Fic: Pinstripes & Jacquard ‘Verse, Chapter 5: Hell's Bells
Title: Pinstripes & Jacquard ‘Verse, Chapter 5: Hell’s Bells
Author: psyfi_geekgirl
BetaBabe: akkajemo
Characters/Pairings: Twelfth Doctor, Tenth Doctor, Jack, Martha/Mickey
Excerpt: “Come home. We need you. It’s the rift. It’s open again...”
Word count: 4,848
Disclaimer: Until she’s Jossed, Twelve is mine-but of course, based entirely on stuff that ain’t mine… All hail Auntie Beeb!
A/N: Continuing Part II of Girl in the Mirror ‘Verse. Which, if you haven’t read yet, will give you important backstory and character details which are essential to this ‘verse (the link to the GitM masterlist is provided below). This series is a sort of Season Two. Also written before the end of DW season 6, so some details have gone AU.
Part I: Girl in the Mirror ‘Verse Masterlist
Part II:
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4
The sad lamentation of the Cloister Bells interrupted their mirth. Startled, both Doctors stared at each other in incredulity.
“What??” demanded Ten, characteristically.
“Oh, don’t start with that,” shouted Twelve over the bells, waving her hand dismissively, effectively disarming him in full on “What-Mode.”
He was about to open his mouth to say something when the TARDIS phone rang. The Twelfth Doctor ran around the console to pick it up, noticing that the call that was coming to them through the Vortex had originated from London just a matter of minutes after she had previously left Earth.
“Are you all right?” asked the concerned male, American voice on the other end.
“Peachy,” she answered. Twelve glanced up and caught the Tenth Doctor’s eye. “But I’m afraid I might owe the Torchwood Archives some new kit.”
“I told you I didn’t care about the gear… as long as you’re okay-Is that the Cloister Bell ringing??”
“I promise you, it has nothing to do with me, Jack.”
“No, it’s us-“
Twelve pointed insistently at a section of the console and the Tenth Doctor sprang back to switch off the bells. “Wha-What?” she bleated. Ten glared at her pointedly. I couldn’t hear him, she mouthed silently to Ten. She turned back to the phone. “Why? What’s going on?” she asked Jack.
“Come home. We need you. It’s the rift. It’s open again...” Jack sounded worried. She promised him she would and they rang off quickly.
She turned to Ten as she hung up the phone, “Jack says the rift’s opened again-and if you say ‘what’ one more time…”
The TARDIS materialized inside the main control centre of Torchwood One, tucked in-between the sterile, open computer terminals and the large, rolling metal door that led to the ramp that traveled down two levels to the street outside. Technicians scrambled to hold papers down on desks as the engines died down. Several errant pieces of paper fluttered through the air as the door opened and the Twelfth Doctor stepped out into the room looking clear eyed and ready for action.
Jack, Martha and Mickey stood waiting for her.
“I’m gone for two minutes and you guys wreck the place?”
“Oh, it is you!” exclaimed Martha in relief as she launched herself towards the Doctor, giving her a big hug.
Jack elbowed Mickey, who stood next to him, “I told ya she’d be okay!”
“Like hell you did,” Mickey retorted. “He was bricking it, Doc!” Mickey tattled as Martha finally released the Doctor with a small squeeze.
The Doctor turned to regard them all. “So, did you cook up this little emergency just to get me back?”
“I had to think of something,” said Jack, “I didn’t want to have to tell the kids here you’d gone out for cigarettes and just never came back!”
“Aw, you know me, Jack,” Twelve grinned, “I’m like a bad penny, I always turn up eventually!”
Jack frowned, “and I see you’re still taking all my best lines!”
“S’better than your wardrobe, Fly Boy-although admit it, you got the billowing coat thing from me!”
“Just because this incarnation has got style is no reason to be smug. I seem to remember the old U Boat Captain look you rocked earlier…”
She grinned at him, smugly-“Oh yeah? Well if it was so horrible why did you have the hots for me, old man?”
Mickey attempted to hide his snorts of laughter behind his fist as Jack was rendered speechless. The Doctor appeared more smug by the growing second seeing Jack so incapacitated.
“I see your healthy ego hasn’t changed,” Martha teased. “All back to normal, are we?”
“Did it work?” asked Mickey. “Did your Doctor Frankenstein project do what you intended to do?”
“Did it suck up all the residual personalities into the TARDIS?” asked Martha.
“Yeah…” started the Doctor, picking at her sparkly nail varnish. “About that…”
“Wait a sec,” exclaimed Martha, reaching out to touch the Doctor’s hair. “What’s this?” She ran her fingers through the white streak in the Doctor’s hair. “When’d you get this?”
The Doctor removed Martha’s hand gently from her hair. “Just a little side effect from the experiment, nothing to worry about.”
Jack eyed her. “Any other ‘side effects’ from your little ‘experiment’ that we should be made aware of, Doctor?”
“Funny you should say that, Jack,” said a familiar male voice, as the door to the TARDIS creaked open again.
A pair of cream converse trainers stepped out of the TARDIS. They were connected to a thin man in a brown pinstriped suit and a long camel coat; his spiky hair jiggled with uncertainty as he looked into the startled faces of his former companions. He wiggled his fingers at them tentatively. “Hidey ho…”
The Twelfth Doctor turned to Jack and shrugged, “It followed me home. Can I keep it?”
The Tenth Doctor cringed from the near explosion of noise his three friends created and found himself passed between the three of them-each of them greeting him soundly with the biggest of bear hugs.
Once all of the shrieking, hugging, tearfulness and other exclamations of shock were over, Jack forced the Twelfth Doctor to explain, again.
“So this happened how??”
“I told you. Those people you have down in Artifacts got it wrong-“
“Y’mean you got it wrong,” Mickey accused.
“Yes, yes, me as well,” she relented, “Cos, it wasn’t a Configurable Neurotransmitter Separator or a Cerebelloscope-“
“It was a GENIE,” finished Ten. The others stared at him as if he were the lamp in the corner that had suddenly barked. For as much as they were all glad to see him, his very appearance just seemed wrong somehow. He sighed off their looks and crossed his arms in front of him.
The Twelfth Doctor looked at him sympathetically, “S’ok. They’ll come around. They were like this the first time they saw me, too.”
“I know,” he replied, “I was there.”
“I don’t get this,” said Martha. “Not at all.”
“You got the Metacrisis-and Jenny-how is this different?”
“Yes, but in those cases there was existing genetic material to grow a separate human from-at a drastically accelerated rate, yes-but still separate. You say he was pulled out of you. He just suddenly existed! How is that possible?”
“You all saw me before-Martha, you’d even said you could hear him through me-the GENIE just made him separate-“
“But out of what?”
“Look,” started Ten. “I never took you to the late twenty-fourth century. You don’t know what it was like. You never saw how those humans of the future operated. Think about how you all complain that people nowadays are so impatient and entitled-“
“Always thinking they can have a thing as soon as they think it,” continued Twelve.
“Well, in the late twenty-fourth century their technology finally caught up with their desires-“
“But it went amok,” finished Jack and everyone turned to look at him. “I know. I’ve been there. Not a pretty chapter in our history-our future history, that is…”
“So this GENIE thing fell through the rift and Torchwood found it?” asked Mickey.
“Yes.”
“Then how’d you mistake it for somethin’ else?”
Twelve sheepishly looked to Ten to explain. “Because most of the original GENIES were organic,” he said. “There really are Cerebelloscopes and Configurable Neurotransmitter Separators out there-and they do look very similar-but this thing she had was a biomechanical GENIE-“
“A knockoff?” finished Jack.
“Yep,” said Ten, popping the ‘p.’
“Look… Shouldn’t we… uh…” Twelve gestured, indicating the other people running around Torchwood.
“Oh, relax,” said Jack, waving her off, “It’s Torchwood, it’s always the end of the world! Besides, the rift hasn’t reached critical levels yet and I have a whole team of people at my beck and call, which means…” he picked up his earbud off the desk and placed it in his ear with a flash of a broad smile, “I can delegate!”
“Power has its privileges,” sang Martha.
Still grinning, Jack touched his earpiece, activating it. “This is Captain Jack Harkness,” he said into the air, “I want status updates every twenty minutes. Do you copy?” After a few seconds of silent nodding, he turned back to the double Doctors, “Nothing so far, but they’re closing in on a hot spot.”
“Where is it?” asked Twelve.
“Take a wild guess,” said Jack, grimly.
“Cardiff…” supplied Ten.
“Reanimated Gentleman wins a prize!” said Jack. “I’ve sent a team out there to investigate. And while they do, we can catch up…”
“Nothing to catch up. I’ve been here all the time,” said Ten.
“So, it really is you,” breathed Martha, studying his profile.
The Tenth Doctor looked at her with a funny half-smile, waiting.
The Twelfth Doctor watched with interest, remembering what this was like for her when her former companions struggled with themselves to accept her.
“And it’s you, yeah? Completely you?” continued Martha. “Not a half Doctor, not a human Doctor-but The Doctor-the one I knew. My Doctor…”
Ten noticed Twelve wince a little at Martha’s words and he answered, “We’re both the Doctor,” he insisted, “But yes, I’m the one that you met first. Judoon Platoon on the Moon; nighty night Shakespeare; stuck in 1969 without my Wispa bars; running from the wacky old Master and all the rest! You traveled the world alone for me for a whole year-saved the planet, you did-and you saved me, too.” The Tenth Doctor leaned down to get closer to her, “And you got out because I was a bit of a git, I’m afraid…”
“Well there’s nothin’ new there, mate,” Mickey piped up.
“Oi! I’ve called you brilliant twice now and this is the thanks I get?”
“You haven’t called me anything in years, Doc,” exclaimed Mickey defensively, “She’s the one that called me brilliant,” he said, pointing to the Twelfth Doctor. “So, if we’re all picking Doctors here, then I pick her.”
Mickey’s words made Twelve smile, but Ten turned to her with his eyebrows raised, “Well, well, lucky you. Mickey’s yours...”
“I think you’ll find I’m first in that line, Mister,” teased Martha.
“Oh, well yes. Couldn’t forget that, Doctor Martha Jones Smith…”
She turned to him, “So it is you…”
“Yeah, it’s me,” he said simply. “Isn’t that good?”
“Yeah,” said Martha, the smile breaking across her face like dawn, banishing all of her doubts, “Yeah, it is!”
She reached up with a squeal and pulled him into a hug, nearly squashing the air out of his lungs. He laughed joyfully in spite of his brief pain-or the Cloister Bells-glad to have his friends around him again.
“Ohh! Not so hard, Martha!” he burbled.
“Oh, quiet, you!” she ordered. “I’ve missed you! Plus, if you break, you’ll just grow another part like last time!” She giggled as he crushed her back in return, causing Mickey to bluster.
“Hey, now-that’s my-“
“Oh, shut it, Mister!” barked his wife. “You get plenty of turns with me!”
“Okay, now-oh-ow-oooch! Easy on the double entend-woowww-and the ribs! Martha!!”
Eager to get away from Martha and Ten’s heartfelt reunion, the Twelfth Doctor got up and headed for the door. “Show me what’s going on,” she directed over her shoulder to Jack as she walked past. He followed her to a computer screen across the next room.
“So, how are you really?” Jack asked once they were out of earshot. His voice was low but sounded firm and concerned.
“I’m fine, Jack,” she reassured, her purply sparkly nails stabbing at the keyboard. “I don’t have any headaches or voices or feedback any more, I promise. It worked like a charm.”
He scrutinized her out of the corner of his eye. “Did it?”
She knew what he was getting at. She decided to stop evading the conversation about the sudden re-appearance of a specific, extra Doctor: “That was a bit of a shock at first, yes.”
“Isn’t what you intended, was it?”
“No. I admit it wasn’t. But now that he’s here, it isn’t terrible. He can come in quite useful-It’s not bad, having two of me around…“
Jack stared off into the middle distance for a second, his eyes glazing over. Twelve took his silence as silent reprobation. “Honestly, Jack-he’s good in a fight. He’s just the same as he-I-ever was. It’s not all bad news!”
Jack shook his head repeatedly, spluttering, “No-n-naaaaa-it’s not that… Nevermind!”
“Really, Jack-with the two of us here, what can’t we take on?”
Jack blinked and shook his head again. “Oh! Yeaaahh. Definitely not gonna tell you what I’m thinkin’ now!”
Finally she got it, and for a moment stared at him, slack-jawed. “Jaaaack! You’re terrible!”
“And you wouldn’t have me any other way.”
With a begrudging smile, the Doctor returned to fiddling with the computer. Jack doubled back for another thought before continuing, “You know Martha only means-“
She cut him off. “Yes, I know… Funny. After regeneration, some people don’t like the new me. Some companions leave, some might wish I could turn back but soldier on and eventually get used to the new me. This is the first time I got to see someone choose the old me over the current me. Kinda feels like walking in on my own funeral.”
“Beats the hell outta waking up at it,” Jack said, cheerily. “Boy, did that ever suck!”
Twelve laughed in spite of herself, which made Jack grin. He wrapped his arm protectively around the Doctor. “Well, I don’t think I need to remind you that Martha loves you, too-she’s just glad to have her original Doctor back. But I don’t mind saying I’m glad you came back in one piece. You had me pretty scared, Doctor. I happen to think that this regeneration is pretty special, and I’d hate to think of losing you.”
He squeezed her closer to him and she squeezed back. “Y’mean ‘pretty,’ not just ‘pretty special,’” she teased.
“Both,” he said, and tenderly kissed her on the temple. Once he’d done so, he braced himself internally for a rebuff from the Doctor.
Except she didn’t reject him like he’d expected. If he hadn’t known better, she may have even leaned into it slightly. Then, after silently looking off into the middle distance for a moment she squeezed his middle before pulling away.
“Thanks, Jack… Sorry I frightened you with the Three Faces of Eve act earlier. But I swear, I’m all better now… Now show me what’s going on.”
Jack explained how they’d gotten reports of rift activity almost as soon as she’d left. Operatives had been finding rift flotsam all over the place-artifacts mostly, in addition to other space junk-but no alien sightings had been made; and certainly no Weevils had been anywhere around since after their encounter with the Doctor. “They’ve all just disappeared,” he said, finishing his update.
The Doctor studied the patterns of red dots of hotspots on the map and turned from the screen. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Laughter coming from the next room interrupted them.
“Oh, you’re too funny, you are,” they heard Martha through her giggles. “You haven’t changed a bit!”
The Doctor and Jack headed back over to the group.
“That may be true,” called Jack as they rejoined them, “but I still want you to do full scans, Doctor Smith,” he ordered as he came closer. “The last time I had somebody come back from the dead at Torchwood-other than me-they were too fragile to live. The time before that the reanimated body was drawing off energy from the host body; and the last time you were alive,” he pointed to Ten, “you sprouted a half human. I want to know precisely what we’re dealing with.”
The Tenth Doctor nodded, already knowing what the procedures were, having experienced them all through his Twelfth self. He made a little bow towards Martha. “I place myself in your capable hands, Doctor Smith,” he said, and allowed Martha to lead him away.
“Hey,” the Twelfth Doctor called out after him, “It’ll be fine, but whatever you do, don’t let her give you anything in the lavvy from a shop bag…”
Ten grinned slyly as Martha blushed profusely.
“What’s this then?” Mickey asked, his radar activated.
“Aw… nothin’,” answered Twelve as the reddened Martha hastily led Ten out of the room.
However they were only meters away before the earth suddenly trembled beneath them. The group steadied themselves against the walls and furniture as the building rolled with the shock. Martha and the Tenth Doctor came staggering back into the room.
“Earthquake?” cried Martha.
“Feels like it!” exclaimed Twelve.
More alarms and flashing markers appeared on the computer screens as maps popped up indicating new trouble spots. “Yup!” exclaimed Mickey, steadying the screens he was trying to look at. “Multiple reports indicate tremors from underneath South London. No real damage, though.”
Jack’s earbud chirped and he activated it. “Go for Harkness!” After waiting a second for the reply he shook his head and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Say that again?”
He pushed a button on his phone and the speakerphone function kicked in, filling the room with the disembodied voice of a Torchwood Operative in the field: “-said we’ve arrived at the hot spot. It’s by the Roald Dahl Plass in Cardiff Bay-“
“The site of my destroyed Torchwood Three,” said Jack as an aside to the Doctors. “What’s going on there? What do you see?”
“Well. I don’t know… We’re feeding in the live vidlink to you now, but I doubt you’ll be able to see it.”
Mickey punched up various buttons and commands on the terminal and pulled up the live video connection on the screens in front of them. The camera was pointed at the old tourist information centre, their former “secret” entrance on the docks. The surrounding environment-minus the underground base-had been rebuilt by the city in an exact duplicate after the explosion several years ago that had wiped out the Hub.
“I just see the docks,” said Jack in frustration. “What are we supposed to be looking for?”
“Just listen!” said the operative over the phone lines.
Mickey turned up the dials on the vidlink and the five of them strained to hear over the ambient hiss of the connection and rhythmic, gurgling slap of the water lapping under the docks.
Glug, glug, splat… glug, glug, splat!
Then they heard a voice.
“Tell… Jaaack…” it began. Jack narrowed his eyes and stared at the computer screen. A soft, baritone voice with a lilting, Welsh accent whispered scratchily over the vidlink. “Tell Jack… the chaos…”
Jack’s face went slack in shock. “…Ianto?”
Martha gasped, finally recognising the voice. “Oh my God, Jack!”
“Ianto? Is that you??” Jack’s eyes frantically scanned the vidlink picture, but saw nothing. “Jenkins! What are you seeing?!?” Jack yelled in desperation, “WHAT IS MAKING THAT SOUND?!”
“You’ve got to see it for yourself, sir. It can’t be captured by the camera.”
“Tell him I’m coming! Do you hear me?! I’m coming!” Jack grabbed his jacket and headed away from the group in one swift movement, already impatiently stabbing his finger at the screen on his Vortex Manipulator, setting the coordinates for Cardiff Bay...
“Jack, wait!” yelled Martha, covering the armband. “It could be a trap!”
Ten nodded behind her. “Splitting us up. Maybe it’s some sort of game.”
“I don’t care. I have to go see this for myself,” said Jack, pushing Martha’s hand off to finish punching in the codes.
The Twelfth Doctor hurried to his side and grabbed his hand. “Then I’m coming with you,” she said and held a hand out to stop Ten. “Stay here! Finish your checks with Martha. And if anything gets crazy, take people inside the TARDIS to safety. We’ll be right back, and if we’re not, you can come get us. Deal?”
Both Doctors sized each other up from across the room, the Tenth Doctor knowing instinctively that after the debacle with the Weevils and the Death Winds she was anxious to get out and do something instead of sitting around the base sitting on her hands again. He nodded at her, reluctantly. “Be careful,” he added.
“Right back at ‘cha,” she said back to him.
In a blinding blue flash of light, they were gone.
They reappeared on the docks by the tourist information centre in Cardiff. The smell of the waterfront wrapped around them, a heavy cloak in the early evening as the sun had set only a half-hour before. The first thing they saw was a small group of Torchwood operatives staring anxiously past them on the silvery worn wood of the docks. All of them wore the traditional black field gear, complete with flak jacket and standard Torchwood issue weapons. Except one man, who held a camera, and was pointing it rather shakily past them.
The same voice from before came from behind them in a whisper, “Jaaack…”
Jack and the Doctor spun around. There, slightly in front of them, framed by the exterior door to his old office, was a young man in his late twenties in a light shirt and striped tie with a dark, pinstriped waistcoat. He was pale, and the Doctor could see he had an old cut on his right cheekbone, and his skin had a subtle but unearthly glow like a cheap electroluminescent night-light. His eyes were dead and looked beyond them at nothing.
From beside her, Jack issued a thick gasping sob of grief. “Ianto!” he yelped, covering his mouth. “Ianto, I’m here! It’s me! It’s Jack!”
He made to stride forward, but the Doctor held him back, “Jack, no! Stay back!”
“But, it’s Iano!” he yelped. He called out again to the ghostly figure in front of them, “Ianto, I’m sorry! I haven’t forgotten! I promise, I haven’t forgotten you!”
“Jaaack,” the pale figure of Ianto repeated. “Tell the Doctor… You have to tell the Doctor…”
“Tell me what?” asked the Doctor, standing taller. She faced the ghost of Ianto, stone-faced.
“Doctor…?”
“Yes. That’s me. What do you need to tell me?”
The vision of the dead man swayed for a moment. “The chaos… The chaos is coming…” he said weakly as his edges started to grow indistinct.
“NO!” yelled Jack. “IANTO, STAY! DON’T LEAVE ME AGAIN!”
The Doctor shook her head at the figure as he started to disappear, angry that something would exploit Jack in this way. “You couldn’t be any more specific than that, could you?” she yelled. “Like what sort of chaos and from where it will be coming?” Silence was her only reply. “No, I don’t suppose so,” her voice was bitter in the breeze as the dreadful image of Ianto shimmered out entirely.
Beside her, Jack pulled free and rushed forward into the empty space. The Doctor followed, pleading with him, “Jack! Jack, I’m sorry-I really truly am, but that was not your friend! It was probably something using him. I know you know that…”
He only stood in silence, rooted to the spot where the ghostlike image of his dead lover had disappeared. Briefly, he looked every day of his timeless age, his grief washing over him afresh. Grimly, the Doctor wondered at the horrors he had endured during a life that was nearly double hers. Gently, she took his arm, “C’mon. There’s nothing we can do here, we should get back to the others.”
He stood mutely next to her as she punched in the coordinates to the main command centre of Torchwood One herself. She thanked the men for calling them in, and taking Jack’s hand, disappeared in a blue crackle of electricity.
Meanwhile at Torchwood One, most of the operatives were still off chasing leads to rift activity. Also, not surprisingly, the Tenth Doctor’s scans came back completely normal: He was not a clone, he was not human, he was not drawing energy off of the Twelfth Doctor, nor was he trapped in a reanimated death like Owen Harper. Nor did he have any of the headaches that had formerly plagued the Twelfth Doctor. He was a completely different person-his own distinct personality, a complete Timelord, reanimated into a separate body-sharing all of the memories with the Twelfth Doctor up until the point of his reanimation, just like the Metacrisis before him.
“Well, you’re totally and completely, one hundred percent you,” declared Martha as she put down her last test report.
“Yeeaah. Coulda told you that,” he replied as he re-buttoned his shirt.
“But you could do with a hamburger or two,” she assessed, throwing him his tie and pointing at his skinny frame. “That GENIE thing didn’t give you enough body fat! Shame you didn’t wish for that!”
“Really? Well, I’ll take that under advisement, Doctor,” he said as he hopped off the exam table. “Y’know you really are developing quite a specialty.”
“Y’mean basic Timelord biology, the care and feeding of a Timelord, or Timelord neurobiology?” she asked with a wide, knowing smile.
“All of the above,” he answered, a proud grin breaking across his face as he jammed his hands in his pockets.
Mickey’s shriek from the other room had them drop everything and run outside to investigate. There, they found Mickey standing behind a desk with his legs locked in terror, pointing frantically to a spot just inside the main door.
Turning towards the direction Mickey indicated the Doctor moaned, “Ohhh, no…”
Behind him, Martha cried out in horror, “Carly!!!” She covered her mouth with her hands.
Standing about two meters in front of them was the recently mutilated body of Carly-Martha’s Torchwood MedLab technician-a trail of blood leading away behind her, charting her wobbly path up from the morgue in the underground floors.
“How can she be alive??” gasped Mickey.
“She’s not,” stated the Tenth Doctor simply. Martha’s sobbing next to him sparked his anger that something was using this woman’s body to hurt his friend. “Who are you?” he demanded. “You’ve taken a dead woman’s body-and for what?” No answer came but it did nothing to reduce his fury. “Name and galactic coordinates, now!” Suddenly he wished he had a sonic screwdriver.
The body of Carly gurgled.
“Oh my God, Doctor! It’s trying to speak!” cried Martha.
“Easy now, that body is badly damaged,” he cautioned whatever was inside Carly.
The body gurgled again, causing blood from inside her trachea to dribble out of her mouth and down her neck. Martha shuddered visibly next to him. The grisly meat puppet twitched and jerked, a macabre marionette missing half of its strings…
“Tell…” it gurgled.
Watching the body with interest, the Doctor jammed his tongue up to the roof of his mouth, “Hmm? Yes? Tell what?”
Martha gasped. “She’s talking!”
He shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Martha, but she’s still dead. Something is just reanimating her body and making it speak. But what, hmm?” said the Doctor as he tilted his head towards it. “C’mon, you can do it.”
“The… Doc…tor,” said the body.
“Yep. That’s me-the one and only-Weeeell…” the Doctor stopped. “One of two, apparently… but you can tell me, go ahead. I’ll pass it along. So tell the Doctor, what do you need to get off your chest?”
“The… chaos…”
“Oh, not again with the chaos!” he barked, ruffling his spiky hair in frustration. “Do you mean you stole a perfectly good dead woman’s body and dragged it all the way up here-disgusting and traumatising my friends-just to tell me that ‘the chaos is coming??’” His voice grew louder in direct proportion to his displeasure.
“No,” replied the body.
“Then what, then?!”
“The chaos is here, Doctor!”
Suddenly an alarm sounded from one of the computers, the shrill noise of it setting their nerves on edge. As it did so, the body of Carly lost its animation and crumpled into a bloody heap onto the floor with a dull, wet thud. Martha wailed at the gruesomeness of it and the Doctor pulled her to his chest as she sobbed into his pinstriped suit jacket.
Between them and the mangled pile on the ground, the air crackled and fizzed with a blue static electricity. Jack and the Twelfth Doctor reappeared in a blinding flash and a loud pop. Amid Martha’s weeping horror and Jack’s stark torment the two Doctors faced each other with matching grim-faced looks.
“You too, eh?” asked Ten.
“Apparently it’s chaos-and not fluffy bunnies with large Lotto winnings-that’s still coming.”
“Apparently it’s already here, according to ‘Carly’ there.”
Twelve’s eyes grew wide as she craned her neck to see the mess on the floor.
“Yep…And you’ll never guess where the chaos landed!” added Mickey from his place at the computer terminal. The two Doctors rushed over to take a look at the flashing red spot over a particular point on the map in South London.
“Oh no,” said Ten.
“It can’t be,” breathed Twelve.
“Oh it is,” exclaimed Mickey. “Saddle up, ladies and gents,” he announced. “Some of our trip alarms just went off. We’re going to the Tyler flat in the Powell Estates!”
To be continued in Chapter 6: A Stitch In Time…
Author: psyfi_geekgirl
BetaBabe: akkajemo
Characters/Pairings: Twelfth Doctor, Tenth Doctor, Jack, Martha/Mickey
Excerpt: “Come home. We need you. It’s the rift. It’s open again...”
Word count: 4,848
Disclaimer: Until she’s Jossed, Twelve is mine-but of course, based entirely on stuff that ain’t mine… All hail Auntie Beeb!
A/N: Continuing Part II of Girl in the Mirror ‘Verse. Which, if you haven’t read yet, will give you important backstory and character details which are essential to this ‘verse (the link to the GitM masterlist is provided below). This series is a sort of Season Two. Also written before the end of DW season 6, so some details have gone AU.
Part I: Girl in the Mirror ‘Verse Masterlist
Part II:
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4
The sad lamentation of the Cloister Bells interrupted their mirth. Startled, both Doctors stared at each other in incredulity.
“What??” demanded Ten, characteristically.
“Oh, don’t start with that,” shouted Twelve over the bells, waving her hand dismissively, effectively disarming him in full on “What-Mode.”
He was about to open his mouth to say something when the TARDIS phone rang. The Twelfth Doctor ran around the console to pick it up, noticing that the call that was coming to them through the Vortex had originated from London just a matter of minutes after she had previously left Earth.
“Are you all right?” asked the concerned male, American voice on the other end.
“Peachy,” she answered. Twelve glanced up and caught the Tenth Doctor’s eye. “But I’m afraid I might owe the Torchwood Archives some new kit.”
“I told you I didn’t care about the gear… as long as you’re okay-Is that the Cloister Bell ringing??”
“I promise you, it has nothing to do with me, Jack.”
“No, it’s us-“
Twelve pointed insistently at a section of the console and the Tenth Doctor sprang back to switch off the bells. “Wha-What?” she bleated. Ten glared at her pointedly. I couldn’t hear him, she mouthed silently to Ten. She turned back to the phone. “Why? What’s going on?” she asked Jack.
“Come home. We need you. It’s the rift. It’s open again...” Jack sounded worried. She promised him she would and they rang off quickly.
She turned to Ten as she hung up the phone, “Jack says the rift’s opened again-and if you say ‘what’ one more time…”
The TARDIS materialized inside the main control centre of Torchwood One, tucked in-between the sterile, open computer terminals and the large, rolling metal door that led to the ramp that traveled down two levels to the street outside. Technicians scrambled to hold papers down on desks as the engines died down. Several errant pieces of paper fluttered through the air as the door opened and the Twelfth Doctor stepped out into the room looking clear eyed and ready for action.
Jack, Martha and Mickey stood waiting for her.
“I’m gone for two minutes and you guys wreck the place?”
“Oh, it is you!” exclaimed Martha in relief as she launched herself towards the Doctor, giving her a big hug.
Jack elbowed Mickey, who stood next to him, “I told ya she’d be okay!”
“Like hell you did,” Mickey retorted. “He was bricking it, Doc!” Mickey tattled as Martha finally released the Doctor with a small squeeze.
The Doctor turned to regard them all. “So, did you cook up this little emergency just to get me back?”
“I had to think of something,” said Jack, “I didn’t want to have to tell the kids here you’d gone out for cigarettes and just never came back!”
“Aw, you know me, Jack,” Twelve grinned, “I’m like a bad penny, I always turn up eventually!”
Jack frowned, “and I see you’re still taking all my best lines!”
“S’better than your wardrobe, Fly Boy-although admit it, you got the billowing coat thing from me!”
“Just because this incarnation has got style is no reason to be smug. I seem to remember the old U Boat Captain look you rocked earlier…”
She grinned at him, smugly-“Oh yeah? Well if it was so horrible why did you have the hots for me, old man?”
Mickey attempted to hide his snorts of laughter behind his fist as Jack was rendered speechless. The Doctor appeared more smug by the growing second seeing Jack so incapacitated.
“I see your healthy ego hasn’t changed,” Martha teased. “All back to normal, are we?”
“Did it work?” asked Mickey. “Did your Doctor Frankenstein project do what you intended to do?”
“Did it suck up all the residual personalities into the TARDIS?” asked Martha.
“Yeah…” started the Doctor, picking at her sparkly nail varnish. “About that…”
“Wait a sec,” exclaimed Martha, reaching out to touch the Doctor’s hair. “What’s this?” She ran her fingers through the white streak in the Doctor’s hair. “When’d you get this?”
The Doctor removed Martha’s hand gently from her hair. “Just a little side effect from the experiment, nothing to worry about.”
Jack eyed her. “Any other ‘side effects’ from your little ‘experiment’ that we should be made aware of, Doctor?”
“Funny you should say that, Jack,” said a familiar male voice, as the door to the TARDIS creaked open again.
A pair of cream converse trainers stepped out of the TARDIS. They were connected to a thin man in a brown pinstriped suit and a long camel coat; his spiky hair jiggled with uncertainty as he looked into the startled faces of his former companions. He wiggled his fingers at them tentatively. “Hidey ho…”
The Twelfth Doctor turned to Jack and shrugged, “It followed me home. Can I keep it?”
The Tenth Doctor cringed from the near explosion of noise his three friends created and found himself passed between the three of them-each of them greeting him soundly with the biggest of bear hugs.
Once all of the shrieking, hugging, tearfulness and other exclamations of shock were over, Jack forced the Twelfth Doctor to explain, again.
“So this happened how??”
“I told you. Those people you have down in Artifacts got it wrong-“
“Y’mean you got it wrong,” Mickey accused.
“Yes, yes, me as well,” she relented, “Cos, it wasn’t a Configurable Neurotransmitter Separator or a Cerebelloscope-“
“It was a GENIE,” finished Ten. The others stared at him as if he were the lamp in the corner that had suddenly barked. For as much as they were all glad to see him, his very appearance just seemed wrong somehow. He sighed off their looks and crossed his arms in front of him.
The Twelfth Doctor looked at him sympathetically, “S’ok. They’ll come around. They were like this the first time they saw me, too.”
“I know,” he replied, “I was there.”
“I don’t get this,” said Martha. “Not at all.”
“You got the Metacrisis-and Jenny-how is this different?”
“Yes, but in those cases there was existing genetic material to grow a separate human from-at a drastically accelerated rate, yes-but still separate. You say he was pulled out of you. He just suddenly existed! How is that possible?”
“You all saw me before-Martha, you’d even said you could hear him through me-the GENIE just made him separate-“
“But out of what?”
“Look,” started Ten. “I never took you to the late twenty-fourth century. You don’t know what it was like. You never saw how those humans of the future operated. Think about how you all complain that people nowadays are so impatient and entitled-“
“Always thinking they can have a thing as soon as they think it,” continued Twelve.
“Well, in the late twenty-fourth century their technology finally caught up with their desires-“
“But it went amok,” finished Jack and everyone turned to look at him. “I know. I’ve been there. Not a pretty chapter in our history-our future history, that is…”
“So this GENIE thing fell through the rift and Torchwood found it?” asked Mickey.
“Yes.”
“Then how’d you mistake it for somethin’ else?”
Twelve sheepishly looked to Ten to explain. “Because most of the original GENIES were organic,” he said. “There really are Cerebelloscopes and Configurable Neurotransmitter Separators out there-and they do look very similar-but this thing she had was a biomechanical GENIE-“
“A knockoff?” finished Jack.
“Yep,” said Ten, popping the ‘p.’
“Look… Shouldn’t we… uh…” Twelve gestured, indicating the other people running around Torchwood.
“Oh, relax,” said Jack, waving her off, “It’s Torchwood, it’s always the end of the world! Besides, the rift hasn’t reached critical levels yet and I have a whole team of people at my beck and call, which means…” he picked up his earbud off the desk and placed it in his ear with a flash of a broad smile, “I can delegate!”
“Power has its privileges,” sang Martha.
Still grinning, Jack touched his earpiece, activating it. “This is Captain Jack Harkness,” he said into the air, “I want status updates every twenty minutes. Do you copy?” After a few seconds of silent nodding, he turned back to the double Doctors, “Nothing so far, but they’re closing in on a hot spot.”
“Where is it?” asked Twelve.
“Take a wild guess,” said Jack, grimly.
“Cardiff…” supplied Ten.
“Reanimated Gentleman wins a prize!” said Jack. “I’ve sent a team out there to investigate. And while they do, we can catch up…”
“Nothing to catch up. I’ve been here all the time,” said Ten.
“So, it really is you,” breathed Martha, studying his profile.
The Tenth Doctor looked at her with a funny half-smile, waiting.
The Twelfth Doctor watched with interest, remembering what this was like for her when her former companions struggled with themselves to accept her.
“And it’s you, yeah? Completely you?” continued Martha. “Not a half Doctor, not a human Doctor-but The Doctor-the one I knew. My Doctor…”
Ten noticed Twelve wince a little at Martha’s words and he answered, “We’re both the Doctor,” he insisted, “But yes, I’m the one that you met first. Judoon Platoon on the Moon; nighty night Shakespeare; stuck in 1969 without my Wispa bars; running from the wacky old Master and all the rest! You traveled the world alone for me for a whole year-saved the planet, you did-and you saved me, too.” The Tenth Doctor leaned down to get closer to her, “And you got out because I was a bit of a git, I’m afraid…”
“Well there’s nothin’ new there, mate,” Mickey piped up.
“Oi! I’ve called you brilliant twice now and this is the thanks I get?”
“You haven’t called me anything in years, Doc,” exclaimed Mickey defensively, “She’s the one that called me brilliant,” he said, pointing to the Twelfth Doctor. “So, if we’re all picking Doctors here, then I pick her.”
Mickey’s words made Twelve smile, but Ten turned to her with his eyebrows raised, “Well, well, lucky you. Mickey’s yours...”
“I think you’ll find I’m first in that line, Mister,” teased Martha.
“Oh, well yes. Couldn’t forget that, Doctor Martha Jones Smith…”
She turned to him, “So it is you…”
“Yeah, it’s me,” he said simply. “Isn’t that good?”
“Yeah,” said Martha, the smile breaking across her face like dawn, banishing all of her doubts, “Yeah, it is!”
She reached up with a squeal and pulled him into a hug, nearly squashing the air out of his lungs. He laughed joyfully in spite of his brief pain-or the Cloister Bells-glad to have his friends around him again.
“Ohh! Not so hard, Martha!” he burbled.
“Oh, quiet, you!” she ordered. “I’ve missed you! Plus, if you break, you’ll just grow another part like last time!” She giggled as he crushed her back in return, causing Mickey to bluster.
“Hey, now-that’s my-“
“Oh, shut it, Mister!” barked his wife. “You get plenty of turns with me!”
“Okay, now-oh-ow-oooch! Easy on the double entend-woowww-and the ribs! Martha!!”
Eager to get away from Martha and Ten’s heartfelt reunion, the Twelfth Doctor got up and headed for the door. “Show me what’s going on,” she directed over her shoulder to Jack as she walked past. He followed her to a computer screen across the next room.
“So, how are you really?” Jack asked once they were out of earshot. His voice was low but sounded firm and concerned.
“I’m fine, Jack,” she reassured, her purply sparkly nails stabbing at the keyboard. “I don’t have any headaches or voices or feedback any more, I promise. It worked like a charm.”
He scrutinized her out of the corner of his eye. “Did it?”
She knew what he was getting at. She decided to stop evading the conversation about the sudden re-appearance of a specific, extra Doctor: “That was a bit of a shock at first, yes.”
“Isn’t what you intended, was it?”
“No. I admit it wasn’t. But now that he’s here, it isn’t terrible. He can come in quite useful-It’s not bad, having two of me around…“
Jack stared off into the middle distance for a second, his eyes glazing over. Twelve took his silence as silent reprobation. “Honestly, Jack-he’s good in a fight. He’s just the same as he-I-ever was. It’s not all bad news!”
Jack shook his head repeatedly, spluttering, “No-n-naaaaa-it’s not that… Nevermind!”
“Really, Jack-with the two of us here, what can’t we take on?”
Jack blinked and shook his head again. “Oh! Yeaaahh. Definitely not gonna tell you what I’m thinkin’ now!”
Finally she got it, and for a moment stared at him, slack-jawed. “Jaaaack! You’re terrible!”
“And you wouldn’t have me any other way.”
With a begrudging smile, the Doctor returned to fiddling with the computer. Jack doubled back for another thought before continuing, “You know Martha only means-“
She cut him off. “Yes, I know… Funny. After regeneration, some people don’t like the new me. Some companions leave, some might wish I could turn back but soldier on and eventually get used to the new me. This is the first time I got to see someone choose the old me over the current me. Kinda feels like walking in on my own funeral.”
“Beats the hell outta waking up at it,” Jack said, cheerily. “Boy, did that ever suck!”
Twelve laughed in spite of herself, which made Jack grin. He wrapped his arm protectively around the Doctor. “Well, I don’t think I need to remind you that Martha loves you, too-she’s just glad to have her original Doctor back. But I don’t mind saying I’m glad you came back in one piece. You had me pretty scared, Doctor. I happen to think that this regeneration is pretty special, and I’d hate to think of losing you.”
He squeezed her closer to him and she squeezed back. “Y’mean ‘pretty,’ not just ‘pretty special,’” she teased.
“Both,” he said, and tenderly kissed her on the temple. Once he’d done so, he braced himself internally for a rebuff from the Doctor.
Except she didn’t reject him like he’d expected. If he hadn’t known better, she may have even leaned into it slightly. Then, after silently looking off into the middle distance for a moment she squeezed his middle before pulling away.
“Thanks, Jack… Sorry I frightened you with the Three Faces of Eve act earlier. But I swear, I’m all better now… Now show me what’s going on.”
Jack explained how they’d gotten reports of rift activity almost as soon as she’d left. Operatives had been finding rift flotsam all over the place-artifacts mostly, in addition to other space junk-but no alien sightings had been made; and certainly no Weevils had been anywhere around since after their encounter with the Doctor. “They’ve all just disappeared,” he said, finishing his update.
The Doctor studied the patterns of red dots of hotspots on the map and turned from the screen. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Laughter coming from the next room interrupted them.
“Oh, you’re too funny, you are,” they heard Martha through her giggles. “You haven’t changed a bit!”
The Doctor and Jack headed back over to the group.
“That may be true,” called Jack as they rejoined them, “but I still want you to do full scans, Doctor Smith,” he ordered as he came closer. “The last time I had somebody come back from the dead at Torchwood-other than me-they were too fragile to live. The time before that the reanimated body was drawing off energy from the host body; and the last time you were alive,” he pointed to Ten, “you sprouted a half human. I want to know precisely what we’re dealing with.”
The Tenth Doctor nodded, already knowing what the procedures were, having experienced them all through his Twelfth self. He made a little bow towards Martha. “I place myself in your capable hands, Doctor Smith,” he said, and allowed Martha to lead him away.
“Hey,” the Twelfth Doctor called out after him, “It’ll be fine, but whatever you do, don’t let her give you anything in the lavvy from a shop bag…”
Ten grinned slyly as Martha blushed profusely.
“What’s this then?” Mickey asked, his radar activated.
“Aw… nothin’,” answered Twelve as the reddened Martha hastily led Ten out of the room.
However they were only meters away before the earth suddenly trembled beneath them. The group steadied themselves against the walls and furniture as the building rolled with the shock. Martha and the Tenth Doctor came staggering back into the room.
“Earthquake?” cried Martha.
“Feels like it!” exclaimed Twelve.
More alarms and flashing markers appeared on the computer screens as maps popped up indicating new trouble spots. “Yup!” exclaimed Mickey, steadying the screens he was trying to look at. “Multiple reports indicate tremors from underneath South London. No real damage, though.”
Jack’s earbud chirped and he activated it. “Go for Harkness!” After waiting a second for the reply he shook his head and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Say that again?”
He pushed a button on his phone and the speakerphone function kicked in, filling the room with the disembodied voice of a Torchwood Operative in the field: “-said we’ve arrived at the hot spot. It’s by the Roald Dahl Plass in Cardiff Bay-“
“The site of my destroyed Torchwood Three,” said Jack as an aside to the Doctors. “What’s going on there? What do you see?”
“Well. I don’t know… We’re feeding in the live vidlink to you now, but I doubt you’ll be able to see it.”
Mickey punched up various buttons and commands on the terminal and pulled up the live video connection on the screens in front of them. The camera was pointed at the old tourist information centre, their former “secret” entrance on the docks. The surrounding environment-minus the underground base-had been rebuilt by the city in an exact duplicate after the explosion several years ago that had wiped out the Hub.
“I just see the docks,” said Jack in frustration. “What are we supposed to be looking for?”
“Just listen!” said the operative over the phone lines.
Mickey turned up the dials on the vidlink and the five of them strained to hear over the ambient hiss of the connection and rhythmic, gurgling slap of the water lapping under the docks.
Glug, glug, splat… glug, glug, splat!
Then they heard a voice.
“Tell… Jaaack…” it began. Jack narrowed his eyes and stared at the computer screen. A soft, baritone voice with a lilting, Welsh accent whispered scratchily over the vidlink. “Tell Jack… the chaos…”
Jack’s face went slack in shock. “…Ianto?”
Martha gasped, finally recognising the voice. “Oh my God, Jack!”
“Ianto? Is that you??” Jack’s eyes frantically scanned the vidlink picture, but saw nothing. “Jenkins! What are you seeing?!?” Jack yelled in desperation, “WHAT IS MAKING THAT SOUND?!”
“You’ve got to see it for yourself, sir. It can’t be captured by the camera.”
“Tell him I’m coming! Do you hear me?! I’m coming!” Jack grabbed his jacket and headed away from the group in one swift movement, already impatiently stabbing his finger at the screen on his Vortex Manipulator, setting the coordinates for Cardiff Bay...
“Jack, wait!” yelled Martha, covering the armband. “It could be a trap!”
Ten nodded behind her. “Splitting us up. Maybe it’s some sort of game.”
“I don’t care. I have to go see this for myself,” said Jack, pushing Martha’s hand off to finish punching in the codes.
The Twelfth Doctor hurried to his side and grabbed his hand. “Then I’m coming with you,” she said and held a hand out to stop Ten. “Stay here! Finish your checks with Martha. And if anything gets crazy, take people inside the TARDIS to safety. We’ll be right back, and if we’re not, you can come get us. Deal?”
Both Doctors sized each other up from across the room, the Tenth Doctor knowing instinctively that after the debacle with the Weevils and the Death Winds she was anxious to get out and do something instead of sitting around the base sitting on her hands again. He nodded at her, reluctantly. “Be careful,” he added.
“Right back at ‘cha,” she said back to him.
In a blinding blue flash of light, they were gone.
They reappeared on the docks by the tourist information centre in Cardiff. The smell of the waterfront wrapped around them, a heavy cloak in the early evening as the sun had set only a half-hour before. The first thing they saw was a small group of Torchwood operatives staring anxiously past them on the silvery worn wood of the docks. All of them wore the traditional black field gear, complete with flak jacket and standard Torchwood issue weapons. Except one man, who held a camera, and was pointing it rather shakily past them.
The same voice from before came from behind them in a whisper, “Jaaack…”
Jack and the Doctor spun around. There, slightly in front of them, framed by the exterior door to his old office, was a young man in his late twenties in a light shirt and striped tie with a dark, pinstriped waistcoat. He was pale, and the Doctor could see he had an old cut on his right cheekbone, and his skin had a subtle but unearthly glow like a cheap electroluminescent night-light. His eyes were dead and looked beyond them at nothing.
From beside her, Jack issued a thick gasping sob of grief. “Ianto!” he yelped, covering his mouth. “Ianto, I’m here! It’s me! It’s Jack!”
He made to stride forward, but the Doctor held him back, “Jack, no! Stay back!”
“But, it’s Iano!” he yelped. He called out again to the ghostly figure in front of them, “Ianto, I’m sorry! I haven’t forgotten! I promise, I haven’t forgotten you!”
“Jaaack,” the pale figure of Ianto repeated. “Tell the Doctor… You have to tell the Doctor…”
“Tell me what?” asked the Doctor, standing taller. She faced the ghost of Ianto, stone-faced.
“Doctor…?”
“Yes. That’s me. What do you need to tell me?”
The vision of the dead man swayed for a moment. “The chaos… The chaos is coming…” he said weakly as his edges started to grow indistinct.
“NO!” yelled Jack. “IANTO, STAY! DON’T LEAVE ME AGAIN!”
The Doctor shook her head at the figure as he started to disappear, angry that something would exploit Jack in this way. “You couldn’t be any more specific than that, could you?” she yelled. “Like what sort of chaos and from where it will be coming?” Silence was her only reply. “No, I don’t suppose so,” her voice was bitter in the breeze as the dreadful image of Ianto shimmered out entirely.
Beside her, Jack pulled free and rushed forward into the empty space. The Doctor followed, pleading with him, “Jack! Jack, I’m sorry-I really truly am, but that was not your friend! It was probably something using him. I know you know that…”
He only stood in silence, rooted to the spot where the ghostlike image of his dead lover had disappeared. Briefly, he looked every day of his timeless age, his grief washing over him afresh. Grimly, the Doctor wondered at the horrors he had endured during a life that was nearly double hers. Gently, she took his arm, “C’mon. There’s nothing we can do here, we should get back to the others.”
He stood mutely next to her as she punched in the coordinates to the main command centre of Torchwood One herself. She thanked the men for calling them in, and taking Jack’s hand, disappeared in a blue crackle of electricity.
Meanwhile at Torchwood One, most of the operatives were still off chasing leads to rift activity. Also, not surprisingly, the Tenth Doctor’s scans came back completely normal: He was not a clone, he was not human, he was not drawing energy off of the Twelfth Doctor, nor was he trapped in a reanimated death like Owen Harper. Nor did he have any of the headaches that had formerly plagued the Twelfth Doctor. He was a completely different person-his own distinct personality, a complete Timelord, reanimated into a separate body-sharing all of the memories with the Twelfth Doctor up until the point of his reanimation, just like the Metacrisis before him.
“Well, you’re totally and completely, one hundred percent you,” declared Martha as she put down her last test report.
“Yeeaah. Coulda told you that,” he replied as he re-buttoned his shirt.
“But you could do with a hamburger or two,” she assessed, throwing him his tie and pointing at his skinny frame. “That GENIE thing didn’t give you enough body fat! Shame you didn’t wish for that!”
“Really? Well, I’ll take that under advisement, Doctor,” he said as he hopped off the exam table. “Y’know you really are developing quite a specialty.”
“Y’mean basic Timelord biology, the care and feeding of a Timelord, or Timelord neurobiology?” she asked with a wide, knowing smile.
“All of the above,” he answered, a proud grin breaking across his face as he jammed his hands in his pockets.
Mickey’s shriek from the other room had them drop everything and run outside to investigate. There, they found Mickey standing behind a desk with his legs locked in terror, pointing frantically to a spot just inside the main door.
Turning towards the direction Mickey indicated the Doctor moaned, “Ohhh, no…”
Behind him, Martha cried out in horror, “Carly!!!” She covered her mouth with her hands.
Standing about two meters in front of them was the recently mutilated body of Carly-Martha’s Torchwood MedLab technician-a trail of blood leading away behind her, charting her wobbly path up from the morgue in the underground floors.
“How can she be alive??” gasped Mickey.
“She’s not,” stated the Tenth Doctor simply. Martha’s sobbing next to him sparked his anger that something was using this woman’s body to hurt his friend. “Who are you?” he demanded. “You’ve taken a dead woman’s body-and for what?” No answer came but it did nothing to reduce his fury. “Name and galactic coordinates, now!” Suddenly he wished he had a sonic screwdriver.
The body of Carly gurgled.
“Oh my God, Doctor! It’s trying to speak!” cried Martha.
“Easy now, that body is badly damaged,” he cautioned whatever was inside Carly.
The body gurgled again, causing blood from inside her trachea to dribble out of her mouth and down her neck. Martha shuddered visibly next to him. The grisly meat puppet twitched and jerked, a macabre marionette missing half of its strings…
“Tell…” it gurgled.
Watching the body with interest, the Doctor jammed his tongue up to the roof of his mouth, “Hmm? Yes? Tell what?”
Martha gasped. “She’s talking!”
He shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Martha, but she’s still dead. Something is just reanimating her body and making it speak. But what, hmm?” said the Doctor as he tilted his head towards it. “C’mon, you can do it.”
“The… Doc…tor,” said the body.
“Yep. That’s me-the one and only-Weeeell…” the Doctor stopped. “One of two, apparently… but you can tell me, go ahead. I’ll pass it along. So tell the Doctor, what do you need to get off your chest?”
“The… chaos…”
“Oh, not again with the chaos!” he barked, ruffling his spiky hair in frustration. “Do you mean you stole a perfectly good dead woman’s body and dragged it all the way up here-disgusting and traumatising my friends-just to tell me that ‘the chaos is coming??’” His voice grew louder in direct proportion to his displeasure.
“No,” replied the body.
“Then what, then?!”
“The chaos is here, Doctor!”
Suddenly an alarm sounded from one of the computers, the shrill noise of it setting their nerves on edge. As it did so, the body of Carly lost its animation and crumpled into a bloody heap onto the floor with a dull, wet thud. Martha wailed at the gruesomeness of it and the Doctor pulled her to his chest as she sobbed into his pinstriped suit jacket.
Between them and the mangled pile on the ground, the air crackled and fizzed with a blue static electricity. Jack and the Twelfth Doctor reappeared in a blinding flash and a loud pop. Amid Martha’s weeping horror and Jack’s stark torment the two Doctors faced each other with matching grim-faced looks.
“You too, eh?” asked Ten.
“Apparently it’s chaos-and not fluffy bunnies with large Lotto winnings-that’s still coming.”
“Apparently it’s already here, according to ‘Carly’ there.”
Twelve’s eyes grew wide as she craned her neck to see the mess on the floor.
“Yep…And you’ll never guess where the chaos landed!” added Mickey from his place at the computer terminal. The two Doctors rushed over to take a look at the flashing red spot over a particular point on the map in South London.
“Oh no,” said Ten.
“It can’t be,” breathed Twelve.
“Oh it is,” exclaimed Mickey. “Saddle up, ladies and gents,” he announced. “Some of our trip alarms just went off. We’re going to the Tyler flat in the Powell Estates!”
To be continued in Chapter 6: A Stitch In Time…