A Stranger at the Funeral (Part 1 of 2)
Rating: PG/All Ages
Characters: Susan; William Howie (OC)
Author: uncledark
Betas: slashpervert, brknhalo241, worthyadvisor
Spoilers: Nothing major, some reference to locations from "Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday"
Notes: AU; I use certain story elements from New Who, but do not conform to New Who continuity
Ownership: Susan, the TARDIS, and all Doctor Who-specific elements belong to the BBC. The Daleks are property of the estate of Terry Nation. The rest is mine, and only I can be blamed for it.
Summary: Investigating the deaths of Steven and Susan Campbell leave the man from Torchwood chasing a mysterious woman... And being chased by something that crawled out of the ruins of London to threaten humanity's future. (Follows 30 years after the events of "The Dalek Invasion of Earth.")
The man from Torchwood sat in Mrs Petersen’s front room, sipping tea and looking quite unlike the kind of man a government agency would send around to ask one questions related to the death of a hero of the state. He was dressed as one would expect. He wore a grey suit jacket without lapels or a collar, fastened closed to the neck over a starched white shirt. Grey trousers, black boots that had doubtless been shiny before a morning walking through streets still wet with the Thames’ spring flood.
No, it was his face, and his manner. He had a plain, pleasant, square face, open eyes, and a mouth that smiled more frequently than was generally expected for men from Torchwood. His hair was that kind of dark brown that was mistaken for black in dim light, and would likely be as grey as his suit given ten more years in his job. When he said, “I just have some routine questions,” something about his face and voice agreed that his questions really were just routine, and that he, too, would much rather be out in the garden.
Mrs Petersen, on the other hand, was exactly the kind of person one would expect to find living in restored housing in Whitechapel, near enough to the Thames’ post-invasion banks for her boys to go fishing in the afternoon, but far enough away that the smell wasn’t too bad most of the time.
She was a solidly-built, middle-aged woman with an Essex accent, some barely visible silver streaks in her blonde hair, clear eyes, and a way of bustling about the front room in nervous practicality when men from the government come around to ask routine questions. She wore a dress, with a skirt just short enough that it didn’t get wet when she had to go down to the marshy streets down by the river, with long sleeves always worn buttoned. The sleeves hid the large tattoo on her left arm, the one the Daleks had put there when she was born into one of the labor camps.
“Does Torchwood always investigate this kind of thing, Inspector Howie?” Mrs Petersen said, finally settling down after serving the tea. “I thought the police were handling this. The girl didn’t seem, well, at all alien.”
Howie smiled, slightly, conceding the point with a wave of his free hand. “No, Mrs Petersen, normally we leave this kind of thing to the city police. However, given that your mysterious guest appeared so soon after the deaths of David and Susan Campbell, we thought we should follow up.”
Sadness and curiosity colored Mrs Petersen’s expression in equal measure. “Such a tragedy. Him being a hero, and all.” She rubbed at her left forearm, unconsciously. Howie noticed it, and decided to follow that angle.
Howie made his face somber, and said, “Yes. One of the men who drove the Daleks from Earth. He will be missed.”
“They were washed off the bridge in last night’s flooding, the papers said.” Mrs Petersen leaned a bit forward, dropping her voice to a stage whisper, and added, “I heard that they couldn’t find the bodies.”
“No, the bodies were strapped into the car, just as one would expect.” Well, his was, at least. Susan Campbell’s body was missing, but that was supposed to be a secret. “Now, about the girl you found yesterday morning?”
“You don’t think she has something to do with this, do you?” Mrs Petersen sat back up, and looked nervous again. “There wasn’t anything, well, political about the accident, was there?”
Howie had heard that rumor, too. “No, it’s just an odd little mystery. It’s probably nothing, but we’d rather check now than be surprised later. Where did you say you found her?"
“Oh, I didn’t find her, it was my boys.”
“That would be,” Howie checked a note pad, “Samuel and Mitchell?”
“Yes. They work on a salvage crew, down in Limehouse Basin. Found her just outside the work area.”
“I’ll want to see where they found her.”
She nodded, and went on. “Nearly naked, she was, wrapped up in the shreds of her dress. A police doctor said she was still cold from having been in the river. They might have thought she was dead, except that she sat bolt upright and started shouting for her grandfather.”
Howie made a note of that. If the girl had family to claim her, he could wrap things up that much faster. “How did she come to be staying here?”
“The floods have been bad this year. One of the other salvage crews got caught out in it, and the hospital was full. My boys volunteered our spare room, and they were glad not to have to deal with another patient.”
“So she was awake when she was brought here?”
“Not exactly. She kept going in and out. You could lead her around, but she never quite seemed to be in the same place with you, if you take my meaning. Kept calling me Barbara. I think she might have been underwater too long.”
Howie wrote down the new name. “How do you mean?”
“Well, we never could get a name out of her. She didn’t seem to remember. And she kept staring at herself in the mirror, as if she’d never seen her own face before. All we could get was that the Barbara woman she’d mistaken me for had been a teacher of hers, up in Shoreditch. I’ve told the police about that bit, but I don’t think they’ve had time to ask around.”
The police had, in fact, had time to ask around. No one in Shoreditch was missing a young woman, or recognized her description.
“And where is she now?” he asked.
Mrs Petersen flushed, looking ashamed. “I don’t know.”
“Sorry?” Howie said. No one had told him that the mystery woman was missing.
“I saw her this morning, and she thanked me for taking care of her while she was indisposed. I thought that was a queer way of putting ‘half-drowned and nearly dead,’
but that’s what she said. She did seem to be quite a bit better, more steady on her feet.
“When I went to check on her a little while later, she was gone. She’d taken some things from my closet, and an old overcoat. My boys have been out looking for her ...” She let the sentence fall off, staring at a patch of wall behind Howie’s left shoulder.
“Then I got word that you’d be coming around. I was hoping we’d find her before you got here. I thought she might be someone important, if one of you was coming down from Torchwood after her, and I didn’t want a black mark on my record.”
She looked back at him, and continued. “I panicked, and fell back on old habits. You were born after the Daleks left, weren’t you?”
Howie was one of the first wave of children to have been born in the baby boom which followed Earth’s liberation. He had grown up in the wreckage the Daleks had made of the Earth, but he had never seen one. He said, “That’s right.”
“Old childhood habits. In the work camps, you never let the bosses know when something went wrong.”
“Because you didn’t want the Daleks to find out,” Howie said. He had heard similar things from his own parents.
She nodded.
He decided to leave it at that.
The boys returned in the middle of the afternoon. Mitchell was sent to inform the city police, while Sammy took Howie over to the Limehouse Basin work site.
London had been almost destroyed by the Dalek invasion. Even now, thirty years on, much of the city was in ruin. The invaders had wrecked the levees and the Thames flood barrier, letting the product of a century’s worth of global warming wash up the river. Now, a shallow, salty marsh bisected the city.
The old Limehouse Basin was on the northern edge of that marsh. The salvage crews were dredging and digging in the area, going through the rubble looking for resources to be used in the reconstruction.
The young woman had been tossed up on the north-western side of the work site, where the exposed foundations of some old apartment buildings formed tidal pools. Howie squatted in borrowed hip-waders, in ankle deep water, poking absently through the muck with a stick while Sammy talked to him.
Sammy was a sandy-haired, wiry young man. He was also more than willing to talk to the inspector. Howie hadn’t had to ask more than a few questions, which was good, as he might not have been able to get a word in.
“She was floating face down, just a few feet ahead of where you’re at now, and she was cold,” he said. “Not as cold as the water, but cold enough. Dress was all torn up, too. We rolled her over to see if anyone knew her, and that’s when she sat up.”
Howie wasn’t looking for anything in particular. He was just hoping to find something that might give some clue as to the mystery woman’s identity. And, if it wasn’t too much to hope for, something that proved she had nothing to do with the Campbells. In which case, Howie could leave all the poking about in the muck to the city police.
“Scared the piss out of us, I’ll tell you. Started shouting, calling for her grandfather. Didn’t seem to know where she was, didn’t even realize she was sitting in a great puddle of smelly water.”
Howie stood, stretched his back, and moved over nearer to where Sammy had found the woman. He squatted back down, and resumed poking the, so far, uncooperative mud. Sammy followed him, going on without pausing for breath.
“Said some other stuff, nothing that made sense. That’s when Mitch went off to get the foreman, who went off to get the police. We hauled her up and wrapped blankets around her .…”
The inspector kept prodding at the muck, but looked up from his search to try and catch Sammy’s attention.
“Hold on,” Howie said, a bit loudly and a bit sharply, to make sure he got to ask his question. “What else did she say?”
Sammy seemed to have been disoriented by the sudden interruption. “What?”
“The bit that didn’t make sense.” Howie turned a bit toward the young man, dragging the point of his stick along the bottom as he did. He didn’t notice it catch on something on the bottom.
“Oh, that.” Sammy stopped to think for a moment, then continued, “I don’t recall exactly, but it was something to the effect of ‘Now I know what that feels like.’”
“Drowning?”
“I don’t know, I suppose so .…” Sammy stopped talking, distracted by something glinting under the water. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing.
A fine metal chain hung off of the end of Howie’s stick, bits of grit and slime stuck in the links. Howie reached out and took the chain, gently drawing it out of the water. At the other end was a plain brass key, free of muck and gleaming in the sun.
“I wonder what that opens,” Sammy said.
“I wonder why it’s not dirty, after two days at the bottom of this mess,” Howie said. Apparently, he was not going to be able to let this go to the police.
The Torchwood laboratories were housed in an old building off of Wapping Lane. The building had survived the invasion, and had since housed any number of government operations. Those had moved on to better quarters as soon as possible, but Torchwood stayed put. Mostly, Howie understood, because the labs had been moved here after something had blown up the last building they’d been housed in.
Torchwood was the agency in charge of the extraterrestrial detritus the invaders had left behind. Inspectors like Howie investigated when anything odd was turned up during salvage. If it was odd enough, it was brought back here for analysis.
Kay Morris was one of the people who did the analysis. She was a bit short and a bit round, and she and Howie had known each other for years. End of shift had passed ten minutes ago, but she and Howie had stayed behind in the lab.
There were three long benches in the room, two on opposite walls and one down the middle. The outer two were piled with bits of junk and blocky gizmos, most of which were made in the strangely retro style the daleks had preferred. The middle bench was full of human lab equipment. Morris and Howie stood at one end of that bench.
“Where did you find this key?” she asked, brushing her dark hair out of her face.
“Limehouse. I think it belongs to this woman I’m investigating.”
Morris arched an eyebrow, not really needing to say anything to get the innuendo across.
“It’s an official investigation,” Howie said, feigning indignation.
“I thought you were following up on the Campbells’ deaths?”
“Yes, well, this young woman washed up downstream from where their car went off the bridge, the next morning. No identification, no possessions, and so far as anyone I’ve talked to can say, no firm grasp on reality.”
Morris typed a short command into her computer. “You think she might be a witness?”
“Maybe,” Howie said, “But she disappeared this morning. Went from half-dead trauma patient to fugitive in twenty-four hours.”
“Fugitive?”
“You don’t run away after nearly drowning unless you have something to run from. So, what can you tell me about the key?”
Morris sighed, and took the key out of a tray, which had been inside the sensor-studded tube attached to one of the lab’s more expensive toys. “Well, first off, it’s not brass. Same color, same weight, but the electrical and magnetic properties are completely different.”
“I thought brass wasn’t magnetic,” Howie said.
“It’s not. This isn’t brass. It’s an alloy, and it does have some of the same components as brass, but I’ve never seen metal like this before.
“Also, I couldn’t tell you how it was made.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Howie said, “I paid attention when I had the locksmith make a spare key for my flat.”
Morris pointed at the computer display. “That’s just it. This key was never ground. Most keys are cast, then notches are ground into the blade to match a lock. This one is completely smooth.”
Howie looked at the images on the display. “So, there should be scratches on the blade?”
“Microscopic ones, yes,” she said. “But this shows no signs of having been milled. Or cast, for that matter. If I had to guess, I’d say it was woven together, one atom at a time.”
Howie looked concerned, for the first time since entering the lab. “Can we do that?”
“Not anymore.” Morris waved vaguely off to her left, taking in the bench full of Dalek cast-offs. “We know how it’s done, more or less, but it was just becoming a practical industrial technology before those bastards burned us down. We don’t have the kind of industrial base, yet, to support that kind of manufacture.”
“Did the Daleks make it?”
She shook her head. “No. They are capable of similar micro construction, but there’s more to this key than just that.”
Howie said a silent goodbye to his weekends for the next month or so. “What do you mean?”
“There is circuitry embedded in the key, on the molecular level.” Morris tapped another command into the computer, and the display shifted, showing a schematic of the key. It was shot through with circuit paths spreading out from several complex nodes in the round end. “I have no idea what it does, but it’s more complex than my workstation.”
“So, not only is it aliens, but it’s aliens more advanced than the daleks?” He rubbed his eyes and ran a hand through his hair. “This is not how I wanted to make my career.”
“Well, I’m happy to make my career on something like this,” she said, turning the key over in her hand. “I’ve already got half a dozen things I want to try on it.”
“Yes, about that …” Howie said, almost apologetically. “Let’s not file any reports on this one, yet. You tell the director what you just told me, and we’ll be buried alive under all the ‘help’ the bosses will drop on us. Not to mention the paperwork.”
“Certainly don’t mention the paperwork,” she said. “Fine. How long do we wait?”
“At least until I can find this woman. I don’t want to tell the director, ‘Yes, I let the hideously advanced alien get away, but at least we have her car key.’” He put his hand out, palm up. “Best give it back to me, for now.”
Morris hesitated, but she dropped the key into his hand. Howie wrapped the key in a handkerchief, and put it in his jacket pocket. “Look, let’s call it a day. We have a state funeral to attend, tomorrow.”
Interlude
The Dalek was barely aware of its surroundings. Tons of rubble had fallen on its casing when the human resistance set off the bombs in the building’s foundations, but the dalekenium shell had held. The mutant inside had gone into a form of stasis while awaiting rescue. A small part of its consciousness remained aware, overseeing the automatic repair functions of its casing and monitoring its sensors for any sign of dalek activity.
Within hours, the mechanisms within the Dalek’s shell had repaired as much as they could. Small intakes around the Dalek’s base pulled raw materials from the collapsed building, and nanofactories converted the dust and muck into supplies needed to effect further repairs and maintain the mutant’s life. Once these systems settled into a steady routine, the mutant went into full stasis.
It awoke much later (thirty years, two months, eight days, thirteen hours, six minutes later, according to the clock in its battle computer) when the sensor domes on its skirting registered vibrations consistent with digging machines. The mutant stirred, its boneless limbs stiff after decades of sleep, and began to perform systems checks. Power was low, and its force field had been critically overtaxed protecting it from the original explosion. Life support, sensors, and especially weapons would be on-line and ready for use as soon as the creatures digging towards the dalek got close enough.
It did not fear, despite the fact that it could detect no signals of Dalek origin. Fear had been engineered out of the mutant’s forebears countless generations ago, along with love, pity, and all emotions except hate.
Hate was fully functional as well, on-line, and ready for use.
When the digging machines were within three meters of its position, the mutant caressed the weapons controls, firing short-range, wide-dispersion beams from its gun. Concrete rubble was reduced to powder, and the Dalek crept forward. The mutant could hear crunching and scraping as its shell pushed through the rubble which its gun had not removed.
When it broke into the chamber where the salvage team worked, it saw that they were unarmed and unprepared for its arrival. It announced itself, in the traditional fashion.
“ExTerMinAte!”
* * *
William Howie disliked funerals. They were the kind of quiet that forced one to be aware of every rustle of restless movement, every whisper meant not to be heard, and every private sob.
He found the funerals of people he had not really known even more uncomfortable. The stock phrases with which one expressed public grief wore thin with very few repetitions, leaving him feeling false and obviously out of place. State funerals were part of the duty, however, and he could only have avoided this one if he had some other, even less pleasant duty to perform.
Howie had been thankful when it was time for his row of Torchwood staffers to rise and file past the coffins (the small contingent of David’s siblings, nieces, and nephews, then the government dignitaries, then the veterans of the resistance had their turns ahead of him), since it gave him an opportunity to move around without forcing further condolences.
The coffins at the front of the chapel were closed, and Howie knew that one of them was empty. Recent photographs of David and Susan Campbell stood in stark black frames upon each box. His face had been square, lined, and surrounded by neatly-trimmed grey hair. She had looked young for her age (Howie thought she had to have been about his mother’s age), except in her eyes and her grey-streaked black hair.
He had been a hero of the resistance, and a minor official of government. She had directed a different section of Torchwood. They had been the kind of people Howie had been introduced to at two or three official functions, but not the kind of people he ever had reason to call on.
And now, Howie was walking slowly past their coffins, feeling vaguely guilty that he was not more deeply affected by their deaths. Soon enough, he was past, and he turned toward the back of the hall. His rank was a mixed blessing for him. It was too low to require him to speak to the assembly, but too high for him to simply slip out unnoticed.
Thus it was with some relief that he noticed, lurking at the back of the hall, a young woman in a not-somber-enough overcoat. Both matched descriptions given by Mrs Petersen. Glad to have something to do other than stand around with the rest of the staff, Howie marked her place and continued on his original path. He planned to pass her, then turn around and come up behind her, between the woman and the exit.
The mystery woman was slightly taller than average. Her hair was long, thick, and the color of dark honey. Her face was long and narrow, as was her nose, giving her a severe profile. The drab brown overcoat hung rather loosely on shoulders a bit too narrow for it, leading Howie to believe that the woman inside was probably slender. She seemed to be in her late twenties, though her eyes rivaled any of Howie’s senior supervisors in their intensity and vague, disapproving criticism.
She was watching the mourners file past the coffins at the front of the hall as Howie passed. He had thought she hadn’t noticed him, until she spoke. No one else was nearby, so he had to assume she was addressing him.
“The problem with security guards,” she began in a bored tone, “is that anyone with any intelligence or powers of observation is quickly promoted off the front line. They end up watching banks of monitors or filing paperwork.”
She turned toward him, angling her head slightly to look up into his eyes. Her eyes were a very dark brown, and her thin brows were drawn down over them in a way that reminded Howie slightly of an old school teacher he’d never much liked.
“This leaves the dull and the thick out front,” she continued. “All I had to do was mention Torchwood and scowl importantly, and they practically fell over themselves to open the doors.”
In Howie’s experience, this was not how gate-crashers behaved. Generally, they tried not to draw attention, and certainly did not volunteer that they had bluffed their way past security. No, this seemed more in line with the behavior of self-important experts who thought that every meeting had been called solely for their benefit.
Howie was no stranger to the tactics of taking control of a conversation. He’d done so many times, using this same gambit. Say something, anything really, but make it unexpected and put all authority into the voice. Most people then find themselves at a loss, and will surrender the initiative.
“Not always,” he said instead. “You’ll find that, on occasion, the smart security guards get promoted to investigations.” He put his hands into his pockets, casually, and smiled in a welcoming manner, as if he had been happy to run into her here. He had always found reacting this way disarmed defensive subjects.
Howie enjoyed conversational judo.
The woman turned back to the funeral. “Nice turnout. Not what I would have expected at all.”
“Oh?”
“They weren’t very important people, in the scheme of things,” she said, looking a bit pensive.
“I don’t know about that,” Howie said. “It wasn’t widely put about, but Susan Campbell was key to the reconstruction.”
“Really?” The woman’s tone brightened just a bit.
“Oh, yes. Led the team reverse-engineering Dalek technology. We’d have been years behind, without her.”
“And yet,” she said, the bored, superior tone returning, “the eulogies were all about the brave hero who, it would seem, single-handedly fought off the Daleks with a can opener.”
“As I said, it wasn’t widely put about. Most of what she did was far above the pay-grade of many of the officials here, not to mention the civilians.” Howie motioned to one of the uniformed guards, stationed by the door. She fairly marched up behind the mystery woman. “But perhaps we’d be better off discussing this in a less public venue.”
As she approached, the guard cocked her head, listening. She pressed two fingers to her throat, activating the microphone there, and murmured something.
Howie withdrew one hand from his pocket, bringing out an identity card and showing it to the guard. “Inspector William Howie, Torchwood investigations,” he said.
The guard spoke first. “Inspector. There’s been a report of a disturbance at one of your salvage sites. Multiple deaths.”
The mystery woman cocked an eyebrow at this. “Which site?”
The guard looked to Howie, who shrugged and nodded for her to continue.
“The Shadwell site.”
“That’s just an old tube station .…” Howie couldn’t think of anything that should have been deadly, buried there.
“Oh, damn,” the mystery woman said quietly. She began to look about, nervously. “We have to get there before it gets out.”
“What are you talking about?” Howie asked. “What do you know about that site that I don’t?”
“Shadwell Station was a resistance equipment cache during the invasion. We … David Campbell’s resistance group fought a Dalek there, towards the end. They buried one under the rubble.”
The guard said, dismissively, “That was thirty years ago.” She addressed Howie, “Sir, I’ve been asked to get a ranking Torchwood officer and .…” She stopped, holding a hand up to her ear. “Sir? Air control reports that there’s something in the air, moving fast.” She paused. “Out of Shadwell.”
“Oh,” he said. “Damn.”
The mystery woman headed for the door. “Wait! Where do you think you’re going?” Howie called after her.
She stopped and turned on Howie and the guard. “Look, Inspector, I know you’re too young to have seen one in action, but certainly they taught you about the Daleks in school?”
“Of course they did. But even if there was a Dalek buried in Shadwell Station .…”
She cut him off. “Don’t tell me how long it’s been buried. I know. A Dalek could do thirty years buried, standing on its head.”
The guard spoke. “It will be overhead, soon, whatever it is.”
“Inspector Howie.” The woman’s tone became cold. “Don’t think of a Dalek as a soldier in armor. That shell is more like a tank. A tank with complete, self-contained life support systems.”
Howie waved his hands, motioning for the woman to quiet down. “We’re at a funeral, for god’s sake .…”
“And we’ll be at a massacre if you don’t listen to me! That Dalek has unlimited ammunition, unlimited range, and nothing better to do than exterminate humanity, one person at a time. In alphabetical order, if it likes.”
People were beginning to stare. More guards started toward the three.
Howie motioned towards the door. “All right, all right .… Let’s talk about this outside.”
Once Howie, the guard, and the woman were outside, he saw soldiers in dress uniforms rushing from ceremonial stations to more practical defensive stations. In the distance, in the night, there was a small light approaching. Gunfire could be heard. Bright beams of white light stabbed down from the flying object, starting fires on the ground.
As it approached, Howie could begin to make out details. It was a vaguely conical shape, topped with a dome. Lights flashed atop the dome, and the energy beam was fired from a gun on the left-hand side. Grey hemispheres studded its lower half.
“Right. It’s a Dalek,” he said. Turning to the guard, “Find the ranking officer on site. Tell him we have to draw that thing off.” As she ran off, he called after her, “We’re going to need bigger guns!”
“This is no good,” the mystery woman said. “It will take too long for the army to mobilize guns big enough to hurt it.”
“Well, what do you suggest?”
She thought for a moment. “We need to get to Canary Wharf.”
Part 2
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