Appearances are deceptive, and solitude is fleeting

[maris_ocean]

Characters: Maris Newell, the Master, Jack Harkness
Rating: PG
Time Period: Modern day
Location: an open area near the castle
Relative Date: late during the current plot
Status: Finished

Comments

[neverreallygone]

"You're going to want to enter a code into that, unless you want it to carry on beeping forever," the Master said scathingly, coming up behind the new arrival, having been drawn from his path towards the castle by the noise of the helicopter.

He looked awful. He was white and drawn, with huge dark circles under his eyes, and his breath was coming in noisy wheezes. His black coat was drawn tightly around him but he was still shivering.

He been feeling sick ever since the party - what was it about bloody parties for him? - but it had taken a good while for him to admit that hunkering down in his cottage feeling sorry for himself was not going to deliver the goods this time. He had actually, amazingly, been on his way to the castle to look for help.

...Which was why he was quite willing to be distracted by the opportunity to be irritable at a new arrival.

[maris_ocean]

"Excuse me?" Maris took an automatic step back from the man, wondering just why someone so visibly ill would be at a medical conference. Unless he was a local, in which case, she wondered what sort of security this place had that let him get this close.

And what a code had to do with getting someone's cell phone to stop beeping at her, she hadn't the least idea. Or why she should bother, when it should be the problem of lost-and-found, as soon as she located where that was located.

[neverreallygone]

"Not until you put the damn code in and stop that infernal beeping," the Master said nastily. His head was pounding with the fever, the drums joining in in counterpoint, and the beeping was the last straw. He would have snatched the phone off her and put the code in himself but he couldn't see where she had stashed it.

"The code is 29.10," he said, trying to put the last of his meagre patience into his voice. "Please will you just type it in and shut that thing up?"

[maris_ocean]

"Is the phone yours, then, sir?" It would save her locating the lost-and-found, though it still wouldn't explain how he had manage to circumvent whatever security this conference had. If there were security, which she wasn't so firmly certain of, even if it should have.

Digging the phone out of her pocket, she held it out, in the hope that it was his phone. It wouldn't be the first one she'd located and returned to its absent-minded owner, though that was usually the purview of the serving staff at events. "You ought to keep better track of your belongings if this is yours, sir."