.’
But he just stood there, concentrating, those fine ears like a radar. ‘Doesn’t
sound like a cat.’
‘Oh God, well if it’s a rat, don’t tell my mother.’ In the background, Jackie’s
hairdryer started up. Thank God she couldn’t hear this. ‘She is literally like a
cartoon when it comes to rats.’
‘Let’s have a look,’ said the Doctor, and he lifted up the chair.
No cat. No rat.
Just the plastic arm from last night, lying on the floor. Palm facing up, fingers
curled inwards, like some creature that had died in the dark.
‘What’s that doing there?’ said Rose, annoyed. Someone must be playing a
trick. ‘I gave it to Mickey, he took it with him, I saw him, he carried it out.’
‘It came back,’ said the Doctor, his voice grim. He carefully put the chair to
one side and squatted down in front of the arm. As though wary of it.
Rose said, ‘Well how did it get inside here?’
‘Through the cat flap.’
‘Who’d do that, though?’
‘No one. It did it on its own.’
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ said Rose. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
But then, all on its own, the arm flipped 180 degrees, to land palm down, the
fingers like legs now, exactly like legs, propelling it along, fast, scuttling with a
tic-tic-tic on the floor, and it ran to the Doctor, climbed up his body, all the way
up to his neck, where the hand began strangling him.
The Doctor was being strangled by a plastic hand.
The Doctor was standing in the middle of No.143, her home, being strangled
by an animated plastic hand intent on killing him.
 Rose stood there staring as he said ‘Gaah!’ and ‘Aaak!’ and held on to the arm
with both hands, trying to pull it away. Exactly like Mickey had done, in the
same room, last night, the same joke. Except she could see the fingers digging
into the Doctor’s neck.
And she thought: I am doing nothing again.
She threw herself at the Doctor. Grabbed hold of the arm. She pulled and
pulled, the Doctor heaving at the arm too, but it wouldn’t shift. It was locked in a
death grip. His eyes were boggling now, spit flecking at his lips. It was killing
him!
She pulled to the right. The Doctor pulled to the left. Then they both tried
pulling different ways at the same time so they toppled over, landing on Jackie’s
bamboo-and-glass coffee table. It shattered into sticks and shards.
The Doctor rolled onto his back—even in the panic, Rose realised, he was
protecting her from the broken glass—and she straddled his chest, heaving at the
arm. But its grip tightened as the Doctor let go, digging into his inside-pocket,
searching for something. Rose was left alone to hold the arm, and dear God, the
strength of it, the heat! She could feel plastic veins and plastic muscles bulging
inside the plastic skin.
Then the Doctor pulled out his metal device, dug it right into the arm and
made it whirr, loud and shrill.
The arm stopped. It stiffened like a dead thing, and Rose pulled it away from
the Doctor’s neck. She saw a patina of cracks scatter across its skin, like old
varnish.
The Doctor struggled to catch his breath. And then he grinned at her. That
brilliant smile. Rose looked down and couldn’t help it, she burst out laughing.
‘What the hell?’
It was Jackie. Standing in the doorway. Seeing her daughter panting and
dishevelled, straddling the chest of a man in a leather jacket lying in the
wreckage of her precious coffee table while holding a spare arm.
‘Rose Tyler,’ she said. ‘You … tart!’
 5

The Turn of the Earth

Rose ran along the walkway, chasing the Doctor. ‘Wait a minute,’ she yelled. As
soon as Jackie had appeared, he’d stood up, brushed the glass off his clothes,
taken the plastic arm off Rose, said ‘Thanks!’ with that daft grin and strode out.
Jackie had started yelling about the table, the mess, the shame of it, but Rose had
barged past her, heading after the Doctor.
She caught up with him as he yomped down the stairwell. Behind her, she
could hear Jackie, still yelling, announcing to the entire estate that the coffee
table was a gift from her own mother. ‘Real bamboo, not fake!’
But Rose focused on the Doctor. ‘Hold on a minute!’ she said. ‘You can’t just
go swanning off.’
‘Yes, I can, this is me, swanning off, see you around, Rose Tyler.’ He said her
name as though knowing it gave him power over her.
She fought back. ‘Well who are you, then?’
‘I told you. The Doctor.’
‘Yeah, but Doctor what?’
‘Just, the Doctor.’
‘The Doctor?’
‘Hello,’ he said, and gave her a little wave with the plastic arm, as he kept
charging down, down, down. They rattled along together, tenth floor, ninth, Rose
running to keep up. ‘Nobody’s called “the Doctor”.’
‘I am.’
‘Is that supposed to sound impressive?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Well you’ve failed.’
‘Really?’ He stopped dead. How ridiculous; he looked upset. He said in a
small voice, ‘I like it.’ And then he shook it off, taking the stairs two at a time.
Seventh floor, sixth, fifth.
Rose kept following. ‘But that arm was moving. I saw it! The fingers were
digging into you, they had knuckles and everything. It was trying to strangle
you! You can’t just walk away, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on.’
‘No, I don’t.’
 ‘All right then. I’ll go to the police! I’ll tell everyone. You said, if I did that,
I’d get people killed. So, your choice. Tell me, or I’ll start talking.’
‘Now you’re threatening me, Rose Tyler. Proud of yourself?’
They reached the ground floor, the Doctor bursting through the doors to head
across the concrete plaza. He lobbed the plastic arm up into the air and it landed
in one of the industrial grey metal rubbish bins behind him; he hadn’t even
looked in that direction, and yet achieved a perfect hit.
‘Wait a minute,’ Rose called out. ‘You can’t chuck that thing away, isn’t it
dangerous?’
‘Not any more. I killed it.’
‘How can you kill it if it isn’t alive?’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t make any sense at all. Fantastic, isn’t it?’
She kept following, not so angry now, more fascinated, trotting to keep up
with his speed as he strode towards the rear of the estate, past the garages, on to
the bare scrubland beyond. She kept her voice calm, trying to reason with him.
‘So come on. You can tell me, I’ve seen enough. Are you the police?’
‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘I was just passing through. I’m a long way from home.’
‘Which is where?’
‘Miles away. Miles and miles.’
‘What, like, Manchester?’
‘Bit further than that.’
‘But tell me, cos I really need to know. Those plastic things. How come they
keep chasing after me?’
‘Oh, suddenly the entire world revolves around you. You were just an
accident. You got in the way, that’s all.’
‘That arm tried to kill me!’
‘It was after me, not you. Last night, in the shop, I was there, nice and busy,
you blundered in, almost ruined the whole thing. This morning, I was tracking it
down, but it was tracking me down at the same time. The only link it had to me
was you. It came looking for you because you’d met me.’
This sounded to Rose like every story every man had ever told her. ‘So you’re
saying the world actually revolves around you?’
‘Sort of, yeah.’ He had a massive grin on his face.
‘You’re full of it.’
‘I’ve missed this.’
‘Missed what?’
‘Little human beings trotting along at my side and asking daft questions.
Those were the days!’
 And now Rose stopped. Making a stand. ‘Hey. I’m not your secretary. And
I’m not your pet. Have you got that?’
To her surprise, he stopped and looked at her with genuine alarm. ‘Oh no, no,
no,’ he said. ‘You don’t understand. Those people, asking questions. I loved
them. Oh my God, I loved them all.’ It was the strangest thing, he looked as
though he could cry. Then he turned and walked away.
And still, she followed. ‘Okay. So. This plastic. If you’re not the police, who
else knows about it?’
‘No one. Just me.’
‘You’re on your own?
‘It’s better that way.’
‘Shouldn’t you tell someone?’
‘Like who? Who else is there? I mean, you lot, what good are you? All you do
is eat chips and go to bed and watch telly, while all the time there’s a war going
on, right underneath your nose.’
‘But … a war with who?’
‘Long story.’
‘What, too long for me? Do I look like I can’t cope?’
He smiled at that. ‘No, you look like you can cope with anything.’
That’s more like it, she thought, he gets me now. ‘Well then who is it? What
kind of war? I mean, why use shop-window dummies? Does that mean
someone’s trying to take over Britain’s shops?’
He laughed out loud, and said, ‘No, it’s not a price war,’ and she laughed too.
Then in a second, his smile was gone as he said, ‘They want to overthrow the
human race and destroy you all. D’you believe me?’
‘No.’
‘But you’re still listening.’
‘I know,’ she said, ‘I must be mad,’ and they both found themselves coming to
a halt, the battle between them exhausted. They looked at each other properly,
two survivors of extraordinary events.
‘Really though, Doctor,’ she said quietly. ‘Who are you?’
He rubbed his head. Heaved a tired sigh. Looked left and right, perhaps
checking that no one else could hear. They were alone; the edge of the estate was
a flat, open wasteland leading to the motorway, far-off in the distance, with an
empty car park to the left. Not quite empty. Someone had left a tall, chunky,
dark-blue box on the tarmac, some sort of old wooden hut, inlaid with windows.
But Rose only considered it for a second before the Doctor lifted himself to his
full height and looked into her eyes.
 Rose saw red weals around his neck, where the plastic hand had dug deep. She
saw cuts from the broken glass, little flecks of blood on his jaw, a deeper slice
across his cheekbone. And she wondered if he let himself show any pain to
anyone, as he said, ‘D’you know what we were saying? About the Earth
revolving?’ He gave an exhausted smile. ‘It’s like when you were a kid. The first
time they tell you the world’s turning and you can’t quite believe it cos
everything looks like it’s standing still.’ And now she felt as though the Doctor
could see through her every pretence and compromise, to stare right through to
her soul. ‘I can feel it,’ he said. ‘The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our
feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour and the entire planet is hurtling
round the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour, and I can feel it. We’re
falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world,
and if we let go …’
He broke the moment. Stepped back. Rose gasped, as though gravity could
have snapped in that second, to fling them off the world and into the dark. But
no, she was still here, on her plain old estate, standing at the edge of an empty
car park with this terrifying man.
‘That’s who I am,’ said the Doctor. ‘Now forget me, Rose Tyler. Go home.’
He walked away.
Rose turned, wanting to run, some primal survival instinct telling her to get
away from him as fast as she could. She walked across the scrubland, not
looking back. The Enoch Tower was waiting for her in the distance. Home and
safety and Mum.
But then she heard a noise. The strangest of noises, like nothing she had ever
heard before. A grinding, heaving, aching sound, like some sort of ancient
engine lurching into life. A wind sprang up, papers and leaves blowing in a
vortex around her.
The noise began to fade and she turned around to look at the Doctor, to see if
he’d heard it or caused it. But he was gone. Impossibly gone. She’d walked
away for only 20 seconds or so, there was no way he could have crossed the
wide-open space.
But the Doctor had vanished. And so had the big blue box.
 6

Life at No.90

‘Hey, it’s my woman! Kit off!’ Mickey stood in the doorway of his flat, No.90
Powell Tower, and gave Rose the biggest smile, then the biggest hug. ‘It’s still
on the news,’ he said. ‘Henrik’s and everything. You’re lucky to be alive. I keep
thinking, if you’d been ten minutes later …’
‘Yeah, well, I wasn’t,’ said Rose. She kissed him, then kissed him some more,
then made her way through to the kitchen. ‘Hello, you lot.’
Mickey’s little gang sat in the kitchen: Mook Jayasundera, a shy, tiny lad with
big staring eyes; Patrice Okereke, the gangling, grinning joker of the pack; and
Sally Salter, born Stephen Salter, sharp, spiky-haired and cautious but always,
Rose thought, smiling at some private joke. They all whooped and stood and
hugged her and asked about last night while Mickey made them coffee.
Rose loved this little gang. They called themselves a band, rehearsing their
R&B once a week, after hours, in the garage where Mickey worked, but they had
few musical ambitions beyond earning £60 in the Lamb & Flag once a month;
really, they were together for the laughs. And laugh they did, this untidy little
kitchen often full of booze and music. Rose thought the company he kept was
one of the best things about Mickey. His crew weren’t just mates, they were all
escaping something; the flat had only one bedroom but the living room settee
was usually taken up by whichever member of the band had fallen out with
someone the night before. Mook was the youngest of six brothers and came to
No.90 so he could gradually, cautiously, definitely be gay. Patrice held down
three jobs, saving for the day he could leave home and escape his mother’s
sullen boyfriend. Sally had never gone back to her parents since starting to
transition, calling her old home Stephen’s house, keeping a toothbrush and
clothes at five different flats scattered across the estate. And Mickey was the
centre of their lives. He’d been on the housing list at 16, and at 18 he’d been
granted that holy grail, a flat of his own. The first thing he did, when given the
keys to No.90, was to prop that door open and make others welcome.
Rose watched him now, taking forever to make the coffee. Mickey was a lean,
chippy strip of a lad, with that winning smile, bristling with energy all day long.
Even now, he kept darting to and fro—a little dance with Patrice, drumming out
a new riff with teaspoons on Mook’s head, showing Sally the Daily Mirror’s
front-page photo of Henrik’s in which, he swore, if you got a magnifying glass,
you could see Rose in the rubble, there, right there, that little yellow blob—and
she thought, I’m lucky. Mickey Smith is a good man.
Patrice took last night’s curry out of the fridge and they all helped themselves.
Rose considered this a radical improvement on Mickey’s home cooking, his
favourite dish being Butter Pepper Rice: rice with butter and pepper. Now, they
all ate and joshed and hooted, the normally quiet Mook inventing a physical
impersonation of Henrik’s exploding that had them all howling. Rose knew they
were making an extra effort to cheer her up. And she thought, Yes, this is where
I should be, this is my normal life, and it’s fine. Something strange had entered
her world with the Doctor, but now he was gone. And she was home.
She wondered if No.90 would truly be home, one day. Rose Smith. Tyler-
Smith. Maybe. Her life had been connected to Mickey’s long before they had
started going out with each other. Her mother had been friends with Mickey’s
mum, Odessa, since the ’80s. Along with their mates Sarah, Suzie and Bev,
they’d call themselves the Wednesday Girls, meeting up for wine and chips
every Wednesday night. Mickey was three years older than Rose, and family lore
maintained that he’d visited Baby Rose in hospital on the day she was born. ‘He
imprinted himself,’ Jackie always said. ‘Like a chick.’ Rose would point out that
she’d been a baby, so technically she was the chick. ‘Trust me,’ Jackie would
say, ‘Mickey’s the chick.’
Now, in the kitchen of No.90, Mickey was improvising a song about the fate
of Henrik’s, rhyming ‘explosion’ with ‘emotion’, Sally adding harmonies. Rose
smiled, thinking of everything he’d been through, this daft, larking-about
boyfriend of hers.
Odessa Smith had relied on the Wednesday Girls for one night of laughter in
the week. Other nights were darker. ‘She could never really cope,’ said Jackie.
‘With money. With men. With anything really, poor soul.’ One day, when
Mickey was five years old, Odessa had gone to her bedroom and quietly taken
herself out of the world.
Mickey was left with his father, Jackson Moseley Smith, an engineer and part-
time pub-singer who was horrified to find himself a single dad. He worked
longer and longer hours, further and further away from home, until he found a
job on the cruise ships moored at Tower Bridge Upper. He was employed as
Second Engineer, though everyone knew he had ambitions to move up through
the decks to sing on the stages above. A two-month contract was followed by a
six-month contract, and then another, until Jackson Smith sailed away and never
returned. ‘Be fair,’ Jackie always said, ‘he ran away with a broken heart.’
Whether he ever sang on those stages, no one knew.
Rose watched Mickey now, making toast—‘Curry on toast, best meal in the
world!’—and she remembered the saviour of little Mickey’s life. Jackson’s
mother, Rita-Anne. Mickey’s Gran had been blind for 20 years and if blindness
intensifies the other senses, then hers had made her angrier, shrewder and a
better aim with a punch. She was a firebrand, a meddler, a troublemaker, and
absolutely magnificent. If she were here now, thought Rose, she’d clout the side
of his head. ‘Shame on you! Wasting good food!’ She had taken Mickey to live
away from the Powell Estate, moving him to her redbrick terrace on Waterton
Street. But she kept him at his old school, and took Mickey back to the estate to
see the Tylers and his friends at weekends, as well as opening the door of
Waterton Street to anyone and everyone.
The open door, thought Rose. That’s where he got it from. And she smiled as
Mickey and Sally invented a filthy rhyme and hugged each other with laughter.
Rita-Anne’s birthday present for Mickey’s sixteenth was to put him on the
council’s housing list, with the Powell Estate as first preference. ‘I’ll never leave
you, Gran,’ he said, but when No.90 became available, she told him that he was
a pain and a nuisance and she wanted him out. Mickey hugged her, everyone
hugged her, as they packed Mickey’s things into a van and drove him away from
Waterton Street to his new life. Two months later, Rita-Anne tripped on the stair
carpet and broke her neck. Three hundred people came to her funeral. The street
was sealed off for a party which danced and wept till 5 a.m., Mickey Smith
carried on the crowd’s shoulders like a king.
What a life, thought Rose.
But as she watched Mickey tuning his bass guitar, Sally writing down the new
lyrics, Patrice and Mook sorting the washing into clean and dirty (no one was
ever quite sure which pile was which), Rose felt a sense of quiet dismay.
Because she was jealous of Mickey. She envied him his losses and tragedies.
She’d never dare admit it, but my God, she’d think, he’s lived.
What had ever happened in her life? Apart from a lost year with Jimmy Stone
and a few failed exams, she’d lived in the same flat with her mother since the
day she was born. She could spin a tragedy out of her poor old dad, but she’d
only been six months old when he died, and life since then had been a straight,
unaltering line. The most exciting option in her future was the prospect of
moving from No.143 to No.90 and then staying there for years and years to
produce lots of little Smiths, until blonde became grey and the day came when
no one danced at her funeral. Her life was fixed and dull and inevitable.
Until last night.
 Until the Doctor.
My God, she thought, the Doctor. She’d spent all these years waiting for
something to happen, then someone different and strange and powerful had
entered her life and what had she done? She’d let him go!
‘Mickey,’ said Rose, ‘can I use your computer?’

She typed the word Doctor into the search engine.

1,080,000,000 results.
Rose took a sip of tea, typed in:
Doctor Henrik’s explosion
848,000 results.
Doctor bomb dangerous man
2,240,000 results.
Doctor leather jacket
1,900,000 results.
Doctor London March 5
3,450,000 results
I am looking for a mysterious doctor
1,970,000 results.
Rose huffed. Took another sip of tea. Looked around Mickey’s bedroom,
planning a good tidy. From the kitchen she could hear laughter, Sally strumming
the guitar as the debate went on; they’d decided that the name of their band, No
Hot Ashes, was rubbish. They had a booking for tonight, £100 for 30 minutes in
the Brook at Camden, and had taken it as their chance to ‘relaunch the brand’, as
Patrice put it, to much hooting. Now they were throwing around new names.
Mickey and the Mooks. Family Hold Back. The Byzantine Exploration. Best
Day Ever. Carbon Footprint. The Dazzlers. Glitch. Bum. If.
One more go, thought Rose, and she typed in:
Doctor blue box
1,600,000 results
It looked like another list of medical sites, but then a link, six down, caught
her eye, with its machine-gunning question marks:
Have you seen the Doctor????????
She clicked. And there he was.
The Doctor.
A photograph of him, running. Same leather jacket. Panic on his face, he was
holding out his arms and seemed to be yelling. Behind him … was that the Taj
Mahal? With some big blurred birds in the sky.
 And then a gallery of more photos, all grabbed, from a distance or on the run,
alongside some CCTV stills. They showed all sorts of people – mainly a curly-
haired man in a long scarf – but there were dozens of shots of the Doctor, in all
sorts of different places. My God, he travelled! Paris. Berlin. Rio. The Great
Wall of China. An endless beach, somewhere. Was that tundra? And did he never
take off that jacket? She noticed, in three photographs, that the same chunky
wooden box was standing in the background. Did he take it with him? Was it
self-assembly? Like a workman’s hut?
As she looked, Rose’s head was thick with the thud of her heart, her right knee
jiggling with tension, like when she sat exams. The urge to click the screen off
and run home to her mother and get a job in a butcher’s and forget this ever
happened.
Has he affected me that much?
She read the text underneath. The site was run by a man called Clive Finch, an
estate agent from Stoke Newington, married to Caroline, two kids, Michael and
Ben. ‘I’m giving you this information so you can see I’m a normal bloke, not a
crackpot. But if you’ve come this far, then I suspect you’ve seen him. The
Doctor. And if you’ve seen him, then I wonder, was it at a time of great peril?
Was there danger? Disaster? Even death? Because these are his harbingers and
helpmeets. If you have seen the Doctor, your life has been touched by something
extraordinary. And doubtless you’re wondering: who is he? Well, faithful reader,
I am here to tell you: I HAVE THE ANSWER!!’
Rose smiled. This man sounded a bit nuts, but kind of funny too. She took a
good gulp of tea as, behind her, the argument in the kitchen raged on, Mook’s
favourite name for the band now Hope of the Hopeless, with Patrice
complaining, ‘We’d sound like evangelicals!’
She read on, Clive explaining that he’d been collecting evidence concerning
the Doctor for years. ‘If you can help, photos or anecdotes or top-secret
documents, please get in touch,’ followed by his email address and telephone
number.
Rose hesitated, wary of contacting a stranger. She turned her mobile phone
over in her hand. She’d switched it off since the Doctor’s disappearance because
Jackie was bombarding her with texts about coffee tables. She put the phone
down, deciding on a little snooping first.
She found an About Me link on his website, clicked on it, and found photos of
Clive, a middle-aged man, untidy black hair, beaming away. The sort of man
who looks like the office joker. And below that, photos of him with his wife
Caroline and their two boys. A snapshot of them all at Thorpe Park just two
weeks ago. Fair enough, thought Rose, but anyone can steal photos. Then she
clicked on the link to the estate agent’s, finding a list of staff bios with, yes, a
photograph of Clive Finch. The same man.
If he’s a murderer, thought Rose, he’s not hiding himself very well.
She fired off a quick email, saying that she’d seen the Doctor, and could he
help? She’d barely picked up her mug for another sip of tea when ping!
Clive Finch replied.

Twenty minutes later, Rose popped her head into the kitchen. ‘Mickey, I need a
lift.’
‘I’m here!’ said Mickey, and leapt to his feet without even asking where they
were going, which made the other members of the band howl with laughter.
Mickey loved their mockery, grinning as he grabbed his keys. He kissed the top
of Mook’s head, ‘Don’t miss me too much!’
‘We’re meeting for a sound check at six o’clock,’ called out Patrice, as
Mickey went into the hall to find his leather jacket, Rose already waiting by the
front door.
‘I’ll be there,’ said Mickey.
Rose turned to go and yelled, ‘See you later!’
‘Hey Rosie,’ called out Sally, ‘we were thinking of names for the band,
something like Bad Karma, or maybe Bad Future, or Bad Timing, what d’you
think?’
‘Bad Echo?’ said Mook.
‘Bad Dogs?’ said Patrice.
‘Bad Wolf?’ said Sally, but Rose had gone.
 7

The Mysteries of Juke Street

‘I’m gonna kill him!’ Mickey gripped the wheel, literally baring his teeth.
Rose laughed. She loved winding him up. ‘Yes, he’s a complete stranger off
the internet, he wears black leather gloves and everything. Plus, a balaclava. I’m
going to his house, to his dungeon, and you’re taking me there, so it’s your
fault.’
Mickey’s old yellow Volkswagen Beetle puttered through the city, heading
north from the Powell Estate, through Southwark, over the river at London
Bridge, towards Stoke Newington; Clive Finch lived on Juke Street, N16, just to
the north of Abney Park. As they drove, Rose tried to explain their mission,
slaloming down a hillside of lies. ‘This Clive bloke is a legal expert, and Mum
says I’ve got to get compensation from Henrik’s, and he works from home, so
I’m just going to see him and fill out some forms.’
‘I’m coming in with you!’
‘You are not. Because I’m not a baby. You can just sit outside and if he gets a
bit creepy, I can whistle.’
‘And I’ll knock his block off!’
‘You’ll knock his block off?’ said Rose, and they both laughed. ‘Where are
you from, 1950?’
‘Pip, pip, old chap,’ said Mickey in a posh voice, and they relaxed into each
other’s company as they drove across the Thames, bright afternoon light glinting
off the grey river. ‘All the same,’ he said, calmer now, ‘why can’t you do this
online?’
‘Because he needs my signature, then the forms can be processed first thing
on Monday morning. I have to, Mickey, I’ve got no wages, I’ve got no savings,
I’ve got nothing.’
That seemed to settle it, and Mickey began to talk about the summer. Maybe a
holiday, just the two of them, maybe Europe, maybe interrailing? And Rose
congratulated herself on a great lie. The Doctor was the most exciting thing that
had happened to her for years, and she liked keeping him secret. Not just to
avoid Mickey’s disbelief; she simply liked having something that was hers and
hers alone. She wondered what that said about their relationship, but as her
friend Shareen always said, Worry about that tomorrow.
Clive Finch had promised much. ‘The truth will shake you to the core!’ She’d
sent him a short, vague summary of her two meetings with the Doctor, not
mentioning Henrik’s or the plastic arm, just that she’d met a man who had
fascinated her. But when she’d asked what Clive knew, he’d emailed to say, ‘Not
online. People are watching. This stuff is so secret and confidential, I can’t risk it
leaking. Seriously, the evidence I’ve got, I won’t send attachments. You’ll have
to come to my house and see it for yourself.’
At that point, Rose had almost given up. ‘Nice try!’ she’d replied, and Clive
had emailed with denials and protestations of innocence, adding ‘I’m not into
boys!’ That had puzzled her for a second, until she realised she was on Mickey’s
computer, emailing from his account. ‘That makes it worse,’ she’d emailed back,
‘cos Mickey’s my boyfriend and my name is Rose.’
A minute or so had passed, and she’d wondered whether to abandon this and
join the laughter in the kitchen. But then, ping! Another email. She’d opened it,
and a photograph had begun to download, slowly. Rose had tensed up, thinking,
If I see anything pink, I’m reporting him. But the photo had resolved into a fully
clothed Clive, smiling, holding up today’s copy of the Guardian—he couldn’t
know the significance of the Henrik’s headline—and behind him, his kids and
Caroline waving at the camera. Caroline had a flat, peeved look, as though she’d
done this a hundred times. Clive’s message read, ‘Look, it’s me, right now,
today, with the family, I don’t think internet weirdos invite you to come and meet
the family, do they? And just to prove that it’s safe, you can bring your
boyfriend, I don’t mind.’
Fair enough, Rose had thought, and then his final line had reeled her in. ‘If
you’ve met the Doctor, if you’ve actually looked into his eyes and heard the
things he has to say, then you won’t be able to let this go. Am I right?’

As soon as Clive Finch opened to door to No.1 Juke Street, Rose trusted him. He
was smiling, beaming, clumsy—he managed to stub his toe on his own front
door—and behind him, she could see his two boys playing on an Xbox. Late
Saturday sunlight bleached the white living room walls through wide patio
doors, a long, narrow, green garden stretching away at the back of the house.
Nice place, thought Rose, nice family, nice man.
‘You must be Rose!’ said Clive, a hint of North East in his voice.
‘That’s me,’ she said. ‘And that’s my boyfriend, Mickey, there he is, d’you
see?’ She stood back so that Clive could see Mickey, sitting at the wheel of his
bright yellow car. Mickey glowered. ‘He’s going to wait outside in case you try
to kill me.’
‘Don’t worry,’ called out Clive, giving Mickey a cheery thumbs-up. ‘No
murders!’
‘You’d better not,’ said Rose. ‘Cos I’d knock your block off long before
Mickey could get here, is that understood?’
‘Perfectly!’ Clive gave a little salute and stepped aside to let Rose in. She gave
Mickey a final glance—his glower was almost rippling with heat, now—and
then closed the front door on him. As she stepped into the hall, a woman’s voice
called out from upstairs, ‘Who is it?’
‘One of Dad’s nutters,’ yelled the oldest boy.
Clive looked mortified. ‘He’s just joking, sorry. Michael! Behave!’
‘Oh don’t worry,’ said Rose. ‘After the day I’ve had, I feel like a bit of nutter.’
‘Well, come on, come through, I’ve got all the stuff, it’s in the shed. Oh, that
sounds a bit murdery, doesn’t it? Sorry!’ Then he called upstairs, ‘It’s a Doctor
thing, I might be a while. She’s been reading the website, she might have
evidence!’
‘She?’ called the voice, presumably Caroline. ‘She’s read a website about the
Doctor and she’s a she?’ Both boys on the settee cackled.
‘My lot are so funny,’ said Clive, giving the lads a pretend kick and a comedy
growl as he led Rose out to the back garden. And there it stood, Clive’s shed,
hemmed in by wooden fences on either side, in the curved shade of a laburnum
tree.
‘The answers to everything,’ he said, ‘are in here.’

Mickey Smith kept on glowering, even though there was no one to appreciate it.
Juke Street made him frown. Bay windows. Neat, square front gardens. Cars
shining in the spring sunlight. Not wealthy, but richer than the Powell Estate. It
was quiet, on a Saturday afternoon. Everyone was playing tennis or bridge or
chess or whatever. Mah-jong, probably.
But still, he thought, his bad mood ebbing away, Rose hadn’t said no, to
France, in the summer. They’d spent a few weekends together in Southend in a
cheap B&B, but they’d never had an actual holiday, as a couple. But now, if he
saved up, they could go away for a fortnight, maybe even three weeks.
Depending on her new job, of course, if she could find one. But if she couldn’t
then maybe, yeah, it was time to ask her to move in.
He was grinning now, his good humour restored by the one thing that always
made him happy. Rose Tyler from No.143.
 When he thought of her, Mickey held one particular word close, like a
talisman, and that word was: lucky. Everyone else used that word too. ‘Oh
you’re lucky, going out with her,’ said Patrice, said Mook, said Sally, and
Mickey would laugh, like it was a joke. But he knew with all his heart that it was
true. He was going out with the only girl he’d ever loved, the first girl he’d ever
spent the night with, the best girl he’d ever known.
He didn’t tell her that too often, of course. But he planned on having years and
years to ration out the compliments.
He remembered those terrible Jimmy Stone days, when she’d got bored and
taken off with that louse, leaving Mickey with hollow bones. He could have
raged, he could have shouted, he could’ve run off with Trisha Delaney instead,
but Mickey had been so stunned that he’d done the best thing possible, quite by
accident. He did nothing. He’d just waited. And when the Jimmy Stone storm
had passed, Rose saw Mickey, still there, still faithful, still true, and came back.
Luck beyond luck.
And his luck had one truly strange and remarkable aspect, which bemused
him every single day; his mother was long since gone, but nevertheless, she had
known his girlfriend. Odessa Smith had once held the baby Rose in her arms,
she’d smiled at her and kissed her forehead as though giving her blessing to
them both across the years.
I’m the luckiest man in the world, thought Mickey.
And then he saw something move.
He’d parked opposite Clive’s house, outside No.2 Juke Street, and he thought
he’d glimpsed something by the front door. Nothing now. The house sat still and
silent, front window, porch, azalea bush, a grey wheelie bin …
Which moved.
The plastic bin jerked, bumped, and turned to face front, if a bin could be
facing anything without an actual face, thought Mickey, smiling. He lifted
himself up in his seat to see if a cat or a dog was nudging the bin. But there was
no sign of anything.
And then the bin jerked, shuddered, tottered from side to side, and seemed to
make its mind up. It trundled down the path to the garden gate, big plastic
wheels rumbling as it rolled. Then it stopped, bumping against the gate again
and again, like a dog in a cage. Mickey was laughing now, because the lip of the
lid on top of the bin did suggest a mouth, in a long, mean scowl.
Anthropomorphism, he thought. Like seeing a face in the moon.
He got out of the car, chuckling to himself, because they were clever, whoever
was doing this. Kids, of course. Had to be. He looked for wires or strings but
couldn’t see any. It was a free-standing bin, jerking and thudding against the
gate, as though angry. A fleeting thought said, It’s hungry. But Mickey dismissed
that and walked forward.
‘Where are you, then?’ he said to thin air. But no one appeared, and the bin
seemed to be getting angrier. ‘Okay, I’ll play your game.’ He opened the garden
gate and gave a mock little bow to allow the bin out. But then he was chilled as
the bin zoomed forward to execute an arc, curving around to face him. The
animation was perfect. This couldn’t be strings or levers or pulleys. It couldn’t
even be remote control, because the turn of the bin had been so fluid, so
graceful.
So real.
Like something living.
Mickey stared at the wheelie bin. It stared back. Even the tub of its body
seemed to flex and contract, as though breathing.
He flushed with anger. Many times in his life, he’d said: no one takes the
mickey out of Mickey. So now he reached out to grab hold of the bin, lifting up
its lid to expose the child or puppeteer or motors inside—
But the bin was empty.
A black hollow.
Mickey slammed down the lid and stepped back—
Or tried to step back, because his right hand was now stuck to the lid.
Superglue, he thought! He swore out loud. Oldest trick in the book. He pulled
away, grimacing, ready to lose a little skin off his hand if he had to.
But the plastic stretched. Like thick grey toffee. A pizza-cheese-rope of plastic
extended from the bin, to his hand, and then—yank!
The plastic pulled him back in. Mickey jerked forward, holding out his left
hand stop his head hitting the bin. And now his left hand was stuck too.
He felt like an idiot, guessing that some kids behind net curtains were
capturing this on a camcorder. £250 from You’ve Been Framed, you little sods.
But at the same time, Mickey felt absolute terror, because the plastic underneath
his hands was squirming, somehow, it had heat, it had motility, it had intention
as it flowed over his hands, up to his wrists.
The bin was absorbing him.
Mickey didn’t care who was watching now, or how stupid he looked. He was
fighting to save his life. He heaved backwards. The gluey-grey-toffee-plastic
extruded out, he felt the plastic around his wrists tighten, but he pulled harder
and harder, and the extrusions grew longer, paler, thinner. Yes, he thought, yes, if
I can pull hard enough, they’ll snap, so he pulled with all his might, the ropes of
plastic stretching out a metre, two metres, thinning, about to break …
But the bin was just playing with him.
 It yanked back its extrusions with one smart snap. Mickey stayed attached and
lifted off his feet, flying through the air towards the bin. It opened its lid to
swallow him. He plunged head-first into the bin’s body with an echoing scream,
and the lid slammed shut.
Then the bin stood still. Inanimate. An ordinary thing on an ordinary
pavement on a completely ordinary day.
There was silence on Juke Street.
Nothing moved.
Then the bin’s lid-lips rippled as it issued the most tremendous, larruping,
satisfied burp.
And everything was silent and still once more.
 8

Shed of Secrets

Rose felt that old fear return as she stepped into the shed. From the outside, it
was rickety and wooden, but on the inside, sophisticated enough to be a
murderer’s lair. Clive had walled it with a skin of cladding and then filled it with
filing cabinets, bookshelves, a light-box table, piles of files and folders, all
chilled with the hum of air-conditioning. He offered her a stool by the light-box
and she thought of the chairs in Sweeney Todd and Austin Powers, trapdoors
poised to plunge her down into the depths before his innocent wife could even
hear the scream.
But Clive was still reassuringly Clive. He bumbled about, moving papers and
rolled-up charts, then moving them back again, having a little argument with
himself, which he lost. He offered her a drink. If he means alcohol, Rose
thought, I’m out of here, but he immediately added, ‘I’ve run out of coffee but
I’ve got tea?’
‘Tea would be fine,’ she said. Clive did a little three-act play with the desktop
fridge, opening it, no milk, closing it, opening it again, still no milk, and then he
said, ‘Hold on! I’ll get some from the house.’ He scurried off and Rose was left
alone.
She looked around. One wall was covered with old calendars, cut-and-pasted
into some sort of curvy timeline, with the letters U.N.I.T. stencilled above. The
opposite wall was stacked with a hundred-plus box-files underneath a big white
sign—the word was partially obscured by crenellations of VHS tapes but she
presumed it said TOUCHWOOD.
She was dismayed by the photographs pinned to the walls. Silly monsters.
Cheap robots. Daft aliens. Fake dinosaurs from Saturday afternoon movies,
pasted into landscapes of London. All snapped at bad angles, hand-held,
deliberately blurred to give them a fake authenticity. Maybe this man’s just a
hoaxer, she thought, as Clive came back waving a carton of milk.
‘It’s a lot to take in,’ he said of his rogues’ gallery, as he popped a teabag into
an X-Files mug.
‘I’m not really into that science-fiction stuff,’ said Rose, and then she had to
endure him giggling and snorting with laughter as he clattered about with the
kettle. ‘You wait!’ he chuckled, and she glared at the back of his head. She
hadn’t come all this way for some man to laugh at her. She said, ‘So, anyway,
the Doctor?’
‘Right, yes, sorry,’ said Clive, leaving the kettle to thunder away. He grabbed a
stack of files, saying, ‘This stuff’s quite sensitive. In fact, it’s top secret. But I’ve
discovered, over the years, that if you keep a lively mind and dig deep enough,
the Doctor keeps cropping up. All over the world. In history books. Political
diaries. Autobiographies. Whistleblower journalism. Conspiracy theories. Even
ghost stories. Over and over again, known only by that name. The Doctor.’
‘But there are lots of doctors,’ said Rose. ‘Millions of them. That was the
problem with searching online, it got too many results.’
‘Yes,’ said Clive, with a glint in his eye. ‘That’s how to stay hidden in plain
sight. Clever, isn’t he? Or she.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Well, to narrow the search down, I started looking for the Doctor, the definite
article, specifically no first name, no last name, just the Doctor. And all the
evidence seems to suggest that Doctor must be some sort of title. Given to a
freedom fighter or a covert operative. Granted by the government or the United
Nations, or the Powers That Be. Because in times of crisis, there’s always been a
Doctor. And look, here they are, these people would seem to be the most
important Doctors of all.’
He’d laid out the files on the glass table top and opened each of them to
specific photographs. He pointed them out, one by one. ‘It’s hard to work out the
right order, but I think this is the Doctor. And this. And this …’
He was running away with himself. Rose brought him back to the first
photograph, a shot of an old man with white hair and a black cape, standing in
the street in front of some sort of metal tank. She asked, ‘What’s that thing?’
‘A War Machine,’ said Clive. He took a deep breath and said as fast as he
could, in case she laughed, ‘Killer tanks built by an evil supercomputer hidden
inside the Post Office Tower, which invented the internet. I mean the
supercomputer invented the internet, not the tower. Obviously.’
Rose sighed. ‘You don’t really believe that stuff, do you?’
But Clive rushed on, and Rose felt awful; she could see how many times he’d
been mocked. He pointed out Doctor after Doctor. There was a little man with a
Beatles mop of hair outside an antique shop. A man with a fabulous grey
bouffant standing next to a small silver hovercraft. That man in the long scarf
again, too small to be seen in detail because he was dwarfed by a silly forced-
perspective puppet monster rising out of the Thames. A rather hot blond man at
Heathrow. A curly-haired man clearly on his way to a fancy-dress party dressed
as a picnic. A World War II photo of a short man with an umbrella running with
some soldiers. A dashing, Byronic man at the opening of some atomic clock
thing. And then, him!
The Doctor. Her Doctor. Wrestling with … a pterodactyl?
‘Well that’s the one, that’s my Doctor,’ said Rose. ‘But that photo makes him
look stupid. Did you do that? With Photoshop?’
‘No, but hold on. Before we stop, you should see the whole thing,’ said Clive,
exasperated. ‘He’s not the final Doctor in the sequence, have a look at this next
one.’
‘I can’t keep Mickey waiting forever,’ said Rose. Clive wittered on, saying
something about a man with two suits, brown and blue, but she ignored him,
distracted by the pterodactyl. She looked closer. There was a small mark on the
Doctor’s cheek. Strange. It was exactly like the cut he’d got today, just a few
hours back, from the broken glass in her living room. This looked like the same
scar. But the photograph was crumpled and bent at the corners, it must’ve been
taken years ago.
Chance, she thought. Coincidence. And she realised the kettle had clicked off
with no sign of a cuppa as she returned her focus to Clive, who was closing the
next file and shoving a new one forwards.
‘And how about this one?’ said Clive. ‘He’s more your age.’ Rose saw a photo
of a man with a fantastic jaw, dressed in a tweed jacket and bow tie. Then Clive
kept the sequence going; an older, angry man in a brown caretaker’s coat,
holding a mop; a blonde woman in braces running away from a giant frog in
front of Buckingham Palace; a tall, bald black woman wielding a flaming sword;
a young girl or boy in a hi-tech wheelchair with what looked like a robot dog at
their side …
‘All right,’ said Rose. ‘I get it, they might be secret agents or whatever. Under
the same codename, okay. But I’m only interested in my Doctor.’
‘Yes, yes, yes’ said Clive, hurrying to fetch a box-file labelled 09. ‘Let’s focus
on yours. Because now it gets tricky.’
‘Oh good.’
‘One theory says that once you’ve been designated a Doctor, the title can be
passed down the family line. Like an inheritance. Because look, that’s your
Doctor there, yes?’ He pointed to the pterodactyl picture. ‘That’s from five years
ago. And yet, here he is, the same man, in America.’ From box-file 09, he
showed Rose a photograph of the Doctor, in a crowd, beside a road, being held
back by police. ‘But this photograph is from 1963. It’s been verified by the
Washington Archive, November 1963, that’s a fact, and yet he looks exactly the
same. Must be his dad, don’t you think? Your Doctor’s father is witnessing
history, look!’
Grinning, Clive showed more versions of the same photo, each one widening
to reveal the context. A police motorcycle. American. An open-top black
limousine.
‘Is that the Kennedy assassination?’
‘It is! And he was there!’
‘Oh Clive, look at it. Be serious. That’s not even Photoshop, that’s a pair of
scissors and glue, it’s an obvious fake.’
‘Okay, that may not be the best example, but look, look, look,’ said Clive, as
he took out more documents. ‘If it is a family line, then it goes way, way back.
This is a photograph from 1912. The Daniels family, plus friend, about to
embark on the Titanic.’
The sepia photograph showed a family, mum, dad, son, daughter, and the
Doctor. Finally out of his leather jacket, in a wing-collar and fancy hat. But still,
the same face. Same ears. Same age.
‘Well, if that’s genuine, then they’ve got strong genes, the Doctor family,’ said
Rose.
‘Funny thing is,’ said Clive, ‘that photograph was taken the day before they
were due to set sail. But at the last minute, they cancelled, and survived. Almost
like they knew. And look at this one.’ He pulled out a photocopy of an old
parchment, an ink drawing of the same Doctor, this time on a beach. ‘Same
lineage. He’s identical. And this Doctor washed up on the shores of Sumatra, the
day after Krakatoa exploded.’ He put down the files, that gleam in his eye.
‘D’you see, though? Kennedy, Titanic, Krakatoa. When disaster comes, he is
there. The Doctor is a legend woven throughout history. He brings the storm in
his wake and he has one constant companion.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Death.’
‘Okay,’ said Rose, trying to be kind, thinking of all the Clives of the world,
tucked away in their sheds with their obsessions. She was glad this man had
Caroline and those two bright-faced lads, back in the house. ‘So tell me. If you
know so much. What’s this thing?’ She pointed at a photo of the chunky blue
box. It cropped up five, six, seven times in the background behind various
Doctors. ‘It keeps on appearing. What is it?’
Clive took a deep breath, as though preparing to make a solemn
announcement. He said, ‘I have no idea.’
Rose laughed. Clive laughed too. The relief, to find something without a
conspiracy theory attached. He said, ‘I don’t know everything! I keep wondering
if it’s a mobile canteen.’
Rose slid the photographs away from her. ‘What about you then, Clive? I
mean, how did you get into this, in the first place? All this research, it must’ve
taken years.’
‘All my life.’
‘So what started it?’
‘It was my dad,’ said Clive. ‘He died when I was two years old.’
‘Oh, I was six months old when I lost mine,’ said Rose, and they shared a nice
little smile.
‘I bet you still think about him.’
‘I do, yeah.’
‘Me too,’ said Clive. ‘My old fella was a soldier with the Infantry. He was in
the London Regiment. Proper little Cockney by all accounts, Mam said he was
always scrapping. Handy with his fists. They said he died on manoeuvres. But in
Shoreditch, of all places. Sounds a bit odd, dying in peacetime on British soil.
Accidental discharge of a weapon, they told my mam. And bear in mind, this
was back in 1963.’ He nodded at the Kennedy photograph. ‘You didn’t argue,
back in those days, you accepted what the establishment said. But not me! I got
older, I kept asking questions. Second Lieutenant Gary Jonathan Finch, how did
he die?’
He’d taken out a laminated photo, this time from his wallet. His father, in
uniform, a black and white snap of a tough, stocky man in his early 30s. The
same curly hair. ‘The more I tried to research it, the stranger it seemed. Like
something was being hidden. Turns out, Dad’s regiment was caught up in some
sort of incident. All very hush-hush. The day he died, they’d sealed off the whole
of Shoreditch. Officially, they said a cache of unexploded bombs had been
discovered. And there were certainly reports of huge explosions, that day. I
tracked down the Service Inquiry, in the end, it was buried deep but I found it.
And it said Dad had been killed in a junkyard, in a place called Totter’s Lane.
But killed, how? Information redacted. No record of the inquest. But I kept on
looking, I searched and searched. Until I found it. The secret.’
‘Which was what?’
‘Are you ready for this?’
‘Go on.’
‘There was something else on the streets that day. Something that had no place
in this world.’
Clive took a deep breath and with ceremonial solemnity opened a black folder,
showing Rose his most prized photograph. It was a picture of another tank, of
sorts, smaller, conical, more like a one-man vessel made of white and gold
metal, its lower half studded with balls, odd prongs sticking out of its body, one
at the top like an in-built telescope.
Clive said, almost in a whisper, ‘No one knows what it’s called. But I believe
this creature, from outer space, murdered my dad.’
Rose felt so sad for him. He’d built this wild, cosmic fantasy in order to make
his father’s death heroic. She looked at the photos on the wall. ‘And all of these
things, the lizards and the robots and the blobs. They’re all from outer space?’
‘I think so.’
‘But Clive. Look. I’m sorry about your dad, but … All these creatures of
yours, they’ve been photographed out on the streets. In the open. They’re next to
Big Ben. That giant big tentacle-thing is wrapped around Westminster Abbey. If
all these alien invasions happened in public, how come we don’t know about
them?’
‘That’s the thing!’ said Clive, excited, moving to sit opposite her so he could
look her in the eye, the shine of the light-box uplighting his face. ‘How do we
forget? Why? That’s the biggest mystery of all. Some people say they’ve
drugged the water. Some people say there’s an amnesia wavelength being
beamed into our heads. And some people say there’s a crack in time, leaching
away the memories of the human race.’ He paused. ‘That one sounds a bit too
fanciful for me.’
‘Me too,’ said Rose.
Then Clive blurted out, ‘You don’t believe any of this, do you?’ And he
sagged a little, looking at her with watery eyes. She realised how much effort it
must take, not only to convince her but to convince himself.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Rose. ‘I just can’t.’
‘I know. It’s okay. You should hear Caroline banging on about it. She’d burn
this shed down. With me inside it, sometimes!’ They both laughed a little. ‘I just
think it’s important for you to know. Because you’ve seen him, you’ve met the
Doctor. And if these stories tell us one thing, then meeting the Doctor means
danger is on its way.’
‘For me?’
‘For all of us. But yes, you in particular, you should be careful. Because
you’ve been singled out.’
‘All right,’ said Rose, carefully. ‘Let’s say what you’ve said is true. Let’s say I
believe it. Just for a second. Then you still haven’t answered my question, who is
he? Who is the Doctor?’
Clive held up the Kennedy photograph, and he seemed older, wiser and sadder
as he confessed his most heartfelt secret. ‘I think all these pictures are the same
man. They’re not fathers and sons, it’s the same Doctor, over and over again,
throughout history. Because I think he is immortal. I think he is an alien. I think
he is a shape-changer.’ Then he opened his arms over the table to include all the
files. ‘I think every single one of them is the Doctor. The same Doctor. Because
they are many. They are multitudes. They exist for anyone and for everyone and
they are everything to me.’ Clive was suddenly on the edge of tears. ‘Can I come
with you?’
‘What?’
‘You’ve met one. And you’ve met him twice. If you meet him a third time,
can I come with you? It’s all I’ve ever wanted. My whole life. Just to see the
Doctor. To hear their voice. To look into their eyes. Can I? Please?’

Rose slumped back into the Beetle and slammed the car door shut, angry. ‘Waste
of time. He was nuts.’ She struggled with the seatbelt, jerking it and jerking it
again, remembering her lie about compensation. ‘He didn’t even have the right
forms. It was just stupid. Sorry. My fault. Won’t do that again.’
In truth, Clive had scared her. Rose could see her own obsession with the
Doctor reflected in his begging. He’d actually sobbed when she’d said she had to
go. But even though she felt sorry for him, she couldn’t sanction his fantasies
any more. To hell with it, she wanted to get out of here, to drive away, to have
pizza and a beer and a nice Saturday night with Mickey.
And she turned to look at him properly, her patient and faithful Mickey Smith,
sitting in the driver’s seat, exactly where she’d left him, still here, still waiting,
as constant as ever.
He looked a bit odd.
‘Is it hot in here?’ asked Rose, because his skin had a sheen, like sweat.
‘It’s fine!’ said Mickey, with a big, goony smile. Doing a daft voice again.
‘Not hot. I’m not hot. I am not hot. Rose. Not. Hot.’
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘don’t be silly, get me out of here. What have you done to
your hair?’
He rolled his eyes up as if he could actually see his hairline. ‘What is wrong
with it?’
‘I dunno. It’s just different.’
‘We go now,’ he said, and started the engine.
‘Can we have a pizza? Have you got time before the band?’
‘Band cancelled. They telephoned. They telephoned me. On the telephone. I
am all yours, Rose Tyler.’
‘Quite right too. Now stop talking silly, let’s go for a pizza. Have you got any
money? Cos I’m skint.’
‘I have no money, no money, no money at all.’
‘Then how are we going to pay for it?’
‘Plastic,’ said Mickey, and they drove away.
 9

The Pizza Surprise

On a normal Saturday night they’d grab a takeaway and go to the pub. But there
was nothing normal about today, and to hell with it, Rose thought, if Mickey’s
paying, then he can treat me for once. So they went to Toni Jo’s Pizzeria.
Waiters, starters, tablecloths, nice.
But it didn’t make Rose feel any better. Her hunt for the Doctor had only led
to a sad man’s shed and now, without the quest, she was left looking at her life.
What little there was of it.
‘I could try the hospital,’ she said, picking at some deep-fried something that
tasted only of heat. ‘Suki said they’ve got jobs, in the canteen. That’s just about
my level, dishing out chips. But even those jobs are going to vanish, the entire
staff of Henrik’s are out there, snapping them up, what chance have I got?’
That was Mickey’s cue, to tell her she was bright, brilliant, amazing, the best,
what was wrong with him? He was just staring at her. His grin a little bit too
fixed. He’d been doing this routine ever since Juke Street and it was beginning
to get on her nerves, like that time he’d spent an entire day being The Fast Show.
‘All right, Mickey, a joke’s a joke.’
‘What is a joke?’ he said in that new, bright voice he’d discovered.
She said, ‘Don’t you even care? What am I going to do with my life?’ She ate
a bit more. Maybe it was a prawn. She’d ordered without thinking. ‘I could go
back and do my A levels, what d’you think?’
Mickey just smiled. He hadn’t touched his soup.
She decided to provoke him. ‘It’s all Jimmy Stone’s fault.’ Mention of Jimmy
Stone always made Mickey angry. But not tonight. He just kept staring and
smiling. She went further, feeling a bit sly and mean. ‘If it wasn’t for Jimmy
Stone, I’d have stayed at school. It was his fault. All that stubble. Luring me
away. But I couldn’t help it, he did look good in those jeans.’
This was weird. Mickey should be fuming by now, but he didn’t even blink.
And that shine on his skin was so strange. Maybe he had a temperature. ‘Mickey,
are you feeling all right?’
He said, ‘I’m fine, baby, babes, sugababe, babyface, babycakes, baby boomer,
babyboombastic, boom boom bang-a-boom.’
 ‘No, really, stop it, what’s wrong with you?’
He lost the smile, sat forward and said, ‘The Doctor.’
She froze. ‘Who told you about him?’
‘I know all about the Doctor.’
She felt that old horror, like the awful day she’d had to tell him about Jimmy
Stone, but now, today, how? Had Jackie phoned him up? And told him that she’d
caught her rolling on the floor with a stranger? ‘My bloody mother!’ But Rose
had done nothing wrong; she rallied, anger taking over. ‘I didn’t tell you about
the Doctor because I’ve got very good reasons, okay? And I am not sitting here
letting you get angry with me. That is not on the menu, so you can stop it, right
now.’
‘But I need to know,’ said Mickey, leaning further forward, staring, eyes wide.
‘I need to know about the Doctor. Where he is. Who he is. What his plan is. And
the only person who can tell me, is you!’
He thrust his head forward to emphasise the last word, and his eye fell out.
His left eye.
His left eye fell out and plopped into his soup.
His left eye was now bobbing in the soup, staring at her.
She looked up, expecting an awful gaping bloodied mess in Mickey’s face.
But she saw the skin around his eye-socket closing up neatly, flesh flowing like
liquid to seal off the hole, no wound, no scar, just a smooth scoop where the eye
had once been.
‘I apologise,’ said Mickey. ‘This replica was manufactured in haste. Normally
the Consciousness would have immaculate standards of duplication.’ He plucked
the eyeball out of the soup, licked it clean, and popped it back into place, the
skin parting to allow the eyeball in. Mickey’s left eye glistened with a teardrop
of tomato soup.
Rose looked at his face. The shine. The teeth, too white. His hair, every
perfect root. His eyebrows, not a single strand out of place. Everything glossy
and far too perfect.
Plastic.
It was a plastic Mickey.
‘Now tell me,’ he said, and his voice wasn’t funny any more. ‘I want to know
everything about the Doctor. Or I will kill them.’
‘Who?’
‘The people. The diners. The humans.’
She looked around. A couple, at the next table, laughing. Nearby, a family,
two kids. Next to them, two women on a date. Behind her, a gang of school
mates on a night out. All in danger. Because of her. She’d brought this terrible
thing into the room and sat him down in the middle of them all. She felt a raw
terror like never before, because other people were in danger now, not just her.
And this monstrosity was in the shape of her boyfriend.
Mickey. The real Mickey. Where was he?
‘Excuse me,’ said a waiter, sidling up to the table. ‘Your champagne.’ He
hovered at Mickey’s side, offering the bottle.
Mickey kept staring at Rose. ‘We didn’t order champagne.’
‘Madam, your champagne,’ said the waiter, stepping closer to Rose.
She didn’t even look up, keeping her eyes on Mickey, terrified of him making
a move. She muttered to the waiter, ‘Don’t say anything, just get away, get away
from the table, it’s not safe.’
But the waiter huffed, annoyed, ‘Doesn’t anybody want this champagne?’
Mickey glared and looked up, ‘We didn’t order—’
Then he stopped, and smiled.
Rose looked up.
It was the Doctor.
The waiter was the Doctor, holding a champagne bottle, a teacloth over his
arm as his only concession to disguise.
‘At last,’ said Mickey.
‘Hello!’ The Doctor shook the bottle hard. ‘Don’t mind me, I’m just toasting
the happy couple. On the house!’
He aimed the bottle, and, pop!
The cork flew into Mickey’s face. Literally, into it, hitting the nose but not
stopping as the skin swamped in to close over the site of impact, swallowing the
cork into Mickey’s head. His entire skull wobbled, rippled, settled. Mickey
gulped. Then he opened his mouth, impossibly wide, and spat the cork out. He
grinned at the Doctor like a man accepting a duel.
Rose was aware that she was just sitting there like a plum. But now she moved
fast, staggering back as Mickey lifted up both arms and the entire table went
flying—everyone in the pizzeria turning to look—as his hands expanded.
They morphed into giant blades.
His hands became broad, flat, plastic skin-coloured blades, twice the size of a
shovel. Mickey took a swing at the Doctor—the blades looked sharp, like they
could slice a man in two—but the Doctor dodged the swing and leapt forwards.
He put Mickey in a headlock and tugged and tugged and tugged.
Snap!
Mickey’s head came off.
The man at the next table screamed and fainted.
 Everyone was watching now, astonished, Rose staring in horror at Mickey’s
head in the Doctor’s hands.
The body stayed standing, the neck ending in a flat, smooth oval like a
decapitated mannequin. But then the separated head grinned up at the Doctor—it
was still alive! The head said, ‘Don’t think that’s gonna stop me.’ And then it
whistled to its own body. ‘Over here!’
The headless body jolted into action, its shovel-blade hands swinging wildly,
chopping a chunk of plaster out of a pillar. Rose looked at the Doctor and he was
grinning, like this was some sort of fun. She ran to the fire alarm, smashed the
glass—part of her thinking, I’ve always wanted to do this—and she yelled, ‘Out!
Get out! Everyone out!’
The alarm whooped, and people ran, screaming, customers and staff alike, but
the headless Mickey-body seemed to hear Rose, swung in the direction of her
voice, lashing out. She leapt back, just in time.
‘Over here!’ called the Doctor, and he started to run. Was he yelling at her or
the Mickey-thing? Whichever, she ran after him. She wasn’t going to let him out
of her sight.
Behind her, the decapitated plastic Mickey swung and chopped, tables
splintering into pieces, crockery flying, glasses smashing, as it staggered blindly
after them. The Doctor and Rose ran into the kitchen.
Waiters and cooks were standing around, wondering if the fire alarm was just
a test, when the Doctor burst in, holding a living head. The head barked at them,
like a rabid dog. Rose followed, still yelling, ‘Get out, all of you! Out!’ But the
staff only jolted into action when the crazy, clumsy, violent headless thing
battered its way into the kitchen, swinging, chopping, staggering, sending pots
and pans flying as it blundered in pursuit.
The Doctor and Rose ran down a corridor—he grinned at her and said, ‘Nice
to see you, by the way! How’s your mum?’—and they pushed their way out of a
fire door.
They ran into a small, gated yard, yellow security lights glaring against the
night, the walls lined with bins and stacked with pallets and crates, and there,
standing in the middle of the yard …
The blue box.
That old, battered, chunky hut that the Doctor seemed to take everywhere with
him. No use to them now—Rose spun around to see the Doctor holding
Mickey’s head in the crook of his left arm, his foot jamming the fire door shut,
whirring that metal stick to lock the push bar.
Wham! The fire door shook, but held. On the other side, headless Mickey
clattered and stamped like a trapped bull. Mickey’s head called out, ‘Come and
get me!’ Then it glared with fury as the Doctor clamped his left hand over its
mouth to shut it up.
Rose watched, horrified, as bang, bang, bang, the fire door began to buckle.
Those chopper-blade-hands would slice through in seconds. She remembered
how the Doctor had stopped the plastic arm, back in the flat. ‘Can’t your
whirring-thing stop him?’
He held up the metal stick. ‘Sonic screwdriver,’ he said proudly. ‘But I’ve
used it once, the plastic’s recalibrated, won’t work twice.’
Great! She ran to the yard’s heavy double-gates. They were padlocked and
chained with bolts studded into the floor. She pulled up the bolts, pushed at the
gates. They gave, but only slightly, not enough to open. ‘Give me a hand,’ she
yelled at the Doctor.
‘No, we’re fine,’ he said. Why was he so calm? He was standing in the middle
of the yard, holding a screwdriver and a decapitated head, happy as can be,
watching the fire door with that stupid smile.
Crack! One of headless Mickey’s blades sliced through.
Rose yelled at the Doctor, ‘Open the gate!’ She grabbed hold of the padlock.
‘Use your screwdriver!’
‘Naah,’ said the Doctor, and he sauntered happily towards the blue box. ‘Tell
you what, let’s go in here.’ He pushed open one of the panelled doors—it
creaked, it was so rickety—and stepped inside, slamming the door shut behind
him. As if that would protect him! Like a child thinking he can hide by holding
his hand in front of his face.
Crack! The second blade-hand sliced through.
Rose looked around, terrified. The walls were too high, with barbed wire at
the top.
Rip! A big chunk of fire door went flying, and headless Mickey could be seen
through the gap, blundering and thrashing about.
‘Doctor,’ she shouted! ‘You can’t hide inside a wooden box!’ That stupid hut
was so flimsy, the shovel-hands would chop it into matchsticks. ‘Doctor!’ What
was he doing, just standing in that tiny little space like an idiot?
Police telephone, said a panel on the door. Pull to open. Too late now! She
only had seconds to spare.
Chop, chop, chop, the fire door was almost gone.
And now, she was furious. If she was going to die, right here and now, at the
age of 19 in a dirty yard behind a cheap pizzeria, she was going to give the
Doctor a good punch first.
So she ran into the box.
 10

Inside the Box

She ran into a cavern.

She ran into a vault.
She ran into a cathedral.
She ran into a huge space, a vast dome, with the Doctor standing at its centre,
the grinning lord of an impossible realm.
It was like being plunged underwater, the sudden pressure in her head, and
Rose thought, simply, No! and ran back out again.
Into the yard. The same old yard. With headless Mickey still chopping away at
the fire door.
She looked back at the blue box. She’d left the door open and she could see, in
the gap between door and jamb, that huge, strange space reaching far beyond,
with the Doctor somehow in the distance, a small figure, a good twenty metres
away and yet within a box that stood beside her, no deeper than a metre in itself.
Headless Mickey began to kick away the last of the wood.
But she had to run around the box, a full circle, counting all four corners, one,
two, three, four, but no, it was a straightforward solid box, no tricks, no traps, but
how?
Wham! The final scraps of fire door went flying and the headless Mickey
staggered into the yard, shovel-blade hands flailing as it blundered murderously
towards her.
There was nothing else she could do.
She ran back inside the box.
She slammed the door shut, and then stayed facing it, because that was easier
than looking at the space behind her. She flinched as she heard headless Mickey
reach the doors, and hit them. The flimsy wood, painted white on the inside,
shuddered, and yet … that was all. A simple shudder. The noise from outside
was muffled and distant.
‘The assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn’t get through that door,’ said
the Doctor. ‘And believe me, they’ve tried.’
Okay, she thought, now I’ve got to turn around.
So she did.
 The Doctor’s blue box was bigger on the inside than on the outside.
Much bigger. Hugely so.
She was standing on a metal ramp surrounded by curved walls arching
upwards, studded with hexagons. What she’d thought was a dome was more of a
sphere; she could look down, through the metal mesh at her feet, to see the curve
completing far below in one vast circle. The whole interior was weathered,
rusting, bruised, and yet humming with life, as though huge engines were
brooding somewhere beyond the walls. The skin of the sphere was supported by
weird buttresses, shaped like … coral? Yes, she could smell ozone, like the
seaside, though this was a coral glowing with internal light.
The metal ramp at her feet was part of a suspended walkway leading to the
centre of the sphere, to the Doctor. He stood in front of a sculpture, a coral
mushroom out of which a glass pillar containing tubes of light soared up to the
roof and down to the depths, like a linchpin holding the entire globe together.
The Doctor had his arms folded, feet set apart in a classic pose of masculine
supremacy, looking down at her.
And yet the most important thing was this: the Doctor had a copy of her
boyfriend’s head plugged into the sculpture. He’d attached wires to run from
Mickey’s forehead to a panel below. The head was still alive, eyes darting from
the Doctor to Rose.
‘You must have a lot of questions,’ said the Doctor, to Rose.
The Mickey-head answered instead. ‘Not really. Seen all this before. Seen
better than this! You lot brought a war crashing down on our civilisation, d’you
think we don’t remember?’
The Doctor lost his tough-guy pose, muttered a quick sorry, and leapt to the
sculpture—it was more of a desk, really, a work-desk, a cluttered circular
console that hadn’t been tidied for years. He stabbed buttons and pulled a big red
lever. ‘Hold on a tick, we don’t need laughing boy.’
Mickey’s head said, ‘I’m gonna do more than—’ but then he froze, and his
eyes glazed over. Reduced to inanimate plastic.
‘Right, where were we?’ said the Doctor, and returned to that superior folded-
arms position, facing Rose.
She stared at him.
He stared back.
Rose controlled her breathing. Calm down, don’t lose it. She looked up at the
vaulted roof. Back at the wooden doors. Down to the depths below. Back up to
the Doctor and that shaft of shining glass at the heart of the room.
Where to start?
 She thought of Clive. Clive and his long-dead dad, Clive who’d give anything
to be here right now, and she was glad she’d met him. Perhaps he’d prepared her,
a little.
So.
‘It’s bigger on the inside,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor.
‘It’s alien.’
‘Yes.’
She took a deep breath. ‘Are you alien?’
‘Yes.’ But then he added, ‘Is that all right?’ A kindness in his voice.
That pose, she thought, the folded arms, the boots, the frown, that’s just
striking an attitude. He’s more than that.
She said, ‘I’m fine, yeah,’ and tried to smile.
‘It’s called the TARDIS,’ he said. ‘This thing. It’s an acronym, T.A.R.D.I.S. It
stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space.’
And then Rose burst into tears. She was ashamed, but couldn’t help it, the
whole thing surging up inside her. ‘Sorry,’ she gulped. ‘I’m sorry.’
But he was weird, this Doctor. Kind one minute, and yet, when she cried, he
stared like a scientist considering an ant. ‘Culture shock,’ he said. Almost like he
was glad. ‘Natural reaction, for a human. It does your head in, seeing technology
like this.’
He was arrogant, he was alien, and he was an idiot. ‘I’m thinking of Mickey,
not you,’ she said, furious. ‘Did they kill him? If they copied him, did they kill
him? Is he dead?’
‘Oh,’ said the Doctor, crestfallen. ‘I didn’t think of that.’
‘You didn’t think? He’s my boyfriend and they copied him and you didn’t
even think? You just waltzed in and pulled off his head. Like it’s funny. And now
you’re just going to let him melt?’
‘Melt?’
The Doctor followed her eyeline, to see Mickey’s head melting into a plastic
ooze, sinking down into the desk. Rose sobbed out loud, like she was seeing him
die.
‘No, no, no,’ yelled the Doctor, and he started stabbing buttons like a madman.
Rose ran up the walkway—it clattered and shook, this place felt like it had been
bolted together in a hurry—to give the Doctor a shove. ‘Save him!’ she said, the
head suddenly so precious.
‘I’m trying,’ said the Doctor, flicking a row of blue glass switches. But the
head lost its integrity, spreading out into a thick, sticky pool. One of Mickey’s
eyeballs remained—the one that had fallen into the soup—to give them a final
tomatoey glare, and then it dissolved.
‘He’s gone,’ said Rose.
‘Not quite,’ said the Doctor. He ran around the console, eyes bright, like a mad
musician, trying this button, that button, any button. Rose looked closer; the desk
had six sides, full of control panels, some sophisticated, some antique, with
levers improvised out of bottle-openers and hammers, paperweights in place of
dials, toy soldiers and scissors and curling tongs duct-taped to switches to hold
them down.
Designed by a mad geek wizard child, she thought. Whatever this place once
was, the Doctor has pimped it.
He worked feverishly but glanced at her every now and then. It occurred to
her: he’s loving this, he’s just waiting for me to ask what he’s doing. So she
didn’t. She wiped her eyes and stood there.
The Doctor blinked first. He said, ‘I’m trying to track the signal. There might
still be a trace. From the head, to whoever’s controlling it.’
‘Okay,’ she said, but when she thought of the head, she thought of Mickey,
and she had to hold back that horror. She was inside an alien sphere with a man
from another world, and she had to concentrate on getting out of here alive. She
could grieve for Mickey later, but not now. ‘So, who are you? What sort of
alien?’
‘Doesn’t really matter,’ he said, and kept working.
‘It does to me. You must have a name. A species.’
‘I said, it doesn’t matter.’
‘Then why won’t you tell me?’
He ignored her, picking up two pieces of equipment, a bicycle pump and a
trimphone, and wiring them together.
‘So this … TARDIS. Is this like your home? I mean, is this where you live?’
‘No. Not really. I’d much rather go outside. I just bunk down in here, now and
then.’
‘What, d’you take it with you, then? Wherever you go? Has it got wheels or
something?’
‘You’d be surprised.’
She looked down the walkways, three of which disappeared through dark
arches set into the walls, leading off to God-knows-where. ‘And is it just you?
Are there more of you? Have you got a team? Or staff?’
No reply. He kept working.
She said, ‘Why are you such hard work?’
‘I had a bad day.’
 ‘No worse than mine!’
He looked up, eyes blazing. ‘No, I had a very bad day. I had the worst day of
all. I lost everything. I lost everyone. I lost myself. In one single moment, gone.
And I have survived since then, very nicely, without a little human standing at
my side going yap-yap-yap, so if you don’t mind, shut up.’
She was outraged. ‘You wanted me to ask questions!’
‘I did not!’
‘You did! You love it!’
But then he suddenly yelled, ‘Gotcha!’ and slammed down a row of levers.
The entire room lurched. Like a ship in a storm, an enormous storm, the entire
sphere pitching at 45 degrees. Rose grabbed hold of the desk—the Doctor was
already holding on tight, grinning—and then the whole internal space rolled
back in the opposite direction. Then it swung back again, tilting so radically that
the desk became almost vertical, Rose holding on to it like a climbing-wall, the
pillar of light above her swooping down to the horizontal, before everything
tilted left, and then violently right. It was like being trapped in the middle of a
gyroscope.
And the air was filled with that noise she’d heard back on the estate, that deep,
aching, echoing grind, rising and falling, but massive now, like metal wailing in
pain.
The Doctor yelled with excitement, ‘We’re following the signal!’
Rose held on tight, wondering what the hell this looked like from the outside,
in the yard of that pizzeria—was the blue box rocking to and fro? On the spot?
Like some stupid toy?
Then the Doctor yelled, ‘No!’ He had a rubber mallet in his hand – it was
chained to the console, standard kit, for him – and he battered the desk, bang-
bang-bang! But whatever he was doing, it was too late. ‘Lost it,’ he groaned and
the see-sawing stopped, the huge sphere settling to a halt, the grinding noise
echoing away.
‘I lost the signal,’ said the Doctor, ‘but we must be close,’ and he raced down
the walkway to the wooden door, yanked it open and ran out.
Rose yelled, ‘You can’t go out there! It’s not safe!’ The headless Mickey-
killer-shovel-hands was still outside in the yard, the Doctor would get chopped
to death!
She ran down the ramp and hurtled outside.
 11

War Stories

Rose hurtled out of the box and onto the Embankment.

Not the yard.
The Embankment.
Beside the Thames.
The middle of London, at night, close to Westminster Bridge. She could see
the Houses of Parliament further down the road, and opposite, across the black
river, the London Eye. And right beside her, there it stood, that blue wooden box,
almost smug in its simplicity.
They’d moved. The box had moved.
It had moved miles, in seconds, and again she felt that dizzying sensation as
she caught her breath, her body trying to cope with the change from interior to
exterior, the sheer impossibility of the Doctor’s machine.
She looked at his TARDIS, her head buzzing with questions. And the Doctor
had that look, that little smile, like he was just waiting to deign to answer her.
But sod that. She could work it out for herself. She’d seen the TARDIS on the
estate, and she’d seen it gone, therefore …
‘It disappears,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t fly, does it? There’s no way it flies cos
we’d see it. It must sort of disappear there and reappear here, like it kind of …
warps.’
‘Oh,’ said the Doctor, disappointed. ‘That’s exactly right.’
‘But what’s happening back there? At the pizza place? There’s a mad headless
thing on the loose.’
‘No, it would’ve melted with the head.’
She thought of the body dissolving, the last vestige of her boyfriend, and she
felt a surge of horror in her heart, the enormity of it. Mickey. Lovely Mickey
Smith, with his smile and his mates and his daft yellow Beetle, the only boy
who’d buy a car because it was funny, not because it was cool. And it hurt so
much, to see the chain of his family across the decades, Odessa, Jackson, Rita-
Anne, now Mickey, all gone.
‘What are you blubbing about now?’ said the Doctor.
 ‘Mickey!’ she yelled! ‘Again! How many times are you going to forget him?
I’m the one who’s got to tell them. His mates. The boys from football. His Uncle
Cliff. All the little kids from the estate, they adored him. Oh my God, I’ve got to
tell them he’s dead.’ She looked at him with contempt. ‘Not that you care. You
were right. You are an alien.’
But he wouldn’t back down. Steel in his voice. ‘Listen, if I did forget some
kid called Mickey—’
‘He’s not a kid!’
‘If I did, it’s because I’m trying to save the life of every stupid ape blundering
about on top of this planet, all right?’
‘All right!’
‘Yes it is!’ and they ground to a halt, like sulking kids.
The Doctor sat on a concrete bench and fiddled with his screwdriver-thing. It
bleeped and whirred; she supposed he was still trying to find that mysterious
signal. And now Rose felt cold, a spring breeze gusting down the river and
shivering the trees along the Embankment.
She looked at this man from outer space, and there was one question she was
dying to ask above all others.
‘If you’re an alien, how come you sound like you’re from the north?’
‘Lots of planets have a north.’
Oh.
Fair enough.
She looked at the TARDIS, reading the sign at the top: POLICE PUBLIC
CALL BOX. ‘If you’re not a policeman, then what’s this thing meant to be?
Why does it look like that?’
‘It’s a disguise,’ he said.
‘Disguised as what? It’s not a very good disguise if I don’t know what the
disguise is. That’s the opposite of a disguise.’
‘All right, calm down, it’s a bit out of date, that’s all.’ He looked at her
askance. ‘I bet you never lose an argument, do you?’
‘Never.’
‘Well if you must know, they used to have police boxes on every street corner,
back in the ’30s and ’40s. They didn’t have walkie-talkies back then, just
telephones, so there’s a phone inside that little panel. And that’s the disguise.
The TARDIS hides itself, like a chameleon. Park it on a street corner, no one
notices.’
‘D’you think? It’s a great big box!’
‘Yeah, and d’you know what the human race does, when it sees something big
and strange in the middle of the street?’ He grinned. ‘You walk right past it.’
 ‘I suppose,’ she sighed, and sat down next to him. A silence, just the chug and
honk of boats on the Thames. Then she said, ‘You heal fast.’
‘I do what?’
She pointed at his cheek. ‘You cut yourself. On my mother’s glass table. For
which she is never going to forgive you.’ She leaned in closer. ‘But there’s
nothing there. It was deep, I remember thinking, that’s nasty. But there’s not
even a scar. And that was, what, 12 hours ago? Is that an alien thing then, self-
healing?’
‘No. I cut myself weeks ago.’
Sometimes, she thought, he says things just to provoke me. Don’t rise to it.
She said, ‘That thing mentioned a war. Mickey’s head, it said there’d been a
war.’
He grunted a yes.
‘A war between who? Your lot and these plastic people?’
‘Oh no.’ The Doctor lowered the screwdriver and craned his head back to look
at the sky. The stars were hidden behind the greenish haze of the city, but the
Doctor seemed to be looking beyond. ‘There was an almighty war. Out there. Far
away. Between my people and another kind. Not this lot we’re fighting now, a
different species altogether. The worst.’ He sighed and brought his head back
down. ‘Long time ago.’
‘But you won.’
‘Did I?’
‘You said you had a very bad day. Was that it?’
‘Yup.’
She left a silence. Then she said, ‘So the plastic people …?’
‘They were victims of the war. Bystanders. The battle swept across their
planet. And this wasn’t a fight like laser guns and spaceships and explosions, this
was a filthy, stinking war that changed reality itself. Corrupting everything it
touched. Ripping life inside out and making it obscene. The Nestene
Consciousness didn’t stand a chance.’
That was the name plastic-Mickey had said. Consciousness. She tested the
words for herself. ‘Nestene Consciousness.’
‘Yup.’
‘That’s quite a name.’
‘Quite a creature. You keep calling them people, but it’s more like a single,
vast, physical, thought-hive-aggregation. Huge, restless thing. Ambitious. It’s
eyed up the Earth once or twice before. But then the war rolled across and
devastated it. In a single second. It ripped apart the Consciousness, devolved it,
rebuilt it into a travesty of its old self. And then the battle boiled away into the
stars and left the Nestene to starve.’ He gave her a sudden, lovely smile. ‘I
haven’t talked like this in a long time.’
‘Well, I’ve never heard anything like it!’
They both laughed.
‘So it’s starving,’ said Rose. ‘Is that what the Nestene wants? Is it going to eat
us?’
‘Don’t be daft.’
‘Yes, because out of everything that’s been said on this bench, that’s daft.’
‘It can feed off the toxic waste of this planet. Loves it, lots of smoke and oil,
plenty of toxins and dioxins, perfect. Just what it needs. Its food stocks were
destroyed in the war, all its protein planets rotted. So it made its way here.’
‘And it what, it controls plastic?’
‘It is plastic. That was the damage the war left behind. The Nestene was flesh
and blood, once upon a time, it just had an affinity with plastic, it could resonate
organic polymers. Nice party trick. But then the war came. And rewrote its
DNA. Like a cruel joke. The Nestene Consciousness became living plastic, an
actual living plastic creature. No wonder it found its way here. Earth, the greatest
plastics factory in the cosmos. You’ve littered this world with so much junk,
there’s plastic in the food, in the air, in the wildlife, you’ve got plastic lining the
entire ocean floor. The Nestene looks at you lot and thinks it’s in paradise.’
‘All right, Swampy, I’ve got it.’
‘He’s a very nice man. I spent a week up a tree with him.’
‘I bet he jumped out first.’
‘He did, yeah.’
She folded her arms to ward off the cold. ‘So stopping the Nestene, is that
like, your job? I still don’t know who you are or what you really do.’
‘I don’t do anything. I just travel.’ He gave a weary smile. ‘Believe it or not,
all I want is a quiet life. No job, no wage, no boss, no tax, no home, no
responsibilities. Just me.’
‘Well, you say that. But you were part of that war, you damaged the Nestene,
so what are you doing now? Making amends?’
‘Oh, I wish. That would take me a long, long time.’
‘But all the same. Have you got a plan? I mean, is there a way of stopping it?’
He reached into his pocket and took out a phial of deep-blue liquid. He
waggled it in front of her with a silly smile. ‘Anti-plastic.’
‘Anti-plastic?’
‘Yup.’
‘What’s anti-plastic?’
‘It’s a polymer-blading reconvertant heuverstatic animotrope.’
 ‘Right,’ said Rose. ‘Anti-plastic.’
‘If I can get this inside the Nestene, it’ll stop it dead.’
‘Well that’s good news!’
‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s the last thing I want to do.’ He pocketed the phial
and leapt to his feet, holding his sonic screwdriver in the air like a man trying to
get reception on his phone. ‘But first things first, we need to find the Nestene.
It’s clever. Hiding the signal, it keeps slipping away.’ Exasperated, he went to the
balustrade to look at the river’s expanse. ‘How can you hide something that big
in a city this small?’
‘Hold on,’ said Rose, going to join him. ‘Hide what?’
‘The transmitter. Somewhere round here, there’s a transmitter. The Nestene
can control every piece of plastic with the power of its mind, but the power
needs boosting. It had that nest, in your shop, it had lots of little nests all over the
place, I’ve dealt with them, but they were just relay points. The control was
coming from one central transmitter. Hidden in the city somewhere. And it must
be huge.’
‘Right,’ said Rose, determined to be useful. ‘Tell me what it looks like.’
He stood with his back to the river. ‘Huge. Circular. Metal. Like a dish, like a
wheel. Radial. Close to where we’re standing.’
‘Doctor,’ she said, and pointed behind him.
He turned around. He saw the city, the river, the sky. He turned back to Rose,
puzzled. ‘What?’
‘Doctor,’ she said, and pointed again.
He turned to look. River, city, sky. Turned to Rose. ‘What?’
‘You idiot,’ she said, and pointed once more.
He looked again, river, city, sky, and …
The London Eye.
The great big circular metal radial London Eye, the world’s biggest Ferris
wheel, standing over the Thames in all its floodlit glory.
He turned back to Rose with a grin.
‘Fantastic,’ he said.

They ran over the bridge, across the dark river, running headlong towards danger
and disaster and death, and she held out her hand and took hold of his, so they
ran together hand in hand, and she looked at him and he looked at her and they
smiled as they ran, and the smile became a grin as they hurtled along, the lights
of the night streaking past them, and in that moment, for all her fear and horror
and grief, Rose had never been happier in her life.
 12

The Living Statues

The South Bank was busy, the hub of one of the world’s greatest cities lighting
up on a Saturday night. Rose and the Doctor pushed their way through the
crowds, and Rose wondered if Londoners were showing their defiance after the
Henrik’s explosion, refusing to cower at home. She looked around at the tourists,
families, buskers, mates, mums with kids, gangs of teenagers, couples of all
ages, scrums of rowdy lads already drunk, women in tiny shiny dresses ready to
strut until 4 a.m., some people heading for the Eye, some for the Aquarium,
some heading further down to the National or spreading out to fill the bars and
restaurants and clubs.
All these people in danger, she thought, panic rising.
But at the same time, she felt a dark, powerful thrill. She understood now, how
the Doctor could look so confident, so detached, so scornful at times; it was
astonishing to know so much more than everyone else. The people around her
strolled along in ignorance, while she knew about alien worlds, and spaceships,
and creatures trying to destroy the human race. Rose Tyler, four GCSEs, an
unemployed shop assistant living with her mother, barely £40 in her bank
account, but tonight she knew things about life on Earth that no one else knew.
For once, she felt special. More than that, she felt capable. The Doctor had
trusted her, and she wouldn’t let him down.
Right, Rose thought, to business. Detail. Facts. Answers. ‘So did the Nestene
build the London Eye?’
‘Don’t be daft. That would be ridiculous. They’re just using it. Although, the
Eiffel Tower. That was built by aliens.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘It’s a good thing I stopped it taking off. Mind you. I only left it on idle. One
of these days …’
‘I can never tell when you’re joking.’
‘Assume never.’ He kept whirring his sonic screwdriver as they walked along.
‘I’m looking for the absence of a signal. Sometimes that’s as strong as the signal
itself.’
 ‘But what about your TARDIS? It’s full of gear and stuff, can’t we find it with
that?’
He looked at the far side of the river. ‘It’s safer over there, safer for all of us. I
don’t want the Nestene getting a sniff. Right now, it doesn’t know the TARDIS
exists, and let’s keep it that way.’
‘But it does know,’ she said. ‘Mickey’s head, that was Nestene, wasn’t it? And
he saw the TARDIS, he recognised it, he said so.’
‘Oh, you’re getting good at this.’
‘Don’t be so condescending.’
‘Yep. Right. Sorry. But Mickey’s head only saw the TARDIS inside the
TARDIS. Signals can’t get out. So the Nestene majority is still unaware. And
that’s just how I want it.’ He leaned in closer with that dangerous smile. ‘Word
of advice, Rose Tyler, when you’re searching for a hostile alien life form, don’t
deliver the universe’s greatest technology into its tentacles.’
‘Oh my God, does it have tentacles? Really?’
‘Depends. It’s changed. Since the old days. I mean, it’s plastic, it could take
any shape. But it’s a big old consciousness, I reckon its physical shape must be
huge. Where would you hide?’ He kept his voice low, his eyes flicking round the
crowd. ‘Could be anywhere. In these buildings. Tube tunnels. Sewers. Under the
river. But it’s going to be guarded. It knows what we look like, you and me.
Keep an eye out.’
‘What for?’
‘Autons.’
She stayed silent and kept walking, refusing to ask the obvious, waiting for
him instead. He blinked, getting into her rhythm. ‘Autons are the Nestene in
human form. Like the dummies in the shop. They’re just foot soldiers, they’re
crude and simple, but the Nestene can make perfect copies. Like your mate
Ricky.’
‘Mickey,’ she said, biting back her fury. She’d punch him later. ‘So they could
look like anyone?’
‘Anyone.’
‘So how do we know?’
‘They don’t blink.’
She looked around. Police officers. Security guards. A traffic warden. But why
assume they’d be in uniform? She looked at anyone and everyone, that laughing
mum, that sullen emo, those two boyfriends hand-in-hand. It was impossible to
spot whether people were blinking or not. Instead, she thought: If I were made of
plastic, on the banks of the Thames, how would I hide?
And she felt a chill of horror down her spine.
 The statues.
The living statues.
Those people standing along the Thames, in costume, staying frozen in
position, to earn money from people throwing coins at their feet.
Rose and the Doctor were just walking past a living statue, a comedy tramp
like Charlie Chaplin, battered suit and bowler hat, but sprayed silver from top to
toe. He stood on a little box, the crowd passing him by. Jackie always used to
complain about living statues. ‘Creepy,’ she’d say. ‘What a way to make a living.
If they want to earn money by standing still and doing nothing all day, they
could work for BT.’
The tramp was perfectly static. Not breathing. Not blinking. Not the slightest
tremor. He was holding out his hand, offering a plastic daffodil, his arm fixed
and unmoving. Rose stared. This was either the best mime on the South Bank, or
not a mime at all.
‘Doctor,’ she said. ‘You don’t think …’
The word Doctor was a trigger.
The tramp moved.
It turned its silver face to look at her.
It did not blink.
‘Oh my God,’ said Rose.
The Doctor, perversely, was delighted. ‘Well done!’
The tramp stepped off its box and walked towards them. Some people
laughed, a lad yelled, ‘I can see you moving!’ and a woman who’d just dropped
a pound in the hat grabbed it back and stomped away. But the silver tramp paid
them no attention. Bright black eyes fixed on the Doctor and Rose. Slowly, it
advanced. Holding out its flower like a threat.
A posh little boy stood in front of the tramp. He said crossly, ‘You’re supposed
to stay still.’ The tramp swatted the kid aside, whack! Then it kept walking,
remorseless.
‘Come on,’ said Rose, taking the Doctor’s hand to hurry him, to draw the
tramp away from the crowd. But should she shout, should she fight, should she
get people out of the way?
‘They’re still in hiding,’ muttered the Doctor. ‘The Autons, they don’t want to
draw attention. If we can just keep ahead of them.’
They heard shouting behind them. ‘Hey, you!’ They turned to look as a large,
red-faced man grabbed hold of the tramp. ‘Did you hit my little boy?’
The Doctor started back towards them, but too late. The tramp shoved the man
and sent him flying. He collided with a gang of drunk lads, which perhaps saved
his life as one of them grabbed the man and started waltzing with him, his mates
cheering. The tramp turned back to face the Doctor and Rose and resumed its
march.
Rose could see the drunken waltz and, behind that, the little boy crying,
pockets of aggression spreading in the tramp’s wake. What should they do?
She’d only fought these things with the Doctor, with no one else as witness, but
this escalation in public terrified her. Already, a policeman was heading over as
the father fought off the drunk. And the tramp kept walking.
Then the Doctor said, ‘Uh-oh.’
Ahead of them, another living statue. A ballerina, painted entirely white
except for blotches of red on cheeks and lips. Eyelashes like spiders. She’d been
fixed in an arabesque, but then onlookers laughed, surprised, as she suddenly
moved, snapping her head round to look at the Doctor and Rose.
They hurried past but the ballerina pirouetted in their direction, then lowered
her leg to step down from her box, five or six people applauding her. She
ignored them. Stalking her prey.
Behind her, the tramp continued its march. Behind that, the drunks were
arguing with the policeman, and now a woman was holding the crying boy, his
mother, pointing at the tramp, ‘It was him!’ People looked around, blaming
anyone, everyone. The crowd was brittle, panicky, thinking of last night’s
explosion, fear jittering along the South Bank.
‘What do we do?’ muttered Rose.
‘No idea. Keep going,’ said the Doctor.
They ran past the London Eye, then stopped. Ahead of them, a third living
statue was stepping off its box. A knight in armour. It raised a sword as sharp as
steel.
Little kids running around it. So close to the sword.
Rose looked back. The ballerina was advancing, her arms in fourth position,
and behind her, the tramp was still proffering that sinister flower. Behind him,
the crowd jostled with violence, the drunks pushing the policeman, people
running away, the woman yelling, the place like a powder keg.
Everything volatile. About to explode.
‘This way,’ said the Doctor, heading for the Embankment wall. Rose saw a
gap, a stone staircase leading down to the river. She and the Doctor ran towards
it—a final look back saw the tramp, the ballerina and the knight converge and
march towards them—then she followed the Doctor down the wet, worn steps.
Plunging into darkness.
At least this would take the chase away from the crowds. The sounds of
trouble on the Embankment were already fading away. But below them, Rose
could only see mud and black water.
 No boat, no jetty, no tunnel, no escape.
She looked back. The knight, the ballerina and the tramp had reached the top
of the steps and began to march down.
‘But what do we do?’ said Rose, panicked, as they reached the bottom, the
stink of the river rising up. ‘We’re trapped, aren’t we? There’s nowhere to go!’
The Doctor grinned—God, he loved trouble—and held up his sonic
screwdriver. ‘What did I say? The absence of a signal. And there is absolutely
nothing coming from that!’
He pointed at a manhole, a few metres away, across some slimy flagstones. A
hazy red steam billowing from its vents.
Like anyone who’d ever lived in any city of the world, Rose had spent her life
walking past grilles in the ground that smoked away, without ever giving them a
second thought. But now, she saw them through the Doctor’s eyes. A portal to
another world.
Or to her death.
The Doctor ran over the slippery flags, squatting down to aim his sonic
screwdriver at the manhole cover.
Rose looked back. The knight, the ballerina and the tramp had stopped,
arranged along the steps in a diagonal line. ‘Why’ve they stopped?’
‘Well, yes, problem is,’ said the Doctor, a little shame-faced, ‘I don’t think
they’re chasing us. They’re herding us. We’re not escaping, we’re walking into a
trap.’
‘You mean they wanted us to find this?’
‘Yeah. Or we’d be dead by now. We’d have been ballerina’d to death. Which,
actually, I’d like to see, but there you go.’
‘So we’re doing exactly what the Nestene wants?’
‘Yup!’
The Doctor kept whirring away, and Rose heard something click and release
within the manhole. He lifted the cover and a rush of heat and steam billowed up
from the depths. An awful stench of sewage and carcasses. And a noise. The
distant roar of something vast. Rose looked down. A metal ladder descended into
reddish darkness.
The Doctor said, ‘Normally I’d say, wait here. But that’s a bit tricky with the
Three Stooges behind us.’
‘Never mind them,’ said Rose. ‘I’m coming with you.’
‘They always used to say that,’ said the Doctor, with a sad smile.
She didn’t know who he was talking about. But whoever they were, she
wasn’t them; she’d do her own thing. Rose sat on the lip of the manhole and took
hold of the ladder, lowering herself down first. She glanced up at him. ‘You can
wait here if you want.’
The Doctor grinned and followed her.
They went down, rung by rung, the heat and steam and stink thickening as
they descended into the pit.
Far below them, deep in the earth, something huge was shrieking with delight.
 13

The Lair of the Beast

The ladder went down a shaft leading to a floor of metal grilles streaming with
thick red smoke. The Doctor and Rose hauled up an iron trapdoor. It opened onto
a rusting metal staircase that took them to a wide, open platform, and from there,
Rose could only stare in awe. The Doctor, the dummies and the statues were all
alien life in human form, but now, she gazed upon the Nestene.
Far below, in a vast underground chamber, it sat in a circular pit. Some 30
metres in diameter, the Consciousness looked like a writhing cauldron of lava.
No face, no limbs, no body as such, but a churning, molten mass.
It’s plastic, Rose thought, it’s melted plastic. But it’s alive.
It kept moving, as though driven by an internal rage. It surged like a bottled
tide, waves of lava peaking then falling as it heaved to and fro, trapped and
trying to find release.
And the noise! It roared as it lurched, and screamed, and wailed. Calling out
in pain.
Rose followed the Doctor down the next metal staircase, to look closer. They
had no idea if the Nestene even knew they were there. It kept twisting in the vat,
as though trying to find its proper shape and failing, every time.
She looked around the chamber. It was half-industrial, once some kind of
underground depot, the upper walls lined with mesh, empty doorframes like the
black eyes of a skull. A series of suspended walkways and gantries descended
towards the depths, all bolted, rickety, creaking, the whole place under stress.
And two huge stanchions, each as thick as a house, shafted through the chamber
at opposing angles, vast pillars of steel supporting the Eye above.
But the lower half of the chamber seemed to have been chewed out of the
earth. Rough, rocky walls bearing the marks of huge teeth. The Nestene had
devoured its way beneath London and created its own nest.
Rose had entered an alien world twice, first the TARDIS, and now this. She’d
thought the future would be shiny and white. Instead, it was decaying, broken
and dangerous.
Then she heard footsteps on metal and turned around to see the living statues
descending through the trapdoor. But there they stopped. Knight, ballerina and
tramp stood guard on the top staircase, blocking any exit.
Rose muttered to the Doctor, ‘Get on with it, then. Tip in your anti-plastic.’
He looked at her in surprise. ‘I’m not here to kill it. I’ve got to give it a
chance.’
He walked to the edge of the platform and called out to the pit below with
absolute authority, ‘I seek audience with the Nestene Consciousness!’
Now the mass of plastic had a focus. It screeched and boiled, reaching out to
form tendrils in the Doctor’s direction. Rose remembered those fronds in the
pipes at Henrik’s, now a thousand times bigger.
But the Doctor stared down, magnificently unimpressed. He announced, ‘I
come here under peaceful contract according to Convention 15 of the Shadow
Proclamation.’
It was the last thing Rose had expected: diplomacy. But it worked. Whatever
this Proclamation was—the United Nations of Outer Space, the EU, MI5, the
AA?—it seemed to calm the Nestene. It withdrew, simmering down to a low
boil, and the scream became a bubbling grumble.
‘Thank you,’ said the Doctor.
The vat gurgled.
‘Not at all,’ said the Doctor politely, and Rose realised that the noises made
sense to him. He could speak Nestene.
‘If I might have permission to approach?’ asked the Doctor.
A bubble on the Nestene’s surface rose and popped, which the Doctor took as
a yes. ‘Stay here,’ he said to Rose, and he clattered down a series of stairways
leading to the centre of the chamber, his yomping stomp in those big boots
making the whole array shudder. Rose took a step forward to see better, stepping
into a well of light.
‘Rose?’
The voice came from far across the chamber.
It couldn’t be.
‘Rose, is that you?’
She turned her head to see.
Mickey.
Mickey Smith.
Mickey, alive and well, dirty and bedraggled, crouched on the floor of a metal
platform halfway down the vault. Clinging to a railing like a frightened animal.
Alive!
‘Oh my God, Mickey!’
She ran down the stairs to her left, across a gantry, the walkways swinging on
their chains, clattering and battering, but she didn’t care, he was alive! One final
jump and she was there, with Mickey, she’d found him, she knelt down and
hugged him and held him tight.
He was filthy. Streaked with oil and grime, he sobbed and kept saying ‘I’m
sorry, I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ she said, amazed, and she leaned forward to find the Doctor.
He was climbing down a ladder to reach the level below. She called out, ‘It’s
Mickey, he’s alive!’
‘I can see that,’ said the Doctor. He looked annoyed at being distracted. ‘That
was always a possibility.’
‘You mean you knew?’
‘Keeping him alive maintains the copy.’
Rose’s exhilaration hadn’t lasted long. ‘You mean you knew and you didn’t
tell me? You let me think he was dead?’
‘Can we keep the domestics outside, thanks?’ He looked away as though
dismissing her, and continued down the ladder.
Mickey was terrified, babbling, ‘That thing, down there, it’s alive, it’s been
screaming at me.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Rose. ‘It’s okay, it’s all under control, I promise. But how
the hell did you get here?’
‘There was a bin, it pulled me inside. Big white light. Opened my eyes. I was
here.’
She pulled back to wipe the dirt and snot from his face, and she thought:
Culture shock. Like the Doctor had said. Rose had discovered this world step-
by-step, but Mickey had been thrown in headfirst.
And also, whispered a secret, selfish thought, maybe I can handle this better
than him.
The Doctor had reached the ledge below. He stood forward, silhouetted
against the fierce red smoke rising from the pit. His leather jacket had the glint
of armour. He called out, ‘Am I addressing the Heart of the Consciousness?’
The plastic below rumbled an assent.
‘Thank you,’ said the Doctor. ‘If I might observe, you infiltrated this
civilisation by means of warp shunt technology. So, may I suggest with the
greatest of respect, that you shunt off?’
The Nestene roared! Rose stood to get a better view, Mickey clinging to her
leg. Below her, she could see the Doctor, and below that, the cauldron of plastic,
now writhing with anger.
But the Doctor shouted it down. ‘Oh, don’t give me that! It’s an invasion!
Plain and simple. Don’t talk about your constitutional rights!’
 The creature bellowed and Rose could see craters forming in its skin, two
smaller pits with a gaping maw beneath. A crude face. It bellowed and the whole
chamber shook.
But the Doctor shouted over it: ‘I. Am. Talking!’
He silenced the beast. The vat simmered, brooding.
Then the Doctor was quieter. ‘How d’you want history to remember you? As a
fine and rare intelligence? Or a genocidal intergalactic criminal? You once built
mighty transparent empires in the sky. Now you’re reduced to this, plotting
down here in the sewers. Don’t you think it’s time to stop?’
The lava slopped at the sides, a little sulky.
‘I know you’ve been through agony. And it wasn’t your fault. But look at the
Earth around you. This planet is just starting. These stupid little people have
only just learnt how to walk, but they’re capable of so much more. I’m asking
you now, on their behalf. Please. Just go.’
The vat gurgled. Am I imagining it, Rose thought, or did that noise end on an
upward lilt? Like a question? And yes, the Doctor was answering.
‘There are a thousand worlds out there with skies of dioxins. Places you could
colonise without hurting anyone. The Western Heights of the Jaggit Brocade.
Callistenia. Beynhale. Gris. The Threppitch Consolidation …’
He rattled off names with confidence. He’s winning the room, thought Rose.
But Mickey pulled at her arm, bringing her down to crouch at his side. ‘It won’t
listen,’ he whispered, terrified. ‘I’ve heard it. Screaming at me. It’s furious, it
wants us dead.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Rose. ‘You can trust the Doctor.’
‘But it’s going to destroy the whole world.’
‘No, it can’t.’ She leaned closer to him and whispered, ‘He’s got this anti-
plastic. He can kill that thing if he has to.’
‘Really?’ he said.
And Mickey smiled a terrible smile.
His voice was cold. ‘Thanks babes, baby, babyface boombastic.’
He wasn’t Mickey.
He was a copy.
It copied him twice.
Mickey stood, now strong and unafraid, facing the pit and calling out to the
Nestene in words that were more like roars and howls.
The Doctor turned around, furious, with Rose, not Mickey. ‘What have you
done?’
Mickey called out alien commands. Two shop-window Autons, dressed in
sharp navy suits, strode out of the darkness at the back of the Doctor’s ledge. He
had nowhere to run, with only the drop in front of him. He was helpless as one
Auton grabbed hold of him and pinned his arms behind his back, the second
Auton digging into his jacket. It found the phial of blue liquid anti-plastic and
held it aloft for the Nestene to see.
The beast screeched with rage, betrayed.
‘No,’ said the Doctor, sounding desperate. ‘That was just insurance. I was
never going to use it. I’m not attacking you, I’m here to help. I swear!’
But Mickey answered as the Nestene’s puppet. He yelled one simple word of
English: ‘Liar!’ Then Rose looked on in horror as Mickey turned to her and
grinned. His teeth a perfect, plastic white.
‘See ya,’ said Mickey.
He melted away. His body kept its shape for a second, hollowing from the
inside, his plastic interior pouring away through the grille at his feet leaving the
clear shell of a grinning Mickey behind, which then collapsed inwards and
dissolved into nothing.
‘Mickey,’ said Rose, helpless.
She’d lost him again, and this time for good.
 14

The Never-Ending War

Suddenly a grille behind Rose opened, and with a rush and a clatter and a thump,
a body tumbled out!
Rose looked down in disbelief.
It was Mickey.
Alive.
Again!
‘Rose,’ he said, terrified, grabbing hold of her. ‘Oh my God, it held me
prisoner, there was a bin and this light and then that monster!’
‘Get him out,’ yelled the Doctor, still being held tight by his Auton guard.
‘Rose, both of you, get out of here.’
‘Who’s he?’ said Mickey, and that convinced her he was real, because the last
copy hadn’t even asked. That and the stink of sweat and fear rising off him, God,
yes, definitely flesh.
But she didn’t have time for him. He’s alive, great, been there, done that,
sorry. She sort of patted him on the head as she looked up at the top of the
chamber. The living statues were still guarding the exit. ‘We can’t get out!’ she
yelled at the Doctor, but then she realised that Mickey’s cage had opened as part
of a larger sequence; walkways were being hauled up on their chains,
counterweights to a wider platform now descending to arrive above and behind
her.
On the platform, the TARDIS.
The Nestene had found it.
Rose looked from the TARDIS to the Doctor, and his horror told her this was
very bad news.
‘What’s going on?’ said Mickey.
‘Shut up,’ said Rose, then she yelled, ‘What’s going on?’ to the Doctor.
‘It knows the TARDIS,’ said the Doctor. ‘Worse than that, it knows who I am.
And it’s terrified.’ He turned back to the pit, desperate. ‘Yes, that’s my ship, but I
swear, I’m not attacking you, I promise.’
But the Nestene’s screech was monstrous. It was pure noise to Rose, yet its
ferocity pressed on her mind to form words. She was beginning to understand it.
She realised: it’s a consciousness, it’s making me conscious.
It spoke of pain.
It spoke of war.
It spoke of planets boiling in space and a thousand TARDISes spinning in
flames. And then Rose saw its molten maw shape a word, which seemed to say:
‘Time.’
It reformed, to roar another word:
‘Lord.’
And now the Doctor was terrified.
More than that. He was sorry.
‘I couldn’t help it,’ he called to the Nestene, his voice raw. Was he crying? ‘I
tried to stop the war. I lost everything. But it was too late. I’m sorry, but I
couldn’t save your world, I couldn’t save mine, I couldn’t save any of them.’
But the Nestene’s fury could not be contained. It surged and swamped within
its vat, whipping up a friction. The edges of the pit began to crackle with
electricity. Rose watched as curls of white lightning skittered over the creature’s
skin. Its roar seemed to command the lightning bolts, which arced up the huge
stanchions. Bristling up through the roof, towards the London Eye.
She yelled, ‘What’s it doing?’
‘It’s the war,’ shouted the Doctor, despairing. ‘It’s still fighting the war. It
never ends.’ He looked up as the lightning grew in strength. He said, ‘It’s
starting.’
‘Starting what?’ said Mickey.
‘What’s starting?’ said Rose.
‘The invasion,’ said the Doctor.

All along the South Bank, the crowd stopped and stared as the London Eye lit
up. Tendrils of electricity flickered up from the ground, spiralling along the two
supporting stanchions towards the central pivot. From there, the lightning danced
and jumped along the spokes.
People in the pods looked out, some entranced, some scared. The posh little
boy who’d been swatted by the tramp-statue now stood in Pod 27, open-
mouthed, his mother and father beside him along with 20 Chinese students, all
fearful. But the electricity seemed to carry no charge; it had a greater purpose,
arcing across the diameter, building in strength.
Down below, some people clapped, as though seeing fireworks. But others
backed away, and some began to run, that nervous jitter spreading along the
Embankment once more.
 At the base of the Eye, the staff swung into action. The wheel could still turn,
and they began to empty the pods as fast as they could, keeping calm, but with a
wary eye on the light-storm. At the top of the wheel, the posh little boy and his
parents watched their descent. Wishing it would speed up.
Cars on Westminster Bridge screeched and swerved, drivers staring at the Eye.
In the Houses of Parliament, government and staff ran to the windows on the
riverside to witness the phenomenon.
The electricity grew stronger. The air filled with a sizzling noise. And beneath
that, some swore they could hear a huge, distant roar from below the ground.
Along the promenade, from the Eye to the National to the Globe and beyond,
they stood: the living statues. A robot. A pixie. A gladiator. A golden monk. A
bowler-hatted businessman. All fixed and frozen. And all ignored, as everyone
turned to watch the London Eye.
But then the robot twitched.

In the chamber below, bolts of electricity zig-zagged across the huge space. Rose
yelled at the Doctor, ‘What’s happening up there?’
He was still struggling in the Auton’s grip, helpless as he called across, ‘It’s
activating the plastic.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’ said Mickey, but she ignored him as she
looked up at the roof, imagining London above.
Out there, right now, the Nestene invasion of Earth was beginning, and Rose
could think of only one thing.
Her mother.
She took out her mobile. Would she get a signal, underground? She could only
hope with all her heart, as she keyed in the number designated Mum.
 15

The Army Awakes

Jackie’d had a hell of a day.

First of all, her bamboo coffee table had been broken. Second, her daughter
had been mysteriously flighty with that tall bloke who was way too old
(although, nice jacket). Third, Rodrigo had cancelled. Fourth, she’d obviously
developed an allergy to milk, because she’d popped into Jacinta’s who’d insisted
on making her a cappuccino when a cup of instant would’ve been fine, but no,
she’d bought herself a frother and had to show off, so Jackie had been feeling a
bit nasal ever since and would have to give up milk for the rest of her life. Fifth,
these jeans had shrunk.
But still. She’d battled on. She’d gone to the police station to ask advice about
Rose’s compensation, since madam was too busy chasing after lanky Mancs to
do anything about it herself. They’d given her a phone number, but it was
permanently engaged. Then Billy Croot said that Henrik’s had opened a help
desk on Oxford Street, so Jackie trotted off, up West.
The area around the bomb site had been closed to traffic. They’d erected
portacabins in the street, some for the police, one for Henrik’s management to
deal with unemployed staff. Jackie queued up with grumbling shop assistants
and chefs and lift engineers to get the necessary forms. Rumour had it that the
son and heir, Rudi Henrik, was going to appear in person to shake hands and
commiserate with the troops. He’d bring a windfall of thousands of pounds, cash
in hand, they said. The Henrik family loved their workers, they’d do them proud.
But as yet, there was no sign of him. ‘I bet his helicopter’s stuck in Monte
Carlo,’ said a bitter ex-security guard. Still, Jackie tucked in her blouse a little
tighter. You never know, she thought. Jackie Henrik. Madder things have
happened.
A hush fell across them when news came from the ruins. A body had been
found. Bernie Wilson, the caretaker, they said. A woman started crying. ‘I loved
him,’ she said. Her friends said, ‘Be brave, Erica. He died doing the job he
loved,’ and took her for a cup of tea, so Jackie nipped into her place in the queue.
Best thing of all: sales! Everywhere! Fifty per cent off. The shops were scared
that the explosion would drive everyone away, so they’d reduced everything in
price, with late-night opening. Bonus! As soon as Jackie had the compensation
forms, she walked down Oxford Street, searching for bargains. Obviously, she
was really very sorry that the shop had blown up and all that, but it’s an ill wind
… The people in the portacabin queue had reckoned they’d get £1,000 minimum
for shock and trauma, and since Jackie was technically Rose’s landlady, that
gave her a good £500 to play with, if not more. So when her phone rang, Jackie
had already bought new jeans, a white leather belt, some oven gloves and a nice
pair of opal earrings.
Her screen said Rose, and in that eternal and mysterious war between mothers
and daughters, Jackie had now called a truce, all smiles as she answered. ‘Hello
sweetheart!’
It was a bad line, crackling and dipping. Rose’s voice sounded a thousand
miles away. ‘Mum, where are you?’
‘I’ve got you that compensation form,’ said Jackie. ‘And who’s that woman
that Howard likes, is it Cynthia Rothrock? Cos I thought I could buy him a
DVD, after I knackered his washing machine.’
‘No, but listen,’ said Rose. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m up West, you should see Henrik’s now! How the mighty are fallen. It’s
like Pompeii. Oh and they found that man, they said he was dead, that’s sad, isn’t
it? Didn’t you say he was horrible?’
Rose’s voice flickered in and out, ‘Mum,’ and then ‘Don’t,’ and then maybe,
‘Go home.’
‘Sorry darling,’ said Jackie. ‘Bad line. I’ll speak to you later, I’m off shopping.
On your money, but you’re a very kind girl. There’s a bit of paella in the fridge if
you’re hungry, although heat it up properly because old rice can kill you, see you
later.’
As Jackie hung up, she heard Rose swear—cheeky girl! Right, she thought,
what next?
She walked on. All around her, shop windows, bright with light. Display after
display of dummies, dressed in the latest fashions, all fixed in position, staring
out at the night.
But then, behind her, a dummy in a red miniskirt turned its head.

Not far away, the Bad Wolf band strolled from Camden towards Soho.
Patrice, Mook and Sally were despondent. Mickey had vanished that
afternoon, although the fact that both he and Rose had their phones off surely
meant they were having fun together, somewhere. But it wasn’t like them to let
anyone down, so a low level of worry had ticked away throughout the evening.
 The band had made do, for the gig. Their mate Big Bone Bill had taken
Mickey’s place on bass guitar, and now Bill had driven the drums and kit home
in his van leaving the others to wander to the Cellar Lights bar on Old Compton
Street. Patrice knew a barman there who could slip them a free drink or two.
But the whole night had been lacking. The crowd for Bad Wolf had been
sparse. The pub had only started filling up in anticipation of the next act, three
brothers from Dulwich who called themselves Three Brothers from Dulwich.
Patrice, Mook, Sally and Big Bone Bill had packed up their stuff in the tiny
backstage corridor, hearing yells and applause they’d never had.
‘It’s the name,’ said Mook, as they crossed Oxford Street. ‘We shouldn’t have
changed the name. Maybe Bad Wolf is bad luck.’
‘I like it,’ said Sally.
Patrice said, ‘Haven’t I seen it somewhere before?’
‘It’s graffiti,’ said Sally. ‘It’s all over that Jordan Street car park, it’s been there
for years. Must’ve been a gang, or a tag.’
‘I wonder,’ said Mook.
‘We’ll never know,’ said Patrice.
And they wandered into Soho, smiling, laughing, but with that faint, nagging
worry about Mickey and Rose making everything a little thin.
Behind them, a row of child-size dummies stood in their primary-coloured
shop window, staring out into the night.
The dummy of a little girl turned its head.

Not far away, Clive Finch marched his family along and read from his notebook.
‘According to my spreadsheet, if we move 20 per cent of our summer money
into spring, we can all afford a little treat tonight. But that’ll mean belt-buckling
in July!’
His wife Caroline said, ‘Yes, cap’n,’ with a mock salute while his sons, Ben
and Michael, laughed. Ben gave his dad a little shove.
Clive smiled. The love and mockery of family life. Exactly what he needed
right now. He’d had a bad afternoon. He’d made that nice girl, Rose Tyler, think
he was an idiot. Worse than that, he’d scared her away.
She truly had met the Doctor. He knew it. He could see it in her eyes, that
shiver of fear, that little glitter of excitement. She had glimpsed the impossible
and, oh, he was jealous. From the moment he’d met her, he’d been clumsy and
bumbling, overwhelmed with both envy and a joy that the Doctor might be near.
And then he’d said too much, he’d babbled, he’d poured out all his nonsense and
he’d seen her face darken. She’d run away, Rose Tyler, never to be seen again.
 Clive then stamped around in his shed, furiously finding new ways to
alphabetise things. Until Caroline appeared, always Caroline, knowing him so
well, smiling and kind, leading him out of the shed, back to the house, to the
kids, to his normal, lovely life.
Clive had first met Caroline at Durham University when his UFO Society and
her Reclaim The Night Enclave had convened upon the same double-booked
room, him with five pals, her with forty-four. Clive’s little team had been ousted,
but Caroline then tracked him down to Cuth’s Bar and apologised with a lager
and black. They talked into the night, and she was honest from the start: she
believed some of his theories, not all. Alien life, yes, alien invasions, not so
much. And she agreed wholeheartedly that there was something suspicious about
his father’s death. As the years went by, she’d assume a thin, distant smile if he
talked too much about creatures and conspiracies, but she loved him for his
passion. Let him have his shed! Let him spend £100 a month on photocopies. Let
him journey to the foot of Mount Snowdon with his mates Jacko and Bean if
they believed a spacecraft had once crash-landed there. Because that same
passion made him an honest husband and a splendid father. She had mates who’d
married fools and liars and cheats, while Clive’s greatest fault was to get a little
bit too excited whenever there was a meteor storm.
And now, on days like Rose Tyler days, Clive always compensated for his
mood by spending a bit of money. He’d taken them out that evening for a
Chinese buffet, and now they’d have a little wander and a shop. ‘You can have
whatever you want for under £40,’ he said to the boys. Then to Caroline he said
with mock pomposity, ‘The funds are limitless for you, my darling.’
She laughed, slapped his arm and said, ‘I’ll pay for myself, thank you.’ Then
she reached out and held Clive’s hand. He gave her the most massive smile. She
leaned in, tucking her arm into his, and the family walked on into the night.
Behind them, in a shop window advertising the glories of England’s
countryside, a big plastic sheepdog flicked its tail.

On the Embankment, the London Eye finally juddered to a halt, overwhelmed by

lightning bolts. All along the river, everyone stared as the crackles of electricity
smoothed out to form an unbroken circle of light around the wheel’s
circumference.
The posh little boy in Pod 27 was scared. They’d stopped a good 14 pods from
the ground and now he was trapped, along with his mother and father and the 20
Chinese students. His red-faced dad yelled into his mobile phone, but the signal
was swamped beneath howling static.
 Then the posh little boy and everyone inside Pod 27 looked up and down and
around, amazed, as …
The London Eye pulsed.
It pulsed out a signal, visibly, concentric circles of light beaming from its
centre to radiate across the city, hoops of blue energy widening out, out, out, in
an exact visual representation of a signal being broadcast.
Along the riverbank, people stared up, not seeing the living statues step down
from their boxes. No one paid any attention as the monk, the businessman, the
pixie, the gladiator and the robot took some faltering steps, jerked a little as
though getting used to this new freedom, then looked around. Their faces blank
and yet full of malice.
Then their hands sharpened into blades.
And they began to murder.
 16

The Battle of London

Jackie heard a huge smash, leapt out of her skin! She turned around to see that
some idiots dressed as shop-window dummies had broken open their windows,
now hacking away at the remaining shards.
I’ve seen that on TV, she thought, as shock turned to laughter, sugar glass, that
glass is made of sugar, thin sheets of sugar, easy to break. But why would
anyone do that?
In every shop?
She yelped as the windows of the shop to her right caved in, smashed apart by
tall female dummies in sharp black clothes. Jagged teeth of glass fell from their
frames, biting down onto the pavement, shattering into splinters. To her left,
another smash, a range of high-fashion dummies breaking free. Further down the
street, another storefront was being trashed. And another. And another.
And she focused on the glass, rather than the dummies. Because that’s not
sugar, she thought. That’s heavy. That’s sharp.
That’s real.
A young red-haired man was yelling, furious. The falling glass had cut his
arm, his sleeve ripped open on the bicep. Blood on his jacket. He aimed his fury
at a tuxedo-dressed dummy marching stiffly towards him. He’d sue, yelled the
red-haired man, he’d take them to court, he’d get compensation.
Jackie was just thinking, I could help you with that. She even reached for the
compo papers in her denim bag.
Then she saw the tuxedo-dummy raise its hand, the hand flattening into a
blade even as Jackie watched, a blade that it lifted up and then swung down on
the head of the helpless red-haired man.
Jackie Tyler screamed.
Then she ran for her life.

For the first time that night, Bad Wolf were having a good laugh. They’d reached
Old Compton Street, a row of cafés, bars and pubs, all bright, busy and buzzing,
none of them hosting dummies in its windows.
Except one.
 They’d been standing outside what Patrice called ‘a gentleman’s specialist,’
telling Mook he should go inside and treat himself, when some sort of publicity
stunt happened right in front of their eyes. A shiny-white shop-window
mannequin with exaggerated musculature, naked except for a studded harness
and black leather pants, suddenly turned to face them.
They all leapt!
And then laughed.
‘Oh my God, he’s real,’ said Sally.
‘He’s looking at you, Mook,’ laughed Patrice. ‘You’re in there!’
‘I wish,’ said Mook.
But then the model pulled back its arm, and swung it round in a karate chop.
The window shattered.
Patrice, Sally and Mook jumped back, shielding their heads, yelling out. As
they recovered, they saw the dummy and its two companions—one head-to-toe
in black leather, the other dressed only in speedos—step down from the window,
kicking the remaining glass into the street.
‘You idiots,’ said Sally. ‘You could’ve killed someone!’
But she was interrupted by a stocky, bald, bearded man in a white T-shirt and
leather waistcoat running out of the shop—the owner, presumably—and heading
for Patrice, the tallest and presumably the one to blame. The man yelled at him,
‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’
Patrice just pointed, and the man turned to see the plastic threesome stepping
towards him.
They all stared, dumbstruck, as the harness-dummy lifted its hand. And they
saw the hand change shape, the fingers fusing to become something new, a hard,
jagged blade. And suspended in that second, they all began to notice the
intrusion of noises from far-off; sirens in the distance, smashes, glass breaking,
brakes screeching, the yells and screams of men and women, the whole world
around them going mad somehow, as the dummy in front of them raised its new
hand above its head.
The shop owner stood his ground, blazing with anger. ‘You’ll have to pay for
that window!’
The dummy swung its arm down.
Patrice, Mook and Sally flinched. Gasped. Horrified.
And then they began to run.

Clive was studying his notebook, thinking he should differentiate between his 2s
and his 7s, perhaps going continental with the latter, so he just muttered, ‘Yes, in
a minute,’ when Michael and Ben told him to look.
 But then Caroline let go of his arm, complaining, ‘Honestly, they could give
someone a heart attack.’ Clive looked up.
The shop-window dummies were moving. The Finch family had been walking
past a display extolling The Great Outdoors, dummies dressed in kagoules, hi-
vis jackets and climbing boots. And now the dummy at the front—male,
probably, but with no face, his head a stylised blank globe—was looking,
without eyes, from right to left. Either side of him, two mountaineer dummies
stepped forwards. In the next window, three globe-headed female dummies in
jogging outfits turned to face out.
Ben and Michael were laughing. ‘They’re people dressed up!’ said Michael.
Except Clive was looking at the neck. The absence of a neck. The globe-heads
were joined to the shoulders by a thin rod, barely an inch thick. There couldn’t
be anyone inside those clothes. Which meant it was robotics, somehow …?
‘That’s clever,’ said Caroline, but now Clive looked down the entire street. He
saw pedestrians all the way along, stopping, laughing, pointing. Every shop.
Every window containing dummies, coming alive.
And now, in sudden coordination, every dummy in every window lifted its
arm and swung down. Row upon row of glass shattered, bright chips cascading
to the floor. All along the street, people screamed, yelled, some still laughing.
Caroline said, ‘Well that’s not very funny,’ and she grabbed hold of the boys to
pull them back.
But Clive was staring. With horror. And yet, with delight.
Because he remembered.
In his files. In those mad old stories of monsters from Loch Ness, and wizards
in Cornwall, and robots at the North Pole, there had been tales, from long ago,
fables about shop-window dummies coming to life and attacking people, a
slaughter, so the secret files said, a massacre on the streets of England, hushed
up ever since by the Powers That Be, the population doped and duped into
forgetting. And Clive, even Clive, had read those stories and thought, How can
that possibly be true?
But here it is, he thought.
It’s happening again.
Which meant the Doctor was true. Every word of him and her and them. All
Clive’s fantasies were now becoming facts, right before his eyes. But if the
glories were true then so were the terrors. And Clive felt a chill in his heart as he
watched the plastic army step down into the street.
He turned to his wife and children.
He said, ‘Run.’
 Caroline stared at him, more scared by the look in his eyes than by the
dummies.
He said quietly, ‘I’ll try to stop them. Now for the love of God, run.’
And Caroline, at last, believed. She looked at her husband for one last time
and said, ‘I love you.’ Then she took hold of the boys’ hands, and ran.
Clive faced the dummies. Their leader, in a bright orange waterproof, an
incongruous bobble hat on top of its globe-head, walked towards him. Eyeless
and yet aware.
To protect his wife and children, Clive simply opened up his arms. He would
greet the dummy in friendship, or stop it with his body, whatever it took. And he
found himself smiling, even as he started to cry. Because here it was at last.
Adventure.
The dummy straightened its arm, pointing at Clive, and the plastic hand
morphed into a long, thin barrel.
Like a gun.
But Clive Finch stood his ground. Anything to buy his family a few more
seconds. He held his breath and puffed out his chest and closed his eyes.
Somewhere in the back of his head, he thought: Like father, like son.
Then the back of his head was gone.

Far away, beneath the city, Rose looked up. She thought she could hear the terror
on the streets. Screams. Sirens. Gunshots.
Her mother was out there somewhere. Her mother and everyone she knew,
with an Auton army on the march.
But then the Nestene bellowed, forming another two syllables with its red
plastic maw.
It said, ‘Doc.’
And then ‘Tor.’
On the ledge below, the Auton holding the phial stood back and its twin began
to push the Doctor forwards. Towards the edge. The Doctor struggled, gasped,
dug his heels in, but the Auton was remorseless. The Nestene below widened its
awful mouth in anticipation. Its rage battered Rose’s mind, hammering ideas into
her thoughts. It said feast. It said sacrifice. It said revenge. And one more word,
what was it …?
Absorb.
It would absorb the Doctor.
And with him, it would gain everything he knew about time and space. The
TARDIS would come under Nestene control. The massacre spreading across
London would roll on forever and outwards into the stars.
 Rose sank down, helpless, to hug poor, sobbing Mickey. There was nothing
she could do. She’d never felt so small; one stupid girl in the middle of a war,
trapped underneath a burning city with entire galaxies pivoting around this
moment, and she was tiny, infinitesimal, useless.
The Auton pushed.
The Doctor was forced closer to the edge.
 17

Rose Says No

Jackie ran through hell.

A black cab careered past her, a dummy kneeling on the bonnet, hacking at the
windscreen with axe-hands. The taxi mounted the pavement, crashed through a
window and rammed its way inside a shop. Seconds later, it exploded, a bright
fireball funnelling out of the wreckage.
And the dummies marched on. Some of them on fire. Not caring. Burning,
walking, killing.
A red double-decker bus braked and slewed across Oxford Street to stop
sideways-on. Its passengers stared out in horror at the carnage. A line of
dummies marched towards the bus and kept marching, arms held out to push.
The bus creaked, tilted, then slammed onto its side with an almighty wham!
Then the dummies clambered up, mounting the bus. They hacked at the
horizontal windows, then dropped down into the interior. Screams and yells and
begging came from inside.
This is insane, thought Jackie, still running, this is impossible, and she blamed
Jacinta for giving her that milk. Hallucinations caused by ergot, she’d read about
that, although, hold on, was there ergot in milk? What is ergot anyway?
But even as she ran, she knew the terror around her was genuine. The fear and
adrenalin pumping in her heart and guts had to be real. And she knew, damn it,
she’d survive, yes she would, even if she had to run forever, because now she
knew why Rose had sounded so scared on the phone. Her daughter was out there
somewhere, and Jackie would find her, she’d save her, she’d bring her home.

The Bad Wolf band ran down Frith Street. Gunshots! They ducked, terrified, as
bullets spat and ricocheted. Behind them, the plastic threesome had now
morphed their hands into guns, swinging to and fro, firing wildly. All around
them, bodies in the street.
Patrice, Sally and Mook clung to a doorway. Then Sally yelled, ‘Get out of the
way! Go back!’ She was shouting at five children walking down the street
towards the gunfire.
 But then the children stepped into a cone of streetlight. Not children at all.
Dummies of children, in bright red duffle coats. Faces painted with huge cartoon
eyes and goofy smiles.
The children lifted up their arms. Pointed them. Their hands narrowed into
guns. Patrice, Sally and Mook cringed, helpless, sobbing, and Patrice took hold
of Mook’s hand.
The children fired.
Peashooters.
Little pellets of plastic went ping, ping, ping!
The children’s dummies had children’s weapons.
‘Ouch!’ said Patrice, with a wild, scared laugh.
But the little dummies kept firing, faster, harder, and the pellets began to sting.
Patrice, Sally and Mook flinched and hopped and wailed.
‘Down here!’ Sally yelled, and they broke cover to run down a long, narrow
alleyway.
As they ran, Patrice kept hold of Mook’s hand. And for all his terror, Mook
held on to Patrice with a thrilling lurch of his heart.

Caroline raced down the middle of the road, holding on to Ben and Michael,
pulling them along, chaos all around them. She was crying, but anger filled her,
like ice, like fire. Nothing would stop her getting these boys to safety, nothing in
this world.
And then nothing of this world bounded out in front of her. A big, clumsy,
impossible plastic dog blundered into the street.
‘No way,’ said Michael, coming to a halt.
It was a representation of a sheepdog, six big blocks painted in brown and
white. It jerked its head at them, as though barking. But as they watched, the
head-square peeled apart into a mouth. And grew teeth. Long, sharp teeth.
‘Sod that,’ said Caroline and launched herself forward. She gave the dog an
almighty kick. It flew apart into separate blocks!
‘Yes!’ said the boys and high-fived their mum.
But then Caroline looked back. Dozens of dummies, perhaps hundreds, were
forming a battalion in the street. An elite corps in High Street fashion. Their
hands shifting from swords to axes to guns. And they began to march.
Caroline, Michael and Ben ran in terror.

Outside the ruins of Henrik’s department store, a limousine pulled up.

Inside sat Rudi Henrik, 27 years old, gleaming and Botoxed, his forehead as
smooth as a shop-window dummy’s. Though he risked a wrinkle now, as he
smiled. He’d had good news. The lawyers said that if the dead caretaker, Bernard
Wilson, could be blamed for the bomb, then they had a little legal wriggle-room
over the word ‘staff’; the insurance contracts made no difference between staff
singular and staff plural, so if staff singular had destroyed the shop, then staff
plural could be blamed. Which meant, no compensation. No payoffs. No wages.
Indeed, one clever soul in Berlin said it might be possible for the Henriks to sue
the survivors for loss of earnings.
So Rudi was delighted as he stepped out of the limousine to shake hands and
commiserate with the plebs. Beside him, his wife Valentina slid out of the car,
and on the far side, Oskar, his boyfriend, disembarked. All three assumed smiles
to greet the grimy masses.
They saw, walking towards them, some sort of tribute. Charming, thought
Rudi and he said aloud, ‘How sweet.’ Some of the workers had evidently dressed
as mannequins, wearing Henrik’s finest, to greet their master.
Rudi was still smiling as one dummy’s arm swung round, and its axe-for-a-
hand decapitated his wife.
Behind him, a dummy’s arm turned into a drill, which whirred through
Oskar’s stomach.
Rudi gibbered and wailed and jumped back into his car. But too late. A tall,
muscular dummy stopped the door from closing, and clambered inside after him.
The limousine shook and jolted and juddered, and the gold-sputtered windows
became a darker gold.

Somewhere in Catford a lanky, rangy, stubbly man was making a quick escape.
He’d been living for three months with a Ghanaian woman called Abena. In
truth, he couldn’t stand her. But she had money to spare. Her father was the CEO
of a petrochemicals firm back in Ghana, and she’d come to London to study
Politics and Philosophy at the LSE. Her student life was supported by an open
cheque book from dad. Nice flat, nice car, nice meals.
And that, thought Jimmy Stone, was very nice indeed.
So he’d romanced her, and moved in, and helped her to spend the money. And
then he’d got bored. It was all very well, having cash to flash, but he couldn’t
bear her smile, her positivity, her relentless dedication to doing good in the
world. Give it a rest, love!
She was out tonight, at some posh wedding in Henley. Jimmy had wrangled
his way out of the invitation by pretending to have food poisoning. Left alone, he
went around the flat, helping himself. Six pairs of gold earrings, one gold
bracelet, one platinum bracelet, and bingo, her Duomètre Chronographe watch,
worth about £25,000, all shoved into his pockets and off he went, down the
stairs, thanks, Abena, bye-bye.
He reached the street and inhaled a shock of cold air. He’d done it! He wasn’t
a thief by nature—a born liar, perhaps, and unfaithful, okay, that was only
natural—but Abena deserved it. In fact, he was doing her a service. He could
teach her more about politics and philosophy than the LSE with one simple
phrase: always look after Number One.
‘You’ll come to no good one day,’ said a memory in his head. The voice of
that gorgeous, stupid Rose Tyler. Ranting at him as he drove off with her rubbish
second-hand computer stashed in the back of his car. Hah, he’d proved her
wrong!
So Jimmy Stone, swaggering in tight jeans, turned the corner onto Catford
Broadway, his pockets bulging with so much expensive jewellery that
technically he died a very rich man, as a crowd of Autons fell upon him and
chopped him into bits.

As the citizens of London ran, screamed and fought for their lives, someone was
fast asleep.
In a house in Chiswick, a woman hugged her pillow a little tighter, annoyed
by vague alarms from far-off. She’d had hell of a time last night, a bit too much
vino collapso because Rufus from Accounts was leaving, to go to Northampton,
and she fancied him like rotten, except she drank a bit too much and told him,
and he’d laughed in her face, so that went well, and it was still only 9.30 p.m.,
and God knows what had happened after that, except she’d arrived home at 3
a.m. without one shoe. Or, to put a positive spin on things, with one shoe.
She’d then wandered through Saturday, dazed and glum. She made a truly
disgraceful ham in parsley sauce for her mother’s birthday tea, then gave up.
‘You go to sleep, sweetheart,’ said her granddad.
‘Good idea,’ said Donna Noble.
And she slept through the whole thing.

Jackie ran to a halt, shielding her face from a blizzard of glass fragments as a
window shattered to her left. A bridal shop. Three dummies of brides in veils and
white dresses stepped forward, late for the wedding.
She looked ahead. The street was filling up with crash-test dummies. Behind
her, a four-metre-tall clown built out of little plastic bricks, freed from a toyshop,
was lurching down the street, creaking and swinging its huge white-gloved
hands to club people so hard, they flew through the air.
 She was trapped. Crash-tests ahead. A giant clown behind. And now the
brides.
She retreated backwards, against the underside of an overturned black cab as
the eyeless faces of the brides seemed to see her.
Jackie stared in horror.
The brides extruded their hands into blades and advanced.

Bad Wolf’s alleyway had reached a dead end. Sally hammered on one door, then
another, yelling for help, but everyone had locked themselves inside.
They saw the five child dummies approaching, peashooter-hands outstretched.
But then Mook said, ‘Oh my God.’
The shiny-white muscled dummies appeared behind the children. Soldiers in
harnesses and leather and speedos. Lifting their arms.
‘Over here!’ yelled Patrice and they ran behind three tall, steel, industrial bins.
They cowered in the muck and rubbish on the floor as the dummies opened fire
and the bins pinged with pellets and bullets.
Patrice was crying as he put one arm around Mook, then the other around
Sally. The band hugged each other. The bins rang with ricochets as the dummies
and their children marched closer and closer.

Caroline and her sons ran from the army behind them, but then the smoke from a
burning car in the road ahead cleared, revealing …
A second army.
A hundred dummies marched from both directions.
The family was trapped in the middle.
Caroline sank down to the tarmac, and pulled Michael and Ben to her. She
wept and kissed them, and they hugged their mum. On both sides, the impassive
battalions advanced.

On every street, people cowered and wept. Above the Thames, in Pod 27, the
posh little boy, his mum and dad and 20 Chinese students stared out at the city.
Flames blossoming from the dark streets. Cars swerving as people ran and
dummies marched. And below them, on the Embankment, a golden monk with
samurai swords for arms sliced his way through the panic.
They could not see, beneath the river, the Nestene signal travelling as fast as
thought, shooting along cables, away from London, across the channel, over to
Europe and out to the west, beneath the Atlantic, thick coaxial cables of plastic
on the ocean bed fizzing and sizzling as the signal raced along.
 From deep below to far above; satellites in orbit above the Earth clicked and
jiggled, plastic circuits rewriting themselves, to send the signal from on high.
Below, above, and across the curve of the world, the signal sang its song, and
in the windows of a thousand cities, in Beijing and Barcelona, Reykjavik and
Rio, Sydney and San Francisco, ordinary plastic dummies began to twitch, and
jerk, and swivel, and think.
Every form of plastic felt an urge to move, tugging at a cellular level. An
instinct to rise up and kill. Wires and panels and joints and plugs in kitchens and
cars and computers and offices began a little dance. Cables yearned to strangle.
Dolls grinned in anticipation of murder. Bags imagined suffocation. Nylon ropes
knew their time had come. Laminated sheets of paper felt their edges sharpen
into razors and prepared to spin. On deserted Pacific islands, reefs of plastic
bottles tumbled together to form giant, lurching, man-shaped idols, rearing up
over the surf with no one to witness their birth.
And still, the call of the Nestene went deeper. Reaching inside the bodies of
men and women to find the tiny particles of plastic ingested by the human race,
microbeads assimilated into their guts and brains and hearts. The Nestene heaved
at the plastic; people tried to run but found their legs slowing down, they tried to
fight but found their arms becoming heavy.
In a Soho alleyway, three dummies threw the bins aside. Patrice, Sally and
Mook sat in the dirt, weak, powerless, unable to run.
The dummies lifted their guns.
In the middle of the West End, Caroline Finch and her sons felt their strength
drain away as two armies converged upon them.
The dummies raised their axes.
In the shadow of an overturned black cab, Jackie Tyler felt her legs buckle and
she sank to the floor as the brides advanced.
The dummies raised their stilettos.
Jackie sobbed, and thought of Rose, and thought of Pete, and she closed her
eyes.

And then Rose Tyler said no.

She stood up.
She said it aloud.
She said, ‘No.’
She’d had enough.
She’d had enough of standing back and doing nothing. Of being told to sit still
and behave and go to work and wear this and say that, of being told what to do
by men, and boys, and her mother, and teachers, and bosses, and boyfriends, by
the Doctor and the Nestene and everyone in between.
Above her, the world was ending. In front of her, the Doctor was dying. At her
feet, Mickey was blubbing.
Well, to hell with that.
She ran across, jumped down to a lower gantry and yanked a metal chain from
its railing. She wrapped it around her wrist. Looked down. If she were a
physicist, or a soldier, or an architect, she might be able to calculate the angle
and distance and velocity, but sod it. In a life without many qualifications, Rose
had one badge of merit: in the Jericho Street Junior School Under-7s Gymnastics
Tournament, she’d won the bronze.
So she held on tight to the chain.
She took a deep breath.
She jumped off the gantry and swung across the chasm.
She sailed towards the Doctor.
He saw her coming.
And in that second, he gained new strength—with a grin, he doubled over, to
throw the dummy holding him over his shoulder and down into the pit, so easily
that Rose had a second to think: What, was he waiting for me?
But she swung over the Doctor’s head.
She wasn’t aiming for him.
She was aiming for the second Auton. The one standing back, forgotten.
The Auton still holding the Doctor’s phial of anti-plastic.
Wham!
She hit the Auton.
As Rose continued her arc, she looked back to see the dummy totter and fall,
its outstretched hand letting go of the phial.
The phial glittered, dark and blue, as it fell down, down, down towards the
Nestene’s roaring maw.
Rose’s arc completed and she began to swing back.
The phial fell into the Nestene and disappeared into its molten skin. The glass
went crack!
As Rose sailed back towards the wall, there he was, the Doctor, with that
huge, silly smile, arms wide open to intercept her, a whoomph of air from his
lungs as he caught her and held on tight.
The two of them laughed with joy, and looked over the edge.
Below them, the cauldron of red plastic seethed and bubbled, but now lines of
dark blue streaked and skittered across its surface, branching out like winter
trees.
The Nestene screamed!
 18

Death Throes

The dummies stopped.

Jackie looked up.
The brides had frozen.
She held her breath.
All three dummies jolted upright. Spasmed. Then shuddered as though being
electrocuted. They held their sharpened hands to their heads in an imitation of
pain.
Jackie looked around. To her right, the crash-test dummies were juddering,
jerking, colliding. To her left, the tiny bricks of the giant clown were bristling,
making him look pixelated.
Then he fell apart. The clown scattered into a hundred thousand tiny pieces,
splaying across the road in a multicoloured cascade.
And the brides snapped. Their plastic joints broke and they clattered to the
floor in pieces, heads and hands bouncing on the tarmac. A veiled head went
bump-bump-bump in front of Jackie, then came to a halt.
Jackie stared and said, ‘What the hell?’

Patrice, Sally and Mook cowered. And then realised they’d been cowering a
little too long. They came out of their hug to look up, just in time to see the
shiny-white dummies topple like fallen dictators, hitting the ground with a
smack.
The five little child dummies collapsed into themselves, heads sinking down
into their duffle coats. Their plastic-wire-frame bodies folded down into their
yellow wellington boots until they settled in the alleyway as little piles of
clothes.
The Bad Wolf band looked around, dazed. But then overjoyed. Giggling.
Shocked. Ecstatic.
Mook stayed holding Patrice, deciding that he’d like to hold him for the rest
of his life. And Patrice showed no signs of letting go.
Caroline hugged her sons and kissed the tops of their heads and whispered their
names over and over again. But then she heard creaks, clanks, bumps, and
looked up.
Both armies, on either side, were shaking in a frantic St Vitus’s dance.
Hundreds of dummies jerking, jiggling, spasming.
And then their heads popped off like champagne corks. A cacophony of pops.
Heads flew, bodies fell. Row after row, like a world-record domino display.
Caroline stayed on the floor, holding her sons. She looked back in the
direction from which they’d run, hoping she would see Clive strolling through
the smoke and fire towards them, beaming as ever, chuckling, all curly-haired
and daft.
But no one came.

Far above the Thames, in Pod 27, the posh little boy, his mum and dad and the
20 Chinese students looked all around. The signal had stopped. The wheel was
suddenly at rest.
In the city below, fires still burned and sirens wailed, but the battle had ended.
Those dummies, or people in disguise, or whatever they were, had fallen to the
ground. The golden monk below lay spreadeagled on the pavement, unmoving,
dead.
For a moment, everyone in Pod 27 dared to recover.
They had survived.
Then they heard a deep, ominous crack, and the twang, twang, twang of high-
tension cables snapping. And the London Eye began to fall.

‘Now we’re in trouble,’ said the Doctor.

Below the Embankment, there came a vast, awful thunk! One of the massive
stanchions underpinning the London Eye began to rise upwards, like a huge peg
being pulled out of the ground. As it rose, the second stanchion began to sink.
Everything started falling. The rising stanchion pulled up the gantries, which
ripped the stairs free, which made the platforms collapse. The Nestene below
was battered by falling rafts of metal as the whole internal structure began to
collapse.
And the Doctor was laughing!
‘Come on,’ he yelled, and pulled Rose across to the last remaining stairway, to
head up.
Towards the TARDIS.
Trapped on his ledge, Mickey wailed, ‘We’re going to die!’
 ‘Oh shut up,’ said the Doctor, and he reached Mickey’s level, ran across and
took hold of his hand. Mickey let himself be yanked along, and they ran back to
Rose, but the next second, a huge ball of flame roared up from the depths.
‘Oh my God!’ said Rose, clinging to the wall. She looked down to see fire
erupting from the Nestene itself. The web of anti-plastic had thickened until the
creature’s entire skin had become a beautiful, poisonous blue. The Nestene was
solidifying, losing its elasticity. It reached out into tendrils but its skin tore open
and fire guttered from the rips. It tried to rise from the pit but pulled itself apart,
red flames bursting out of blue wounds. The chasm below became a lake of fire.
‘It’s destroying itself,’ said the Doctor.
In that moment, Rose saw his glee, and his agony, and she was terrified of
him.
But then he said, ‘Up!’ and pulled her over to a ladder bolted to the wall. She
clambered up, and the Doctor shoved Mickey onto the rungs.
‘There’s no way out,’ cried Mickey.
‘In there,’ yelled Rose, pointing at the TARDIS.
‘But it’s just a box!’ said Mickey, and Rose remembered how dumb she’d
been just a short time ago, as she reached the TARDIS’s platform and pulled
Mickey up, the Doctor following.
Above them, the uppermost walkway collapsed, and Rose saw the knight, the
clown and the ballerina tumble into the burning depths, impassive even in death.
But then she looked back up to see the entire roof buckling. With one stanchion
slowly rising and its opposite slowly sinking, the whole space was about to be
ripped apart. Debris began to fall. Rose ducked, dodging concrete and bricks as
she pulled Mickey along the platform. She reached the rickety blue doors of the
police box and yelled to the Doctor, ‘Key!’
The Doctor reached into his pocket. Took out the key. Threw it to her. She
caught it, and for a second, held the Doctor’s look. Like he had trusted her with
the most precious thing in the universe.
But then a girder hit the platform, and the whole rig swung and shook, its
supporting chains threatening to snap. Rose shoved the key in the door. Swung it
open. Pushed Mickey inside, and tumbled in behind him.
Again, that shock of entering the TARDIS, the change in pressure like a
physical thump. And for Mickey, the interior was a brand new terror. He yelped.
‘Whaaat?’ and boggled like he was being attacked by bees, but she ignored him
and looked back to find the Doctor.
He’d jumped into the doorway, his back to her, standing on the edge to look
down.
Rose ran forward to join him.
 ‘What the hell is going on?’ said Mickey, but he was just a voice in the
background as Rose stood beside the Doctor and they looked down to see the
death throes of the Nestene Consciousness.
The creature was ripping itself into blue, fleshy chunks as it descended into
the pit of fire, huge explosions blossoming up from the depths, the walls caving
in on all sides. And above the roar, a terrible, keening sound as the Nestene
wept.
Rose looked at the Doctor, though he did not look at her. He only stared down.
His eyes like skies of ice. He said, ‘I’m sorry.’
Then he slammed the door shut, sealing them inside the cocoon of the
TARDIS. Mickey said, ‘We’re still going to die!’ But the Doctor strode past him,
reached the controls, flipped a big red lever.
Rose sank to her knees, exhausted, with a blissful smile, welcoming the
joyous sound of the engines lurching and stuttering into life. The shining glass
within the central column began to rise and fall, and the roar of the world outside
faded away.

In the lair of the Nestene, a final wail rose from the beast as the walls and roof
collapsed into the burning ravine. The creature died in fury and despair, and the
flames and rocks became its tomb.
The rising stanchion reached maximum stress and sheared in half with a snap
like a thunderbolt. The last lattices of ceiling fell, exposing the chasm to the
night sky above.
In Pod 27, everyone clung on for dear life as the ground beneath the London
Eye collapsed into a deep, dark hole and the wheel was set free from its
moorings. The snapped stanchion shot out of the ground and the entire Eye tilted
over the river at an alarming angle of 45 degrees. The posh little boy, his mum
and dad and the 20 Chinese students rolled and bumped, peas in their pod,
tumbling onto the glass as the windows became the floor.
For a second, the Eye paused.
A silence.
Everyone in Pod 27 was holding their breath. Praying the glass would hold.
The dark glint of the river below.
Then with a creak, a squeal and a final almighty twang, the London Eye fell
forwards, into the Thames.
It hit the water with a colossal smack!
The pods popped free and bobbed up to ride the tsunami. Pod 27 soared on the
crest of a giant wave that swept over the river’s wall, hitting the Houses of
Parliament. Water smashed through the windows and flooded the Palace of
Westminster, flushing helpless, screaming MPs down the corridors, while Pod 27
sailed high over the rooftops, glanced off Big Ben, then plunged down as the
wave broke, plummeting towards Parliament Square Garden. They screamed, the
posh little boy, his mum, his dad and the 20 Chinese students, all howling and
tumbling and rolling round and round.
A tree caught them. A wonderful, life-saving tree. Pod 27 jammed in its
branches under the gaze of Winston Churchill, his statue standing tall as the
flood parted around him to sweep down the streets, pooling out and subsiding
into the city.
They cried and laughed, inside their pod. Limbs broken, bruised heads, but
alive, alive when so many had died. The posh little boy hugged his mum, then
his dad, then a student or two. Below their sturdy curved windows, the water
ebbed away, leaving ruin in its wake.
In the devastation, people now began to stand upright. Stepping out of
doorways. Emerging from hiding. Gazing around in horror. And then they
looked up, above the wreckage, to see the stars in the night sky, unchanged.
 19

Aftermath

The city began to recover. The wail of a thousand sirens called across the night
as Sally, Patrice and Mook wandered out of the alleyway, dazed and shaken,
wondering about everyone they knew, their mates, their families, Mickey and
Rose. All three tried their phones, but the networks were down.
They looked towards Old Compton Street. Dummies lay on the ground,
alongside the dead. But then, movement. Survivors. Calling out in pain or relief.
Some staggering along, some sitting against walls, wounded, lost, in shock.
‘Bandages,’ said Sally, ‘and water, and painkillers. Come on.’ She strode
towards Oxford Street to find a chemist’s or a supermarket with a pharmacy. The
shops had been abandoned in the panic, so they’d just walk in and raid the place.
No time for niceties. People needed help.
As they hurried along, she saw that Mook was still holding Patrice’s hand.
About time, she thought. Everything had changed that night, and perhaps it was
time she made some changes herself.
She should go home, to see her mum and dad. She should talk to them. She
should tell them more, about herself and the Stephen who once was. Maybe she
could even move back in for a while. The anger that had propelled her out of the
house and into her new life seemed so much smaller now, so unimportant.
And one more thing. She took hold of Mook’s free hand, and made a decision
on behalf of the Bad Wolf band.
‘It’s the name,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to change the name.’

Caroline stayed on the floor, hugging Ben and Michael. Both boys crying, out of
shock, she supposed, doubting they yet understood what had happened to their
father. She wondered how to tell them.
And there she remained, in the middle of a thousand dummies’ heads. She
could hear people sobbing, and others shouting, asking if anyone needed help.
Someone even began to sing. Rule Britannia. She stayed on the tarmac even as
blue emergency lights began to flicker at the end of the road. A camera crew ran
up. Fixed their ruthless lens upon her. Ran away.
Throughout all this, Caroline thought of one person.
 She thought of the Doctor.
She’d listened to Clive’s stories. She’d read his files. She knew that every age
had some sort of Doctor, whether young or old, male or female, in-between or
neither, black or white or anything. And the Doctor invited disaster. Every single
one of her husband’s stories said the same thing: death stalks the Doctor and
anyone who crosses the Doctor’s path.
Which meant everything was the Doctor’s fault.
Sitting there, on the floor, holding her sons in the ruins of a broken city,
Caroline Finch made a promise. Somehow, someday, she would complete her
husband’s lifelong quest and find this mysterious Doctor.
And then she would have her revenge.

Jackie was desperate. Thinking of Rose. Her phone wouldn’t work, the networks
had given up the ghost, but she kept trying, again and again, until she exhausted
the battery and her handset died.
She kept walking. Heading for home. All around her, horrors. Injuries that
made her flinch. People lying on the floor, asking for help. Huddled in corners,
crying. Lost children. But Jackie didn’t have time, she had to get back to the flat,
to find Rose. She’d been in that flat so many years ago, when the terrible news
came about Pete. She had to be there now. To stop that news from ever coming
again.
And then her mobile rang.
Which was odd, because it was dead. The power-bar still said zero as the
screen blinked back into life to say: Rose.
Jackie answered, ‘Oh my God! Sweetheart, is that you? Are you all right?’
Rose’s voice was so clear, it startled her. ‘Mum! Oh thank God, you’re alive!
Where are you? Are you okay?’
‘Never mind me, what about you?’
‘Honestly, trust me, I’m fine.’
‘Where are you?’
A pause.
‘Travelling,’ said Rose.
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘Never mind, I’m on my way home.’ Rose’s voice became muffled as she
asked someone, ‘How long?’ Then she came back to Jackie, ‘I’m one second
away, apparently.’
‘I’m still up West. Did you see it? All the dummies? And not just people
dressed up, their heads fell off, I picked up this bride’s head and I gave it a tap
and it was solid. Then I banged it on the floor, and I’m telling you, 100 per cent
plastic! But it was moving! And they tipped over a bus! And killed this man
right in front of me, you should’ve seen it, and this great big clown—’
‘Yeah, sorry, got to go.’
And click, Rose was gone.
‘Oh, well thank you, madam,’ said Jackie to her phone.
But Rose was alive. Her daughter was safe, and heading home. Jackie would
get there somehow, even if she had to walk all the way, she’d burst through that
door, she’d get out the whisky, she’d knock them up a curry, she’d toast their
survival and hold her daughter tight. Hey, she might even sell her story for a bit
of money. My Night of Hell, by Jacqueline Tyler.
But first of all, she thought of the children she’d walked past. And Jackie went
back to help.

Rose held up her mobile and said to the Doctor, ‘Best reception ever, she
sounded louder than she does in real life. And for my mother, that’s saying
something. Did you give my signal a boost?’
‘The TARDIS might’ve helped,’ said the Doctor, with a smile. He moved
around the central console, attaching one switch to another with the sort of
elastic rope you’d use on a roof rack. The glass column sighed up and down
above their heads, the engine noise reduced to a slow groan, the room tilting and
swaying but gently, this time.
Rose said, ‘Could I phone Mars from here?’
‘Yeah. Tell them I want my boots back.’
‘Why, what happened to your boots?’
‘I left them there. Obviously.’ Even when joking, he was still so rude.
Mickey interrupted. ‘How do we get out of here?’ He was sitting on the floor,
on the opposite side of the console to the Doctor, determined to stay as far away
from him as possible. He’d initially retreated down one of the gantries, so scared
of the chamber’s size that he’d tried to hide in the shadow of an internal
doorway. But then he’d heard a roar from the depths of the TARDIS. ‘That’ll be
the dragon,’ said the Doctor, and Mickey had scarpered back to the centre. Now
he huddled into himself, miserable, smeared with grease and grime. As far as he
knew, the police box was still inside the underground lair; he could accept that
the interior was calmer somehow, safer and sort of detached, but he had no
concept of the box having moved.
Rose supposed she could explain it to him. But later, maybe. The Doctor was
more important, right now. Time with him was precious, he could vanish on a
whim.
 ‘So what are we now?’ she said to the Doctor. ‘I mean, like this, right now,
what are we doing, are we in flight?’
‘Sort of, yeah.’
‘But in flight where?’
‘Like I said, one second away.’
‘But it’s taking more than a second,’ Rose said. ‘So while we’re in flight,
we’re not flying like a plane, so where are we?’
Mickey said, ‘What the hell are you on about?’ but the Doctor had a wolfish
gleam in his eye. A challenge. He strode down the entryway, those big boots
making the metal clatter and clang, to reach the wooden doors.
He said, ‘D’you really want to see?’
Rose said, ‘Yeah,’ and smiled, returning the challenge.
He opened the left-hand door.
She looked at the view, and took a good few seconds to accept it, to consider
the angle, and the depth, and the likelihood, and the sheer oh-my-God sight of it,
and she wanted to yell and run away and hide, but then she did what she was
dying to do, and she went to stand at the Doctor’s side.
They were in flight above the Earth.
She stood on the edge of the rickety wooden box and below, there was the
entire planet. She held the whole of the world within her sight.
‘It’s a trick. That’s not real,’ said Mickey. But she didn’t even look round. She
heard a clang of metal, Mickey sitting back down and burying his head, she
guessed, but she stayed in the doorway, looking out at the universe. She
wondered: With the door open to space, how can we breathe? But in the same
moment she thought: Well, we can, so therefore it’s possible. Simple as that. She
could trust herself to work things out, and she smiled, thinking of everyone
who’d ever doubted her, now so tiny, trapped by gravity far below while she
sailed on high.
She looked down at Great Britain, the lights of London a yellow sprawl in the
dark of night. Down there, she supposed, there must be fires and alarms and
tragedies, but it seemed mercilessly peaceful from above. She looked to her left,
the clouds of the Atlantic curling towards a bright fringe of sunlight, the long
day ending beyond the curve.
Then she looked up and out, at the infinite stars.
She had imagined space as a simple black. But it was paler, and richer, and so
much more complex, infused with extraordinary maroons, reefs of light blue,
glints of yellow on vast clouds of the deepest green.
They stood there together, Rose and the Doctor, in an intimate silence. Then
she looked at the north-east curve of the horizon below, some plains of Russia.
Focusing on particular dips of landscape. She waited, and then, as she knew she
would, she saw them change under the planet’s slow revolve.
‘I can feel it,’ she said. ‘The turn of the Earth.’
He smiled.
They stayed there for a while. Then she stepped back and the Doctor closed
the door.
It was time to go home.
 20

The Journey Begins

Rose held her breath, excited.

The interior of the TARDIS had settled with a big, resounding thump, the
glass column hissing to a halt and the groan of engines falling away. The end of
the line. The Doctor had promised to bring her back to No.143 Enoch Tower,
and she relished the mad clash of it, her plain old living room now waiting
beyond the wooden doors, the blue box perhaps jammed in between the TV and
the big red chair. Her worlds colliding. She wished Jackie could be home, to
gawp. This might finally shut her up!
With a grin, Rose opened the door.
Onto the cold and dark.
She stepped out, into the London night.
‘We’re in the wrong place!’
Henrik’s. Where it all began. They were just beyond the ruin of the shop. The
TARDIS had brought them to a mountain of blackened rubble sealed off by
hazard tape and chain-link fencing. In the distance, Rose could hear a thousand
sirens, but the Henrik’s alarms had burnt themselves out the night before so she
stood in comparative peace.
The night before. Just 24 hours ago. One day in which everything had
changed. A day now coming to an end. Rose knew that the stranger’s promise,
given to her in the dark and snow of New Year’s Eve, had finally come true. But
she also knew it couldn’t last forever.
The Doctor leaned against the TARDIS doorway, arms folded, defiant.
‘You said home,’ said Rose. ‘You got it wrong.’
‘Funny,’ he said. ‘The times I’ve heard that. I’d forgotten all this.’
He was pushed aside as Mickey ran out, came to a halt, looked around, then
looked back at the TARDIS, then at Rose, then down at the ground, then up at
the sky, then down again. He stamped on the street to prove it was real. He’d
convinced himself that seeing the Earth from orbit had been some sort of back-
projection, but now he had to face the truth. That they’d moved.
Mickey said, ‘Were we thrown?’
‘What d’you mean, thrown?’ said Rose.
 ‘Like. We were underground. And it exploded. And we got thrown out. And
we landed here.’
Rose took a deep breath, to explain, but the Doctor said, ‘Actually, that’s not
bad. Same difference. Well done, Ricky.’
‘It’s Mickey,’ said Mickey, and he slumped down to sit on a pile of bricks,
exhausted. Rose went to him, put her hand on the back of his neck and said to
the Doctor, ‘Is he all right?’
‘Don’t talk like I’m not here,’ said Mickey.
The Doctor ignored him. ‘He was copied,’ he said to Rose. ‘Bit knackering.
Ten minutes, fresh air, right as rain. So. Are we done?’
Rose felt a sudden rush in her heart. This was it. The Doctor was going. He’d
step into that box and slam the door, never to be seen again. But she wouldn’t
give herself away. She said, as though indifferent, ‘I suppose.’
‘Good,’ said the Doctor.
‘Yeah,’ said Rose.
And they both stayed where they were.
Then the Doctor said, ‘Right. I’d better go.’
‘Well, good luck,’ said Rose. ‘You’ll need it.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘You’d be dead if it wasn’t for me,’ she said, with a smile.
‘D’you think?’ He was smiling too, just a little.
‘Yeah, you were rubbish. Thank God I was there.’
‘I suppose I should say thanks.’
‘Go on then.’
‘Thank you,’ said the Doctor.
‘Okay.’
‘Well then.’
And still, they both hesitated. The Doctor’s weight shifted onto his back foot,
his hand tensed on the wooden door, about to close it—but not yet.
The moment suspended.
Rose thought that it should feel so new, talking to an alien, and yet she’d had
this conversation a hundred times before. With boys. Outside bars, pubs, discos.
The game, the rules, the dance of it, the push and pull, the give and take, the yes
and the no. But this time with a man from outer space.
And yet he surprised her with what he said next.
‘D’you want to come with me?’
Everything fell away: the sirens, the city, the cold. Rose could only hear the
thump of her heart. And she imagined going through that door, standing with
him at the centre of that amazing machine. Travelling outwards, upwards,
onwards.
The Doctor’s smile was sly. He made it sound so casual, rubbing his thumb
along the jamb of the doorway, idly fascinated by the grain. ‘This box isn’t just a
London hopper. It goes anywhere. The whole universe. Free of charge.’ Then he
blinked, drew in a sharp breath, looked at Rose as though preparing to forget her.
‘Anyway. Never mind. Just a thought.’
He took one step back.
Rose said, ‘No,’ to stop him, but then couldn’t think of what to say next.
Mickey looked up at her and said, ‘You can’t. It’s not safe. He’s an alien. He’s
a thing.’
‘He’s not invited,’ said the Doctor.
They’re fighting over me, she thought.
She had no problem with that.
The Doctor said, ‘Choice is yours, Rose Tyler. You could always stay here.
Fill your life with work and food and sleep. Or you could go … anywhere.’
‘Is it always this dangerous?’
‘Yes.’
She felt a chill, a memory of the terrors she’d faced. And yet she wanted that
feeling again.
But then, ping, ping, ping. Her phone, strafed by texts as the network came
back to life; 34 messages received, 35, 36, 37. The list of names: Sally, Shareen,
Mook, Patrice, Omar, Maxwell, Suki, Janice, Keisha, Cole, Mum, Mum, Mum.
Her old world, flooding back. She wondered if any of those texts would be
someone’s final message. And then Jackie, of course, she thought of Jackie,
wandering home. And Mickey, poor Mickey Smith, that lovely bright boy
shattered by events. Needing her help. And tomorrow the sun would shine and
life would go on and she needed a job, she needed a wage, she couldn’t go
running off like she’d done with Jimmy Stone, she wasn’t a kid any more. She
had to buckle down and behave and face her responsibilities.
‘I can’t,’ she said to the Doctor. ‘I’ve got to stay.’
The Doctor’s expression did not change. He kept a level stare, as though none
of this mattered at all. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘See you around.’
And he stepped back and slammed the wooden door shut.
She could imagine him, contained within that box, crossing that distance,
boots on metal, reaching the centre, throwing that switch. And yes, she’d timed
it perfectly, as she heard those wheezing engines lurch into life. Mickey stood up
to stare alongside her and they saw the miracle of the box for the first time. The
lamp on top of the stacked roof flared as bright as the sun. Then it pulsed up and
down, seeming to draw all the colour out of the box as the noise heaved into a
bellow, a fierce little wind whipping up, a vortex of papers and flakes and ash
spiralling around the shape of the box even as that shape began to disappear. The
lines and light melted away into the night. The wind died down, the debris
settled to the floor, and the noise faded down to a whisper, and then nothing at
all.
The Doctor had gone.
‘Come on,’ said Mickey. ‘Let’s go.’
Rose looked at the empty space and then said, ‘Yeah.’
She turned away. And saw herself. A tall, broken shard of mirror leaned
against an alleyway, part of a Henrik’s display thrown across the street. And
there she stood. Nineteen years old, London born, average height. Hoodie and
jeans, like everyone her age. A scoop of dirty blonde hair around her face. Eyes
like her father’s, mascara like her mum’s. A bit of a sullen expression which
made everyone, her whole life, say ‘Cheer up.’
The most ordinary girl in the world.
And I’m happy with that, she thought. This ordinary girl helped to save the
world, not with magic, not with science, not with any particular skill, I just did
one simple thing: I never gave up.
And then she heard it again.
The grind of engines.
The light blazed into existence, then colour, a rush of blue, a spiral of wind,
then the outlines of the box, bleeding into the air, and then with a thump, the
TARDIS was back.
The Doctor opened the door.
Big smile.
He said, ‘Did I mention? It also travels in time.’
Oh! The spin of the world beneath her feet seemed to tilt. Now so many things
made sense.
The photographs in the shed. The cut on his cheek. And those two words,
spoken by a furious beast: time and lord.
Rose turned to Mickey.
She loved him, but that seemed a very small thing, right now. She thought of
the people who’d abandoned him, the people he’d lost over the years. And she
was sorry, but above and beyond that, she thought: That’s his story. But this is
my story, now. And the only person who can tell it, is me.
She gave Mickey a kiss.
She said, ‘Thank you.’
Then she ran towards the rest of her life.
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Novelisation copyright © Russell T Davies 2018

Original script copyright © Russell T Davies 2005

Russell T Davies has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Doctor Who is a BBC Wales production for BBC One.

Executive producers: Steven Moffat and Brian Minchin

First published by BBC Books in 2018

www.penguin.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
 ISBN 9781785943263

Editorial Director: Albert DePetrillo

Project Editor: Steve Cole
Cover design: Two Associates
Cover illustration: Anthony Dry
Production: Phil Spencer