Upon the Upland Road

With the Master in power and the Doctor missing, a diary, a watch and an old wedding gift send Donna Noble, Sarah Jane Smith and Clyde Langer on a mission to save a planet. But the planet they are saving may not be their own.

A huge thank you to the wonderful Settiai and Rivendellrose for the betas. Title nicked from James K. Baxter's High Country Weather. Chapter titles stolen from Neil Finn.

Art by Genie (LJ | e-mail | comment) and Matsujo9 (LJ | e-mail | comment)

Chapter One: To the Beat of a Drum

While Donna Noble knew that the series of events that had led to her being manhandled by security guards and bundled into a van had begun the day she had been given a job at HC Clements. She also knew that the major event in all of this was when she had met the Doctor, since it was always the Doctor that they were interested in.

Whether they were the police or people pretending to be the police or people who didn't bother to pretend to be the police, it was always the Doctor. It was rarely the Racnoss and even rarer her. Though for that, she was thankful. She suspected that if anyone had decided that she was more than a pawn in some plan for world conquest she would have been subjected to far more scrutiny.

Nevertheless, she had once again been singled out because she knew him. She was the only person the Toclafane stopped for, and she was in no doubt as to why.

Donna had been trying, really trying, to follow all the news of alien activity -- particularly in the local area. So of course she had planned to be in front of the television at home to watch first contact, since she couldn't actually be there (wherever there was, it had never been made clear what 'neutral territory' really was). Though it seemed fate, or more specifically a cooking accident involving salt and cake mixture, had decided that instead she would be running around the supermarket looking for a birthday cake for her Gramps and glancing at her watch every twenty seconds, painfully aware that she was going to miss it.

So when the Toclafane found her, they found her clamouring behind a supermarket trolley, prepared to defend herself with a chocolate cake. She had expected that like all the others in the supermarket she would be screaming in seconds as they tore into her with their spinning blades, the Toclafane laughing the whole time with voices that were metallic and cold as well as childish. But instead they stopped. As the screaming in the other aisles died down, a group of them, blood dripping from their blades, seemed to crowd around her.

"She's no fun. We can't kill her," one said.

"Mister Master wants her whole," another of them said in that childlike voice.

As Donna opened her mouth to retort, she realised her throat was stiff. With her heart racing and her joint stiff in fear, she was trying so desperately not to break down.

"Well, you can tell Mister Master to go to hell!" Donna managed to muster.

"You can soon tell him yourself." While the first had sounded male, this one sounded like a female.

Despite all this the Toclafane could do little by way of taking prisoners. They seemed not designed for it as they did not have hands. They only seemed capable of bringing about a painful and swift death. Instead black clad security guards armed with expensive looking weapons arrived and were soon dragging her off past the blood-splattered cereal boxes and the torn up corpses of adults and children lying in pools of their own blood.

Donna had once worked in a supermarket. All she could think of was the drone of the store communication system she expected at any moment.

Spill on aisles one, two, three...

The Toclafane were monsters -- cruel, sadistic creatures -- but it was the guards that angered Donna enough for her to snap out of her initial shock at what was going on.

"What have they offered you lot, then?" she yelled at her human captors as she struggled against them. "Money? Power? Are they going to take you to see the stars? Are they giving you the planet?"

They dragged her out the front door and into the carpark. It was then she got a glimpse of the devastation. Toclafane zoomed through the London sky, striking down anything that moved. Buildings were on fire, thick smoke filling the air. Every now and again a person in the distance would scream.

All around her was devastation. Streets she knew and drove down every day were destroyed.

There was no other way to put it. It was the end of London, and maybe the world.

Donna whirled around and got a good look into the eyes of one of her captors. "You're traitors. The lot of you. And you know what happens to traitors? I've seen what happens to traitors. You'll all be dead within a week. I promise you that."

Instead of answering her yells, they put a piece of duct-tape over her mouth and bundled her unceremoniously into the back of the van.

Alone and exhausted, she couldn't help but wonder where the Doctor was. Wasn't this exactly what he was supposed to prevent?

After what seemed to be half an hour, the van stopped. Donna was sure they were going to pull her out. Instead they bundled somebody else in, a small, middle-aged brunette who seemed to be making an effort to show Saxon's men and women that all they were to her was a mild annoyance. She stepped into the van, head held high and glared as her captors as she sat down slowly.

But when the doors shut and they were alone, she dropped the defiant act and stared at Donna with a deeply worried expression. Then after a moment, she began an uncomfortable looking manoeuvre, seemingly trying to undo her boot, which was considerably difficult since her hands were tied behind her back.

After a while she looked up.

"Would you be able to give me a hand?"

Donna ended up lying on her back, having fallen off her seat in an attempt to free her hands. It was not her most dignified hour, but they did get the boot off. Out of it tumbled a tube of lipstick.

The woman seemed to be quite pleased with herself. "They could learn a lesson from airports," she whispered.

Donna decided that no possible expression her face could muster was capable of conveying the annoyance than she would have been able to express if not for her mouth being taped up. Their great hope was a tube of lipstick.

However, taking it in her hands the woman opened up the lipstick to reveal something more akin to a James Bond gadget than make-up, although it reminded Donna of a figure far more mysterious and real than James Bond. Within seconds the woman's wrists were free and moments later Donna the duct tape off her mouth.

"I need you to hold on," the woman said, "and when I say so, run."

"Wait. What are you going to do with that?" Donna asked. The woman didn't respond.

Donna remembered what had happened to the robot Santas and grabbed the walls as the woman pointed the lipstick at the ground below the cab of the truck. With a great 'thunk' the truck lurched and buckled. Donna found herself thrown against the front of the trailer and then against the walls as the van fell to its side and began to skid across the road.

She screamed, expecting at any moment to die horrifically. But she didn't. Instead, once things stopped moving, there was an eerie silence.

Donna picked herself up off the ground and hobbled on a bruised leg towards the door, now ajar -- the crash having forced it open -- and the woman, who was pulling herself up nearby.

Donna did not need to be told when to run. Grabbing the woman by the arm, Donna rushed them both out of the cab and ran full pelt toward a row of houses nearby. It seemed they had been travelling down a nice street before they crashed. Town houses hid behind brick walls and neatly trimmed gardens, so far untouched by the Toclafane.

It was once she reached the front gate of the nearest house that she heard shouting, followed in quick succession by a round of gunfire. Heart pounding in her chest and hand clamped on the woman's arm, Donna ducked down her head and continued running.

They kept off the streets at first, running through houses instead. Locked doors were no match for the woman's lipstick, nor were fence gates or pad-locks. After an incident in which a terrified occupant made a swing at Donna with a sauce pan, they kept out of the houses and headed for a park, still running.

Finally they found a canal and followed alongside it, eventually coming a small boat shed.

Inside, Donna collapsed in a heap, panting, while the woman locked the door and begun poking around.

"I didn't expect to be running for my life today," Donna muttered once she had some of her breath back, as a means of beginning a conversation.

"I've found it's best to always expect to end up running for your life," the woman replied as she investigated the shed a bit more. "Then at least you're never wearing completely inappropriate shoes."

Donna stared down at her leg, noticing a nasty cut in her calf that was oozing blood. It hurt, but she would live.

"Safe. I think," the woman announced.

"Safe? Did you see those things?" Donna exclaimed. "They bloody well came from the sky with those knives and guns. That door isn't going to stop them."

"It's better than nothing and I don't think they can see through walls."

"What are they?"

"I don't know," she answered quickly.

"Well, what do they want, other than us all dead?"

"I'm not sure and I don't think it was them that did all the planning."

"Who then? The Prime Minister?"

"He's known to the public as Harold Saxon, but his real name is the Master and he's not from this planet."

"The Prime Minister's an alien?"

The woman nodded and Donna got the impression she was being assessed on both her questions and answers.

Donna sat down and contemplated this for a moment.

"From Gallifrey?" she asked.

"Why do you say that?"

"I don't know about you, but I've met two kinds of alien and only one of them looked like us. You couldn't tell the difference other than that he was a bit skinnier than normal."

"The Doctor," the woman interrupted.

"Yeah. You've met him too, then?" Donna continued. "And how many species of aliens of all of them out there would look exactly like humans? The fact that there are any aliens out there that look exactly like us is a bit hard to believe. So odds are they're from the same planet. Not to mention, the name's a bit of a giveaway."

"They are. I've never met the Master, but I certainly have heard a lot about him."

"So are you one of them?"

"One of who?"

"The Gallifreyans."

"They're called Time Lords."

"That's a bit rich," Donna replied. "So are you one of them? You are a little skinny, and you have one of those bleepy things," she added, getting back on track.

"No. Human." She shifted and winced as she did. "A journalist, actually."

"You're not Rose are you?"

"Sarah Jane Smith. And you are?"

"Donna Noble."

With that, a thought struck her. The chocolate cake. Her granddad's birthday party.

"Oh my god. My family."

Election Day at number thirteen Bannerman Road had been rather inconspicuous. Maria and Clyde had been around, as always, hoping for something more exciting than homework, and Alan followed along that evening. But there were no alien activities and no new pieces of technology to show off, only maths problems and history essays to be done, and for Sarah and Alan, a bottle of wine to polish off.

It was two days later that things started to go askew, beginning with Harold Saxon's declaration on national television that Earth had made contact the day before. The kids were out the next morning: Clyde was again trying to teach Luke how to use a skateboard. They'd be home in time for contact and in the meantime Sarah felt disappointed on their behalf that she had nothing to tell them. Mr Smith could find nothing at all about the Toclafane.

She was continuing her inquiries with Mr Smith about the Toclafane with no luck on identification when the phone rang, the Brigadier on the other end, sounding quite a bit perturbed.

"I'm afraid this isn't a social call." This was no particular surprise, it rarely ever was. Although as the Brigadier was going through one of his frequent periods of being 'retired' lately, it had been Sarah always calling him.

"They've dragged you out of retirement again, then?" Sarah asked.

"Not this time, and for a reason I think. Can that alien computer of yours access UNIT and Torchwood?"

"Now that would be illegal, Brigadier," Sarah replied. There were people she trusted, and the Brigadier was one of them. But Sarah knew that unlike so many others in her field of work she was alone and required every advantage available to her, and so she would never admit Mr Smith's capabilities to anyone with loyalties to UNIT or Torchwood.

"Never mind that now, can it access Torchwood's files?" There was something in the way he phrased his question, a desperation she was not accustomed to hearing from him.

"Yes," Sarah replied cautiously.

"Good. I need you to find out some information on Harold Saxon."

"Mr Smith, I need to know what Torchwood knows about the new Prime Minister."

"Sarah Jane," Mr Smith's voice came. He changed his screen to the news on TV to reveal the Doctor's latest regeneration on the screen, listed as one of Britain's most wanted alongside a man she recognised as Jack Harkness, the head of Torchwood, and a pretty young woman she had never seen before.

"Brigadier, what is going on?"

"I'm sure you have heard of the Time Lord known as the Master."

She had. They had never met, but Benton and Yates had told her tales of the man who constantly challenged both UNIT and the Doctor, only to disappear shortly before her arrival. They had warned her then to be vigilant.

"All the Time Lords are dead. The Doctor told me as much."

"I have good reason to suspect that this one is not."

"Good reason?" Sarah replied, as before her Mr Smith answered her initial request. Harold Saxon's Torchwood file flashed onto the screen. There was nothing out of the ordinary; it just listed his name, contact details, birthday, blood type and occupation. None of these fields had been updated since before the election. "Torchwood has nothing."

"Then I can't prove it. But I know I am right. Or at least I know Miss Grant is. Harold Saxon invited Miss Grant to a dinner last night. He made statements to her that has led her to the conclusion of his identity and the possibility that not one of us is safe."

Sarah's mind raced with possibilities. The Master, who had a personal vendetta against the Doctor, was in a position of power. The Toclafane meant it was not just the Government's resources he had at his disposal; he had an alien army with goodness knows what capabilities.

"He was the Minister of Defence," the Brigadier continued, "with access to all of UNIT's files and resources. For twelve months now he's been giving them orders which means UNIT has been compromised. And so have all the records we have."

"Never mind that, what are the Toclafane?"

"I don't know." The Brigadier paused for a moment. "Sarah, UNIT knows about your son and your neighbours. You're all targets."

Sarah's blood froze.

"I'm faxing through a list of names, every person I can think of with a connection to the Doctor. You need to erase them from public record. I think right now you are the only one that can."

She heard the fax machine nearby burst into activity.

"I'm sure I don't need to tell you to run." He didn't. Sarah was already busy working out exactly what needed to be done and who needed to do it.

"I voted for him," she said. He had seemed so trustworthy.

"As did I. Good luck."

"To you as well."

Sarah hung up and immediately dialled Luke.

Luke picked up his phone after three rings. "Clyde thinks I'm getting better."

"Luke, I need you, Clyde and Maria to come home right now."

He must have heard something in the tone of her voice. He just agreed. "What's wrong?"

"I'll explain it when you're here. Just don't go talking to any police officers or strangers," she added quickly. "Or anyone or anything. And hurry."

She hung up and then picked up a piece of paper and glanced at the names. She saw Luke's, Clyde's, Maria's and Alan's followed by her own, with some familiar and others not at all familiar after them. The Brigadier had forgotten to add his own.

"Mr Smith, hack into every government database there is, including Torchwood and UNIT. I need everyone on this list to be deleted, as well as Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart."

She picked up her phone again and dialled next door. Instead of Alan, Chrissie answered. On finding out it was Sarah, she called for Alan.

"It's that crazy Betty Sue from next door."

"Sarah Jane!" she heard him call back.

"Hello?"

"Alan, pack your bags. Pack one for you and one for Maria, and get ready to run."

"What?...You can't possibly...What is...?" He seemed to not be quite capable of knowing which question to ask first. "Chrissie's here," he eventually finished.

"Then get her ready to run as well."

"What's going on?" Alan replied, seeming quite irritated now.

"I can't explain right now, I'm going to go."

It painfully occurred to her that Alan and Maria would not have to run if it were not for her.

"Sarah Jane," Mr Smith started. "Your name can be erased from the database. However a paper record exists that I cannot touch."

"But are Alan and the children wiped?"

"They no longer exist on record."

"Then move on. Get the other names."

She headed for the door.

"Sarah Jane," Mr Smith called again. She turned to find his screen flickering. "It appears I have been compromised."

"By what?"

"Searching..."

Sarah watched astounded as Mr Smith's voice trailed off to nothing as his screen flashed from pictures of records to static at a more rapid and violent pace. Then he went black, only to be quickly replaced by a white screen and an angel-like symbol that seemed to Sarah vaguely familiar.

The she remembered with horror just where she knew that symbol from. Sarah glanced at her cell phone and there it was, innocently sitting in the corner of her screen.

The Archangel Network.

That was how the Master had done it. He had infiltrated their lives quietly without them ever knowing. She hadn't even thought to question. Was it mind control, she wondered. He had been in her head.

Suddenly feeling nauseous, Sarah threw the mobile phone onto the ground and quickly stood on it, smashing it to pieces repeatedly while trying to keep a hold of herself. She could not afford to lose her head.

"If you were in that van with me, it's because the Master knows of your connection to the Doctor, which means he knows about your family," Sarah explained Donna. She rubbed her arm while doing so, Donna certainly had a grip and had seemed quite determined not to let Sarah fall behind as they ran from the Master's men.

"What? So?" Donna asked.

"There are probably Toclafane waiting at your home, your parent's home and the home of any other close relatives."

"They've gone after my family? Those things?" Donna rubbed her eyes, and got up. "Then I have to get there."

"You can't."

"I've seen them!" she cried heading for the doors. "I saw them come through a supermarket! I can't just leave my family to them!"

"Then they'll get you."

"So what?" she asked. "What does Saxon want with me?"

"He probably wants to use you against the Doctor. There's more to it than you, there's a bigger picture."

"I know there's a bloody bigger picture! But that's my family!"

Sarah had locked the door of the shed with her sonic lipstick. The chain was not going to budge.

"Flaming bloody hell...," she said struggling with the door. "Fuck!" she yelled. "Help me!"

Sarah shook her head. "Your family, if not captured, are most certainly dead. To go after them now would be to condemn yourself to the same fate, and I'm very certain any death the Master has in store for you will be both prolonged and painful. Do you want that? Would your family want that for you?"

"It's my Granddad's birthday," she cried. "I was buying him a cake, and you're telling me..."

"I don't even know where we are. Do you?"

Donna glared at her, and stormed off to the corner of the shed. Sarah could hear her crying. Sarah knew the feeling of being torn into pieces, wanting to be with and protect those you loved and that rational voice at the back of your head that dictates with cold logic what must be done and then also that very basic instinct to run and hide and save yourself.

After a long silence, a question came. "Where is he anyway? The Doctor"

"I don't know."

And that was what worried Sarah most of all.

Donna had once considered herself a good judge of personality. Lance, however, had caused her to rethink this. Still, whether or not she was, she certainly did not know what to make of Sarah Jane Smith. Striking Donna as both knowledgeable and vulnerable, and capable of being both charming and icy, Donna did not know whether to follow her instructions or go out alone.

Though it seemed Sarah might just be the only person she had. She didn't even know where she was. In a park somewhere in London, but what part of London she had no clue.

It seemed then, that they were stuck together.

Leaning against the wall, Donna decided it was like the night after meeting the Doctor all over again, except so much worse. There was just too much. In one day she had seen death and destruction she never could have imagined, and it hung with her. Her clothes stunk of smoke from burning buildings, the screams of shoppers echoed in her mind, and when she closed her eyes, she could still see the blood on the polished supermarket floor.

Her mind raced with scenarios of what could have happened to her mother and grandfather -- whether they got out, whether they had been captured or whether they had been killed.

This time there was no warm bed to go home to at the end of it. Instead she was cold, hungry and incredibly sore.

Eventually exhaustion caused her to drift off.

Donna slept uncomfortably, leant up against the wooden wall with the breeze drifting in through gaps and the occasional spider crawling across the floor.

They did not sleep long. Gunfire woke the pair of them.

"What do we do?" Donna whispered harshly.

Instead of responding, Sarah headed for the door. She removed the lock and opened it a crack. The small shed was filled with the light of fires and lasers.

Donna poked her head out and saw tanks and solders firing into the night sky. As they were firing, the Toclafane would sweep down upon them. Donna watched the silhouette of one soldier as a Toclafane cut him down.

She then noticed that they were retreating and in doing so headed right towards them.

Donna felt Sarah's hand on her wrist, and before they knew it they were running again, towards a set of trees and thick bush, where they hid behind the branches.

"UNIT, I think," Sarah whispered.

"Who?"

Sarah didn't respond. Donna watched on as a tank burst into flames.

"We're losing," Donna exclaimed. The soldiers were being cut down in front of their eyes. "We've got to do something."

There was a loud roar as a car crashed into the shed where they had just been hiding and the building erupted into flames.

"Bloody hell!"

Donna felt Sarah's hand on her arm once more. "We've got to go."

Donna did not know what else to do other than follow. So they ran, again, through the park. They had not gone far when Donna's foot collided with something and she found herself flat on her face.

She scrambled to her feet when to her horror she discovered it was the body of a soldier.

He let out a groan.

Without thinking, Donna grabbed his arm, and attempted to pull him to his feet. Sarah had doubled back and between the pair of them, they got him standing, and taking an arm each, made a beeline for the edge of the park and the row of houses beyond it.

Dawn was beginning to light up the sky as Sarah opened a door and the three of them nearly fell through it.

Sarah quickly went about closing and locking the doors, while Donna tried to assess the soldier. He was cut up pretty badly, with scratches on his face and arms, but by far the worst was a gaping gash to his chest, from which stood what Donna realised was part of a Toclafane. Blood was oozing out.

"Oh my God," Donna managed to sputter out.

The soldier groaned again.

Donna pulled off her jacket and wrapped it around the soldier's chest. The bleeding had to be stopped if he was going to have any chance - she'd watched enough television to know that.

"What's your name officer?" Sarah asked, her tone mixing concern with something that sounded like military formality.

"Luke Williams. Lieutenant Luke Williams."

"He's bleeding," Donna exclaimed. "You're bleeding," she added, deciding to talk to Luke the soldier rather than just about him. It was what she would have wanted.

"Don't touch the knife," Sarah said.

"We didn't know what to do," the soldier said. "Alien threat, it's what we're supposed to be about but commands were for us to do nothing. Stand by."

Donna slipped as she applied pressure and hit the knife. Luke let out a groan. He was so pale, she noticed. She's never seen anyone so sickly white before.

"But we had to do something," he choked out. "We disobeyed orders. Went after them."

"You did the right thing, Lieutenant," Sarah said, looking him straight in they eyes.

"It's the guns," he sputtered out. "When we fired, they just came. More and more..." his sentence drifted off and Donna noticed blood seeping out of the corners of his mouth.

"Do something!" she cried, looking to Sarah.

Sarah didn't move.

"Do something!" Donna cried out. "Use that bleepy thing to fix him or something...Just do something!" Her resolved weakened and her cried became a desperate plea.

"I can't."

The soldier didn't move. Lieutenant Luke Williams died in front of them.

Tears streaming down her face, Donna looked down to discover she was covered in blood.

Blood. There was just so much blood and never her own. It all had belonged to the dead.

Donna jumped up; reacting to the blood as if it was toxic and it touching her skin going to destroy her. She rushed upstairs.

Yesterday had been just another morning, nothing special besides a birthday party. And now, twenty-four hours later she was scrubbing the blood of a dead soldier off her hands with the image of the blood splattered floors of the supermarket circling in her head.

She had to get the blood off.

Donna collapsed in the shower and wept.

Donna emerged downstairs a couple of hours later, dressed in clothes she had found in the master bedroom. She didn't want to think what had happened to the family that had lived there.

Luke Williams' body lay in the corridor, covered with a blanket.

She found Sarah working away at the kitchen table, surrounded by dismantled appliances, televisions and computers.

Donna was going to leave. She would head out on her own and she would go home when she found out where she was. She could not stay with Sarah, who acted so cold in such a horrific situation.

"What are you doing?" Donna asked as she moved towards Sarah.

"Well, it's...um...it's as I suspected," Sarah said quietly. There was something in her voice, the defences were down. "The Toclafane knives aren't made out of any metal found on earth, so..." she paused, clearly struggling to sound cohesive. Donna moved forward. "With a bit of tinkering and a lot of borrowed parts, we can make something that will detect them."

Donna placed a hesitant hand on Sarah's shoulder as she let out a sob.

"Luke's the name of my son. And I don't know where he is."

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