fic: children of time (4/14)
Title: Children of Time: Gone
Characters: Donna Noble, Martha Jones, Sarah Jane Smith, Jack Harkness and the Doctor.
Rating: PG
Summary: Following on from Journey's End...
Index Post
Gone
Donna’s beginning to think that she should have been a reporter. She’s got the talking to people and getting them to open up thing down pat, and it’s a lot easier than she ever imagined. She just has to be a little less loud, a little less brusque and really listen to what they’re saying, and it’s not even as though she’s doing it deliberately right now, not when she’s desperate for answers and half-terrified that she’ll find them.
Tracking down the right Sarah Jane Smith is easy enough: a quick Internet search and she finds plenty of photos of the woman and discovers she’d been a bit of a hot-shot reporter a few decades back. Since she still does the odd bit of free-lancing now, Donna calls around the papers she’s recently been published in and finally manages to persuade one editor into giving her an address.
The house on Bannerman Road appears to be empty. Donna stands with her finger on the doorbell for a good five minutes before she gives the door a frustrated kick and is forced to conclude it isn’t likely there’s anyone at home. She walks all round the outside of the house, looking for another way in, just to make sure. The windows are all pretty secure and she doesn’t think she could jimmy them open, but one good throw with a nice heavy rock from the garden...
...Donna decides she isn’t quite ready to enter into the murky criminal underworld of breaking and entering.
She asks around the neighbours instead, but doesn’t find out anything other than most of them think Ms Smith’s a bit on the eccentric side. It should be frustrating, looking for answers like this - following a trail and then hitting a dead-end - but Donna finds it all rather exhilarating. It’s a challenge, one that she’s becoming ever more confident she can match and she’s a long way from giving up yet.
She knows quite a bit about Sarah Jane Smith from her research, and she’s been trying to catch up on the news, and she knows that Sarah Jane Smith used to work for UNIT and that UNIT are heavily involved in... in... She blinks and wonders when she started to think the whole alien invasion thing wasn’t quite so silly after all. Ood, Racnoss, Daleks.
For a top secret organisation, UNIT aren’t very good at hiding the location of their HQs. Still, as she’s driving up to their London one, it’s the first time since she decided she wanted some answers that Donna actually feels nervous. These people aren’t going to be impressed by her shouting at them, and they carry guns. Soldiers or not, she really doesn’t like guns. Especially when they’re being carried by people she’s shouting at.
She drives up to the front gate and is halted by the sentry. She smiles as he approaches, and realises she’s got about ten seconds to think of a way to talk her way inside.
-
Mickey leans back in his seat, feet up on the desk. In one hand he holds a large slice of pizza slathering with mozzarella and pepperoni. “Want to know the worst thing about that alternate universe?” he asks Gwen, who’s sitting next to him, chewing on a slice of margarita. “They never got the pizza quite right.”
“What?”she says, grabbing an empty box from the top of the pile and tossing it towards the bin. She almost doesn’t miss. “It wasn’t a dough base with tomatoes and cheese and whatever else you liked on top?”
“Nah, they got that bit okay, but it was the taste. They never got the taste of pizza quite right. Never found out what the problem was. Course, now I can’t find out, it’s gonna drive me nuts trying to figure it out.”
“Yeah,” says Gwen, smirking round the edge of her slice. “That’s what I’d be worried about too if I suddenly moved from a parallel universe back to my own one, what the weird taste of the pizza really was.”
Mickey fixes her with a pointed look. “You’re mocking me aren’t you?”
“Course I’m not,” says Gwen, eyes wide.
“I can tell, Gwen Cooper, you are mocking me, and one day when you’re stuck in a parallel universe and eating pizza that doesn’t taste quite right, I will be sitting right here and laughing.” He takes a bite, dragging half the cheese off the slice in one go and chews firmly.
“Pepperoni pizza, was it?”
“Yeah,” says Mickey, his mouth still half full.
“Well, did you check what went into their pepperoni? I mean maybe it wasn’t pork or beef at all, maybe it was guinea pigs.”
Mickey stares at her. “That’s gross,” he says.
“No, it’s not. They eat them all the time in Peru.”
Mickey groans, and leans back in his seat, stares up at the distant ceiling. “I’m so glad you didn’t go home tonight.”
Gwen grins. “And I love you too, Mickey.”
“Well, I am very lovable,” he says, nodding. The computer bleeps, and he sits up, fingers dancing over his keyboard, but after a moment he sighs, disinterested.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing much I don’t think,” says Mickey, with a shake of his head, checking again anyway. “It’s been coming up all day, some sort of intermittent fault you’ve got going on.”
“We’ve got going on,” Gwen corrects. “And you’re the one who’s supposed to be able to fix this stuff.”
“And I will, after my pizza and after I figure out what’s going wrong.”
“So what’s the problem?” she asks.
“It’s an energy spike the scanners are picking up about once every twenty minutes.”
“And you think this is a fault because...?”
“Cause it’s never in the same place twice and the locations see to be coming up randomly. Look.” He calls up a map of Great Britain on the screen in front of them, hits a key and several dozen little white lights spring up, spread over the entire country, but concentrated on London and Cardiff.
“Looks pretty interested in us,” says Gwen.
“Yeah, but it’s gotta be an error, there’s no connection between the points and your scanners aren’t picking up a point of origin for the spike.”
“Can I see it close up? Get it on a detailed map of Cardiff, show exactly where they ‘re turning up?”
“Sure,” says Mickey, punches a couple of keys in his keyboard. He looks up at the enlarged map of Cardiff and frowns. “Heh, isn’t that us?” He points to a cluster of the lights, sitting near the Millennium Centre.
“Not quite,” says Gwen. “It is just outside though. How about London? You not looked at it properly either?”
“Heh, I thought it was an error, okay? I mean after Jack getting all bitchy about Cornwall...”
Gwen nudges his shoulder. “Don’t get huffy, new boy.” She looks at the London map. “Right, you’re going to have to zoom in some more, London’s a bit bigger than Cardiff, you know.”
“Yeah, I had noticed that actually,” he says.
“Don’t you imply bad things about my city, Mickey Smith.”
“I didn’t say anything!” he objects.
“I heard it in your voice, mister.”
Mickey opens his mouth to retort but is interrupted by the sound of the Hub door opening, to reveal Ianto. “I have coffee,” he says, coming over to join them, careful not to drop any of his paper bags, “I have doughnuts, I do not have bagels.”
“What would we want bagels for?” asks Mickey.
“Carbohydrates,” says Ianto, handing out the coffee. He stares at the pizza boxes for a long moment, then says, “More carbohydrates, anyway.” He nods at the map on display. “What’s this then?”
Mickey punches a key and jumps out to the full map. Ianto leans over his shoulder and frowns. “UNIT HQs?” he asks.
Mickey twists round in his seat to look at him. “What d’you mean?”
“Well, a lot of those places in the home counties are, or used to be, used as UNIT HQs.”
“You sure?” asks Gwen and takes a bite of a glazed raspberry doughnut. The jam squirts out, hitting the edge of keyboard and she winces at the deadly look she gets from Mickey.
“Of course I am,” Ianto says, mildly irritated at having his knowledge doubted.
“The Doctor used to work for UNIT, didn’t he?” says Mickey. He switches back to the London map. “Yeah, and those lights there, that’s the Powell Estate, he used to turn up there all the time. That’s the connection. This thing’s looking for him. All these places, the Doctor’s been to all these places, and this thing’s hunting him down.”
Gwen and Ianto exchanged a look. “But he’s left Earth, right?” says Gwen. “He should be okay.”
“He’ll be back though, this place is pretty much his favourite planet, and we’ve no idea what that thing will do when it finds him,” says Mickey. “And I wouldn’t mind knowing who’s looking for him, and why.”
“Right,” says Gwen, licking the sugar from her fingers. “I’ll call Jack; see if he’s got any idea about this.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Ianto calls after her.
-
“Sarah, I’m in London.”
“You’ve still got access to Project Indigo, haven’t you? The hospitals are already overwhelmed across the country, a lot of medical resources were redistributed towards the major cities and I can’t imagine they can spare an ambulance to come out for this poor man, besides there’s something wrong with him that I don’t think the average doctor is going to be able to deal with.”
“Like what?” asks Martha.
“I’m no expert on alien infections, but I’ve seen a few in my time and this, I’m pretty sure, falls into that category,” Sarah tells her.
Martha pauses, knowing she really doesn’t have a choice, not when she might be able to help. “That isn’t something I’ve got a lot of experience in either,” she admits.
“Still more than most though,” insists Sarah.
“Is he stable?”
“He’s having trouble breathing, but his pulse is strong and steady. He doesn’t seem aware of me though and I think he’s in a lot of pain.”
Martha nods to herself, and says, “Right, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Don’t move him unless you have to, and keep your phone on so I’ve got something to home in on with the teleport. If there’s any change in his condition, call me.” She flips her phone closed and looks at Jack. “You think you can take care of Donna while I’m gone?”
He raises his eyebrows. “Take care of meaning...?”
Martha gives him a stern look. “Meaning check in on her once in a while and make sure she’s alright. And specifically not meaning taking her out and getting her pissed, sleeping with her or having her brought in.”
He jumps to his feet, salutes her. “Understood, ma’am.”
She resists the urge to stick her tongue out at him, and says, “It’d better be.”
They walk to the exit together and emerge into the afternoon sun and immediately hear someone shouting very, very loudly. They look over to the main gate to see a terrified looking sentry being faced down by an angry Donna Noble.
“Uh-oh,” murmurs Jack. “What do we do?”
“How come she’s here? I thought she couldn’t remember anything?” says Martha.
Jack shrugs. “Doesn’t mean she’s still not a smart girl.”
“Come on, we’d better intervene before she gets herself shot.”
“I don’t think she’s the one in trouble,” says Jack as they run across the car park.
“Donna!” shouts Martha. “Private, it’s okay, she’s a friend!”
The private steps back, throwing a salute at Martha. Donna looks up, takes a breath.
Donna disappears.
Martha blinks, stops. She reaches for Jack. “Please tell me that you saw that too.”
“Yup,” says Jack, staring at the empty space where, only a second ago, Donna Noble was standing. One moment wholly and completely there, the next moment, gone.
“What the hell just happened?” asks Martha, looking up at him and hoping to see something other than confusion on his face.
He shakes his head. “You got me,” he says. “Private, what happened?”
“I don’t know, sir, ma’am.” He looks entirely bewildered. “She drove up and when I asked for her pass, she started going on about Sarah Jane Smith and how it was very important that she speak to her immediately. I told her that she needed a pass to get in, but she wouldn’t listen.”
“But she didn’t seem at all unusual?” asks Martha. “I mean, she seemed perfectly human?”
“Yes, ma’am. Nothing odd going on there at all.”
Martha turns to Jack. “Can you look into this?”
“You think this lot will let me?” he asks, jerking his chin at the main UNIT building.
“If you behave yourself,” she says, then turns back to the soldier. “Private, call in to your sergeant and let him know what’s happened, and that I’m allowing Torchwood personnel on site to investigate.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and goes.
“Jack,” she says, looking up at him, “I am trusting you.”
“Have I ever let you down?” he asks.
She smiles, conceding the point. “Alright, but I’ve got to go now. I’ll be back as soon as I can and hopefully we won’t have an alien epidemic on our hands on top of everything else.”
“Martha Jones, you’re such an optimist.”
“With all this going on, can you really blame me?”
-
“Well, he’s sedated now, and I don’t think he’s in pain, not at the moment anyway,” says Martha, coming out of the bedroom and joining Sarah at the kitchen table. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. So either you were right and it’s alien, or we’ve got some very mad home-grown scientists on our hands. Either way, UNIT is going to be thrilled. There’s some good news though: I don’t think it’s infectious.”
Sarah nods, staring into her tea cup. “How are things, back in London?”
Martha shrugs nonchalantly, but her face has been betraying her tiredness since she arrived. “We’re coping, just about. There’s been a lot of vandalism, some looting, but no mass riots.”
“It’s silly really,” Sarah says, “it’s only just hit me now, everything that's happened. What could’ve happened.”
“Just a typical day in the life of the Doctor,” says Martha lightly, but Sarah shakes her head.
“Not them, not the Daleks.” She downs the rest of her tea, and it’s cold now but she doesn’t care. She goes to wash out the mug in the sink, heedless of Martha watching her.
“Are you okay?” Martha asks at length. “I can get UNIT to send people out here if you want; they can look for Alan and Maria. You don’t have to be here.”
“I’m fine,” says Sarah, her back to her. She turns round, and manages a smile. “I’ll be fine, really, I’ve been through worse. And your people have enough to do as it is.”
While Martha goes to check on her patient, Sarah finds herself making another cup of tea. The familiarity of the ritual and the simple steps required are a comfort to her. When Luke comes through from the lounge where he and Clyde have been watching TV, she stiffens a little because she knows that he’ll realise and she doesn’t want to burden him, not with this.
“Mum?” he says cautiously, approaching her as she sits at the table. He touches one arm gently and she can’t bring herself to look up at him. “It’s alright, Mum.” He sits down next to her and takes her hand in both of his and just sits with her a while.
Eventually, he says, “You never told me about the Daleks.”
Her mouth twitches and she looks up at him and manages a little shrug. “I can’t remember everything, Luke. It was all a long time ago, and my memory’s not what it used to be.”
His mouth twists into a reluctant frown. “You’ve never lied to me before, Mum.”
She shakes her head. “I’m not, I’m... I’m sorry, Luke. It was... travelling with the Doctor is the most amazing thing in the universe, and I saw so many wonderful and extraordinary things out there and those are the things I try to remember... but the terrible things.” She pauses, manages a sip of tea. “I can’t forget them either, and they’re always there, just waiting until something reminds me... I was there when the Daleks were created, Luke. I saw them end a war by massacring both sides. And Davros... Davros, he...” She closes her eyes and forces herself to breath slowly.
Luke squeezes her hand. “Did he hurt you?” he asks quietly.
She’s silent for a long moment, then says, “He tortured me, and a very good friend of mine. He... I’m sorry, Luke, I shouldn’t be talking to you about this.”
“It’s alright,” he says.
“No, it’s not.” She stands up. “I’m just going for a walk, okay? I’ll be back soon. I just need some air.”
Outside, there’s a fresh, bracing wind running along the cliff tops. Sarah takes long, deep breaths and concentrates on the sharp salty smell of the sea air. There’s a rough, rocky path down to the beach and, feeling the need for some exercise and something to concentrate her mind on, she makes her way down. It’s more a climb than a walk, but she manages it well enough. Loose stones roll down with her, the odd hand or foot grip crumbling beneath her weight, but she’s had worse climbs. If anything, it’s a nostalgic reminder of a dozen other adventures except this time she doesn’t expect someone armed with a laser gun to look over the cliff top at any moment and order her to stop. She doesn’t look down though. Her vertigo’s as bad as ever, but she’s learned to deal with it.
She reaches the beach with a minimum of bruises and dusts herself down. Her hands are a mess and she’s cracked a nail and she laughs because it’s such a silly little thing for her to bother about.
The beach is pretty rocky this far up and she walks carefully over the slippery stones, not wanting the embarrassment of having to call Martha to tell her she’s twisted her ankle. There’s a good stretch of sand further down, going on for quite some distance before the waves hit it. Must be low-tide. She sticks her hands in her pockets and keeps up a brisk pace until she reaches the sand.
There’s a line of seaweed a little way down the sand, and another where the waves are hitting the shoreline. Sarah pauses, raising her hand to her eyes and squinting as she looks further down the beach and realises it’s not seaweed at all, not any seaweed she’s familiar with at any rate.
The jellyfish of course, she thinks walking out towards the sea. The paper really wasn’t kidding about them being a problem. She can see the line stretching out in both directions along the beach, twisting away round a cliff corner in one, but continuing on as far as she could see on the other.
As she gets closer, she begins to see that all the jellyfish aren’t dead after all, some of them are twitching. Not many, but she can definitely see tentacles jerking, one or two every couple of metres. As the waves wash in and she gets nearer, she notices that they aren’t just on the beach either; the sea is full of them, and every wave crashing in brings more of the dead or dying to shore.
She pauses, still some distance away, as she hears a faint shriek that causes an unwanted ripple of remembrance. She stares at the shoreline for a long time and then slowly approaches, eyes fixed on the twitching line. She can see now that they’re the wrong colour, but maybe there’re jellyfish that colour, it’s not really her field after all. But they’re the wrong shape too, and a part of her is screaming at her to turn and run now, but she has to know, she has to be certain.
She stops. She’s trembling. She’s right: they’re not jellyfish at all, but lining the shore and saturating the sea are thousands upon thousands of Daleks.
Characters: Donna Noble, Martha Jones, Sarah Jane Smith, Jack Harkness and the Doctor.
Rating: PG
Summary: Following on from Journey's End...
Index Post
Gone
Donna’s beginning to think that she should have been a reporter. She’s got the talking to people and getting them to open up thing down pat, and it’s a lot easier than she ever imagined. She just has to be a little less loud, a little less brusque and really listen to what they’re saying, and it’s not even as though she’s doing it deliberately right now, not when she’s desperate for answers and half-terrified that she’ll find them.
Tracking down the right Sarah Jane Smith is easy enough: a quick Internet search and she finds plenty of photos of the woman and discovers she’d been a bit of a hot-shot reporter a few decades back. Since she still does the odd bit of free-lancing now, Donna calls around the papers she’s recently been published in and finally manages to persuade one editor into giving her an address.
The house on Bannerman Road appears to be empty. Donna stands with her finger on the doorbell for a good five minutes before she gives the door a frustrated kick and is forced to conclude it isn’t likely there’s anyone at home. She walks all round the outside of the house, looking for another way in, just to make sure. The windows are all pretty secure and she doesn’t think she could jimmy them open, but one good throw with a nice heavy rock from the garden...
...Donna decides she isn’t quite ready to enter into the murky criminal underworld of breaking and entering.
She asks around the neighbours instead, but doesn’t find out anything other than most of them think Ms Smith’s a bit on the eccentric side. It should be frustrating, looking for answers like this - following a trail and then hitting a dead-end - but Donna finds it all rather exhilarating. It’s a challenge, one that she’s becoming ever more confident she can match and she’s a long way from giving up yet.
She knows quite a bit about Sarah Jane Smith from her research, and she’s been trying to catch up on the news, and she knows that Sarah Jane Smith used to work for UNIT and that UNIT are heavily involved in... in... She blinks and wonders when she started to think the whole alien invasion thing wasn’t quite so silly after all. Ood, Racnoss, Daleks.
For a top secret organisation, UNIT aren’t very good at hiding the location of their HQs. Still, as she’s driving up to their London one, it’s the first time since she decided she wanted some answers that Donna actually feels nervous. These people aren’t going to be impressed by her shouting at them, and they carry guns. Soldiers or not, she really doesn’t like guns. Especially when they’re being carried by people she’s shouting at.
She drives up to the front gate and is halted by the sentry. She smiles as he approaches, and realises she’s got about ten seconds to think of a way to talk her way inside.
-
Mickey leans back in his seat, feet up on the desk. In one hand he holds a large slice of pizza slathering with mozzarella and pepperoni. “Want to know the worst thing about that alternate universe?” he asks Gwen, who’s sitting next to him, chewing on a slice of margarita. “They never got the pizza quite right.”
“What?”she says, grabbing an empty box from the top of the pile and tossing it towards the bin. She almost doesn’t miss. “It wasn’t a dough base with tomatoes and cheese and whatever else you liked on top?”
“Nah, they got that bit okay, but it was the taste. They never got the taste of pizza quite right. Never found out what the problem was. Course, now I can’t find out, it’s gonna drive me nuts trying to figure it out.”
“Yeah,” says Gwen, smirking round the edge of her slice. “That’s what I’d be worried about too if I suddenly moved from a parallel universe back to my own one, what the weird taste of the pizza really was.”
Mickey fixes her with a pointed look. “You’re mocking me aren’t you?”
“Course I’m not,” says Gwen, eyes wide.
“I can tell, Gwen Cooper, you are mocking me, and one day when you’re stuck in a parallel universe and eating pizza that doesn’t taste quite right, I will be sitting right here and laughing.” He takes a bite, dragging half the cheese off the slice in one go and chews firmly.
“Pepperoni pizza, was it?”
“Yeah,” says Mickey, his mouth still half full.
“Well, did you check what went into their pepperoni? I mean maybe it wasn’t pork or beef at all, maybe it was guinea pigs.”
Mickey stares at her. “That’s gross,” he says.
“No, it’s not. They eat them all the time in Peru.”
Mickey groans, and leans back in his seat, stares up at the distant ceiling. “I’m so glad you didn’t go home tonight.”
Gwen grins. “And I love you too, Mickey.”
“Well, I am very lovable,” he says, nodding. The computer bleeps, and he sits up, fingers dancing over his keyboard, but after a moment he sighs, disinterested.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing much I don’t think,” says Mickey, with a shake of his head, checking again anyway. “It’s been coming up all day, some sort of intermittent fault you’ve got going on.”
“We’ve got going on,” Gwen corrects. “And you’re the one who’s supposed to be able to fix this stuff.”
“And I will, after my pizza and after I figure out what’s going wrong.”
“So what’s the problem?” she asks.
“It’s an energy spike the scanners are picking up about once every twenty minutes.”
“And you think this is a fault because...?”
“Cause it’s never in the same place twice and the locations see to be coming up randomly. Look.” He calls up a map of Great Britain on the screen in front of them, hits a key and several dozen little white lights spring up, spread over the entire country, but concentrated on London and Cardiff.
“Looks pretty interested in us,” says Gwen.
“Yeah, but it’s gotta be an error, there’s no connection between the points and your scanners aren’t picking up a point of origin for the spike.”
“Can I see it close up? Get it on a detailed map of Cardiff, show exactly where they ‘re turning up?”
“Sure,” says Mickey, punches a couple of keys in his keyboard. He looks up at the enlarged map of Cardiff and frowns. “Heh, isn’t that us?” He points to a cluster of the lights, sitting near the Millennium Centre.
“Not quite,” says Gwen. “It is just outside though. How about London? You not looked at it properly either?”
“Heh, I thought it was an error, okay? I mean after Jack getting all bitchy about Cornwall...”
Gwen nudges his shoulder. “Don’t get huffy, new boy.” She looks at the London map. “Right, you’re going to have to zoom in some more, London’s a bit bigger than Cardiff, you know.”
“Yeah, I had noticed that actually,” he says.
“Don’t you imply bad things about my city, Mickey Smith.”
“I didn’t say anything!” he objects.
“I heard it in your voice, mister.”
Mickey opens his mouth to retort but is interrupted by the sound of the Hub door opening, to reveal Ianto. “I have coffee,” he says, coming over to join them, careful not to drop any of his paper bags, “I have doughnuts, I do not have bagels.”
“What would we want bagels for?” asks Mickey.
“Carbohydrates,” says Ianto, handing out the coffee. He stares at the pizza boxes for a long moment, then says, “More carbohydrates, anyway.” He nods at the map on display. “What’s this then?”
Mickey punches a key and jumps out to the full map. Ianto leans over his shoulder and frowns. “UNIT HQs?” he asks.
Mickey twists round in his seat to look at him. “What d’you mean?”
“Well, a lot of those places in the home counties are, or used to be, used as UNIT HQs.”
“You sure?” asks Gwen and takes a bite of a glazed raspberry doughnut. The jam squirts out, hitting the edge of keyboard and she winces at the deadly look she gets from Mickey.
“Of course I am,” Ianto says, mildly irritated at having his knowledge doubted.
“The Doctor used to work for UNIT, didn’t he?” says Mickey. He switches back to the London map. “Yeah, and those lights there, that’s the Powell Estate, he used to turn up there all the time. That’s the connection. This thing’s looking for him. All these places, the Doctor’s been to all these places, and this thing’s hunting him down.”
Gwen and Ianto exchanged a look. “But he’s left Earth, right?” says Gwen. “He should be okay.”
“He’ll be back though, this place is pretty much his favourite planet, and we’ve no idea what that thing will do when it finds him,” says Mickey. “And I wouldn’t mind knowing who’s looking for him, and why.”
“Right,” says Gwen, licking the sugar from her fingers. “I’ll call Jack; see if he’s got any idea about this.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Ianto calls after her.
-
“Sarah, I’m in London.”
“You’ve still got access to Project Indigo, haven’t you? The hospitals are already overwhelmed across the country, a lot of medical resources were redistributed towards the major cities and I can’t imagine they can spare an ambulance to come out for this poor man, besides there’s something wrong with him that I don’t think the average doctor is going to be able to deal with.”
“Like what?” asks Martha.
“I’m no expert on alien infections, but I’ve seen a few in my time and this, I’m pretty sure, falls into that category,” Sarah tells her.
Martha pauses, knowing she really doesn’t have a choice, not when she might be able to help. “That isn’t something I’ve got a lot of experience in either,” she admits.
“Still more than most though,” insists Sarah.
“Is he stable?”
“He’s having trouble breathing, but his pulse is strong and steady. He doesn’t seem aware of me though and I think he’s in a lot of pain.”
Martha nods to herself, and says, “Right, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Don’t move him unless you have to, and keep your phone on so I’ve got something to home in on with the teleport. If there’s any change in his condition, call me.” She flips her phone closed and looks at Jack. “You think you can take care of Donna while I’m gone?”
He raises his eyebrows. “Take care of meaning...?”
Martha gives him a stern look. “Meaning check in on her once in a while and make sure she’s alright. And specifically not meaning taking her out and getting her pissed, sleeping with her or having her brought in.”
He jumps to his feet, salutes her. “Understood, ma’am.”
She resists the urge to stick her tongue out at him, and says, “It’d better be.”
They walk to the exit together and emerge into the afternoon sun and immediately hear someone shouting very, very loudly. They look over to the main gate to see a terrified looking sentry being faced down by an angry Donna Noble.
“Uh-oh,” murmurs Jack. “What do we do?”
“How come she’s here? I thought she couldn’t remember anything?” says Martha.
Jack shrugs. “Doesn’t mean she’s still not a smart girl.”
“Come on, we’d better intervene before she gets herself shot.”
“I don’t think she’s the one in trouble,” says Jack as they run across the car park.
“Donna!” shouts Martha. “Private, it’s okay, she’s a friend!”
The private steps back, throwing a salute at Martha. Donna looks up, takes a breath.
Donna disappears.
Martha blinks, stops. She reaches for Jack. “Please tell me that you saw that too.”
“Yup,” says Jack, staring at the empty space where, only a second ago, Donna Noble was standing. One moment wholly and completely there, the next moment, gone.
“What the hell just happened?” asks Martha, looking up at him and hoping to see something other than confusion on his face.
He shakes his head. “You got me,” he says. “Private, what happened?”
“I don’t know, sir, ma’am.” He looks entirely bewildered. “She drove up and when I asked for her pass, she started going on about Sarah Jane Smith and how it was very important that she speak to her immediately. I told her that she needed a pass to get in, but she wouldn’t listen.”
“But she didn’t seem at all unusual?” asks Martha. “I mean, she seemed perfectly human?”
“Yes, ma’am. Nothing odd going on there at all.”
Martha turns to Jack. “Can you look into this?”
“You think this lot will let me?” he asks, jerking his chin at the main UNIT building.
“If you behave yourself,” she says, then turns back to the soldier. “Private, call in to your sergeant and let him know what’s happened, and that I’m allowing Torchwood personnel on site to investigate.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and goes.
“Jack,” she says, looking up at him, “I am trusting you.”
“Have I ever let you down?” he asks.
She smiles, conceding the point. “Alright, but I’ve got to go now. I’ll be back as soon as I can and hopefully we won’t have an alien epidemic on our hands on top of everything else.”
“Martha Jones, you’re such an optimist.”
“With all this going on, can you really blame me?”
-
“Well, he’s sedated now, and I don’t think he’s in pain, not at the moment anyway,” says Martha, coming out of the bedroom and joining Sarah at the kitchen table. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. So either you were right and it’s alien, or we’ve got some very mad home-grown scientists on our hands. Either way, UNIT is going to be thrilled. There’s some good news though: I don’t think it’s infectious.”
Sarah nods, staring into her tea cup. “How are things, back in London?”
Martha shrugs nonchalantly, but her face has been betraying her tiredness since she arrived. “We’re coping, just about. There’s been a lot of vandalism, some looting, but no mass riots.”
“It’s silly really,” Sarah says, “it’s only just hit me now, everything that's happened. What could’ve happened.”
“Just a typical day in the life of the Doctor,” says Martha lightly, but Sarah shakes her head.
“Not them, not the Daleks.” She downs the rest of her tea, and it’s cold now but she doesn’t care. She goes to wash out the mug in the sink, heedless of Martha watching her.
“Are you okay?” Martha asks at length. “I can get UNIT to send people out here if you want; they can look for Alan and Maria. You don’t have to be here.”
“I’m fine,” says Sarah, her back to her. She turns round, and manages a smile. “I’ll be fine, really, I’ve been through worse. And your people have enough to do as it is.”
While Martha goes to check on her patient, Sarah finds herself making another cup of tea. The familiarity of the ritual and the simple steps required are a comfort to her. When Luke comes through from the lounge where he and Clyde have been watching TV, she stiffens a little because she knows that he’ll realise and she doesn’t want to burden him, not with this.
“Mum?” he says cautiously, approaching her as she sits at the table. He touches one arm gently and she can’t bring herself to look up at him. “It’s alright, Mum.” He sits down next to her and takes her hand in both of his and just sits with her a while.
Eventually, he says, “You never told me about the Daleks.”
Her mouth twitches and she looks up at him and manages a little shrug. “I can’t remember everything, Luke. It was all a long time ago, and my memory’s not what it used to be.”
His mouth twists into a reluctant frown. “You’ve never lied to me before, Mum.”
She shakes her head. “I’m not, I’m... I’m sorry, Luke. It was... travelling with the Doctor is the most amazing thing in the universe, and I saw so many wonderful and extraordinary things out there and those are the things I try to remember... but the terrible things.” She pauses, manages a sip of tea. “I can’t forget them either, and they’re always there, just waiting until something reminds me... I was there when the Daleks were created, Luke. I saw them end a war by massacring both sides. And Davros... Davros, he...” She closes her eyes and forces herself to breath slowly.
Luke squeezes her hand. “Did he hurt you?” he asks quietly.
She’s silent for a long moment, then says, “He tortured me, and a very good friend of mine. He... I’m sorry, Luke, I shouldn’t be talking to you about this.”
“It’s alright,” he says.
“No, it’s not.” She stands up. “I’m just going for a walk, okay? I’ll be back soon. I just need some air.”
Outside, there’s a fresh, bracing wind running along the cliff tops. Sarah takes long, deep breaths and concentrates on the sharp salty smell of the sea air. There’s a rough, rocky path down to the beach and, feeling the need for some exercise and something to concentrate her mind on, she makes her way down. It’s more a climb than a walk, but she manages it well enough. Loose stones roll down with her, the odd hand or foot grip crumbling beneath her weight, but she’s had worse climbs. If anything, it’s a nostalgic reminder of a dozen other adventures except this time she doesn’t expect someone armed with a laser gun to look over the cliff top at any moment and order her to stop. She doesn’t look down though. Her vertigo’s as bad as ever, but she’s learned to deal with it.
She reaches the beach with a minimum of bruises and dusts herself down. Her hands are a mess and she’s cracked a nail and she laughs because it’s such a silly little thing for her to bother about.
The beach is pretty rocky this far up and she walks carefully over the slippery stones, not wanting the embarrassment of having to call Martha to tell her she’s twisted her ankle. There’s a good stretch of sand further down, going on for quite some distance before the waves hit it. Must be low-tide. She sticks her hands in her pockets and keeps up a brisk pace until she reaches the sand.
There’s a line of seaweed a little way down the sand, and another where the waves are hitting the shoreline. Sarah pauses, raising her hand to her eyes and squinting as she looks further down the beach and realises it’s not seaweed at all, not any seaweed she’s familiar with at any rate.
The jellyfish of course, she thinks walking out towards the sea. The paper really wasn’t kidding about them being a problem. She can see the line stretching out in both directions along the beach, twisting away round a cliff corner in one, but continuing on as far as she could see on the other.
As she gets closer, she begins to see that all the jellyfish aren’t dead after all, some of them are twitching. Not many, but she can definitely see tentacles jerking, one or two every couple of metres. As the waves wash in and she gets nearer, she notices that they aren’t just on the beach either; the sea is full of them, and every wave crashing in brings more of the dead or dying to shore.
She pauses, still some distance away, as she hears a faint shriek that causes an unwanted ripple of remembrance. She stares at the shoreline for a long time and then slowly approaches, eyes fixed on the twitching line. She can see now that they’re the wrong colour, but maybe there’re jellyfish that colour, it’s not really her field after all. But they’re the wrong shape too, and a part of her is screaming at her to turn and run now, but she has to know, she has to be certain.
She stops. She’s trembling. She’s right: they’re not jellyfish at all, but lining the shore and saturating the sea are thousands upon thousands of Daleks.