Fic: Children's Crusade 3/10? [10/J/R | Teen]
Title: Children's Crusade (3/10?)
Author: aibhinn
Pairing: Ten/Jack/Rose
Rating: PG-13 (may go up for later chapters)
Spoilers: For my chaptered fic Reunited. (Link goes to Teaspoon.)
Summary: Jack's past-including his missing memories-comes back for another go…but it's not quite what he expected.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Everything belongs to Auntie Beeb. I'm stuck here on the far side of the wrong continent, playing in her sandbox.
Author's note: This story begins roughly a year after Reunited ended. Many thanks to measi, dameruth, sensiblecat, and invisible_lift for the beta-fu. Don't forget, this is a sequel to Reunited, so it's A/U for post-s2 Doctor Who and post-s1 Torchwood.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5
Gwen and Ianto watched Jack walk out the door with Karen. As soon as they were past, Gwen reached up to her headset and activated the comm. "Owen, they've left the pub together."
"Yeah, I've got 'em. Looks like they're heading down towards the Plass."
Movement caught Gwen's eye. The Doctor and Rose were disappearing towards the back, no doubt intending to go out the service entrance. "You'll have company soon, out the back door," she told Owen.
Owen swore. "They'd better not spook this Karen bird," he said sharply. "We lose her and we may never know what she's after."
"Rose isn't going to spook anyone, and you know it. She's better at shadowing people than you are." Owen snorted in disgust, and Gwen added, "Tosh, have you got Jack on CCTV?"
"Yes," Tosh said. Gwen could hear her typing in the background. "Owen's right, they're heading for the Plass, and they seem to be just wandering along, talking." There was a pause, then she said, "There's Rose-and the Doctor. They've separated and they're following. Jack and Karen don't seem to have noticed them at all."
"Jack has," Ianto said confidently. "He knows exactly where they are and he's counting on it. We can hope Karen doesn't, though."
Gwen bit her lip, thinking. "Keep monitoring, Tosh," she said at last, "and Owen, keep a physical eye on them if you can. Ianto and I are heading back to the Hub. We'll be more use there if Jack needs us."
***
Jack and Karen walked in silence for a bit, weaving their way through the people on the street. He angled towards the Plass, figuring being near the Hub was a good idea. Whether she was telling the truth or not, it was better to be safe than sorry.
The Plass was full of couples and families walking in the summer evening. Jack pulled his greatcoat back and casually stuck his hands in his trouser pockets. It was really too warm for the wool; he'd only worn it so it would hide the fact that he was armed. His pistol was a comforting weight under his left arm, secure in the shoulder harness he'd donned earlier. He was glad to have it, even though he was reasonably certain he wouldn't need it tonight. Karen was more likely to respond to a show of trust than a show of force, and besides, the Doctor and Rose were out there watching him, along with the rest of the team.
"So how long has it been for you?" he asked Karen, falling easily into the 'Shaney dialect of their childhood and noting the odd look a passer-by gave him. He didn't care; the Doctor and Rose would be able to understand him, thanks to the TARDIS, and that was all that mattered. "Since I was mind-wiped?"
"You disappeared in-what? 5097?" she asked, following his lead as to language. He nodded. "Five years, then," she said, and hitched her handbag further up her shoulder, hand loosely wrapped around its strap. "It took me ages to track you down. You're good at hiding your tracks-especially with the name change. I finally managed to find a picture of you in a history text, worked out your new name, and traced you back here to this city and this time."
"How'd you get here?" he asked.
In answer, she stretched out her left hand and pulled her sleeve back to bare her wrist. Jack blinked; she wore a Vortex manipulator. "Where'd you get one of those?" he asked.
She chuckled. "I joined the Time Agency about ten years ago. I've been a senior field agent for six years, Mark."
"Mark?" Jack repeated, startled.
She laughed, a light, delicate sound. "Oh, come on. I know you've been Jack for a long time, but you haven't forgotten your real name, have you?"
Your real name. Jack felt his breath whoosh out of him in a rush as the phrase sank into his brain. His name. She knew his real name-the name that had been taken from him, along with his job, his friends, his family, and two years' worth of memories.
But it didn't sound familiar. It didn't sound right. Being called Mark felt no different from being called Ralph or Sam or Jeffrey-it was just another name, with no emotional connection at all. It shook him. Shouldn't he have some memory of the name he was born with?
"Have you?" Karen repeated. Her brow was furrowed, and she looked concerned.
Jack realised he hadn't taken another breath, and did so, feeling his incipient lightheadedness fade. "I hadn't heard it in a very long time," he prevaricated.
Her face cleared, and she chuckled again, shaking her head. "I have to tell you, I never thought I'd see the day Mark Hutchins was tied down to one planet, one time stream. You were always the one talking about bouncing around the universe. Hell, the teachers could never get you to sit in one chair!"
Jack grinned obediently, though he honestly didn't feel much like smiling. "Tell me about Dennis," he asked. She sobered, and he added gently, "That is why you came to find me, isn't it?"
"What, I can't have just searched you out because I missed you?" she asked, mouth quirked.
He snorted. "Travelling back three thousand years, using only a Vortex manipulator, just to see an old friend? Not a chance. You had to work to find me, and the only reason I can think of for you to have worked that hard is because you need my help." He gave her a Look. "What is it, Karen?"
They were nearly to the red-brick Pierhead Building by this point. She sighed, looked at him, and changed direction just slightly, heading for the railing along the water's edge. Jack remembered how much she'd always loved the ocean-whenever she'd been angry or upset as a kid, she'd always gone straight down to the beach. The Boeshane Peninsula had been the westernmost point of land on the continent: an excellent place to watch storms come in off the ocean. Cardiff Bay was calm and boring by comparison, but it was still water, and clearly still attracted her.
They leaned companionably against the railing, forearms resting on the cool metal, looking out at the gently-lapping water. Seagulls called, and one brave fellow even landed near them. He waddled closer, cocked his head inquiringly, and then wandered off when no food materialised. Jack waited, letting her tell the story in her own time.
A long moment or two later, Karen took a deep breath. "You remember when James and I broke up?" she asked.
"Yeah," Jack said with a familiar pang. James' name was one of the few things from his youth they'd not taken from him. "When we were on leave between Basic and our first posting. Seemed strange at the time."
Movement caught his eye, and he glanced over. A dozen or so yards away, Rose stood with her back to the water, feeding the seagulls bits of bread. The Doctor stood at the railing behind her, watching the water. Neither was in earshot-not even the Doctor with his much more sensitive hearing-but they were clearly keeping an eye on him.
Karen laughed ruefully. "Oh, it was," she said. "Two stupid, stubborn kids. He wanted to run off and get married right away, that day, before you two went back. Said he wanted things to be legalised in case anything happened to him. I said I wasn't marrying anyone just yet, and we had an enormous row about it. He stormed off, and I never saw him again."
"I'm sorry," he said uselessly.
She smiled softly. "You probably know-we'd been sleeping together for some time before that." He nodded. "I thought we were taking precautions, but I found out I was pregnant a few weeks after his funeral. I didn't know what to do-I was halfway through uni, no training, no way of making a living-so I disappeared. I went to my aunt's on Liracula and stayed with her until Dennis was born, then I managed to find a job and we muddled through."
By herself? "Why didn't you come to me?" Jack asked, hurt. "You knew I'd have done anything for you."
She turned to look at him fully, and he could see the echo of remembered pain in her eyes. "Did I, Mark?" she asked quietly.
He flinched and looked away, conceding her point.
After a moment, she picked up her story again. "The war began to spread," she said, her voice still low, her gaze angled out to sea but unfocused. "Once the High Command was assassinated, it was a slaughter. Planet after planet became battlegrounds. Eventually, it even reached Liracula, far out as we were. We had no military to speak of, no industry, very little in the way of natural resources-we were mostly a farming planet-but that didn't stop them."
She shifted her hands, grasping the top of the railing so hard her knuckles were white. She was trembling now, but whether from remembered fear or pure rage, Jack was hard put to say. She carried on.
"One sunny, ordinary Tuesday in 5084, H'rissth ships entered the atmosphere and went straight into the middle of the capital city, where I lived. But they didn't attack the militia, or the government offices, or even the docks and spaceports. They attacked schools, houses, neighbourhoods-including ours. I had warning at work and managed to get down into the bunker, but my son's school was one of the first hit. It was all but disintegrated in the blast." She looked down, hunched her shoulders protectively, and he could hear the way her voice strained in her effort to keep it steady. "They never found more than a tenth of the children's bodies."
"Oh, God," Jack said, heartsick. He remembered that day, remembered the outcry from the whole system and the way the attack had galvanised the humans who had been losing ground so decisively. He'd had no idea she'd been anywhere near Liracula. "Karen, I'm so sorry."
Her body language screamed stay away, but he couldn't help himself-he laid a hand on her shoulder, trying to communicate some of his sympathy and knowing that he was failing utterly. There were no words that could comfort her, but he had to do something.
She tensed under his hand, then relaxed slightly, as though forcing herself. She took another deep breath, raised her head, and shifted slightly, turning to meet his gaze, not bothering to wipe away the tears that were trickling down her face. "I thought my life was over," she said. "There was nothing left to live for-nothing but the pain and the anger. So I joined the Time Agency myself. I wanted to fight back. I wanted to see the H'rissth destroyed, wiped out of the galaxy, turned to dust and light with the pull of a trigger."
"Yeah," Jack agreed in a voice filled with his own quiet fury. "I know." It was what had kept him going, too, after James' death-his and far too many others. Beyond her, the Doctor caught Jack's eye, concern written in his features. Jack shook his head slightly, just enough to signal that he was all right, and the Time Lord relaxed marginally, though the concern didn't leave his face. Rose wasn't facing Jack, but he could see the tension in her body and knew she was worried, too.
"I got through Basic and into uniform," Karen continued, "and fought on the front lines for the next few years, before getting snapped up by Intelligence, shoved into Officer Training and stuck behind a desk, just in time for the end of the war. But it was there that I made the most horrifying discovery of my life." She swallowed. "Dennis wasn't dead. He'd never been killed-none of the kids at his school were. They were all kidnapped and taken to re-education camps. All of them, three-year-olds to twelve-year-olds." More tears spilled. "My son had been there for four years, and I'd thought he was dead all that time."
"But he wasn't," Jack said, running his hand reassuringly over her back and trying desperately to sound hopeful, despite his knowledge of what the H'rissth did to their captives. "You found him. The Agency must be able to get in there and rescue them-they've got some of the best infiltration units in the galaxy, they can get in anywhere-"
"That's just it, Mark." She turned to face him fully and leant forward, intense and hurting. "They weren't H'rissth camps. They belonged to the Time Agency."
"What?" Jack blurted, aghast. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rose turn swiftly to look at him, but his attention was on Karen now.
"It was the Time Agency," Karen repeated. Tears swam in her eyes. "The Agency itself kidnapped all those kids."
Jack stared at her, feeling as though the bottom had dropped out of his stomach. "Are you sure?" he managed.
"Yes," Karen said grimly. "In Intel we get a lot of information, and not all of it goes through proper channels. We-meaning I, of course-got approached by a whistleblower who told me about some dicey stuff going on. Products being paid for but never delivered, people on the payroll who never showed up for work, that sort of thing. It was enough to make me perk up my ears. I started looking into it without telling anyone, and what I uncovered convinced me there was something going on."
"And you trusted him?" Jack asked, surprised. "Some whistleblower out of nowhere, and you trusted him?"
"Oh, yeah," she said. "With my life, and a great deal more. I have since we were kids." She looked up at him, and one corner of her mouth lifted slightly. "I still do."
The penny dropped. "Oh, my God," he said. "I was the whistleblower."
She nodded, and he leaned his hip against the railing, flabbergasted. Though it made sense, really. A lot of sense. Something sparked faintly in the back of his mind; not quite a memory, more like a memory of a memory: a vaguely-familiar silhouette against the wall of his consciousness. This fit. It fit. He couldn't remember details, couldn't remember actually doing any of this, but it felt somehow right.
"We didn't know Dennis was there at first," she went on. "It took months of digging and more than a little danger to uncover what we did-more accurately, what you did; I was just the one who made your side trips look legitimate to High Command. It ended with the most intense, deep, bone-chilling betrayal I've ever experienced-and the loss of two years of your memories." She closed her eyes as though gathering her strength, and said helplessly, "Mark, it's an operative-training camp. They don't want these kids just to be soldiers or even field agents; they're training them to be covert operatives. The elite. The ones with no background, no family, no name-"
"Assassins," Jack breathed, his stomach churning.
"Yes." The tears were gone now; in their place was a burning anger that flared in her eyes when she opened them. "And not all the kids who were on that list were in Dennis's school, though they had all been listed as casualties of war. It's a conspiracy: they kidnap our children and turn them into soulless little killers, and there's nothing we can do about it."
"Oh, yes there is." Jack's jaw had set. "If you can prove this exists, all we have to do is make it public and the people will demand an explanation. Secrets like this need darkness and ignorance to survive; bring in the cold, hard light of day and they're dismantled like a house of cards."
"I've tried that. I went to the High Council, to the Liracula Legislature, even to the press. Nobody wants to believe it. The Time Agency is 'a force for good' in the galaxy. Nobody wants to imagine they could betray their own people like that, nobody wants to believe they'd do that to children! But they can, Mark. They can, and they have, and I can't stop it. Not alone." The tears were back now, but her face was still stony, her eyes still blazing with anger and determination as tears dripped silently down her cheeks. "I have a plan, and I think it will work, but I need you," she said, and her voice quavered with desperation and fury. "Please, Mark. I need you to help me."
Jack took a breath and stepped forward, reaching out to pull her into a hug. She clutched tightly at him, resting her head against his shoulder. His stomach roiled, his heart filled with too many emotions to put a name to. To know why he'd lost his memories, what he'd been doing to have them removed-it was a relief like no other. And yet, despite the vague but definite sense that he knew something about this, he still felt a niggling doubt in the back of his mind. What if she was lying? What if she was only there to bring him back to the Agency as a captive? What if she was working for the very people he'd been working against, and had come looking for him to silence the last voice who might know anything about it?
But what if she wasn't lying? What if there were dozens of children-including his best friend's son-who were trapped in an operative training camp, being forced into the role of clandestine assassins for the Time Agency? What if he could save them, and he didn't because he was afraid?
There was no other choice he could make. The Doctor and Rose were standing shoulder-to-shoulder in his line of sight, looking at him. He met their gaze, felt their support like a palpable warmth, and sighed.
"All right," he said into her hair. "But I've got some friends who'll need to hear this, too."
She pulled back, sniffling. "Friends?" she asked, with an entirely justified note of concern. "Are you sure you want to trust anyone with this?"
"Don't worry," he said, smiling softly. "You'll never meet better friends in your life than these two."
Author: aibhinn
Pairing: Ten/Jack/Rose
Rating: PG-13 (may go up for later chapters)
Spoilers: For my chaptered fic Reunited. (Link goes to Teaspoon.)
Summary: Jack's past-including his missing memories-comes back for another go…but it's not quite what he expected.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Everything belongs to Auntie Beeb. I'm stuck here on the far side of the wrong continent, playing in her sandbox.
Author's note: This story begins roughly a year after Reunited ended. Many thanks to measi, dameruth, sensiblecat, and invisible_lift for the beta-fu. Don't forget, this is a sequel to Reunited, so it's A/U for post-s2 Doctor Who and post-s1 Torchwood.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5
Gwen and Ianto watched Jack walk out the door with Karen. As soon as they were past, Gwen reached up to her headset and activated the comm. "Owen, they've left the pub together."
"Yeah, I've got 'em. Looks like they're heading down towards the Plass."
Movement caught Gwen's eye. The Doctor and Rose were disappearing towards the back, no doubt intending to go out the service entrance. "You'll have company soon, out the back door," she told Owen.
Owen swore. "They'd better not spook this Karen bird," he said sharply. "We lose her and we may never know what she's after."
"Rose isn't going to spook anyone, and you know it. She's better at shadowing people than you are." Owen snorted in disgust, and Gwen added, "Tosh, have you got Jack on CCTV?"
"Yes," Tosh said. Gwen could hear her typing in the background. "Owen's right, they're heading for the Plass, and they seem to be just wandering along, talking." There was a pause, then she said, "There's Rose-and the Doctor. They've separated and they're following. Jack and Karen don't seem to have noticed them at all."
"Jack has," Ianto said confidently. "He knows exactly where they are and he's counting on it. We can hope Karen doesn't, though."
Gwen bit her lip, thinking. "Keep monitoring, Tosh," she said at last, "and Owen, keep a physical eye on them if you can. Ianto and I are heading back to the Hub. We'll be more use there if Jack needs us."
***
Jack and Karen walked in silence for a bit, weaving their way through the people on the street. He angled towards the Plass, figuring being near the Hub was a good idea. Whether she was telling the truth or not, it was better to be safe than sorry.
The Plass was full of couples and families walking in the summer evening. Jack pulled his greatcoat back and casually stuck his hands in his trouser pockets. It was really too warm for the wool; he'd only worn it so it would hide the fact that he was armed. His pistol was a comforting weight under his left arm, secure in the shoulder harness he'd donned earlier. He was glad to have it, even though he was reasonably certain he wouldn't need it tonight. Karen was more likely to respond to a show of trust than a show of force, and besides, the Doctor and Rose were out there watching him, along with the rest of the team.
"So how long has it been for you?" he asked Karen, falling easily into the 'Shaney dialect of their childhood and noting the odd look a passer-by gave him. He didn't care; the Doctor and Rose would be able to understand him, thanks to the TARDIS, and that was all that mattered. "Since I was mind-wiped?"
"You disappeared in-what? 5097?" she asked, following his lead as to language. He nodded. "Five years, then," she said, and hitched her handbag further up her shoulder, hand loosely wrapped around its strap. "It took me ages to track you down. You're good at hiding your tracks-especially with the name change. I finally managed to find a picture of you in a history text, worked out your new name, and traced you back here to this city and this time."
"How'd you get here?" he asked.
In answer, she stretched out her left hand and pulled her sleeve back to bare her wrist. Jack blinked; she wore a Vortex manipulator. "Where'd you get one of those?" he asked.
She chuckled. "I joined the Time Agency about ten years ago. I've been a senior field agent for six years, Mark."
"Mark?" Jack repeated, startled.
She laughed, a light, delicate sound. "Oh, come on. I know you've been Jack for a long time, but you haven't forgotten your real name, have you?"
Your real name. Jack felt his breath whoosh out of him in a rush as the phrase sank into his brain. His name. She knew his real name-the name that had been taken from him, along with his job, his friends, his family, and two years' worth of memories.
But it didn't sound familiar. It didn't sound right. Being called Mark felt no different from being called Ralph or Sam or Jeffrey-it was just another name, with no emotional connection at all. It shook him. Shouldn't he have some memory of the name he was born with?
"Have you?" Karen repeated. Her brow was furrowed, and she looked concerned.
Jack realised he hadn't taken another breath, and did so, feeling his incipient lightheadedness fade. "I hadn't heard it in a very long time," he prevaricated.
Her face cleared, and she chuckled again, shaking her head. "I have to tell you, I never thought I'd see the day Mark Hutchins was tied down to one planet, one time stream. You were always the one talking about bouncing around the universe. Hell, the teachers could never get you to sit in one chair!"
Jack grinned obediently, though he honestly didn't feel much like smiling. "Tell me about Dennis," he asked. She sobered, and he added gently, "That is why you came to find me, isn't it?"
"What, I can't have just searched you out because I missed you?" she asked, mouth quirked.
He snorted. "Travelling back three thousand years, using only a Vortex manipulator, just to see an old friend? Not a chance. You had to work to find me, and the only reason I can think of for you to have worked that hard is because you need my help." He gave her a Look. "What is it, Karen?"
They were nearly to the red-brick Pierhead Building by this point. She sighed, looked at him, and changed direction just slightly, heading for the railing along the water's edge. Jack remembered how much she'd always loved the ocean-whenever she'd been angry or upset as a kid, she'd always gone straight down to the beach. The Boeshane Peninsula had been the westernmost point of land on the continent: an excellent place to watch storms come in off the ocean. Cardiff Bay was calm and boring by comparison, but it was still water, and clearly still attracted her.
They leaned companionably against the railing, forearms resting on the cool metal, looking out at the gently-lapping water. Seagulls called, and one brave fellow even landed near them. He waddled closer, cocked his head inquiringly, and then wandered off when no food materialised. Jack waited, letting her tell the story in her own time.
A long moment or two later, Karen took a deep breath. "You remember when James and I broke up?" she asked.
"Yeah," Jack said with a familiar pang. James' name was one of the few things from his youth they'd not taken from him. "When we were on leave between Basic and our first posting. Seemed strange at the time."
Movement caught his eye, and he glanced over. A dozen or so yards away, Rose stood with her back to the water, feeding the seagulls bits of bread. The Doctor stood at the railing behind her, watching the water. Neither was in earshot-not even the Doctor with his much more sensitive hearing-but they were clearly keeping an eye on him.
Karen laughed ruefully. "Oh, it was," she said. "Two stupid, stubborn kids. He wanted to run off and get married right away, that day, before you two went back. Said he wanted things to be legalised in case anything happened to him. I said I wasn't marrying anyone just yet, and we had an enormous row about it. He stormed off, and I never saw him again."
"I'm sorry," he said uselessly.
She smiled softly. "You probably know-we'd been sleeping together for some time before that." He nodded. "I thought we were taking precautions, but I found out I was pregnant a few weeks after his funeral. I didn't know what to do-I was halfway through uni, no training, no way of making a living-so I disappeared. I went to my aunt's on Liracula and stayed with her until Dennis was born, then I managed to find a job and we muddled through."
By herself? "Why didn't you come to me?" Jack asked, hurt. "You knew I'd have done anything for you."
She turned to look at him fully, and he could see the echo of remembered pain in her eyes. "Did I, Mark?" she asked quietly.
He flinched and looked away, conceding her point.
After a moment, she picked up her story again. "The war began to spread," she said, her voice still low, her gaze angled out to sea but unfocused. "Once the High Command was assassinated, it was a slaughter. Planet after planet became battlegrounds. Eventually, it even reached Liracula, far out as we were. We had no military to speak of, no industry, very little in the way of natural resources-we were mostly a farming planet-but that didn't stop them."
She shifted her hands, grasping the top of the railing so hard her knuckles were white. She was trembling now, but whether from remembered fear or pure rage, Jack was hard put to say. She carried on.
"One sunny, ordinary Tuesday in 5084, H'rissth ships entered the atmosphere and went straight into the middle of the capital city, where I lived. But they didn't attack the militia, or the government offices, or even the docks and spaceports. They attacked schools, houses, neighbourhoods-including ours. I had warning at work and managed to get down into the bunker, but my son's school was one of the first hit. It was all but disintegrated in the blast." She looked down, hunched her shoulders protectively, and he could hear the way her voice strained in her effort to keep it steady. "They never found more than a tenth of the children's bodies."
"Oh, God," Jack said, heartsick. He remembered that day, remembered the outcry from the whole system and the way the attack had galvanised the humans who had been losing ground so decisively. He'd had no idea she'd been anywhere near Liracula. "Karen, I'm so sorry."
Her body language screamed stay away, but he couldn't help himself-he laid a hand on her shoulder, trying to communicate some of his sympathy and knowing that he was failing utterly. There were no words that could comfort her, but he had to do something.
She tensed under his hand, then relaxed slightly, as though forcing herself. She took another deep breath, raised her head, and shifted slightly, turning to meet his gaze, not bothering to wipe away the tears that were trickling down her face. "I thought my life was over," she said. "There was nothing left to live for-nothing but the pain and the anger. So I joined the Time Agency myself. I wanted to fight back. I wanted to see the H'rissth destroyed, wiped out of the galaxy, turned to dust and light with the pull of a trigger."
"Yeah," Jack agreed in a voice filled with his own quiet fury. "I know." It was what had kept him going, too, after James' death-his and far too many others. Beyond her, the Doctor caught Jack's eye, concern written in his features. Jack shook his head slightly, just enough to signal that he was all right, and the Time Lord relaxed marginally, though the concern didn't leave his face. Rose wasn't facing Jack, but he could see the tension in her body and knew she was worried, too.
"I got through Basic and into uniform," Karen continued, "and fought on the front lines for the next few years, before getting snapped up by Intelligence, shoved into Officer Training and stuck behind a desk, just in time for the end of the war. But it was there that I made the most horrifying discovery of my life." She swallowed. "Dennis wasn't dead. He'd never been killed-none of the kids at his school were. They were all kidnapped and taken to re-education camps. All of them, three-year-olds to twelve-year-olds." More tears spilled. "My son had been there for four years, and I'd thought he was dead all that time."
"But he wasn't," Jack said, running his hand reassuringly over her back and trying desperately to sound hopeful, despite his knowledge of what the H'rissth did to their captives. "You found him. The Agency must be able to get in there and rescue them-they've got some of the best infiltration units in the galaxy, they can get in anywhere-"
"That's just it, Mark." She turned to face him fully and leant forward, intense and hurting. "They weren't H'rissth camps. They belonged to the Time Agency."
"What?" Jack blurted, aghast. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rose turn swiftly to look at him, but his attention was on Karen now.
"It was the Time Agency," Karen repeated. Tears swam in her eyes. "The Agency itself kidnapped all those kids."
Jack stared at her, feeling as though the bottom had dropped out of his stomach. "Are you sure?" he managed.
"Yes," Karen said grimly. "In Intel we get a lot of information, and not all of it goes through proper channels. We-meaning I, of course-got approached by a whistleblower who told me about some dicey stuff going on. Products being paid for but never delivered, people on the payroll who never showed up for work, that sort of thing. It was enough to make me perk up my ears. I started looking into it without telling anyone, and what I uncovered convinced me there was something going on."
"And you trusted him?" Jack asked, surprised. "Some whistleblower out of nowhere, and you trusted him?"
"Oh, yeah," she said. "With my life, and a great deal more. I have since we were kids." She looked up at him, and one corner of her mouth lifted slightly. "I still do."
The penny dropped. "Oh, my God," he said. "I was the whistleblower."
She nodded, and he leaned his hip against the railing, flabbergasted. Though it made sense, really. A lot of sense. Something sparked faintly in the back of his mind; not quite a memory, more like a memory of a memory: a vaguely-familiar silhouette against the wall of his consciousness. This fit. It fit. He couldn't remember details, couldn't remember actually doing any of this, but it felt somehow right.
"We didn't know Dennis was there at first," she went on. "It took months of digging and more than a little danger to uncover what we did-more accurately, what you did; I was just the one who made your side trips look legitimate to High Command. It ended with the most intense, deep, bone-chilling betrayal I've ever experienced-and the loss of two years of your memories." She closed her eyes as though gathering her strength, and said helplessly, "Mark, it's an operative-training camp. They don't want these kids just to be soldiers or even field agents; they're training them to be covert operatives. The elite. The ones with no background, no family, no name-"
"Assassins," Jack breathed, his stomach churning.
"Yes." The tears were gone now; in their place was a burning anger that flared in her eyes when she opened them. "And not all the kids who were on that list were in Dennis's school, though they had all been listed as casualties of war. It's a conspiracy: they kidnap our children and turn them into soulless little killers, and there's nothing we can do about it."
"Oh, yes there is." Jack's jaw had set. "If you can prove this exists, all we have to do is make it public and the people will demand an explanation. Secrets like this need darkness and ignorance to survive; bring in the cold, hard light of day and they're dismantled like a house of cards."
"I've tried that. I went to the High Council, to the Liracula Legislature, even to the press. Nobody wants to believe it. The Time Agency is 'a force for good' in the galaxy. Nobody wants to imagine they could betray their own people like that, nobody wants to believe they'd do that to children! But they can, Mark. They can, and they have, and I can't stop it. Not alone." The tears were back now, but her face was still stony, her eyes still blazing with anger and determination as tears dripped silently down her cheeks. "I have a plan, and I think it will work, but I need you," she said, and her voice quavered with desperation and fury. "Please, Mark. I need you to help me."
Jack took a breath and stepped forward, reaching out to pull her into a hug. She clutched tightly at him, resting her head against his shoulder. His stomach roiled, his heart filled with too many emotions to put a name to. To know why he'd lost his memories, what he'd been doing to have them removed-it was a relief like no other. And yet, despite the vague but definite sense that he knew something about this, he still felt a niggling doubt in the back of his mind. What if she was lying? What if she was only there to bring him back to the Agency as a captive? What if she was working for the very people he'd been working against, and had come looking for him to silence the last voice who might know anything about it?
But what if she wasn't lying? What if there were dozens of children-including his best friend's son-who were trapped in an operative training camp, being forced into the role of clandestine assassins for the Time Agency? What if he could save them, and he didn't because he was afraid?
There was no other choice he could make. The Doctor and Rose were standing shoulder-to-shoulder in his line of sight, looking at him. He met their gaze, felt their support like a palpable warmth, and sighed.
"All right," he said into her hair. "But I've got some friends who'll need to hear this, too."
She pulled back, sniffling. "Friends?" she asked, with an entirely justified note of concern. "Are you sure you want to trust anyone with this?"
"Don't worry," he said, smiling softly. "You'll never meet better friends in your life than these two."