For rude_not_ginger The Death's Spiral system.
Follows on from thisJack held fast to the controls of the ship as they plunged into hyperspace. The g-forces on his body pressed him into the chair, and he focused all of his attention on keeping the craft smooth and flying. He'd worry about just where it was they were going later
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Jack's lip curved up into a half smile, but a smile that soon faded when the door opened and the putrid stench of the planet outside hit him. He glanced around them as the effects started to immediately be made on the ship. It wasn't good. He just hoped the TARDIS was secured enough not to be effected by the rot.
"Nice," he said with hint of Ianto Jones style sarcasm. "Reminds me of certain places in Cardiff after a Friday night."
He took the manipulator from the Doctor and buckled it around his wrist, feeling immediately better armed when it was securely there. Feeling a little less naked too. He shook his head though, and laughed to himself, speaking under his breath as he followed him out. "Yeah, you really don't know me if you think I'd leave you behind."
As they stepped out he squinted to see in the dark light. It was like nothing he'd seen before. Like a blackness that was tangible and consuming. Like something from a childhood nightmare.
"According to this," Jack said tapping his wrist strap, "it's that way." He pointed to their right, to an unappealing line of something that might have once been trees. Gnarled and dangerous rotted branches sticking out from the ground like spikes.
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He looked where Jack pointed, to the spiky trees. "Charming," he agreed with Jack's earlier statement.
He took a few careful steps towards them. Sound seemed to get swallowed up in the darkness, and he found himself glancing back to make sure Jack was still there. It was very dark. Very quiet.
"Right," the Doctor said, startling even himself by the noise. "Tell me more about this Rose girl I have so little memory of." He really didn't care, as he'd remember once they got back to the TARDIS, he just needed to hear something other than his own breathing.
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A beat later he spoke again, louder this time and forceful too. "Don't you talk like that, you're not dying and neither is the TARDIS. You'll both be fine."
The ground was hard to walk on, a little like sand as it moved beneath each tread, making steps need to be more precise and with more effort as the ground crumbled underfoot.
"Rose? Oh she was something. Really something. Just an ordinary girl, Doctor. An ordinary girl from an ordinary estate in London. That's what made her so special. She was young, blonde, and she was... well she was Rose. She wasn't afraid to say what she thought needed saying or tell someone when they were wrong. You opened her eyes, Doctor. And I think maybe she opened yours a bit too. You were good for each other."
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"Blonde," he commented, approvingly. He always did fancy blondes. It had to have been something to do with meeting Madonna in his first incarnation, he was never the same after that. "But she keeps walking away." If they were so good for each other...well, it wasn't an unusual thing. He had many companions who were good for him that left him. He...he couldn't remember who.
He edged around another gaping crack in the ground, then stopped short as another, even larger crack appeared in front of him. It was at least five feet across as the light of the torch couldn't find the other side. It could've been an easy jump across, or it could've been miles and miles.
"What do you think?" he asked.
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His eyes flicked towards the Doctor, squinting to watch him in the darkness. "She's gone," he said gently. "Trapped in another universe. She's fine. Happy, I hope. But she can't come back." He thought it best for now not to mention just who she's trapped there with. Might be a little complicated.
Jack held fast as the ground cracked beneath his feet and he crouched down to the ground, touching his fingers against it. His skin seemed to blacken, die and regrow in front of his eyes; a fact he quickly concealed from the Doctor with a shift of his hand from sight. Probably best not to make contact with anything here.
"Careful what you touch," he said. "If it does this to plants I don't want to think what it could do to us." He offered the suggestion idly, as though he hadn't just experienced it first hand.
"No," he shook his head. "No, if we jump this thing with the ground like this it'll likely just fall apart when we hit the other side. Sorry, Doctor, but I think we're going to have to find a longer way around."
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He agreed with Jack, and turned, following the edge of the crack along. Eventually, another crack formed along his other side, creating a thin, bridge-like structure. Ash seemed to crumble to either side no matter which way he walked. And the bridge seemed to be getting thinner.
"Chronocitis," the Doctor said suddenly, loudly, as if that explained everything.
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What?
"Excuse me?" He frowned, wondering why the Doctor had so suddenly brought it up. "What of it?"
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He spun around and very nearly lost his balance. He caught himself, but pouted behind his oxygen mask at the lost drama of his excellent spin.
Though, really, his internal voice (which sounded remarkably like his leather-coated self) reminded him, there were more important things to worry about, like, oh, gee, the entire situation they were in.
"Time Waste is detectable by most authorities. It's the equivalent of intergalactic littering, and if you're driving about in a stolen machine, a tiny ticket is enough of a trail for anyone to follow. So they drive the TARDIS here, to hide. If he or she thinks she can repair the TARDIS, they just park her here and get to work. Except being in this environment will only make her sicker. Make the time waste leakage worse."
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A revelation as to why, perhaps, but not a comforting one. The amount of waste the TARDIS had been leaking back on Assiap alone was immense. The sheer amount of it that Jack himself had absorbed was huge, and that had barely scraped the surface of those leaking clouds. If the leak was worse than that... well, it didn't bear thinking about.
"Doctor are you sure you couldn't survive another jump?" He asked as he tapped his wriststrap. "Just one more, I could take us right there. Right to her. You said yourself this walk might take a day and who knows how much longer this has put on that." He motioned vaguely towards the chasm in the ground.
For once, he felt like time was something neither of them had enough of.
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"Did I say I couldn't? Because I was just about to suggest it----"
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"We did it before," he explained slowly. "You were kind of out of it a bit. Said it was something to do with you being away from the TARDIS. But I don't know, we're closer now, maybe it'd be okay? It's got to be worth a shot, right? I mean what's the worst that could happen?"
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"We could explode in an array of superparticalized atoms," he said. "Or the vortex could malfunction and we could end up not landing on solid ground, but instead falling to our deaths. Or we could end up in space. Or liquefied, I did hear about a vortex manipulator that turned someone inside out once." He nodded and adjusted the torch in his grip. "Or, actually, if the inverted subcortex gets any of this ash in it---"
The beam of light went back to the ground, near Jack's foot. This was the point where he noticed the long, ash tentacle sliding its way up from the crevice and around Jack's leg. The Doctor reached up for his harpoon.
"Look out!"
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Inside out? That sounded familiar. Some people he knew spoke about doing that to someone as a practical joke. Not really the best sort of practical joke though in his book.
Jack just had time to register the Doctor's warning and tense up as he felt the cold tentacle wrap around his leg and tighten, pulling him swiftly down to the ground and back towards the crevice, his legs getting yanked over the edge.
He grabbed quickly onto the crumbling ground and could feel the skin of his hands dying where it touched it. As he tried to tug himself back he felt a second tentacle creeping over his back. "Doctor!" He called, struggling against the creature's grip.
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He dropped , grabbing onto Jack's upper body. He dug his trainers into the ground. Some of the ash hit his calves and hands and burned like liquid nitrogen, killing the cells.
"Get that manipulator going!" he called.
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Lifting his hand from the ground he flicked open the manipulator. His hand was dark and the skin on his fingers crumbled away as he pressed them against the button and programmed in the data.
He could feel his hand rebuilding and it hurt just as much as it did to damage it. A couple more buttons and the manipulator was primed for teleport. "Hold on tight, Doctor! Give me your hand."
Still holding the ground with one hand he reached the other back to grasp at the Doctor and grabbing hold of his arm he tugged it over towards the manipulator, held it over it, and activated.
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Then, suddenly, he was still. His feet landed on ash and his body seemed to still immediately. Dark ash fell around them, though it didn't eat the way the ash from the ground did. It stung, like acid rain. He shone the light of the torch to his side, to check on his companion, then back ahead of them.
The dark blue of the TARDIS doors poked through the haze of ash.
Despite everything, the Doctor grinned.
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