"Enemy of the Universe" - Part Five

Part Five

            “Your Excellence!” Dr. Madison ran up to Urodela as she entered her castle with her child prisoner. “I did as you requested. The alien construct was placed in your bedchamber.”

            Urodela scowled at the scientist. “What ‘alien construct’?”

            Her inquiry baffled Madison. “The one that we found on the beach…y-you saw it yourself there on the monitor in my lab.”

            Urodela’s brow furrowed in correspondence with her rage.

            “You fool,” she roared, backhanding Madison across the face. “You let the imposter use you!”

            Madison straightened his jaw from the powerful slap. Confusion soon replaced pain once he realized what his leader just said. “Imposter? You mean the woman I saw earlier wasn’t you?”

            “Of course she wasn’t!” Urodela bellowed. “She was a fake – one presumably allied with the Doctor.”

            “The man who murdered your father?” Madison reacted in surprise.

            Urodela looked to her child prisoner, roughly gripping him by the arm.

            “You will tell me everything you know about your friend, boy!”

---------------

            “Doctor, are ya there? Doctor! Doctor!”

            Hearing Jamie’s voice come through the communicator, the Doctor hurried to it with Commander Drake and Wirt at his side. “Yes, I’m here, Jamie. What is it?”

            “We gotta big problem, Doctor,” Jamie said. “Urodela herself just walked in, and she’s got that wee lad Greg with her.”

            “Greg?!” Wirt gasped. “I thought he was here at the base with us!”

            “That does it,” the fed-up Drake blurted. “We’re going in!”

            “But Lindsay and the others haven’t completed the mission yet,” the Doctor told him. “You can’t attack while they’re still there! They could be killed!”

            Drake failed to see reason. “This is our one chance to take Urodela down, once and for all, and I’m not gonna waste it, Doctor! I’m sorry, but if your friends get in the way, then so be it!”

            The bull-headed commander stormed off afterwards.

            “Doctor,” the heavily distressed Wirt approached. “W-What are we going to do about Greg?”

            The Doctor was just as agitated, twiddling his fingers.

            Suddenly, an idea struck. “I’ve got it,” he cheered, clapping his hands. “Oh! This will be my most brilliant idea ever!” He then looked to Wirt and instructed, “Follow me to my TARDIS. We haven’t a second to lose.”

----------------

            “Please, believe me, little ones. I’m not that witch you’ve feared for so long.”

            Lindsay had her work cut out for her in shepherding Urodela’s slave children into her TARDIS. In their eyes, she was Urodela, and they had every reason to believe Lindsay was leading them into a trap – deception was all Urodela ever made them believe in.

            She nearly jumped out of her skin just as Jamie and Toby barged in with a young girl tagging along with them. Lindsay figured this girl to be Zoe. “You found her,” she said with relief. “Thank God!”

            Zoe took one look at Lindsay and screamed, “She’s here!!”

            Jamie promptly covered her mouth, muffling her cries. “It’s not Urodela, Zoe. It’s another friend of ours. Her name is Lindsay. She only looks like Urodela.” Being a man who she grew to trust in their travels together, Jamie’s clarification was enough for Zoe, although she still looked on Lindsay with wary eyes.

            “Wish we could convince these guys, too.” Lindsay nodded to the frightened slave children cowering in the corner.

            “We got bigger problems,” Toby told her. “Urodela’s here and she’s captured poor little Greg.”

            Lindsay panicked. “What?! Oh, no! We can’t leave without him!” She glanced over to the slave children, finding herself at a crossroads. “But we also can’t risk their safety.” She was left with a difficult decision with not enough time to think and choose.

            It soon didn’t matter at all, when the bedchamber door barged open once again, this time with even greater force.

            Urodela marched in, flanked by Greg, Dr. Madison, and a group of soldiers.

            Her fiery gaze met instantly with Lindsay’s, marveled by the striking resemblance between them. “Remarkable,” she said, close to a whisper. “It is like looking into a mirror. What are you?”

            Dr. Madison inched near Lindsay with a two-piece handheld device that looked and sounded like a Geiger counter, producing clicks as he pointed the probe in her direction. “She’s definitely alien,” he told Urodela. “The readings are off the charts!”

            “Thanks, I get that a lot,” Lindsay joked. Toby, Jamie, and Zoe weren’t sure how she could have a sense of humor during such a dire moment, though Greg found the joke funny enough to let out a giggle.

            “Silence, boy!” Urodela yelled to him.

            “His name is Greg,” Lindsay defiantly told her. “And you’re gonna let him go!”

            “First, you will tell me where the Doctor is,” Urodela commanded. “It is clear you and him are in league with your alien blood and constructs.” She motioned towards Lindsay’s TARDIS, standing open behind Lindsay, Toby, Zoe, and Jamie. “And if you will not, I will execute your friends.”

            Following on this threat, she snapped her fingers and every one of her armed soldiers took aim at the heads of Jamie, Toby, Zoe, and Greg.

            Lindsay’s hearts suddenly raced. “No! Please!”

            “URODELA!!!”

            A new, Mexican-accented voice spoke out from behind Urodela and her men. She furiously turned, drawing her gun to kill whoever thought themselves important, brave, or foolish enough to call her out during such an inappropriate time.

            Her rage melted into shock when she saw Ramόn Salamander at the doorway of her bedchamber. “Father?” she uttered, slowly lowering her gun. “How can this be?”

            Dr. Madison was just as puzzled, turning his Geiger counter probe to Salamander.

            “Have your men stand down, daughter,” Salamander ordered.

            “No, Father! They know where the Doctor is – the man who took you from me!”

            “I caught their friend sneaking around outside the walls.” Salamander reached out through the doorway and forcefully pulled in another party that had remained unseen until then.

            “Wirt!” Greg recognized Salamander’s prisoner. “What’re you doing here?!”

            “I…I came looking for you,” Wirt told his brother.

            “Quiet, boy!” Salamander demanded before returning his attention to Urodela. “This one will tell us everything we want to know, daughter. And, once we have found the Doctor and killed him, we will pick up where I left off in my goal of complete global domination. Only now, we will have that to take us a step further and dominate the entire universe!” Salamander pointed specifically to Lindsay’s TARDIS.

            Urodela was overjoyed by this new prospect. “Guards,” she beckoned. “Escort the prisoners to their cells. We will deal with them thoroughly after we have our information.”

            “Your Excellence, wait!” Dr. Madison alerted, his Geiger counter clicking uncontrollably as he brought the probe closer on Salamander. “I’m getting weird energy off this man! He isn’t your father! He’s another alien!”

            Urodela looked on the man she believed to be her father, who was now beginning to sweat upon being exposed by Madison. There was just one man she knew who could pull off this clever deception.

            “Doctor,” she hissed. “KILL HIM!!!”

            One of her soldiers moved to do so but was suddenly gunned down.

            Wirt and the Doctor were pushed aside by the shooter – Commander Drake – who was accompanied by his invading forces. Charging into the bedchamber, they engaged in an extreme shootout with Urodela’s soldiers. This prompted Wirt and the Doctor to take cover along with Jamie, Zoe, and Toby. Lindsay joined them, as soon as she was able to pull Greg in with her.

            With all of them sharing the same cover behind an overturned dining table, Lindsay took a moment to have an exchange with the Doctor: “I’m guessing Drake wasn’t part of the plan.”

            “That man’s an impossible brute,” the Doctor griped, relieved to speak in his normal voice again. “Speaking of ‘impossible’ things, how’s it that you’ve come into possession of a TARDIS?” He gestured over the edge of the table to Lindsay’s opened vessel.

            As their attention was on it, they noticed Urodela making a run for the TARDIS.

            The thought of the crazed woman stealing the most powerful ship in existence unnerved Lindsay. With Urodela at the controls, she could only imagine the chaos she would bring to countless dimensions. Lindsay had to stop her right away.

            She was just about to before…

            BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

            Urodela’s back erupted with her own blood, as she fell facedown beside the threshold of Lindsay’s TARDIS. This generated an immediate ceasefire in the bedchamber. A few eyes centered on Urodela’s fallen, hemorrhaging form, while others were on the one responsible: Commander Drake.

            Lindsay and the Doctor went to her, the former turning her body to look up at them. Of course, Urodela – in her final moments – refused to acknowledge her doppelganger. Instead, she glowered straight at the Doctor.

            “I’m…I’m sorry,” he sympathetically told her.

            With her dying breath, Urodela asked him, “Can you bring my father back?”

            The Doctor shook his head. “N-No, I’m afraid I can’t,” he lamented.

            “Then you will never be forgiven,” cursed Urodela, who died shortly thereafter.

------------------

            Urodela’s death brought about a great change over the coastline of Eastern Asia that she once dominated. There were many of her followers, including Dr. Madison, who desperately waited for this day to come. A few of them were in fact the parents of the children she enslaved, both now liberated and free to live out their lives.

            Even Commander Drake was grateful for the “exceptional work” that Lindsay, the Doctor, and their friends did. Lindsay was just grateful that she would never have to see Drake again.

            She and the Doctor returned to the beach in their respective TARDISes.

            “Lindsay, I’m sorry that I got myself caught by that euro lady,” Greg said. “Please don’t be mad at me or Jason Funderburker.”

            “Who’s Jason Funderburker?” Lindsay curiously inquired.

            Greg held up his pet frog to her. “He is.”

            “So you finally came up with a name for the little fella,” Lindsay approved. “Sounds like a good one, too.”

            “Thanks,” Greg returned. “I named him after the boy who stole the heart of the girl Wirt loves.”

            Lindsay wasn’t exactly sure how to respond to that.

            She joined Greg outside of her TARDIS to bid the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe a fond farewell. “It was good seein’ you, Doctor,” Lindsay told him.

            “I still cannot fathom how you’ve been a Time Lady this whole time,” the Doctor mused. “Regardless, I’m glad our paths crossed. You and your companions helped Jamie and I save Zoe. For that, I’m eternally indebted to you.”

            “You’ve already repaid me by saving my lil’ buddy here,” Lindsay said, playfully tickling Greg’s chin.

            “There are so many questions I have about you, Lindsay,” the Doctor uttered. “Where you come from, who you are, how you know me so well, and – more especially – what kind of TARDIS that is of yours?”

            “For the sake of your future, those questions will have to be left unanswered,” Lindsay forbade.

            The Doctor respectfully accepted this. “Well, in that case, we can only wish safe passage to you all.” He, Jamie, and Zoe shook the hands of Lindsay, Toby, Greg, and Wirt and boarded the Doctor’s TARDIS, which had subsequently dematerialized back into the time vortex.

            Another adventure complete, Lindsay sadly turned to Greg and Wirt. “Well,” she huffed, “I suppose this is it for you boys.”

            Wirt frowned. “What do you mean?”

            “You wanted to go back home, remember?” Toby reminded.

            “Did I?” Wirt queried, clearly playing coy. “I don’t seem to remember ever saying that. But, if I did, I’d surely change my mind, after all the fun we’ve been having.”

            Lindsay shared a smile with him.

            Together, the four travelers (and friends) returned inside Lindsay’s TARDIS and back into the infinite dimensional corridor.

So far away, longing for home,

I hope this journey never ends.

An endless sea of worlds to explore,

none of them ever to bore.

The place she calls the “Infinite DC.”

So many memories, filling in me,

I hope this journey never ends.

NEXT WEEK!