Versus Time (1/2)
Title: Versus Time (1/2)
Beta: nightrider101
Rating: PG-13 (R overall)
Warnings: somewhat dark
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Doctor (10), OMCs
Summary: The Doctor being a brave hero with no sense of self-preservation leads to Jack having to save the universe all on his own. Or so it seems.
Note: For Arithon, who won this story on the Support Stacie April Auction.
The noise is rising to an inferno so fast Jack can hardly grasp that it’s happening at all. It’s a distant, threatening buzz at first, a promise of inevitable disaster, and then there’s a storm going on behind the barrier, so loud that he can’t hear his own screams anymore, and in the blink of an eye, the Doctor is gone.
Jack can no longer hear himself screaming his name, but he feels the pain in his hands as he punches against the transparent wall that is keeping him safe, as if by breaking it he could somehow turn back time.
On the other side the storm still rages, invisible but for the panels and wires being torn out of the walls, to evaporate right before his eyes, so quickly Jack can’t even see it. The one thing still standing in the tunnel is the wheel, untouched by the destruction around, and in the middle a green light is glowing, mockingly. The gates are open. The Doctor has done it, in the very last second, before the storm took him away.
He was the faster runner. “It has to be you,” he said, and Jack wasted crucial seconds staring at his retreating back before he realised what those words meant. By the time he caught up with his friend, the Doctor had raised the barrier, and the storm was already far too close.
Through an aching throat Jack draws in a gulp of air, his body demanding its right to breathe. He hasn’t even realised he stopped, that his sobs were choking him, and has no memory of sinking to his knees. The Doctor is gone. It’s too huge to take in. Jack doesn’t know why he’s crying when it doesn’t even hurt.
When he gets back to his feet, he feels every year of his age. The idea of moving is distant and implausible, but the storm stops, gradually, and eventually the barrier falls away, far, far too late.
Jack stares at the spot where the Doctor had been standing in the last moment of his life. There is nothing left of him, not even dust. Nothing for Jack to keep. To hold on to.
To bury.
Time is racing against Jack. Someone wants the gates closed, and Jack has to make it through while they are still open. How far away they are he doesn’t know, only that he has to be out of the tunnel before the next storm comes.
His first steps into the giant, softly curved tube are slow, almost stumbling. After a moment, he starts to run.
-
There’s nothing beneath him. No ground, just air. A lot of air. Even in the darkness he knows that the earth is far away. His right arm swings freely in the wind.
For a long moment he doesn’t know what’s keeping him from falling. Then he tries to move and the pain that shoots through his body is paralyzing. He gasps for air and tastes blood, and his eyes remain stubbornly closed. But he can feel, now, that his chest is lying on something hard and narrow, and when he manages to locate his left leg in the sea of agony, he finds that its fall has also been stopped by something that refused to give way. The rest of him is hanging more or less freely. If it was crashing into whatever is holding him that has smashed his bones or if it happened before, he can’t tell, but he knows that if he falls down now, all the way to the distant ground, his state couldn’t possibly get much worse.
He hasn’t expected to be still alive. The wind stroking his hair is strangely comforting. Unable to move or even think, he sees no point in staying awake and doesn’t fight unconsciousness when it comes to take him once again.
-
There is a narrow path running along the side of the tunnel that slowly but steadily leads downwards. Twenty centimetres from Jack’s running feet the ground falls, so deeply he can’t see the bottom. The ceiling is ten metres above him, a curve in pale grey, with wires and debris even now falling out of the holes torn by the storm, and in some places the entire ceiling is torn away and Jack can see the sky, dark and stormy above him.
He imagines he can feel the force of time and raw power on his skin, though the storm is over and the barrier would not have fallen had there still been any risk. Still he shivers as he runs towards his goal and away from his thoughts simultaneously, until he comes to a spot where for several metres the wall has been torn open and he can run no more.
The sky looks stormy, but there is no wind howling through the wasted land outside. The air that touches Jack’s face is perfectly still and seems to have no temperature at all. It’s dead, like everything on this planet is dead.
The long tube of the tunnel is like an alien worm, its dirty white colour disturbing the strange harmony of black and grey significant for the corpse of the city. Skeletons of buildings once hundreds of metres high and proud create a skyline like a burned-down forest; once the dust moved by the latest storm has settled, this world will be like a picture again: no smell, no movement, no noise. Until the next storm.
The world feels desolate and empty; it transfers that feeling to Jack who stands in front of the gap, unable to turn away and run on. There’s nothing here worth the Doctor’s life.
The air moves, caressing his face like the brush of cautious fingers. In the stillness, the wind is so unexpected that even the soft breeze hits Jack like a punch, nearly causing him to stumble back and into the abyss behind him.
A second passes and it stops, leaving the world dead and still like before. It’s meaningless. Jack, suddenly unable to bear the sight, runs on.
The tunnel is old, a monument of a past he doesn’t know and doesn’t care about. Inside it’s older than on the outside: the walls have been built to last for millennia, and still they’re on the verge of collapse. What little technology is hidden behind the simple cover is laid bare, what is left of it will not last through the next storm.
The technology is not needed but for the opening and closing of the gates. The tunnel itself might make it through another two storms, but Jack doesn’t give it more than that. Each storm takes away more than the one before.
The power of the wind, terrible though it is, doesn’t tear it apart. It’s the time it carries with it: temporal particles in the air that corrode and decompose everything, so concentrated in this narrow place that it turns wood to earth within the blink of an eye, stone to sand, flesh to dust. It leaves nothing in its path.
What the tunnel has been build for originally Jack doesn’t know. The Doctor could have told him, like he has told him of the war that devastated this world, and the terrible weapons that purged it of anything living in an instant. Before, this place must have been a means of winning energy out of the elements: with both gates open, the wind is channelled through the narrow tube, running through it with terrifying force. Maybe this is how they powered their city, whoever has lived here before, though they didn’t have the storm to do it then, just wind.
Outside the tunnel the time storm isn’t as powerful: the skeleton of the city still stands, so even the corrosive effect of present turning to past only wears at it a little at a time, and this part of the city is protected by the cone that feeds the tunnel anyway. Still, every storm that runs over the land takes away a little more, once a day, every day.
But in the end even every storm is not the right expression. There is no next storm and no previous one, but the same storm over and over, following the sunrise along the planet, endlessly. It adds a sense of passing time to this world that truly makes its ruins seem eternal, not just a single moment captured in time, ready to pass any second. Not only is this a dead wasteland, but it was one, and will continue to be while the storm comes and passes and comes, relentlessly. If Jack were religious, this would be closest to his idea of hell.
And yet in its stillness it’s so serene, so comforting that Jack wants to cry. The peace of this place where no more evil can be done is crushing him.
It’s not right, of course. Evil still can be done on this world - it’s just the world no longer cares. It’s for everything else that they came here, for vague possibilities of disaster that might originate from here, nameless and distant. Jack wants to stop running because there is no point - this cosmos is no longer worth fighting for, and too far away for him to care, he wants to scream at the distant sky. Jack keeps running because it’s all he can do.
To the gate, the gate, the gate.
The true name of this world has been forgotten. The Doctor would have known, but Jack never thought of asking.
-
There is movement that isn’t wind. At first he thinks he’s falling; he believes this for a long time, until he accepts that the ground he’s waiting for isn’t going to come. Still, finding out what is happening to him requires concentration, and he is far too tired to think.
Something is touching him, but even this he only realises after a minute. Briefly he considers the benefits of opening his eyes, but when he tries they won’t even flutter, so he gives up. The touches are causing him to remember the pain he has forgotten in the darkness; he prefers the wind.
“He’s more dead than alive,” a voice states, close to his ear and painfully loud. He wants to tell it to be quiet. “You can imagine the force that smashed him into the ruins. There’s no use. Leave him.”
“There shouldn’t even have been anything left to be smashed, and I want to know how he came this far. Even his corpse can tell us that, but try to keep him alive for a while, in case there’s anything more interesting he can tell us.” He doesn’t like the voices, nor the words they’re using. Without really wanting to, he tries to figure out what language they’re speaking in. He understands it effortlessly, but that doesn’t really narrow it down.
-
Jack fears that there is enough of the technology still working to close the remaining gate one more time. The first one has been destroyed by whoever is making use of this complex now, and he keeps wishing it had been destroyed before, in the cataclysm that created this wasteland, so the ever present time storm could have worn down this corridor within days.
The second one, on the far end of the tube, will lead the wind harmlessly outside if open. Closed, it channels all this force in the centre of the complex, to be stored in the form of pure energy. What is the point? Jack hates himself for wondering, his mind for beginning to analyse the situation now the Doctor will not do it for him. He only wants to run.
The temporal energy must be the key, the only thing that can be collected here and nowhere else, barring the vortex. But for what purpose? Time travel? There are easier, more reliable ways to do that. Something about this seems off, almost staged.
Jack cannot keep a part of his mind from lingering on the thought. The rest of him is just running. Against time and against the reality he doesn’t want to catch up with him.
The gate can only be closed from the point where the Doctor had done it, and if whoever wanted it closed did so before Jack crossed to the other side, he would not even notice before getting there, and not make it back in time before the storm came again. He’d die here like the Doctor, and whatever disaster they’ve come to prevent would happen.
Jack is thinking these thoughts, yet for the feelings that should accompany them he waits in vain.
The storm will not catch up with him before he reaches the gate. The day has only just started, and while the tube is long, he can run until he drops dead, if he has to, and then get up to do it again.
There is a speck of colour in front of him. Jack slows down. When he reaches the spot, he tries a full stop, and his own momentum nearly lets him stumble into the abyss.
The fluorescent substances in the walls have been preserved enough for the tunnel to be brighter inside than the world outside, under the stormy sky, will ever be again. Against the faint white glow, the spot seems black from the distance, but now he’s close, Jack can see it’s dark red: a smear of blood inside this tube where anything organic has been turned to dust.
Jack’s heart is racing, and not from the running.
It’s beneath the path, not quite a metre - close enough for Jack to reach it, draw his fingers across. Blood, indeed, already mostly dry. Left, perhaps, by something living hitting the wall at great speed…
Jack can see the ground of the tube far beneath him. There is no dark corpse lying there, in fact there’s nothing as far as he can see. The sensible part of his mind tells him not to hang all his hopes on a spot of spilled blood.
But it’s all I have, he screams inside. Suddenly there’s something to keep him going beside blind necessity, though it leads him in the wrong direction. Instead of running single-mindedly towards his destination, Jack keeps looking for signs, traces, everywhere and anywhere. It slows him down.
Maybe there are beings even a time storm cannot touch. The Doctor doesn’t age, so he cannot turn to dust. It leaves the force of the wind; strong enough to take him away faster than Jack’s eyes could follow, surely faster than anyone, even a Time Lord, could survive. Jack thinks of the smear of blood. He thinks of regeneration and keeps looking, keeps wasting time.
He doesn’t find anything else.
-
The sense of motion is gone.
“So, is he a time traveller?”
“If he came with him, he ought to be.”
“There is enough temporal energy for him to have been born in the bloody time vortex.” He hasn’t heard this voice before.
“Since he’s been in the temporal storm, he has to be soaked in the stuff anyway.” The very first voice, annoyed.
“Since he’s been in the temporal storm, he should be dust, Ole.” Impatience meets irritation. “The vortex particles could explain it, though.”
“You mean, they protected him? Like a shield?”
“Nonsense. But no human could collect this much, even if they spend every minute of their life in the vortex. So, this is not a human.”
“Plants aren’t human either, and they get turned to dust anyway.” They’re human then. It’s not a surprise. They sound human, and they speak a language based on English, Chinese and Spanish typical for the fifth and sixth millennia on Earth.
The second voice is heard again: “I could have told you he’s not human from the scan I have here. His body is pretty ruined, but two hearts are rather rare for humans.” It’s difficult to relate their words to him. He listens with vague, academic interest.
Ole says, “At least the vortex stuff should make it easy to determine his original timeframe. Antony?”
Antony is silent for a minute.
-
The gate is huge. Jack knows that it stretches across the entire diameter of the tube, but seeing it for the first time makes him realise how big the tube really is.
There was no sign of the Doctor anywhere. He’s gone, and Jack doesn’t know where, only that he must be dead.
Where the tube is grounded is coming closer, because the path has lowered steadily over the last two miles. Just a hundred metres before the gate Jack reaches the bottom, and just when he reaches the bottom, the gate begins to close.
He’s wasted too much time looking for a dead man, and now he’s about to throw away what the Doctor gave his life for. Mobilizing his last reserves, Jack runs.
Since the gates are so very large, they move slowly. Jack makes it, just in time, nearly getting his foot smashed between the giant plates as he throws himself forward to roll over the even ground. There is no dirt here, he observes. Dirt doesn’t stand a chance.
It’s odd that there should be wind, this far down, but he can feel it in his sweat-dampened hair while he’s lying, panting, on the ground. The breeze sings softly as it runs through the grate that fills the door, meant to filter out anything brought by the wind before the wind was released back over the city, decades ago.
It has closed, so someone knows it had been opened and is after him now, was trying to keep him from getting in. Behind him, Jack hears the screams of metal as the second gate closes as well. This is the dangerous one because it stops the storm. The first gate the Doctor only opened to let Jack get through. Now it only closed to keep him out.
Around him nothing but blank walls. Jack has no map of this place, realises how much he depends on the Doctor telling him what to do.
The walls are blank - that leaves one place for his destination to be. Jack rolls onto his back, and the ceiling is very far above him.
The hatch is there, almost invisible between the antennas and wires, or rather the remains left by the storm. They were resilient, but won’t last longer than the rest of the complex.
The question of how to get up there is answered by the narrow ladder in the wall. It’s a long, uncomfortable way up - Jack doesn’t know how technically advanced the people of this world were, but judging from the height of their buildings, he wouldn’t put it past them to have developed antigravity tools. The ladder is meant as a precaution, never meant to be used regularly. Perhaps he’ll be the first one to ever climb it. It’s hardly an honour.
-
“No original time.” It’s not a question, just a repetition of the words. Then silence, finally followed by a sense of something moving nearby. Suddenly he wonders if he’s still breathing. It’s so hard to tell.
“Just like him,” the same voice says, much closer now, “to team up with a freaking elemental.”
A hand touches his cheek, softly but without gentleness, turning his face. He doesn’t try to open his eyes. “He’s icy cold. Are you sure he’s still alive?”
His body is preserving energy, he observes distantly and without real interest. An automatic process to keep him alive in a state that would require a regeneration if it were possible. Falling off a radio tower didn’t hurt this much. Why doesn’t he regenerate? He wonders and eventually blames the time storm and all those additional vortex particles his body doesn’t know how to handle.
“He’s breathing.” A pause. “Sometimes.” Another pause. “The gate is closed again.”
“Good. Did he make it?”
“I don’t know.” The voice of Antony sounds vaguely worried now. “Yes, he did. Do you think he’ll be on time?”
“If he wasn’t able to, we wouldn’t have bothered luring him here, would we? Ole, go and make sure he doesn’t succeed. It has to be this planet, and this is our last chance.”
This all sounds worse than he’d thought.
-
It all sounded very simple when the Doctor explained it: there is a tunnel with a gate at the end, and when the gate is closed, the energy of the storm is filtered and stored in the great batteries that are too far from the tube to be destroyed by the time storm’s power. They’re new; someone has replaced the old ones with batteries able to store vortex energy, but for what purpose even the Doctor has not been able to tell. He would have wanted to find out what exactly they were here to stop. Jack isn’t thinking of that when he climbs up the narrow ladder, focusing on the task at hand with determination.
They arrived too late - some energy has already been stored. They’d have to know what their opponents are planning to estimate if they have enough or need all the energy they can get before the channel is completely worn away. Jack can’t take any risks. He climbs on, his legs hanging freely for the last few metres as he pulls himself toward the hatch. Whoever constructed this ladder didn’t expect to ever have to use it themselves, obviously.
Once he has reaches the hatch, he hangs in the air with one hand taking all his weight, because he needs the other one to use the sonic screwdriver.
He should have suspected something when the Doctor gave him the tool. He should have known.
If he let go, fifty metres of fall wait for him. It would probably kill him instantly if he turns right, but it would cost him precious time to climb back up. Someone is after him, and he has to be faster than them.
And somewhere, no more than two hours away, the storm is coming closer. Jack doubts that even he would come back from being turned to dust.
Still he has to waste a minute lying on the ground breathing hard after he mobilised his last reserves to pull himself through the opening. He isn’t as fit as he could be, and this is not a good moment to realise that he needs to work out more.
A narrow tunnel leads on, meant for maintenance in case of an emergency, once again not meant to be frequented by anything larger than a middle-sized dog. Jack painfully bumps against the walls and pipes more than once, but in the end makes it to his final destination before ten minutes have passed.
The batteries loom above him: large towers of a material that looks like steel and isn’t. A set of controls at the bottom tells Jack they are half-full, after harvesting the storm only once. If his unknown opponents had succeeded in getting the one the Doctor robbed them off by opening the gates in the last second, it would already have been too late.
Now all Jack has to do, before he can start hunting down the fools responsible for all this, is discharge the batteries so the energy will be lost without hope of ever regaining it.
The Doctor and he have followed the traces of the culprits all across the galaxy, ever since the Polanii of the Defrax federation called for the Doctor’s help when the converter at the heart of their flux-shield generator was stolen. Not only is the item crucial for the survival of this species the Doctor appears to be close to, it also told them there was something sinister going on that could endanger the whole of creation. The discovery of the harvesting of the time storm only confirmed their suspicions.
“The flux-converter would be a useful tool for the creation of paradoxes, if the right environment was available,” the Doctor told Jack when they were running out of the TARDIS. “I’ll explain how it works later.” And now he’s dead (presumably, a desperately stubborn part of Jack insists), leaving Jack to figure it out all on his own.
The green button there will discharge the batteries. That much at least is obvious.
He can feel the energy prickling on his skin, like fingers of the storm licking at his body even here. But what started as a soft tickle quickly ran deeper as he hurried through the maintenance corridor, and now it feels like his bones are vibrating and singing under the constant battering from foreign power.
Jack knows this feeling. He’s felt it before, on a planet at the end of the universe, when he was being showered by radiation that turned all organic material to dust within seconds. It gets stronger the closer he gets to the batteries that are emitting some kind of radiation strong enough to kill anyone nearing them without protection. Whether it has anything to do with their charge, Jack cannot tell - the scientific details have never been his strong point.
The Doctor would be able to tell him, because he’s known what to expect. “It has to be you.” Jack curses him as he puts his aching hand to the button. The Doctor allowed himself to be killed because Jack had to survive simply for the pushing of this button, and of course he hadn’t told Jack, because Jack, had he known, would have stopped him. No bloody button, no matter how many universes it saved, was worth the Doctor’s life.
Simple protective gear would have enabled the Time Lord to survive here and press each and any buttons he came across himself. Jack could have opened the gate then before being turned to dust or whatever it was he’ll eventually end up as, and all would be well. Jack even knows that there was equipment of that kind in the TARDIS that is standing in the wasteland below. But there was no time to go back and get it.
When he realises that having this gear would have changed nothing, his emotions finally catch up with him. The Doctor wouldn’t have let Jack die in his place, and Jack still wouldn’t have suspected anything until it was too late.
If he gave in now he’d sink to the floor and scream until his throat was raw. Later. Later, when he has time for it, when he is back inside the TARDIS to witness its passing and it all becomes real. Not yet. He has work to do.
Jack presses the button.
-
Footsteps and someone leaves. The door opens with a soft hiss and lets in a faint breath of air that runs over his body like a lover’s caress. Someone snorts nearby, in irritation, while the wind is whispering around the corners and dies down. They can’t hear it. They can’t find the pattern, while for him everything falls into place.
Suddenly deprived of oxygen, his body draws in a deep breath without his permission, arching in new agony when broken ribs shift around his lungs. His eyes open, just a crack, allowing him to finally see the face of the man leaning over him.
“Hello, little elemental.” The man smiles. “It doesn’t look like you’ll live for very much longer, but before you go, I would appreciate it if you answered a few questions.”
Taking in what he can make out of his environment and combining it with what he deducted from their conversations, he thinks that that would be a very stupid thing to do.
-
Nothing happens.
Jack stares at the button and then presses it again. He doesn’t know where exactly all the stored up energy is going to be released, but it’s not like there’s anything on the planet left to be killed, and if it should all fall on his head and end his existence, that’s fine with him. Right now, everything’s fine with him, because deep down inside he knows there is no hope for the Doctor to be still alive. All he needs is the final proof of the dying TARDIS.
Theoretically the energy could be discharged into the air without him noticing, but it’s unlikely and would only be an option to be considered if Jack had to assume that the readings on the console were lying to him. Assuming they aren’t, nothing whatsoever is happening right now.
After a second Jack finds the problem: giant batteries like this don’t usually discharge simply on the pressing of a single button anyone could lean on by accident. There’s a keypad beside it, for the entering of a code.
With Arabian numbers. Jack blames exhaustion and suppressed grief on the fact that he failed to notice so far. In the end it doesn’t even surprise him. Humans. So what?
For the first time he spares a thought for the size of the batteries and the vessel that must have brought them here. It must be enormous as well, assuming no one pulled these out of dimensionally transcendent pockets. A ship that large they wouldn’t have overlooked, especially since the people in question had no reason to hide it after they installed this, unless…
… unless they expected to be followed from the beginning.
Fighting the sudden feeling of being watched, Jack pulls out the sonic screwdriver again and aims it at the keypad. First things first. The code unravels within seconds of the little tool’s humming.
The button begins to glow faintly. Jack reaches for it without allowing his mind time to think.
Just before he touches it, a voice behind him says, “Freeze!”
Jack doesn’t. He whirls around, instinctively reaching for the weapon he doesn’t carry.
The man standing behind him is wearing a tight fitting dark blue suit and a grin on his face. “I always wanted to say that,” he confesses.
Only on second look does Jack see the faint shimmer of a force field surrounding the man’s familiar form, protecting him from the deadly radiation. The weapon pointed at his chest he sees at once.
He should just turn around and press the bloody button. If it kills the two of them, all the better.
“Before you do anything rash, you should listen to what I have to say.” The grin is vanishing from the guy’s face, but he still looks far too relaxed for Jack’s liking. “Also, a word of greeting for an old friend would be nice as well.”
“James,” Jack acknowledges his presence. “I should have known. This has the stink of the time agency all over.”
“It’s Ole now,” the man corrects him. “We got away from the boring old J, though I hear you remained faithful to it. Funny that.” He chuckles. “Anyway, you will find what we are doing here couldn’t be further from the agency’s ways.”
Jack can’t help it: “We?”
“Me and two others. The agency is gone.”
“I heard. Can’t say I’m grieving for it.”
“Yes, it was kind of useless. Did more wrong than right in the end.” James, or Ole, shrugs in a way that fails to appear unconcerned. “But the possibilities - the possibilities we had and were not allowed to use! Now the agency is gone there’s nothing stopping us anymore. We can finally be what we are supposed to be.”
“And that would be what? Gods?” Jack snarls. “You haven’t gotten much past paperback novel level in your ambitions so far.”
“Neither have your replies,” Ole says unimpressed, but with less weight to his words. “The point remains: the agency, while having good intentions in the beginning at least, failed. We’re going to put things right. And from all we hear about your work on Earth, I believe you will like what we’re going to do. At least listen to me before you push any buttons.”
Jack pushes the button. Even if they die now, even if the entire planet blows up, the look on Ole’s face is worth it.
With disappointment but without much surprise he acknowledges the fact that once again nothing happened.
“Ah, well.” Ole pulls himself together. “We disabled it. From the base, you know. Just in case.” Judging from his reaction just now he hasn’t been entirely certain about that.
Jack folds his arms before his chest and leans against the console. “I though about it. I think I have a few minutes to spare for you.”
“Too kind.” Ole glares at him, much of his carefree act gone. “But don’t you think we should go somewhere more comfortable for this? All this radiation must make you feel itchy.”
Right now he’s the only one making Jack feel itchy. “I’m feeling quite fine here, thanks for your concern.” The man shrugs, but Jack thinks that his protective force field looks ridiculously fragile, warming himself with the knowledge that he could disable it any moment with the sonic screwdriver.
“The others would like to speak to you,” Ole tries again.
“I can imagine,” Jack replies. “After all, you took so much trouble to lure me here.”
Oles doesn’t even deny it. “We could use someone with your abilities.”
“Someone with my immortality, you mean. I’m not interested.” The button was a nice shortcut, but with the sonic it shouldn’t be a problem to activate the console anyway. Jack doesn’t want to listen to this man or his friends, knowing they can’t be trusted. No matter what they tell him, he won’t believe it, and even if he did, even if they convinced him that they had turned into angels of mercy out to save the universe, he would still kill them, and enjoy watching them die.
Somehow, even using him and stealing his memory pales in the face of the fact that they killed the Doctor.
“Didn’t you agree to listen to me? At least allow me to satisfy the curiosity you must be feeling. Then you can still go away if you don’t like our plans.”
“My opinion of your plans is pretty unimportant considering that I don’t like you.” Jack’s voice is still calm, his hatred concealed. “Didn’t you consider that when you decided to recruit me? Also, your good intentions must be pretty thin if you think you need a gun to convince me.”
“Your have a reputation for being difficult. And for not liking time agents. Which is hypocritical, considering all the shit you were okay with when it happened to someone else.”
“I improved since then.”
“And yet you deny us the right to do the same.”
“You haven’t changed!” Jack can no longer hold back the sneer. “You killed my friend with your stupid plan, and I really, really don’t care what it is. I’m going to stop you.”
“No one forced your friend to get into that tunnel. It was an accident, and not our fault.”
“If you hadn’t come, it wouldn’t have happened.” Ole has a point, but Jack doesn’t care. “If you had approached us directly instead of leaving traces of impending disaster all over the galaxy. You knew where to find me, obviously. You could have come anytime, but you didn’t. And when my friend tells me you are up to no good, I believe him rather than you!”
“He was wrong,” Ole calmly tells him. “We’re going to save this planet.”
Jack lets this sink in.
“You’ll go back in time and stop its destruction? Why would you do that?”
Ole frowns at him. “Because billions of people died and we can save them. Isn’t that obvious?”
Jack can’t help it. He laughs. “And what’s in this for you?”
“A clear conscience.”
“No, I think you’re lying.” Jack snorts. “You didn’t cause this. Why would it bother your conscience?”
“Because we can prevent it from happening. If you can do that and don’t, it doesn’t make you any less guilty.”
“Yes…” Jack nods, thoughtfully. “That seems to make sense. It would sound really good, if I was a total idiot, or had never travelled in time before. As it is, I’m not and I have. So stop telling me bullshit and get to the point before I lose my patience and kill you.”
“You don’t have a weapon,” Ole helpfully points out. Jack waves the sonic at him.
“I have this. It can turn off your petty little protection within a second. And right now I think I’m going to use it to discharge these batteries. You’ve wasted enough of my time.” He turns around, intent on making true of his words. This is a waste of time, and only old and new hatred of these people has stopped him so far, along with the predicted curiosity. But no more of this, not before he has gone the last step to stopping them.
Seeing someone from the agency here has shaken him more than he realised at first. His mind is racing, in chaos, and he has to act before the reality of everything take over and stops him.
Out of the corner of his eye he sees Ole aim for him.
“If you know as much about me as you claim then you’ll know that your weapon doesn’t scare me.”
“But you’d drop dead anyway and I could steal your tool. Be sensible, Jack. Benj wants to talk to you.”
Jack is changing the setting on the screwdriver. “Who’s Benj?”
“Jonah. You should listen to him before you decide what to do next.”
Jonah. It’s getting better by the minute. Jack throws Ole a look over his shoulder to tell him he’d only like to see Jonah if the man’s head was impaled on a stick, and sees a holographic image unfold before him, projected by the good old time agency wrist device.
Indeed it’s Jonah looking at him in depressingly good quality, much better than what Jack’s device is able to produce. His old acquaintance smiles thinly, and Jack doesn’t care what he calls himself these days, he’s still a bastard. The change of name certainly didn’t improve his personality.
“Hello Jack,” Jonah says. “Long time no see. I hear you’re being difficult.”
Without doubt he has listened to every word they’ve said. “Seeing you doesn’t improve my mood.”
“I thought so.” Jonah chuckles and walks a few steps, which looks silly since the image doesn’t move at all. “I can offer a sight that might help, though.”
“I already told James here that I’m not remotely interested in anything you do.”
“But perhaps you’ll be interested in our company.” The image changes and Jack sees the Doctor, clear as if he was but a step away, lying on a table. His heart stops.
“We were so considerate to collect this for you,” Jonah says after realising that Jack is not going to speak anytime soon. “In return it would be kind if you handed over that tool and let Ole take you without having to kill you first.”
The Doctor looks dead. He’s white as paper, his clothes in tatters and flecked with blood, and Jack can’t touch him because he’s not here. But then the Doctor moves, ever so slightly, and Jack finally finds his voice.
“Or else?” He has to ask, as if there was any chance left of him not going.
He can’t see Jonah anymore, but hears the smile in his voice. “Then he is of no use to us, naturally.” And after a second, like an afterthought: “Except for the obvious, I mean.” His words are accompanied by his fingers appearing in the focus to trail down the Doctor’s cheek.
“If you touch him I’ll kill you!” Jack hisses, making Ole laugh beside him.
“And you compared us with paperback villains.”
Jonah is filling the holographic image again. “That would be inconvenient.” He smirks. “So you see it would be in your interest as well as mine that you come here very quickly.”
- tbc
April 29, 2009
Beta: nightrider101
Rating: PG-13 (R overall)
Warnings: somewhat dark
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Doctor (10), OMCs
Summary: The Doctor being a brave hero with no sense of self-preservation leads to Jack having to save the universe all on his own. Or so it seems.
Note: For Arithon, who won this story on the Support Stacie April Auction.
The noise is rising to an inferno so fast Jack can hardly grasp that it’s happening at all. It’s a distant, threatening buzz at first, a promise of inevitable disaster, and then there’s a storm going on behind the barrier, so loud that he can’t hear his own screams anymore, and in the blink of an eye, the Doctor is gone.
Jack can no longer hear himself screaming his name, but he feels the pain in his hands as he punches against the transparent wall that is keeping him safe, as if by breaking it he could somehow turn back time.
On the other side the storm still rages, invisible but for the panels and wires being torn out of the walls, to evaporate right before his eyes, so quickly Jack can’t even see it. The one thing still standing in the tunnel is the wheel, untouched by the destruction around, and in the middle a green light is glowing, mockingly. The gates are open. The Doctor has done it, in the very last second, before the storm took him away.
He was the faster runner. “It has to be you,” he said, and Jack wasted crucial seconds staring at his retreating back before he realised what those words meant. By the time he caught up with his friend, the Doctor had raised the barrier, and the storm was already far too close.
Through an aching throat Jack draws in a gulp of air, his body demanding its right to breathe. He hasn’t even realised he stopped, that his sobs were choking him, and has no memory of sinking to his knees. The Doctor is gone. It’s too huge to take in. Jack doesn’t know why he’s crying when it doesn’t even hurt.
When he gets back to his feet, he feels every year of his age. The idea of moving is distant and implausible, but the storm stops, gradually, and eventually the barrier falls away, far, far too late.
Jack stares at the spot where the Doctor had been standing in the last moment of his life. There is nothing left of him, not even dust. Nothing for Jack to keep. To hold on to.
To bury.
Time is racing against Jack. Someone wants the gates closed, and Jack has to make it through while they are still open. How far away they are he doesn’t know, only that he has to be out of the tunnel before the next storm comes.
His first steps into the giant, softly curved tube are slow, almost stumbling. After a moment, he starts to run.
-
There’s nothing beneath him. No ground, just air. A lot of air. Even in the darkness he knows that the earth is far away. His right arm swings freely in the wind.
For a long moment he doesn’t know what’s keeping him from falling. Then he tries to move and the pain that shoots through his body is paralyzing. He gasps for air and tastes blood, and his eyes remain stubbornly closed. But he can feel, now, that his chest is lying on something hard and narrow, and when he manages to locate his left leg in the sea of agony, he finds that its fall has also been stopped by something that refused to give way. The rest of him is hanging more or less freely. If it was crashing into whatever is holding him that has smashed his bones or if it happened before, he can’t tell, but he knows that if he falls down now, all the way to the distant ground, his state couldn’t possibly get much worse.
He hasn’t expected to be still alive. The wind stroking his hair is strangely comforting. Unable to move or even think, he sees no point in staying awake and doesn’t fight unconsciousness when it comes to take him once again.
-
There is a narrow path running along the side of the tunnel that slowly but steadily leads downwards. Twenty centimetres from Jack’s running feet the ground falls, so deeply he can’t see the bottom. The ceiling is ten metres above him, a curve in pale grey, with wires and debris even now falling out of the holes torn by the storm, and in some places the entire ceiling is torn away and Jack can see the sky, dark and stormy above him.
He imagines he can feel the force of time and raw power on his skin, though the storm is over and the barrier would not have fallen had there still been any risk. Still he shivers as he runs towards his goal and away from his thoughts simultaneously, until he comes to a spot where for several metres the wall has been torn open and he can run no more.
The sky looks stormy, but there is no wind howling through the wasted land outside. The air that touches Jack’s face is perfectly still and seems to have no temperature at all. It’s dead, like everything on this planet is dead.
The long tube of the tunnel is like an alien worm, its dirty white colour disturbing the strange harmony of black and grey significant for the corpse of the city. Skeletons of buildings once hundreds of metres high and proud create a skyline like a burned-down forest; once the dust moved by the latest storm has settled, this world will be like a picture again: no smell, no movement, no noise. Until the next storm.
The world feels desolate and empty; it transfers that feeling to Jack who stands in front of the gap, unable to turn away and run on. There’s nothing here worth the Doctor’s life.
The air moves, caressing his face like the brush of cautious fingers. In the stillness, the wind is so unexpected that even the soft breeze hits Jack like a punch, nearly causing him to stumble back and into the abyss behind him.
A second passes and it stops, leaving the world dead and still like before. It’s meaningless. Jack, suddenly unable to bear the sight, runs on.
The tunnel is old, a monument of a past he doesn’t know and doesn’t care about. Inside it’s older than on the outside: the walls have been built to last for millennia, and still they’re on the verge of collapse. What little technology is hidden behind the simple cover is laid bare, what is left of it will not last through the next storm.
The technology is not needed but for the opening and closing of the gates. The tunnel itself might make it through another two storms, but Jack doesn’t give it more than that. Each storm takes away more than the one before.
The power of the wind, terrible though it is, doesn’t tear it apart. It’s the time it carries with it: temporal particles in the air that corrode and decompose everything, so concentrated in this narrow place that it turns wood to earth within the blink of an eye, stone to sand, flesh to dust. It leaves nothing in its path.
What the tunnel has been build for originally Jack doesn’t know. The Doctor could have told him, like he has told him of the war that devastated this world, and the terrible weapons that purged it of anything living in an instant. Before, this place must have been a means of winning energy out of the elements: with both gates open, the wind is channelled through the narrow tube, running through it with terrifying force. Maybe this is how they powered their city, whoever has lived here before, though they didn’t have the storm to do it then, just wind.
Outside the tunnel the time storm isn’t as powerful: the skeleton of the city still stands, so even the corrosive effect of present turning to past only wears at it a little at a time, and this part of the city is protected by the cone that feeds the tunnel anyway. Still, every storm that runs over the land takes away a little more, once a day, every day.
But in the end even every storm is not the right expression. There is no next storm and no previous one, but the same storm over and over, following the sunrise along the planet, endlessly. It adds a sense of passing time to this world that truly makes its ruins seem eternal, not just a single moment captured in time, ready to pass any second. Not only is this a dead wasteland, but it was one, and will continue to be while the storm comes and passes and comes, relentlessly. If Jack were religious, this would be closest to his idea of hell.
And yet in its stillness it’s so serene, so comforting that Jack wants to cry. The peace of this place where no more evil can be done is crushing him.
It’s not right, of course. Evil still can be done on this world - it’s just the world no longer cares. It’s for everything else that they came here, for vague possibilities of disaster that might originate from here, nameless and distant. Jack wants to stop running because there is no point - this cosmos is no longer worth fighting for, and too far away for him to care, he wants to scream at the distant sky. Jack keeps running because it’s all he can do.
To the gate, the gate, the gate.
The true name of this world has been forgotten. The Doctor would have known, but Jack never thought of asking.
-
There is movement that isn’t wind. At first he thinks he’s falling; he believes this for a long time, until he accepts that the ground he’s waiting for isn’t going to come. Still, finding out what is happening to him requires concentration, and he is far too tired to think.
Something is touching him, but even this he only realises after a minute. Briefly he considers the benefits of opening his eyes, but when he tries they won’t even flutter, so he gives up. The touches are causing him to remember the pain he has forgotten in the darkness; he prefers the wind.
“He’s more dead than alive,” a voice states, close to his ear and painfully loud. He wants to tell it to be quiet. “You can imagine the force that smashed him into the ruins. There’s no use. Leave him.”
“There shouldn’t even have been anything left to be smashed, and I want to know how he came this far. Even his corpse can tell us that, but try to keep him alive for a while, in case there’s anything more interesting he can tell us.” He doesn’t like the voices, nor the words they’re using. Without really wanting to, he tries to figure out what language they’re speaking in. He understands it effortlessly, but that doesn’t really narrow it down.
-
Jack fears that there is enough of the technology still working to close the remaining gate one more time. The first one has been destroyed by whoever is making use of this complex now, and he keeps wishing it had been destroyed before, in the cataclysm that created this wasteland, so the ever present time storm could have worn down this corridor within days.
The second one, on the far end of the tube, will lead the wind harmlessly outside if open. Closed, it channels all this force in the centre of the complex, to be stored in the form of pure energy. What is the point? Jack hates himself for wondering, his mind for beginning to analyse the situation now the Doctor will not do it for him. He only wants to run.
The temporal energy must be the key, the only thing that can be collected here and nowhere else, barring the vortex. But for what purpose? Time travel? There are easier, more reliable ways to do that. Something about this seems off, almost staged.
Jack cannot keep a part of his mind from lingering on the thought. The rest of him is just running. Against time and against the reality he doesn’t want to catch up with him.
The gate can only be closed from the point where the Doctor had done it, and if whoever wanted it closed did so before Jack crossed to the other side, he would not even notice before getting there, and not make it back in time before the storm came again. He’d die here like the Doctor, and whatever disaster they’ve come to prevent would happen.
Jack is thinking these thoughts, yet for the feelings that should accompany them he waits in vain.
The storm will not catch up with him before he reaches the gate. The day has only just started, and while the tube is long, he can run until he drops dead, if he has to, and then get up to do it again.
There is a speck of colour in front of him. Jack slows down. When he reaches the spot, he tries a full stop, and his own momentum nearly lets him stumble into the abyss.
The fluorescent substances in the walls have been preserved enough for the tunnel to be brighter inside than the world outside, under the stormy sky, will ever be again. Against the faint white glow, the spot seems black from the distance, but now he’s close, Jack can see it’s dark red: a smear of blood inside this tube where anything organic has been turned to dust.
Jack’s heart is racing, and not from the running.
It’s beneath the path, not quite a metre - close enough for Jack to reach it, draw his fingers across. Blood, indeed, already mostly dry. Left, perhaps, by something living hitting the wall at great speed…
Jack can see the ground of the tube far beneath him. There is no dark corpse lying there, in fact there’s nothing as far as he can see. The sensible part of his mind tells him not to hang all his hopes on a spot of spilled blood.
But it’s all I have, he screams inside. Suddenly there’s something to keep him going beside blind necessity, though it leads him in the wrong direction. Instead of running single-mindedly towards his destination, Jack keeps looking for signs, traces, everywhere and anywhere. It slows him down.
Maybe there are beings even a time storm cannot touch. The Doctor doesn’t age, so he cannot turn to dust. It leaves the force of the wind; strong enough to take him away faster than Jack’s eyes could follow, surely faster than anyone, even a Time Lord, could survive. Jack thinks of the smear of blood. He thinks of regeneration and keeps looking, keeps wasting time.
He doesn’t find anything else.
-
The sense of motion is gone.
“So, is he a time traveller?”
“If he came with him, he ought to be.”
“There is enough temporal energy for him to have been born in the bloody time vortex.” He hasn’t heard this voice before.
“Since he’s been in the temporal storm, he has to be soaked in the stuff anyway.” The very first voice, annoyed.
“Since he’s been in the temporal storm, he should be dust, Ole.” Impatience meets irritation. “The vortex particles could explain it, though.”
“You mean, they protected him? Like a shield?”
“Nonsense. But no human could collect this much, even if they spend every minute of their life in the vortex. So, this is not a human.”
“Plants aren’t human either, and they get turned to dust anyway.” They’re human then. It’s not a surprise. They sound human, and they speak a language based on English, Chinese and Spanish typical for the fifth and sixth millennia on Earth.
The second voice is heard again: “I could have told you he’s not human from the scan I have here. His body is pretty ruined, but two hearts are rather rare for humans.” It’s difficult to relate their words to him. He listens with vague, academic interest.
Ole says, “At least the vortex stuff should make it easy to determine his original timeframe. Antony?”
Antony is silent for a minute.
-
The gate is huge. Jack knows that it stretches across the entire diameter of the tube, but seeing it for the first time makes him realise how big the tube really is.
There was no sign of the Doctor anywhere. He’s gone, and Jack doesn’t know where, only that he must be dead.
Where the tube is grounded is coming closer, because the path has lowered steadily over the last two miles. Just a hundred metres before the gate Jack reaches the bottom, and just when he reaches the bottom, the gate begins to close.
He’s wasted too much time looking for a dead man, and now he’s about to throw away what the Doctor gave his life for. Mobilizing his last reserves, Jack runs.
Since the gates are so very large, they move slowly. Jack makes it, just in time, nearly getting his foot smashed between the giant plates as he throws himself forward to roll over the even ground. There is no dirt here, he observes. Dirt doesn’t stand a chance.
It’s odd that there should be wind, this far down, but he can feel it in his sweat-dampened hair while he’s lying, panting, on the ground. The breeze sings softly as it runs through the grate that fills the door, meant to filter out anything brought by the wind before the wind was released back over the city, decades ago.
It has closed, so someone knows it had been opened and is after him now, was trying to keep him from getting in. Behind him, Jack hears the screams of metal as the second gate closes as well. This is the dangerous one because it stops the storm. The first gate the Doctor only opened to let Jack get through. Now it only closed to keep him out.
Around him nothing but blank walls. Jack has no map of this place, realises how much he depends on the Doctor telling him what to do.
The walls are blank - that leaves one place for his destination to be. Jack rolls onto his back, and the ceiling is very far above him.
The hatch is there, almost invisible between the antennas and wires, or rather the remains left by the storm. They were resilient, but won’t last longer than the rest of the complex.
The question of how to get up there is answered by the narrow ladder in the wall. It’s a long, uncomfortable way up - Jack doesn’t know how technically advanced the people of this world were, but judging from the height of their buildings, he wouldn’t put it past them to have developed antigravity tools. The ladder is meant as a precaution, never meant to be used regularly. Perhaps he’ll be the first one to ever climb it. It’s hardly an honour.
-
“No original time.” It’s not a question, just a repetition of the words. Then silence, finally followed by a sense of something moving nearby. Suddenly he wonders if he’s still breathing. It’s so hard to tell.
“Just like him,” the same voice says, much closer now, “to team up with a freaking elemental.”
A hand touches his cheek, softly but without gentleness, turning his face. He doesn’t try to open his eyes. “He’s icy cold. Are you sure he’s still alive?”
His body is preserving energy, he observes distantly and without real interest. An automatic process to keep him alive in a state that would require a regeneration if it were possible. Falling off a radio tower didn’t hurt this much. Why doesn’t he regenerate? He wonders and eventually blames the time storm and all those additional vortex particles his body doesn’t know how to handle.
“He’s breathing.” A pause. “Sometimes.” Another pause. “The gate is closed again.”
“Good. Did he make it?”
“I don’t know.” The voice of Antony sounds vaguely worried now. “Yes, he did. Do you think he’ll be on time?”
“If he wasn’t able to, we wouldn’t have bothered luring him here, would we? Ole, go and make sure he doesn’t succeed. It has to be this planet, and this is our last chance.”
This all sounds worse than he’d thought.
-
It all sounded very simple when the Doctor explained it: there is a tunnel with a gate at the end, and when the gate is closed, the energy of the storm is filtered and stored in the great batteries that are too far from the tube to be destroyed by the time storm’s power. They’re new; someone has replaced the old ones with batteries able to store vortex energy, but for what purpose even the Doctor has not been able to tell. He would have wanted to find out what exactly they were here to stop. Jack isn’t thinking of that when he climbs up the narrow ladder, focusing on the task at hand with determination.
They arrived too late - some energy has already been stored. They’d have to know what their opponents are planning to estimate if they have enough or need all the energy they can get before the channel is completely worn away. Jack can’t take any risks. He climbs on, his legs hanging freely for the last few metres as he pulls himself toward the hatch. Whoever constructed this ladder didn’t expect to ever have to use it themselves, obviously.
Once he has reaches the hatch, he hangs in the air with one hand taking all his weight, because he needs the other one to use the sonic screwdriver.
He should have suspected something when the Doctor gave him the tool. He should have known.
If he let go, fifty metres of fall wait for him. It would probably kill him instantly if he turns right, but it would cost him precious time to climb back up. Someone is after him, and he has to be faster than them.
And somewhere, no more than two hours away, the storm is coming closer. Jack doubts that even he would come back from being turned to dust.
Still he has to waste a minute lying on the ground breathing hard after he mobilised his last reserves to pull himself through the opening. He isn’t as fit as he could be, and this is not a good moment to realise that he needs to work out more.
A narrow tunnel leads on, meant for maintenance in case of an emergency, once again not meant to be frequented by anything larger than a middle-sized dog. Jack painfully bumps against the walls and pipes more than once, but in the end makes it to his final destination before ten minutes have passed.
The batteries loom above him: large towers of a material that looks like steel and isn’t. A set of controls at the bottom tells Jack they are half-full, after harvesting the storm only once. If his unknown opponents had succeeded in getting the one the Doctor robbed them off by opening the gates in the last second, it would already have been too late.
Now all Jack has to do, before he can start hunting down the fools responsible for all this, is discharge the batteries so the energy will be lost without hope of ever regaining it.
The Doctor and he have followed the traces of the culprits all across the galaxy, ever since the Polanii of the Defrax federation called for the Doctor’s help when the converter at the heart of their flux-shield generator was stolen. Not only is the item crucial for the survival of this species the Doctor appears to be close to, it also told them there was something sinister going on that could endanger the whole of creation. The discovery of the harvesting of the time storm only confirmed their suspicions.
“The flux-converter would be a useful tool for the creation of paradoxes, if the right environment was available,” the Doctor told Jack when they were running out of the TARDIS. “I’ll explain how it works later.” And now he’s dead (presumably, a desperately stubborn part of Jack insists), leaving Jack to figure it out all on his own.
The green button there will discharge the batteries. That much at least is obvious.
He can feel the energy prickling on his skin, like fingers of the storm licking at his body even here. But what started as a soft tickle quickly ran deeper as he hurried through the maintenance corridor, and now it feels like his bones are vibrating and singing under the constant battering from foreign power.
Jack knows this feeling. He’s felt it before, on a planet at the end of the universe, when he was being showered by radiation that turned all organic material to dust within seconds. It gets stronger the closer he gets to the batteries that are emitting some kind of radiation strong enough to kill anyone nearing them without protection. Whether it has anything to do with their charge, Jack cannot tell - the scientific details have never been his strong point.
The Doctor would be able to tell him, because he’s known what to expect. “It has to be you.” Jack curses him as he puts his aching hand to the button. The Doctor allowed himself to be killed because Jack had to survive simply for the pushing of this button, and of course he hadn’t told Jack, because Jack, had he known, would have stopped him. No bloody button, no matter how many universes it saved, was worth the Doctor’s life.
Simple protective gear would have enabled the Time Lord to survive here and press each and any buttons he came across himself. Jack could have opened the gate then before being turned to dust or whatever it was he’ll eventually end up as, and all would be well. Jack even knows that there was equipment of that kind in the TARDIS that is standing in the wasteland below. But there was no time to go back and get it.
When he realises that having this gear would have changed nothing, his emotions finally catch up with him. The Doctor wouldn’t have let Jack die in his place, and Jack still wouldn’t have suspected anything until it was too late.
If he gave in now he’d sink to the floor and scream until his throat was raw. Later. Later, when he has time for it, when he is back inside the TARDIS to witness its passing and it all becomes real. Not yet. He has work to do.
Jack presses the button.
-
Footsteps and someone leaves. The door opens with a soft hiss and lets in a faint breath of air that runs over his body like a lover’s caress. Someone snorts nearby, in irritation, while the wind is whispering around the corners and dies down. They can’t hear it. They can’t find the pattern, while for him everything falls into place.
Suddenly deprived of oxygen, his body draws in a deep breath without his permission, arching in new agony when broken ribs shift around his lungs. His eyes open, just a crack, allowing him to finally see the face of the man leaning over him.
“Hello, little elemental.” The man smiles. “It doesn’t look like you’ll live for very much longer, but before you go, I would appreciate it if you answered a few questions.”
Taking in what he can make out of his environment and combining it with what he deducted from their conversations, he thinks that that would be a very stupid thing to do.
-
Nothing happens.
Jack stares at the button and then presses it again. He doesn’t know where exactly all the stored up energy is going to be released, but it’s not like there’s anything on the planet left to be killed, and if it should all fall on his head and end his existence, that’s fine with him. Right now, everything’s fine with him, because deep down inside he knows there is no hope for the Doctor to be still alive. All he needs is the final proof of the dying TARDIS.
Theoretically the energy could be discharged into the air without him noticing, but it’s unlikely and would only be an option to be considered if Jack had to assume that the readings on the console were lying to him. Assuming they aren’t, nothing whatsoever is happening right now.
After a second Jack finds the problem: giant batteries like this don’t usually discharge simply on the pressing of a single button anyone could lean on by accident. There’s a keypad beside it, for the entering of a code.
With Arabian numbers. Jack blames exhaustion and suppressed grief on the fact that he failed to notice so far. In the end it doesn’t even surprise him. Humans. So what?
For the first time he spares a thought for the size of the batteries and the vessel that must have brought them here. It must be enormous as well, assuming no one pulled these out of dimensionally transcendent pockets. A ship that large they wouldn’t have overlooked, especially since the people in question had no reason to hide it after they installed this, unless…
… unless they expected to be followed from the beginning.
Fighting the sudden feeling of being watched, Jack pulls out the sonic screwdriver again and aims it at the keypad. First things first. The code unravels within seconds of the little tool’s humming.
The button begins to glow faintly. Jack reaches for it without allowing his mind time to think.
Just before he touches it, a voice behind him says, “Freeze!”
Jack doesn’t. He whirls around, instinctively reaching for the weapon he doesn’t carry.
The man standing behind him is wearing a tight fitting dark blue suit and a grin on his face. “I always wanted to say that,” he confesses.
Only on second look does Jack see the faint shimmer of a force field surrounding the man’s familiar form, protecting him from the deadly radiation. The weapon pointed at his chest he sees at once.
He should just turn around and press the bloody button. If it kills the two of them, all the better.
“Before you do anything rash, you should listen to what I have to say.” The grin is vanishing from the guy’s face, but he still looks far too relaxed for Jack’s liking. “Also, a word of greeting for an old friend would be nice as well.”
“James,” Jack acknowledges his presence. “I should have known. This has the stink of the time agency all over.”
“It’s Ole now,” the man corrects him. “We got away from the boring old J, though I hear you remained faithful to it. Funny that.” He chuckles. “Anyway, you will find what we are doing here couldn’t be further from the agency’s ways.”
Jack can’t help it: “We?”
“Me and two others. The agency is gone.”
“I heard. Can’t say I’m grieving for it.”
“Yes, it was kind of useless. Did more wrong than right in the end.” James, or Ole, shrugs in a way that fails to appear unconcerned. “But the possibilities - the possibilities we had and were not allowed to use! Now the agency is gone there’s nothing stopping us anymore. We can finally be what we are supposed to be.”
“And that would be what? Gods?” Jack snarls. “You haven’t gotten much past paperback novel level in your ambitions so far.”
“Neither have your replies,” Ole says unimpressed, but with less weight to his words. “The point remains: the agency, while having good intentions in the beginning at least, failed. We’re going to put things right. And from all we hear about your work on Earth, I believe you will like what we’re going to do. At least listen to me before you push any buttons.”
Jack pushes the button. Even if they die now, even if the entire planet blows up, the look on Ole’s face is worth it.
With disappointment but without much surprise he acknowledges the fact that once again nothing happened.
“Ah, well.” Ole pulls himself together. “We disabled it. From the base, you know. Just in case.” Judging from his reaction just now he hasn’t been entirely certain about that.
Jack folds his arms before his chest and leans against the console. “I though about it. I think I have a few minutes to spare for you.”
“Too kind.” Ole glares at him, much of his carefree act gone. “But don’t you think we should go somewhere more comfortable for this? All this radiation must make you feel itchy.”
Right now he’s the only one making Jack feel itchy. “I’m feeling quite fine here, thanks for your concern.” The man shrugs, but Jack thinks that his protective force field looks ridiculously fragile, warming himself with the knowledge that he could disable it any moment with the sonic screwdriver.
“The others would like to speak to you,” Ole tries again.
“I can imagine,” Jack replies. “After all, you took so much trouble to lure me here.”
Oles doesn’t even deny it. “We could use someone with your abilities.”
“Someone with my immortality, you mean. I’m not interested.” The button was a nice shortcut, but with the sonic it shouldn’t be a problem to activate the console anyway. Jack doesn’t want to listen to this man or his friends, knowing they can’t be trusted. No matter what they tell him, he won’t believe it, and even if he did, even if they convinced him that they had turned into angels of mercy out to save the universe, he would still kill them, and enjoy watching them die.
Somehow, even using him and stealing his memory pales in the face of the fact that they killed the Doctor.
“Didn’t you agree to listen to me? At least allow me to satisfy the curiosity you must be feeling. Then you can still go away if you don’t like our plans.”
“My opinion of your plans is pretty unimportant considering that I don’t like you.” Jack’s voice is still calm, his hatred concealed. “Didn’t you consider that when you decided to recruit me? Also, your good intentions must be pretty thin if you think you need a gun to convince me.”
“Your have a reputation for being difficult. And for not liking time agents. Which is hypocritical, considering all the shit you were okay with when it happened to someone else.”
“I improved since then.”
“And yet you deny us the right to do the same.”
“You haven’t changed!” Jack can no longer hold back the sneer. “You killed my friend with your stupid plan, and I really, really don’t care what it is. I’m going to stop you.”
“No one forced your friend to get into that tunnel. It was an accident, and not our fault.”
“If you hadn’t come, it wouldn’t have happened.” Ole has a point, but Jack doesn’t care. “If you had approached us directly instead of leaving traces of impending disaster all over the galaxy. You knew where to find me, obviously. You could have come anytime, but you didn’t. And when my friend tells me you are up to no good, I believe him rather than you!”
“He was wrong,” Ole calmly tells him. “We’re going to save this planet.”
Jack lets this sink in.
“You’ll go back in time and stop its destruction? Why would you do that?”
Ole frowns at him. “Because billions of people died and we can save them. Isn’t that obvious?”
Jack can’t help it. He laughs. “And what’s in this for you?”
“A clear conscience.”
“No, I think you’re lying.” Jack snorts. “You didn’t cause this. Why would it bother your conscience?”
“Because we can prevent it from happening. If you can do that and don’t, it doesn’t make you any less guilty.”
“Yes…” Jack nods, thoughtfully. “That seems to make sense. It would sound really good, if I was a total idiot, or had never travelled in time before. As it is, I’m not and I have. So stop telling me bullshit and get to the point before I lose my patience and kill you.”
“You don’t have a weapon,” Ole helpfully points out. Jack waves the sonic at him.
“I have this. It can turn off your petty little protection within a second. And right now I think I’m going to use it to discharge these batteries. You’ve wasted enough of my time.” He turns around, intent on making true of his words. This is a waste of time, and only old and new hatred of these people has stopped him so far, along with the predicted curiosity. But no more of this, not before he has gone the last step to stopping them.
Seeing someone from the agency here has shaken him more than he realised at first. His mind is racing, in chaos, and he has to act before the reality of everything take over and stops him.
Out of the corner of his eye he sees Ole aim for him.
“If you know as much about me as you claim then you’ll know that your weapon doesn’t scare me.”
“But you’d drop dead anyway and I could steal your tool. Be sensible, Jack. Benj wants to talk to you.”
Jack is changing the setting on the screwdriver. “Who’s Benj?”
“Jonah. You should listen to him before you decide what to do next.”
Jonah. It’s getting better by the minute. Jack throws Ole a look over his shoulder to tell him he’d only like to see Jonah if the man’s head was impaled on a stick, and sees a holographic image unfold before him, projected by the good old time agency wrist device.
Indeed it’s Jonah looking at him in depressingly good quality, much better than what Jack’s device is able to produce. His old acquaintance smiles thinly, and Jack doesn’t care what he calls himself these days, he’s still a bastard. The change of name certainly didn’t improve his personality.
“Hello Jack,” Jonah says. “Long time no see. I hear you’re being difficult.”
Without doubt he has listened to every word they’ve said. “Seeing you doesn’t improve my mood.”
“I thought so.” Jonah chuckles and walks a few steps, which looks silly since the image doesn’t move at all. “I can offer a sight that might help, though.”
“I already told James here that I’m not remotely interested in anything you do.”
“But perhaps you’ll be interested in our company.” The image changes and Jack sees the Doctor, clear as if he was but a step away, lying on a table. His heart stops.
“We were so considerate to collect this for you,” Jonah says after realising that Jack is not going to speak anytime soon. “In return it would be kind if you handed over that tool and let Ole take you without having to kill you first.”
The Doctor looks dead. He’s white as paper, his clothes in tatters and flecked with blood, and Jack can’t touch him because he’s not here. But then the Doctor moves, ever so slightly, and Jack finally finds his voice.
“Or else?” He has to ask, as if there was any chance left of him not going.
He can’t see Jonah anymore, but hears the smile in his voice. “Then he is of no use to us, naturally.” And after a second, like an afterthought: “Except for the obvious, I mean.” His words are accompanied by his fingers appearing in the focus to trail down the Doctor’s cheek.
“If you touch him I’ll kill you!” Jack hisses, making Ole laugh beside him.
“And you compared us with paperback villains.”
Jonah is filling the holographic image again. “That would be inconvenient.” He smirks. “So you see it would be in your interest as well as mine that you come here very quickly.”
- tbc
April 29, 2009