[fic]
Title: Someone You'd Die For (Ep #1)
Fandom: Dr Who/Torchwood (AU).
Word Count: 5,600
Rating: PG-13 for violence.
Pairing: There kind of are some, and there kind of aren't.
Warnings: Violent. Gory. Character death. Stuff.
Disclaimer: Allll the intellectual property contained within belongs to the BBC, who need to stop kowtowing to the Daily Mail. Patrick Troughton was the best Doctor. Jamie could kick Jack's ass off his body and into another dimension. All your TARDIS are belong to BBC.
Note: There is a prequel to this which will explain some of it, but it's not behaving so I'm writing this first. Thank you to ruthi for beta.
This is it, Rose thought, as the muscles in her arms began to burn, I'm going to die. I wonder what he'll tell my mum. I wonder if he'll even tell her.
Until now she'd been viewing her predicament with a kind of detached curiosity, like she was watching herself on TV: how am I going to get out of this, I wonder? As if the whole thing was nothing more than an adventure story she was watching from the inside. It had all the hallmarks of a dream. Until her arms started to hurt and her hands - slippery with sweat from the unaccustomed effort of holding up her entire bodyweight - began sliding down the rope, it hadn't occurred to her that she might not, in fact, get out of it after all.
Dangling far above the London streets in the middle of the Blitz with a bloody Union flag on her tits and searchlights sweeping the sky like the start of a Fox Films movie, she thought that at least it was the kind of thing that made a good anecdote. If you were alive to tell it afterward. And had anyone who'd believe you.
Rose tried not to think about how far there was for her to fall, how much it would hurt when she did, whether she'd pass out before she hit the ground, if the Doctor would take her body back to her Mum - but even as she tried all these thoughts flashed through her head, and her hands slipped again. It was a very long way down to those streets. She tried not to think about photos she'd seen, the way bodies looked after they jumped off the top of buildings, but of course she couldn't avoid thinking about it. The funny angles she would make, the way her insides would look garish and orange. Rose felt sick, and made an attempt at clinging even tighter to the rope, but her sweat betrayed her.
"Well," said a voice from behind her, "that's something you don't see every day."
It sounded amused; it wasn't the voice Rose desperately wanted it to be (inexplicably Northern, inexplicably comforting), but a rescue was a rescue and now was no time to start being picky. She couldn't see who was talking, and it didn't occur to her to wonder what the hell they were doing up there, so far above the street, how they'd got up there. Perhaps they'd fallen off the same balloon.
"You going to need a hand there, or are you just hanging around waiting for someone?" asked the voice, sounding pleased with its own pun.
The wind and the momentum of her next slip sent Rose spiralling round on her rope to face her sarcastic potential saviour and left her faced with an extraordinary sight: apparently standing on the cold night sky over 1941's London streets, a rather good-looking man in antique military uniform was grinning at her impishly. It was such an infectious smile that Rose couldn't help grinning back in spite of her worrying situation. "How - ?" she half-laughed, caught up in the absurdity of the moment so much that she forgot her own plight.
"Chula Time-Craft cloaking technology," the man said with a kind of blasé pride, as if he was slightly in awe of it himself but didn't want her to know that he was, and didn't quite succeed in concealing it. "Swing this way a minute, and you'll get your feet onto the hull -"
Rose did as she was told, willing herself against the gentle sway of the rope until it became a proper arc, and sure enough the sole of one of her trainers hit something solid that her eyes swore up and down couldn't possibly be there. It was rough under her feet, catching on the tread of her trainers, but as far as her eyes were concerned she was standing on nothing, and several hundred feet of sky was quite visible directly beneath her. Rose swallowed.
"Let go of the rope, I've got you," said her rescuer, reaching out a hand to clasp hers, and with an oof and a wobble, Rose stepped into the Chula Time-Craft.
The change was wondrously abrupt, and if she hadn't seen the things she'd seen, travelling with the Doctor, Rose would have been quite shocked. One minute she was out in the cold air, looking at the impossible sight of a man standing on the emptiness like he was balancing on the wind, and the next she was staring at a lot of dials and panels she didn't understand in what looked like an aeroplane cockpit bathed in green and gone slightly rogue. As it was she was still impressed: this was obviously pretty advanced technology, and even if it was a little cramped and funny-smelling it still smelt better than some of the TARDIS's occasional outages. Sort of tinny and meaty at the same time, a little like blood and a little like burnt hair. Amazing.
"Thanks," Rose said, peering around at the time-craft's interior. She wondered what on earth it was doing hovering over London, and if the Doctor knew about it being there. It would be nice to think that he did, but he was showing a propensity for winging it a bit. Maybe she should tell him about it. Er. When she got down. "I'm Rose, by the way - Rose Tyler." She knew her smile probably looked a bit breathless and desperate, but the guy had just saved her from certain death, and the elation of that was as heady as a dozen Bacardi Breezers.
"Charming," said the handsome man, his hand touching her - light, and not entirely unwelcome - on the small of her back so casually that she didn't think to question it; there was something about him, an air that made Rose's cheeks flush as if something suggestive had already been said. It was quite intoxicating. Exhilarating. Other long words. "Captain John Hart."
Rose grinned, because really, what kind of military captain wore girl-fit jeans? Captain Hart winked at her.
The pain that ripped through Rose's abdomen was so intense, so red-hot-and-cold that it shattered her mind for a moment and left her unable to work out what had happened, her lips opening and closing silently around what was suddenly not enough air; she clutched at Captain Hart's shoulder but came up with nothing, nothing at all, clutched at her stomach to hold in the pain and encountered - at last - the answer.
Rose's hand was wet and the thing sticking into her guts was probably cold, but temperature no longer seemed to be working the right way, and it was sharp and sticking through her skin at an angle like nothing ever had before, and the knife blade was still attached to Captain Hart's hand …
Her lips were already beginning to go blue when she looked into Captain Hart's face for some explanation and got a friendly smile in reply.
This close to it she could see what was wrong with it, the cracks and the sharpness, and how it was 'friendly' like sharks are friendly to tuna. His eyes were wrong too, fiery and unpleasantly bright, his pupils too dilated even for the low light and his skin, his crows-feet twitching excitedly. It was sick, it was sick, and the pain in her stomach was a solid force battering her brain. She tried to swallow. It was very, very cold, too cold, too cold in her fingers and her face, and she couldn't feel her legs or the breath in her lungs, and she couldn't think of anything, of anything at all. "Doctor - " she mouthed, trying to find something, anything to steady herself on. Her legs didn't seem to fancy the job any more. "Doctor."
"Oh, I doubt that'll be any help," said Captain Hart dismissively, a quizzical smile on. He yanked the knife out - it had three blades, apparently barbed (Rose could dimly see lumps stuck to them as well as ragged, soggy strips of what she hoped was her t-shirt, and the sick feeling came back) - the pain renewed and redoubled to a state that almost blinded her, and the motion threw her off-balance. If there'd been anywhere to fall, she would've fallen - but all Rose could do was slump against the wall, a hundred spiky dials poking into her back almost unnoticed against the beating pulse of agony in her stomach.
And then he was crouching beside her, the same pose and expression as a concerned nightclub staffer facing some too-drunk girl on the stairs with a glass of water and the number for a taxi company. Rose pushed her hand into the agonising epicentre of the blood, dimly aware that maintaining pressure was important.
It felt so much like a bad dream, something she could escape from at any minute just by struggling towards consciousness, but consciousness was wriggly and unattainable if this was the case. Something shifted under her palm and she tried to cry out in pain, in disgust, as she registered some wet, ropy thing slipping away under her fingers. Nothing came out of her mouth.
For the second time that night Rose thought: I'm going to die - but if plunging from a barrage balloon was a ridiculous way to go then this was something else. Too horrible, too horrible and too real to be the way she died. And too soon. Too soon.
She thought of how her mum would feel about all this, and the desire to just see her, to hold Jackie's hand in her own cold, sticky hand was a choking force in her throat, and she knew she was crying though she couldn't feel the tears on her face, only the faint prickling in her eyelids, the hotness of her eyes. She tried to say, "I want my mum," but that didn't work either. Nothing came out. Nothing came.
"Bleeding to death can take a long time," Captain Hart said in a solicitous, gentle voice, from somewhere beside her. "Shall I just cut your throat and save us both the hassle?" He raised his eyebrows. "Or would a stun blast do?"
Rose blinked tears out of her eyes and tried to grasp what he was saying. The mascara stung as it ran into the corners, and Captain Hart didn't appear to be offering help of any tangible sort. She grabbed at the only straw that made any sense:
"Please," she croaked, although she wasn't sure what she was pleading for, or from whom.
"Well, if you're not going to choose one," he said irritably, and something black and broad came towards her head at the end of his arm.
And that was the last Rose Tyler saw or heard.
John sat back on his heels and wriggled the stun-blaster back into his waistband, its smooth, flat muzzle warm but not blood-warm against the skin of his buttocks. It was ever so slightly uncomfortable, but in a comforting way that made him keep returning it to this most convenient of locations. He stretched.
"Right, Ms. Massive Arton Energy Spike, let's see what you've got on you," he muttered, dipping forwards to rummage through the girl's pockets with an absence of concern for the blood that quickly streaked his hands, cuffs, and forearms, blotting the screen of the device he wore around his wrist. It took a while - she had a lot of pockets, and some of them were tight against her hips and arse, and John was nothing if not thorough and slightly pervy.
When he'd extracted everything he dumped all the detritus on a low tray balanced between the flight chairs, and fiddled with his wristband, frowning as he wiped the blood from its screens.
"Nope," he sighed, waving his arm wrist-first at Rose's mobile, scanning. "No," he added, waving it at her bus pass. "No, no, no, n-" he chanted, and he stopped over a small Yale key without any ring or chain attached. It looked unassuming, but his wristband beeped and flickered like an angry burglar alarm. "Yes? YES? What in the Third Terraforming of fuck is that?" He picked it up and held it close to his eyes, squinting into every dent and ridge of the key. Nothing about it appeared to be anything other than key-like, and after a few minutes of this rigorous examination he gave up and slammed the key into a fist-sized aperture in the near wall that was surrounded with thumbprint dents, all disabled, and all designed for the thumb of something that was not human. He leaned over Rose's body without really looking at it.
"Computer!" John shouted, resting his thumbs on his belt, "What the fuck's this?"
"A key, Captain," the computer said sweetly. The computer's voice was annoyingly perfect, and annoyingly changeable, and for some reason the bloody thing seemed to have smarminess programmed into it as a default state. John made a face that belonged on a child and stamped a foot petulantly without appearing to be conscious of having done it.
"Don't be facetious," John growled, glaring at the scanning-focus tray as the lights moved through it. "Why is it giving off a massive positively-charged Arton signature? It's practically glowing. Keys don't do that." He chewed the inside of his cheek thoughtfully and racked his admittedly quite drug-addled brain for memories of similar occurrences. It was possible he shouldn't have spent so much of theoretical training asleep and/or drunk.
"Key is not of earth provenance," the computer observed. Which was hardly a revelation. The girl might have been human and probably earth-bred human, but she was quite obviously a honking great anachronism.
"What have you got against the word 'the'?" John muttered, idly stroking the top of his belt buckle. It was huge and ostentatious and glinted in the low green light, set with a variety of exciting and precious jewels, some of which had interestingly useful properties; it had cost the original owner a lot of money and, in the end, her life. "So the blonde's travelled through space as well as time. Shocking. Where's it from? Never mind her, just the key."
"Processing."
"Oh came on." John tapped the back of one of the two - why two? Just to rub it in, John thought bitterly and without even a glimmering of rationality - flight chairs with his index finger, barely conscious that he was drumming the beat of the Ninth White Cliff as always. What was the point in stealing the most advanced technology his stage of human evolution could handle if it was going to take this long identifying shit? And talk down to him to boot. He wasn't made of patience, was he -
"Provenance of the key," the ship's computer said in her low, sexy, gender-switching monotone, "is Gallifrey."
"What," John said in guttural stupid surprise. "That's. What. Not possible."
"Provenance of the key," the computer repeated, "is the planet Gallifrey. Time period unknown." Of course it would be. Gallifrey and set time periods were not exactly compatible, even John knew that and he'd been trying to finger Jomjo Breakpeese in that session and really not paying attention.
"Gallifrey doesn't exist," John pointed out unsteadily, his certainty underlined by the boredom inflicted on him in the acquisition of this information. "The Greatest Paradox, etc., etc., the only interesting bit of four weeks of Temporal Ethics and Naturally Occurring Timeshifts that wasn't the inside of Ceno Blackamoor's thigh or Jomjo's arse," he said in a more distant voice. "Gimme a drink, computer, and a better explanation."
The Doctor looked around at the assembled folk on the periphery of the street, their faces showing the same emotion over and over, and frowned. There was no sign of Rose, there was no sign of respite, and his ears were straining in the expectation of the hauntingly creepy whisper of 'are you my mummy' at any minute; there was no explanation for any of this, and he could hear nothing but the crackling of radios in the aftermath of the sirens. All in all he wasn't in the mood for any of it when a short figure swaggered out of nowhere in an anachronistic jacket and a smarmy smile and said, "All right, Big Ears, looks like you got a bit of a problem."
The Doctor stared a rather cold stare - the man had blood stains on the legs of his jeans and reeked of pheromone implants - and said, "You're not meant to be here." That was surely an understatement. If those were the implants he thought they were, the man was several millennia out of his time and waltzing about like he owned the place. It wouldn't do.
"Look who's talking, swanning around Gregorian one thousand nine hundred and forty-one with a leather jacket and a convict's haircut," smirked the other time-traveller, his hand resting on his hip as if laying claim to his own flesh. "I'm from the Time Agency."
"The What?" the Doctor scowled, momently non-plussed and still not remotely reassured. "This really isn't the best time."
"Not heard of us, then?" the time-traveller seemed obscurely pleased by this.
"No, and if you don't mind there's a serious," the Doctor began. A serious what was still plaguing him somewhat. This whole business of contagion played like something from a folk myth, and he wasn't getting straight answers or help from anyone, and he was a rhino's uncle if Rose had actually stayed where he left her, and... and he'd never seen attributes passed on by touch before. Thoughts, yes, but physical change that wasn't just burns or boils? Manifesting so immediately? Matter transfo-he blinked. Matter transformation.
"Chula nanite malfunction," the Agent said a fraction of a second before the Doctor uttered the word 'nanites' himself.
"You're amazing," the Doctor exclaimed, grinning the grin of sudden understanding. It all fell together perfectly. There had to be a source for this, and he could get a fix on that the minute he got back to the TARDIS. "I'm amazing - " he was about to rush out into the street when the look on the Agent's face made him draw up short. "I need to get to the TARDIS. Rose … I can knock them out …" he looked sharply at the Agent, who was grinning almost emptily at him, he didn't much like the expression, but there was a good chance the man could be of some help. "You may as well come," he said, and broke into a run.
John gave the police box a cursory but internally avaricious sweeping glance, an itchy-fingered once-over, as the Time Lord unlocked it with a key identical to the one John had slipped inside his boot.
The inside was much, much larger.
The ceilings arched away into what looked like infinity. There were corridor entrances dotted all over the place and a central console hub that looked like it had been willed into being by a sentient scrapheap. It looked older than time and more ridiculous than a hat on a slug, and it was the last of its kind, a should-have-been-destroyed relic of a part of the universe's history that had, John had been taught, been totally erased. And here it was. Real and whole and amazing and distorting. His fingers twitched against his thighs.
After a few seconds of starry-eyed joy John refocused; the alleged Gallifreyan was concerned about something. Shouting for "Rose", stamping about, muttering in well-practiced despair.
John looked up at the high organic ceilings again, at the central column powered by who knew what (Rift Energy had received a five second "we have no fucking clue what this is" explanation in theoretical, and only the more scientific of his peers had sought to pursue it as a line of enquiry), at the very essence of pocket dimensional architecture - which could fetch on the black market the kind of money that purchased complete empires. With this thing in his command John could bribe, threaten, cajole and coerce, achieve the kind of leverage of avarice that governments only dreamed of. The Shadow Proclamation would be ineffectual, the Agency stumped. He would be rich, the richest, more wealthy and powerful maybe even than the Cousinry themselves. John looked at the interior of the TARDIS and thought, I'm having this.
Aloud he said, "I know how to stop it."
The Time Lord stopped in his tracks, stopped tearing about the place in an ecstasy of despair, and snapped, "What?"
"The nanite wave. There's a fallen ambulance, a Chula battlefield craft, trapped under that primitive warhead out there. I was coming to retrieve it before anything could happen. That's where the wave's coming from." John neglected to mention that this was because he'd put it there rather than merely coming to retrieve it; he neglected to mention that he'd released the nanites in the hope of causing so much temporal damage that the Agency paid him to undo it, and he neglected to mention that he gave marginally less of a fuck about the end results of this than he did about what the Gallifreyan had eaten for breakfast. He just smiled faintly and tried to remember which facial expression was suitable for the circumstances. Probably not the smile.
"And you think you know how to reverse it?" the Time Lord gave him such a icy and penetrating look that for a second John wondered if he was reading his mind. But he dismissed the worry, as anyone reading John's mind generally tried to shoot him soon afterwards. It was a recurring problem; he'd yet to find adequate mental shielding implants in his price range and not likely to cause permanent damage the first time they activated, and people reacted so badly to his thought patterns. Their expressions tended to take on that look of disapproval right there shortly before they whipped out a gun.
"Not reverse," John corrected cautiously, running a hand over the nearest wall before he could stop himself. It felt warm, and so did he, right in the centre of his money-making glands. The places he could sell this. The things he could purchase. Like, oh, his entire family. "But I know how to stop it before it gets any worse."
"And if we don't stop it," the Time Lord mused, apparently embracing John into an instant 'we' without asking, which was fantastically familiar behaviour, wasn't it? Was that what Time Lords did? - his rather homely face creased into a concentrated frown, "they just keep going, like a virus. Converting everyone they come into contact with into those, those broken things."
"Precisely," said John, who privately didn't see how that was a bad thing. "So a bit of wastage is - unavoidable. And acceptable." He shrugged and all but reached for the control panels, sure he could figure out some way to get the thing going before he offed the two-hearted fella, but the Time Lord inserted himself between John and the cobbled-together instruments as if he hadn't moved at all, but had always been there, blocking John's way. John tried not to scowl.
"Wastage? What are you thinking of?"
"Detonate that warhead and knock out the nanite signalling." John waved a hand through the air, a careless enough gesture if one didn't know what he was doing. "Anyone already afflicted might be a bit miserable, I suppose, but you can probably eat through a gasmask-" and they'd always been taught that the aftereffects weren't their concern, at the Agency, so fuck 'em anyway, "-and they probably won't die. Unless it turns out you can't eat through a gasmask. And there's always intravenous feeding." He broke away from that amusing and slightly attractive line of thought. "You just have to keep people away from the bomb while you detonate." Not that he gave an actual fuck, but it was the kind of thing they used to say to people, when he was working field: keep everyone away from this. Don't touch the glowing thing. Or the other thing. Or the nice Agency man/woman/androgyne. Stand back or someone will get hurt. Someone was going to get hurt anyway, of course, afterwards, and - John bit the end of his tongue and made himself stop missing him, stop thinking through that lens.
"And out of the blast radius," the Time Lord stared down at and partially through John with a thoughtful expression, then shook his big-eared head as if shaking off a thought and admitting another one. "Have you seen my … friend … by any chance?" Oh, that was an interesting, interesting pause, but what he said next was even more interesting. "Blonde girl, wearing a union jack, obvious anachronism, penchant for getting into trouble?"
John said, "Oh, her. Yes," and tried not to laugh. Of course that would be it. The key was the same, and the Arton signature was the same, and this was turning into the best day he'd had in ages. "She's back at my ship. I found her hanging off a barrage balloon, mortal peril, that sort of thing."
The Time Lord very nearly rolled his eyes. John could see the muscle twitch. Intriguing. "That's Rose. And she's probably not in your ship any more, if I know her."
"Oh no," John said, barely containing a giggle, "I think she's almost certainly exactly where I left her."
But Time Lords were evidently a little more astute than the people John was accustomed to dealing with and making loaded remarks at; leather-jacket-guy said suspiciously, "Why do you have blood stains on your legs?" as if he'd been thinking about it for quite a long time.
"Haven't had time to change my clothes for a while," John said with what was intended as a disarming smile - it was after all true on all counts.
It didn't appease the Gallifreyan though. In a rougher voice he said, "What have you done with Rose?"
"I told you, she's in my ship - " John realised that if he shot the bastard now there was significant potential for damaging the TARDIS. That wouldn’t do - it would wreck the resale value if the thing wasn't working properly when he got it to the buyers. Sure, they'd still fork over a tidy sum for a broken TARDIS to work with, but - well. Penge altid kommer først, para önce tüm. John had his eyes on the big prize like always, and he inhaled slowly, exhaled slowly, blowing the fine dust he'd released into the air into ever more distant patterns.
"Alive?" asked the Time Lord, hitting the crux of the matter with alacrity. Perhaps he'd dealt with the Cousinry before, John thought, though he doubted it. Perhaps he'd heard of them before - that was more likely - and he could see in John's short stature and silk-razor smile and dancing eyes what the ignorant overlooked; connections.
"Maybe?" John hazarded, ducking backwards away from the taller figure. She might technically still be living matter - he hadn't actually checked for vital signs and bleeding to death had never been - alright, he had timed it a few times out of general scientific enquiry, but he'd lost track of the time and been more than a little distracted by the hot welcome hands on his stomach and - it wasn't like he was directly actually lying, as such.
The fury that blossomed in the man's face was so violent that it almost discoloured the air around it, the beginnings of a proper wrath building in his features like a galactic storm; it was a reaction John was used to, however, and he was already skipping swift away, stumbling nimbly over the uneven and hostile floor as the vengeful body came at him. He burst backwards through the door and spun on his heel so fast his eyes struggled to keep up, only his enhanced inner ear keeping equilibrium; John drew his knife as he ran, the slithery soles of his boots sending him skidding this way and that over the rain-speckled streets, one short embodiment of chaotic motion in sustained flight.
A few brave or simply hopelessly drunk souls were straggled about in his way, but the roads were mostly deserted, and no one got between him and safety; those who looked like they might be in his path dived out of the way as he galloped, sprinted over cobbles and flew over paving slabs, the cold air burning in his lungs. Oh yes, John Hart knew how to run. He knew how to run.
His ship was where he left it, of course, humming and thrumming gently and invisibly in the chilly air, warming the outer wall of a pub that had no inkling of what lay beside it. John hurled himself at his purloined vessel and before he was even in the door he was barking orders and waving his hands vaguely at sensor fields which didn't actually extend that far. "UP," he bellowed as he got his hind foot over the threshold. John stepped over the warm corpse blocking most of the floor and banged on the back of his flight seat with the heel of his hand as the buildings beside the ship began to slip away downwards and the floor beneath him shook almost in time with the wild wired beatings of his patched and punctured heart. "Computer, jettison this-" he kicked the body for emphasis, "-and get us the fuck out of here. Quickly."
John side-stepped and slid into his flight seat as a chute opened out in the base of his ship, the structure reforming itself for convenience in a way that never stopped giving him headaches, and sent this Rose tumbling the fifteen feet the ship had already risen.
"Coordinates?" the computer asked in that laconic, gut-wrenching, groin-pestering voice that made John think of him, curse and fuck it. The informality was fine, the taciturn communication was fine, but he wasn't sure he was going to be able to put up with much more smugness from the damned AI.
"Last known on current-period Cousinry fleet?" he suggested as the air outside grew thinner, less cloud-ridden. The sheer number of things he had down the back of his trousers made sitting upright in the flight chair impossibly uncomfortable. He wriggled and tried to slump, but there were too many obstructions.
"Unavailable."
"Fuckers." Of course they'd have found some Chula-era jammers somehow. Why hadn't he thought of that? John rummaged down the back of his jeans and extracted a fragment of white matter that appeared to have no consistent form. He examined it coolly and said in an off-hand manner, "The Damascene Archipelago?"
"Wanted on two counts of murder and forty-eight of robbery, three retroactive, Agent in residence," the computer said in the same chirrupy monotone. John repressed the urge to go and kick it in the central data storage matter. It would do him no good to have a fucked AI.
"Do you have to be such a bitch?" John sighed, turning the white substance around in his hands. It followed his movements, like a jelly with purpose. He began pulling his hands around into increasingly weird patterns as the ship climbed into the ionosphere, and the white stuff correspondingly made stranger and wilder fluid shapes. It was oddly calming without having the annoying side-effect of making him think he was about to die, the way calming things usually did. "What about … New-to-the-power-of-twelve York, fifth harvest celebration?"
"No retroactive crimes listed. No known Agency sleepers or residents."
"Music to my fucking ears. Take us there" John leaned back and put his feet up on the instrument panel, the white glue in the air around his hands taking shape into the universal symbol for money. "Oh, and, er, detonate that explosive, will you?" It hadn't been what he was intending to say, but if he mentioned the traitor now he'd just start shouting and wear himself out and need more powder and there was no fucking point, not with this length of journey ahead of him. He needed to think about something more immediately useful. "I don't need the nanite wave distraction any more. Wait until there's someone young on top of it, if you can."
--END OF EP. #1--
--EP. #2--
Fandom: Dr Who/Torchwood (AU).
Word Count: 5,600
Rating: PG-13 for violence.
Pairing: There kind of are some, and there kind of aren't.
Warnings: Violent. Gory. Character death. Stuff.
Disclaimer: Allll the intellectual property contained within belongs to the BBC, who need to stop kowtowing to the Daily Mail. Patrick Troughton was the best Doctor. Jamie could kick Jack's ass off his body and into another dimension. All your TARDIS are belong to BBC.
Note: There is a prequel to this which will explain some of it, but it's not behaving so I'm writing this first. Thank you to ruthi for beta.
This is it, Rose thought, as the muscles in her arms began to burn, I'm going to die. I wonder what he'll tell my mum. I wonder if he'll even tell her.
Until now she'd been viewing her predicament with a kind of detached curiosity, like she was watching herself on TV: how am I going to get out of this, I wonder? As if the whole thing was nothing more than an adventure story she was watching from the inside. It had all the hallmarks of a dream. Until her arms started to hurt and her hands - slippery with sweat from the unaccustomed effort of holding up her entire bodyweight - began sliding down the rope, it hadn't occurred to her that she might not, in fact, get out of it after all.
Dangling far above the London streets in the middle of the Blitz with a bloody Union flag on her tits and searchlights sweeping the sky like the start of a Fox Films movie, she thought that at least it was the kind of thing that made a good anecdote. If you were alive to tell it afterward. And had anyone who'd believe you.
Rose tried not to think about how far there was for her to fall, how much it would hurt when she did, whether she'd pass out before she hit the ground, if the Doctor would take her body back to her Mum - but even as she tried all these thoughts flashed through her head, and her hands slipped again. It was a very long way down to those streets. She tried not to think about photos she'd seen, the way bodies looked after they jumped off the top of buildings, but of course she couldn't avoid thinking about it. The funny angles she would make, the way her insides would look garish and orange. Rose felt sick, and made an attempt at clinging even tighter to the rope, but her sweat betrayed her.
"Well," said a voice from behind her, "that's something you don't see every day."
It sounded amused; it wasn't the voice Rose desperately wanted it to be (inexplicably Northern, inexplicably comforting), but a rescue was a rescue and now was no time to start being picky. She couldn't see who was talking, and it didn't occur to her to wonder what the hell they were doing up there, so far above the street, how they'd got up there. Perhaps they'd fallen off the same balloon.
"You going to need a hand there, or are you just hanging around waiting for someone?" asked the voice, sounding pleased with its own pun.
The wind and the momentum of her next slip sent Rose spiralling round on her rope to face her sarcastic potential saviour and left her faced with an extraordinary sight: apparently standing on the cold night sky over 1941's London streets, a rather good-looking man in antique military uniform was grinning at her impishly. It was such an infectious smile that Rose couldn't help grinning back in spite of her worrying situation. "How - ?" she half-laughed, caught up in the absurdity of the moment so much that she forgot her own plight.
"Chula Time-Craft cloaking technology," the man said with a kind of blasé pride, as if he was slightly in awe of it himself but didn't want her to know that he was, and didn't quite succeed in concealing it. "Swing this way a minute, and you'll get your feet onto the hull -"
Rose did as she was told, willing herself against the gentle sway of the rope until it became a proper arc, and sure enough the sole of one of her trainers hit something solid that her eyes swore up and down couldn't possibly be there. It was rough under her feet, catching on the tread of her trainers, but as far as her eyes were concerned she was standing on nothing, and several hundred feet of sky was quite visible directly beneath her. Rose swallowed.
"Let go of the rope, I've got you," said her rescuer, reaching out a hand to clasp hers, and with an oof and a wobble, Rose stepped into the Chula Time-Craft.
The change was wondrously abrupt, and if she hadn't seen the things she'd seen, travelling with the Doctor, Rose would have been quite shocked. One minute she was out in the cold air, looking at the impossible sight of a man standing on the emptiness like he was balancing on the wind, and the next she was staring at a lot of dials and panels she didn't understand in what looked like an aeroplane cockpit bathed in green and gone slightly rogue. As it was she was still impressed: this was obviously pretty advanced technology, and even if it was a little cramped and funny-smelling it still smelt better than some of the TARDIS's occasional outages. Sort of tinny and meaty at the same time, a little like blood and a little like burnt hair. Amazing.
"Thanks," Rose said, peering around at the time-craft's interior. She wondered what on earth it was doing hovering over London, and if the Doctor knew about it being there. It would be nice to think that he did, but he was showing a propensity for winging it a bit. Maybe she should tell him about it. Er. When she got down. "I'm Rose, by the way - Rose Tyler." She knew her smile probably looked a bit breathless and desperate, but the guy had just saved her from certain death, and the elation of that was as heady as a dozen Bacardi Breezers.
"Charming," said the handsome man, his hand touching her - light, and not entirely unwelcome - on the small of her back so casually that she didn't think to question it; there was something about him, an air that made Rose's cheeks flush as if something suggestive had already been said. It was quite intoxicating. Exhilarating. Other long words. "Captain John Hart."
Rose grinned, because really, what kind of military captain wore girl-fit jeans? Captain Hart winked at her.
The pain that ripped through Rose's abdomen was so intense, so red-hot-and-cold that it shattered her mind for a moment and left her unable to work out what had happened, her lips opening and closing silently around what was suddenly not enough air; she clutched at Captain Hart's shoulder but came up with nothing, nothing at all, clutched at her stomach to hold in the pain and encountered - at last - the answer.
Rose's hand was wet and the thing sticking into her guts was probably cold, but temperature no longer seemed to be working the right way, and it was sharp and sticking through her skin at an angle like nothing ever had before, and the knife blade was still attached to Captain Hart's hand …
Her lips were already beginning to go blue when she looked into Captain Hart's face for some explanation and got a friendly smile in reply.
This close to it she could see what was wrong with it, the cracks and the sharpness, and how it was 'friendly' like sharks are friendly to tuna. His eyes were wrong too, fiery and unpleasantly bright, his pupils too dilated even for the low light and his skin, his crows-feet twitching excitedly. It was sick, it was sick, and the pain in her stomach was a solid force battering her brain. She tried to swallow. It was very, very cold, too cold, too cold in her fingers and her face, and she couldn't feel her legs or the breath in her lungs, and she couldn't think of anything, of anything at all. "Doctor - " she mouthed, trying to find something, anything to steady herself on. Her legs didn't seem to fancy the job any more. "Doctor."
"Oh, I doubt that'll be any help," said Captain Hart dismissively, a quizzical smile on. He yanked the knife out - it had three blades, apparently barbed (Rose could dimly see lumps stuck to them as well as ragged, soggy strips of what she hoped was her t-shirt, and the sick feeling came back) - the pain renewed and redoubled to a state that almost blinded her, and the motion threw her off-balance. If there'd been anywhere to fall, she would've fallen - but all Rose could do was slump against the wall, a hundred spiky dials poking into her back almost unnoticed against the beating pulse of agony in her stomach.
And then he was crouching beside her, the same pose and expression as a concerned nightclub staffer facing some too-drunk girl on the stairs with a glass of water and the number for a taxi company. Rose pushed her hand into the agonising epicentre of the blood, dimly aware that maintaining pressure was important.
It felt so much like a bad dream, something she could escape from at any minute just by struggling towards consciousness, but consciousness was wriggly and unattainable if this was the case. Something shifted under her palm and she tried to cry out in pain, in disgust, as she registered some wet, ropy thing slipping away under her fingers. Nothing came out of her mouth.
For the second time that night Rose thought: I'm going to die - but if plunging from a barrage balloon was a ridiculous way to go then this was something else. Too horrible, too horrible and too real to be the way she died. And too soon. Too soon.
She thought of how her mum would feel about all this, and the desire to just see her, to hold Jackie's hand in her own cold, sticky hand was a choking force in her throat, and she knew she was crying though she couldn't feel the tears on her face, only the faint prickling in her eyelids, the hotness of her eyes. She tried to say, "I want my mum," but that didn't work either. Nothing came out. Nothing came.
"Bleeding to death can take a long time," Captain Hart said in a solicitous, gentle voice, from somewhere beside her. "Shall I just cut your throat and save us both the hassle?" He raised his eyebrows. "Or would a stun blast do?"
Rose blinked tears out of her eyes and tried to grasp what he was saying. The mascara stung as it ran into the corners, and Captain Hart didn't appear to be offering help of any tangible sort. She grabbed at the only straw that made any sense:
"Please," she croaked, although she wasn't sure what she was pleading for, or from whom.
"Well, if you're not going to choose one," he said irritably, and something black and broad came towards her head at the end of his arm.
And that was the last Rose Tyler saw or heard.
John sat back on his heels and wriggled the stun-blaster back into his waistband, its smooth, flat muzzle warm but not blood-warm against the skin of his buttocks. It was ever so slightly uncomfortable, but in a comforting way that made him keep returning it to this most convenient of locations. He stretched.
"Right, Ms. Massive Arton Energy Spike, let's see what you've got on you," he muttered, dipping forwards to rummage through the girl's pockets with an absence of concern for the blood that quickly streaked his hands, cuffs, and forearms, blotting the screen of the device he wore around his wrist. It took a while - she had a lot of pockets, and some of them were tight against her hips and arse, and John was nothing if not thorough and slightly pervy.
When he'd extracted everything he dumped all the detritus on a low tray balanced between the flight chairs, and fiddled with his wristband, frowning as he wiped the blood from its screens.
"Nope," he sighed, waving his arm wrist-first at Rose's mobile, scanning. "No," he added, waving it at her bus pass. "No, no, no, n-" he chanted, and he stopped over a small Yale key without any ring or chain attached. It looked unassuming, but his wristband beeped and flickered like an angry burglar alarm. "Yes? YES? What in the Third Terraforming of fuck is that?" He picked it up and held it close to his eyes, squinting into every dent and ridge of the key. Nothing about it appeared to be anything other than key-like, and after a few minutes of this rigorous examination he gave up and slammed the key into a fist-sized aperture in the near wall that was surrounded with thumbprint dents, all disabled, and all designed for the thumb of something that was not human. He leaned over Rose's body without really looking at it.
"Computer!" John shouted, resting his thumbs on his belt, "What the fuck's this?"
"A key, Captain," the computer said sweetly. The computer's voice was annoyingly perfect, and annoyingly changeable, and for some reason the bloody thing seemed to have smarminess programmed into it as a default state. John made a face that belonged on a child and stamped a foot petulantly without appearing to be conscious of having done it.
"Don't be facetious," John growled, glaring at the scanning-focus tray as the lights moved through it. "Why is it giving off a massive positively-charged Arton signature? It's practically glowing. Keys don't do that." He chewed the inside of his cheek thoughtfully and racked his admittedly quite drug-addled brain for memories of similar occurrences. It was possible he shouldn't have spent so much of theoretical training asleep and/or drunk.
"Key is not of earth provenance," the computer observed. Which was hardly a revelation. The girl might have been human and probably earth-bred human, but she was quite obviously a honking great anachronism.
"What have you got against the word 'the'?" John muttered, idly stroking the top of his belt buckle. It was huge and ostentatious and glinted in the low green light, set with a variety of exciting and precious jewels, some of which had interestingly useful properties; it had cost the original owner a lot of money and, in the end, her life. "So the blonde's travelled through space as well as time. Shocking. Where's it from? Never mind her, just the key."
"Processing."
"Oh came on." John tapped the back of one of the two - why two? Just to rub it in, John thought bitterly and without even a glimmering of rationality - flight chairs with his index finger, barely conscious that he was drumming the beat of the Ninth White Cliff as always. What was the point in stealing the most advanced technology his stage of human evolution could handle if it was going to take this long identifying shit? And talk down to him to boot. He wasn't made of patience, was he -
"Provenance of the key," the ship's computer said in her low, sexy, gender-switching monotone, "is Gallifrey."
"What," John said in guttural stupid surprise. "That's. What. Not possible."
"Provenance of the key," the computer repeated, "is the planet Gallifrey. Time period unknown." Of course it would be. Gallifrey and set time periods were not exactly compatible, even John knew that and he'd been trying to finger Jomjo Breakpeese in that session and really not paying attention.
"Gallifrey doesn't exist," John pointed out unsteadily, his certainty underlined by the boredom inflicted on him in the acquisition of this information. "The Greatest Paradox, etc., etc., the only interesting bit of four weeks of Temporal Ethics and Naturally Occurring Timeshifts that wasn't the inside of Ceno Blackamoor's thigh or Jomjo's arse," he said in a more distant voice. "Gimme a drink, computer, and a better explanation."
The Doctor looked around at the assembled folk on the periphery of the street, their faces showing the same emotion over and over, and frowned. There was no sign of Rose, there was no sign of respite, and his ears were straining in the expectation of the hauntingly creepy whisper of 'are you my mummy' at any minute; there was no explanation for any of this, and he could hear nothing but the crackling of radios in the aftermath of the sirens. All in all he wasn't in the mood for any of it when a short figure swaggered out of nowhere in an anachronistic jacket and a smarmy smile and said, "All right, Big Ears, looks like you got a bit of a problem."
The Doctor stared a rather cold stare - the man had blood stains on the legs of his jeans and reeked of pheromone implants - and said, "You're not meant to be here." That was surely an understatement. If those were the implants he thought they were, the man was several millennia out of his time and waltzing about like he owned the place. It wouldn't do.
"Look who's talking, swanning around Gregorian one thousand nine hundred and forty-one with a leather jacket and a convict's haircut," smirked the other time-traveller, his hand resting on his hip as if laying claim to his own flesh. "I'm from the Time Agency."
"The What?" the Doctor scowled, momently non-plussed and still not remotely reassured. "This really isn't the best time."
"Not heard of us, then?" the time-traveller seemed obscurely pleased by this.
"No, and if you don't mind there's a serious," the Doctor began. A serious what was still plaguing him somewhat. This whole business of contagion played like something from a folk myth, and he wasn't getting straight answers or help from anyone, and he was a rhino's uncle if Rose had actually stayed where he left her, and... and he'd never seen attributes passed on by touch before. Thoughts, yes, but physical change that wasn't just burns or boils? Manifesting so immediately? Matter transfo-he blinked. Matter transformation.
"Chula nanite malfunction," the Agent said a fraction of a second before the Doctor uttered the word 'nanites' himself.
"You're amazing," the Doctor exclaimed, grinning the grin of sudden understanding. It all fell together perfectly. There had to be a source for this, and he could get a fix on that the minute he got back to the TARDIS. "I'm amazing - " he was about to rush out into the street when the look on the Agent's face made him draw up short. "I need to get to the TARDIS. Rose … I can knock them out …" he looked sharply at the Agent, who was grinning almost emptily at him, he didn't much like the expression, but there was a good chance the man could be of some help. "You may as well come," he said, and broke into a run.
John gave the police box a cursory but internally avaricious sweeping glance, an itchy-fingered once-over, as the Time Lord unlocked it with a key identical to the one John had slipped inside his boot.
The inside was much, much larger.
The ceilings arched away into what looked like infinity. There were corridor entrances dotted all over the place and a central console hub that looked like it had been willed into being by a sentient scrapheap. It looked older than time and more ridiculous than a hat on a slug, and it was the last of its kind, a should-have-been-destroyed relic of a part of the universe's history that had, John had been taught, been totally erased. And here it was. Real and whole and amazing and distorting. His fingers twitched against his thighs.
After a few seconds of starry-eyed joy John refocused; the alleged Gallifreyan was concerned about something. Shouting for "Rose", stamping about, muttering in well-practiced despair.
John looked up at the high organic ceilings again, at the central column powered by who knew what (Rift Energy had received a five second "we have no fucking clue what this is" explanation in theoretical, and only the more scientific of his peers had sought to pursue it as a line of enquiry), at the very essence of pocket dimensional architecture - which could fetch on the black market the kind of money that purchased complete empires. With this thing in his command John could bribe, threaten, cajole and coerce, achieve the kind of leverage of avarice that governments only dreamed of. The Shadow Proclamation would be ineffectual, the Agency stumped. He would be rich, the richest, more wealthy and powerful maybe even than the Cousinry themselves. John looked at the interior of the TARDIS and thought, I'm having this.
Aloud he said, "I know how to stop it."
The Time Lord stopped in his tracks, stopped tearing about the place in an ecstasy of despair, and snapped, "What?"
"The nanite wave. There's a fallen ambulance, a Chula battlefield craft, trapped under that primitive warhead out there. I was coming to retrieve it before anything could happen. That's where the wave's coming from." John neglected to mention that this was because he'd put it there rather than merely coming to retrieve it; he neglected to mention that he'd released the nanites in the hope of causing so much temporal damage that the Agency paid him to undo it, and he neglected to mention that he gave marginally less of a fuck about the end results of this than he did about what the Gallifreyan had eaten for breakfast. He just smiled faintly and tried to remember which facial expression was suitable for the circumstances. Probably not the smile.
"And you think you know how to reverse it?" the Time Lord gave him such a icy and penetrating look that for a second John wondered if he was reading his mind. But he dismissed the worry, as anyone reading John's mind generally tried to shoot him soon afterwards. It was a recurring problem; he'd yet to find adequate mental shielding implants in his price range and not likely to cause permanent damage the first time they activated, and people reacted so badly to his thought patterns. Their expressions tended to take on that look of disapproval right there shortly before they whipped out a gun.
"Not reverse," John corrected cautiously, running a hand over the nearest wall before he could stop himself. It felt warm, and so did he, right in the centre of his money-making glands. The places he could sell this. The things he could purchase. Like, oh, his entire family. "But I know how to stop it before it gets any worse."
"And if we don't stop it," the Time Lord mused, apparently embracing John into an instant 'we' without asking, which was fantastically familiar behaviour, wasn't it? Was that what Time Lords did? - his rather homely face creased into a concentrated frown, "they just keep going, like a virus. Converting everyone they come into contact with into those, those broken things."
"Precisely," said John, who privately didn't see how that was a bad thing. "So a bit of wastage is - unavoidable. And acceptable." He shrugged and all but reached for the control panels, sure he could figure out some way to get the thing going before he offed the two-hearted fella, but the Time Lord inserted himself between John and the cobbled-together instruments as if he hadn't moved at all, but had always been there, blocking John's way. John tried not to scowl.
"Wastage? What are you thinking of?"
"Detonate that warhead and knock out the nanite signalling." John waved a hand through the air, a careless enough gesture if one didn't know what he was doing. "Anyone already afflicted might be a bit miserable, I suppose, but you can probably eat through a gasmask-" and they'd always been taught that the aftereffects weren't their concern, at the Agency, so fuck 'em anyway, "-and they probably won't die. Unless it turns out you can't eat through a gasmask. And there's always intravenous feeding." He broke away from that amusing and slightly attractive line of thought. "You just have to keep people away from the bomb while you detonate." Not that he gave an actual fuck, but it was the kind of thing they used to say to people, when he was working field: keep everyone away from this. Don't touch the glowing thing. Or the other thing. Or the nice Agency man/woman/androgyne. Stand back or someone will get hurt. Someone was going to get hurt anyway, of course, afterwards, and - John bit the end of his tongue and made himself stop missing him, stop thinking through that lens.
"And out of the blast radius," the Time Lord stared down at and partially through John with a thoughtful expression, then shook his big-eared head as if shaking off a thought and admitting another one. "Have you seen my … friend … by any chance?" Oh, that was an interesting, interesting pause, but what he said next was even more interesting. "Blonde girl, wearing a union jack, obvious anachronism, penchant for getting into trouble?"
John said, "Oh, her. Yes," and tried not to laugh. Of course that would be it. The key was the same, and the Arton signature was the same, and this was turning into the best day he'd had in ages. "She's back at my ship. I found her hanging off a barrage balloon, mortal peril, that sort of thing."
The Time Lord very nearly rolled his eyes. John could see the muscle twitch. Intriguing. "That's Rose. And she's probably not in your ship any more, if I know her."
"Oh no," John said, barely containing a giggle, "I think she's almost certainly exactly where I left her."
But Time Lords were evidently a little more astute than the people John was accustomed to dealing with and making loaded remarks at; leather-jacket-guy said suspiciously, "Why do you have blood stains on your legs?" as if he'd been thinking about it for quite a long time.
"Haven't had time to change my clothes for a while," John said with what was intended as a disarming smile - it was after all true on all counts.
It didn't appease the Gallifreyan though. In a rougher voice he said, "What have you done with Rose?"
"I told you, she's in my ship - " John realised that if he shot the bastard now there was significant potential for damaging the TARDIS. That wouldn’t do - it would wreck the resale value if the thing wasn't working properly when he got it to the buyers. Sure, they'd still fork over a tidy sum for a broken TARDIS to work with, but - well. Penge altid kommer først, para önce tüm. John had his eyes on the big prize like always, and he inhaled slowly, exhaled slowly, blowing the fine dust he'd released into the air into ever more distant patterns.
"Alive?" asked the Time Lord, hitting the crux of the matter with alacrity. Perhaps he'd dealt with the Cousinry before, John thought, though he doubted it. Perhaps he'd heard of them before - that was more likely - and he could see in John's short stature and silk-razor smile and dancing eyes what the ignorant overlooked; connections.
"Maybe?" John hazarded, ducking backwards away from the taller figure. She might technically still be living matter - he hadn't actually checked for vital signs and bleeding to death had never been - alright, he had timed it a few times out of general scientific enquiry, but he'd lost track of the time and been more than a little distracted by the hot welcome hands on his stomach and - it wasn't like he was directly actually lying, as such.
The fury that blossomed in the man's face was so violent that it almost discoloured the air around it, the beginnings of a proper wrath building in his features like a galactic storm; it was a reaction John was used to, however, and he was already skipping swift away, stumbling nimbly over the uneven and hostile floor as the vengeful body came at him. He burst backwards through the door and spun on his heel so fast his eyes struggled to keep up, only his enhanced inner ear keeping equilibrium; John drew his knife as he ran, the slithery soles of his boots sending him skidding this way and that over the rain-speckled streets, one short embodiment of chaotic motion in sustained flight.
A few brave or simply hopelessly drunk souls were straggled about in his way, but the roads were mostly deserted, and no one got between him and safety; those who looked like they might be in his path dived out of the way as he galloped, sprinted over cobbles and flew over paving slabs, the cold air burning in his lungs. Oh yes, John Hart knew how to run. He knew how to run.
His ship was where he left it, of course, humming and thrumming gently and invisibly in the chilly air, warming the outer wall of a pub that had no inkling of what lay beside it. John hurled himself at his purloined vessel and before he was even in the door he was barking orders and waving his hands vaguely at sensor fields which didn't actually extend that far. "UP," he bellowed as he got his hind foot over the threshold. John stepped over the warm corpse blocking most of the floor and banged on the back of his flight seat with the heel of his hand as the buildings beside the ship began to slip away downwards and the floor beneath him shook almost in time with the wild wired beatings of his patched and punctured heart. "Computer, jettison this-" he kicked the body for emphasis, "-and get us the fuck out of here. Quickly."
John side-stepped and slid into his flight seat as a chute opened out in the base of his ship, the structure reforming itself for convenience in a way that never stopped giving him headaches, and sent this Rose tumbling the fifteen feet the ship had already risen.
"Coordinates?" the computer asked in that laconic, gut-wrenching, groin-pestering voice that made John think of him, curse and fuck it. The informality was fine, the taciturn communication was fine, but he wasn't sure he was going to be able to put up with much more smugness from the damned AI.
"Last known on current-period Cousinry fleet?" he suggested as the air outside grew thinner, less cloud-ridden. The sheer number of things he had down the back of his trousers made sitting upright in the flight chair impossibly uncomfortable. He wriggled and tried to slump, but there were too many obstructions.
"Unavailable."
"Fuckers." Of course they'd have found some Chula-era jammers somehow. Why hadn't he thought of that? John rummaged down the back of his jeans and extracted a fragment of white matter that appeared to have no consistent form. He examined it coolly and said in an off-hand manner, "The Damascene Archipelago?"
"Wanted on two counts of murder and forty-eight of robbery, three retroactive, Agent in residence," the computer said in the same chirrupy monotone. John repressed the urge to go and kick it in the central data storage matter. It would do him no good to have a fucked AI.
"Do you have to be such a bitch?" John sighed, turning the white substance around in his hands. It followed his movements, like a jelly with purpose. He began pulling his hands around into increasingly weird patterns as the ship climbed into the ionosphere, and the white stuff correspondingly made stranger and wilder fluid shapes. It was oddly calming without having the annoying side-effect of making him think he was about to die, the way calming things usually did. "What about … New-to-the-power-of-twelve York, fifth harvest celebration?"
"No retroactive crimes listed. No known Agency sleepers or residents."
"Music to my fucking ears. Take us there" John leaned back and put his feet up on the instrument panel, the white glue in the air around his hands taking shape into the universal symbol for money. "Oh, and, er, detonate that explosive, will you?" It hadn't been what he was intending to say, but if he mentioned the traitor now he'd just start shouting and wear himself out and need more powder and there was no fucking point, not with this length of journey ahead of him. He needed to think about something more immediately useful. "I don't need the nanite wave distraction any more. Wait until there's someone young on top of it, if you can."
--END OF EP. #1--
--EP. #2--