STORM'S FURY

Chapter 1

The TARDIS was shooting through the space-time vortex, heading forward in time to the 47th century. The vortex was occasionally lit by flashes of lightning, as the TARDIS tumbled through it. Inside the control room, the Doctor was describing the attraction he was taking his friends to see.

"The kitchen table and chairs do acrobatic stunts that are the wonder of seven worlds. The bar stools have this death-defying tight-rope act you wouldn't believe and the coffee table is the most delicious clown you'll ever find anywhere in the universe. You'll never stop laughing!" The grinning Doctor told them. He was standing near the console waving his hands in excitement, while Amy and Rory were cozied up together on the jump seat, listening. "Oh, and wait 'till you see what scary things the sofa can do, it'll give you chills. I tell you, it's amazing!"

"So, you're telling us Doctor, that in the future, Ikea has a flat-pack circus with living furniture?" A very skeptical Rory asked.

"Oh, don't be such a prat, Rory." Amy chided him. "Of course they don't."

"Amy's right." The Doctor agreed. "Ikea doesn't need to do flat-pack in the future. Furniture is in virtual 4-D, it comes as an app you can download directly to your phone." The Doctor told him seriously.

"Now you two are just taking the mickey out of me." Rory pouted, crossing his arms. "You're both in on it together, aren't you?"

"Well actually, Rory...." Before he could finished his sentence, there was a bang from the TARDIS console. The Doctor jerked back as he was nearly covered with a shower of sparks and billowing white smoke. The ship suddenly flipped end over end, out of control. Amy screamed as she and Rory were thrown down onto the deck. An alarmed Doctor grabbed on to the console to keep himself from falling, and frantically tried to stabilize the ship.

Outside in the vortex, four bolts of sickly green lightning latched on to the four corners of the bottom of the TARDIS like fingers of a hand, pulling it forcefully out of time and space. The ship gave another great lurch. Then, the light inside the control room dimmed and slowly went out altogether, leaving the Doctor, Rory and Amy lying unconscious on the floor in the dark.

Back on earth in the early 21st century, the din of fifty-seven voices all speaking at once from half a dozen rows of shallow cubicles, could barely be heard over the raging thunderstorm outside the office tower's windows. In her own cramped cubicle, Karen suppressed a yawn and took a sip of bitter tepid tea from a Styrofoam cup. She was trying to sell a gym membership to a pensioner. This woman sounded so old, she'd probably not seen the inside of a gym since her high school P. E. class, back when women had to exercise in long skirts.

The elderly woman was droning on and on about her garden. She sounded so very lonely. Karen knew about that kind of loneliness, so she made occasional comments to let the woman know she was still there, and let her talk. Making someone feel better, was about the only pleasure she ever got from her work.

Karen didn't like her job. Oh, she'd had far worse jobs in her time, for even less pay than she was getting now. Dirty, thankless, often literally back-breaking jobs, with wages so low, it sometimes cost more to go out to work, than to stay home living on benefits. How she had hated being forced to live on benefits. Yet Karen didn't like going hungry either, which physically hurt and was emotionally distressing. At least she'd never been reduced to homelessness, though.

Right now, she was just some nobody working a dead-end job. But, at least if you had a job, people valued and respected you more. Being homeless made some people stop seeing you as a human being, altogether. The mere idea of that made Karen shudder with terror. At least by working, she felt useful in some way, even if sometimes she barely was able to scrape enough out of her meager pay to pay for rent and food.

"Are you on your break?" A sarcastic voice from behind her interrupted her thoughts. Karen surreptitiously pressed her headset's 'mute' button, so the old woman wouldn't hear this conversation.

"I'm waiting for the woman to come back on the phone." Karen lied to her supervisor. The tall, thin, dark-haired middle aged woman scowled down at her, so Karen knew she'd have to do some fast talking. "She wants to pay for a two-year membership with her credit card, but can't find it in her purse. She's looking for it now." Her employer urged its employees to make as many credit card sales as possible, to avoid people changing their minds, and not paying their invoices when they came in the post.

"Oh, I see." The woman said in a snarky voice. "Alright then. But do try to hurry her along. If she can't find her card, I suppose you'll have to get the invoice information and flag it for the mail room. You've been on the phone for seventeen minutes. There's too many other calls waiting in the auto-dialer's call queue, for you to be holding things up for one sale." Her supervisor said as she walked away.

As her supervisor walked back down the aisle towards her desk, Karen snorted in derision. All this place wanted from her was to make credit card sales, and now her supervisor was telling her not to? That was rich. She shook her head. Somehow, this wasn't the sort of life she'd pictured for herself when she was a teenager. Karen was never any good at selling. She liked helping people, but lots of times she felt awful, because she'd talked people who could ill-afford it into buying something they probably could do well enough without.

"Are you still there, dear?" Came a querulous voice from the other end of the phone. "The storm outside is so loud, I can hardly hear you. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I'll have to go now. I don't like to use the telephone during a lightning storm. You can get an awful shock that way, you know. Thank you for talking to me, I---" The line suddenly went dead. Karen assumed it was the storm knocking out the line.

Now she was in for it. Karen had no doubt that her supervisor would check the recording on that particular call. She might even get the sack! Much as she hated and loathed her job, Karen didn't want to be unemployed again. That was even worse. She jumped as a particularly loud crack of thunder virtually shook the office block. Looking up towards the windows, Karen saw the other workers nervously doing the same. The lightning was sharp as ice and nearly continual. The storm was practically right on top of them. It was raining so hard, she couldn't see out the windows. They were just a blur of streaming water, punctuated by eye-blinding white flashes.

Deciding it would be a good time for a loo break, she took off her headset and headed towards the office door. Her supervisor gave her an ugly look as Karen walked past her desk. The supervisor was talking on the phone to the personnel department, by the sound of it. Just before Karen reached the door, she heard her name mentioned, and her stomach turned to ice.

A while later, Karen was just coming out of the loo, when the lights dimmed. At the same moment, there was an ear-splitting crash of thunder. Back in the call centre office, the windows lit up with a brilliant pea-green light. Pulsating like a living thing, the light passed on into head and hand sets of all of the phones.

Dreading that her supervisor was ready to give her the sack, Karen reluctantly headed back to work. Barely through the office door, she stood in utter confusion. Why was it so quiet? Then, realization dawned. She'd only been gone a few minutes, but suddenly the entire office was completely deserted. Every single person had vanished.

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