The Torchwood - 9/10
Chapter 9
Lucy/Master led her group of prisoners to the main Observation Desk like she was leading a parade. Her arms flung out wide, she welcomed her ‘guests’ with an expansive feral grin. Ianto was leaning heavily on Jack, the long walk having depleted his strength. His breath was coming out in sharp gasps as he tried to fill his injured lungs, his legs were shaking with the exertion of staying upright, and his head was swimming, black dots prominently floating at the edges of his vision. He fought to remain awake, not only for his sake, but for Jack’s. Jack would undoubtedly do something stupidly heroic, and Ianto would have to be aware enough to help him. Yet, despite all of this, he couldn’t help but think that Lisa, his Lisa, had far better legs than the Master, even in his (her? It’s?) silver stiletto heels.
“Now then,” Lucy/Master crowed as she sauntered to the center of the room and spun so that she was facing her prisoners with her back to the Observation windows, “I have you where I want you. Guards! Bring the Freak over here!” Lucy/Master walked to a curtained off area of the room. The guards pulled Ianto from Jack’s grasp and pushed Jack towards the Master. Ianto cried in pain as his weakened body crumpled to the floor. Owen broke free from his guard and ran to his side, cradling Ianto’s body against his. The Doctor fought his guards as hard as he could, but nothing the Time Lord did could break his guards’ grasps.
When Jack finally reached the Master, he watched as the Master slowly, deliberately pulled back the curtain. Behind it was an old wooden high-backed chair, complete with arm, leg, and chest restraints. Each restraint was covered with metal suction-cup-like circles, and a metal band sat at the top of the chair to encircle the occupant’s head.
“Sit,” the Master commanded, pointing one, long, manicured finger at the chair. Looking back at Ianto gasping for breath in Owen’s arms and the Doctor struggling to break free, Jack looked at the chair and shrugged.
“If you wanted a little S&M time, Saxon, all you had to do was ask,” he said, sauntering over to sit in the chair. Joshua secured the metal restraints and attached wires to them at various points.
“Oh shut up, Freak. Now, this is modeled on a Sontaran cloning pod, designed for humans of course. You sit here, I attach these to you, I kill you, and when you come back to life, the bands extract the parts of your DNA affected by the time vortex. You’ll die, obviously. It’ll be painful. Isn’t that great?! The wires then transmit your DNA to….this!” the Master said happily, pulling the curtain back further. All four men gasped as they stared at the floor-to-ceiling length clear tube attached to the chair’s wires. Inside, barely visible through the bubbling pale gel, was the outline of a man, curled into the fetal position. Even from a distance, they could see the shape resembled the Doctor’s current incarnation, complete with poufy brown hair and brown mole.
“Oh now come on!” The Doctor shouted. “You can’t be serious! You didn’t even change the diploids! You’re gonna look just like me! Freud would have had a field day with this!”
“What the hell!” Jack exclaimed. “Will someone finally tell me what the hell is going on?”
“He used my DNA to create a clone body, Jack. Now he’s going to take the Time Vortex from you to make the clone body immortal. Then, let me guess, another psychic graft onto the clone? He’s going to be wandering around forever with my face! And my hair! And my mole! I love that mole!”
“Oh don’t worry, Doctor, no one will get confused. See, I plan on killing you as well, so there’ll only be one of us left. You always thought you’d win, didn’t you? Well you know what Freak-lover? You lose! You lose, you lose, you LOSE!” the Master shouted, clapping his hands and jumping around the room.
Ianto rolled his eyes, garnering Owen’s attention. “What is it, mate? You ok?”
At that, Ianto couldn’t help himself. The sheer strangeness of the situation, combined with the pain, nausea, dizziness, and shortness of breath caught up with him. He started laughing. Not just laughing, guffawing. And he couldn’t stop, not even when he could barely breathe. Even then, his chest was shaking with the exertion of laughing.
“Uh mate, probably not the best time,” Owen said nervously.
“What?! What is he doing? Why is he laughing?” the master shouted, angrily stomping over to the pair of them.
Ianto looked up at the Master. “You….monologueing…again…. You’re dead!....You’re dead and you’re wearing….. a red dress and silver heels!...And you’re monologueing!....It’s like every bad….eighties sci-fi movie….come to life!”
The Master sputtered in indignation. He looked around, his blue eyes taking in Jack, Owen and the Doctor as they each tried to stifle their response to Ianto’s statement.
“It doesn’t matter. You don’t matter! I’m finally going to watch you die, Freak’s Pet! You’re going to watch the Freak gets drained of everything he is, and then I’m going to kill you!” With that, the Master ran to the computer console in the center of the circular room, and, spinning a few times in the chair, he pushed a blue button and pulled a green level. “Say bye bye Freak!” He pulled out his laser screwdriver and shot Jack in the chest. Jack died instantly.
As Owen, the Doctor, and Ianto shouted, a bright light engulfed the round room. A popping sound was heard, and everyone on deck stared as an armed Gwen, Tosh, and Isaac Bevan (unarmed, no one ever gave accountants weapons, Isaac thought sadly, especially during tax season) suddenly appeared next to Jack’s body. “Oh bloody Christ, that’s painful,” Gwen muttered, looking around.
Seeing their friends surrounded by armed guards, Gwen and Tosh pulled their weapons and, arms outstretched like avenging angels, proceeded to pump bullets into the Ugorians.
“Now that’s how you do it!” Gwen shouted when the echoes of gunshots were finally silenced.
“Who needs a tractor when you have a transmit beam?” Tosh said, giving Gwen a high-five. “Jack’s not the only one who can make an entrance!”
“Gwen!” Ianto rasped, “Get Jack and get him out of here! Now!”
For the first time Gwen seemed to notice Jack’s dead body hooked up to the chair next to her. She grabbed the transmat device from Isaac and, pulling the wires out and wrapping her arms around the chair, transmatted herself and the still-seated Jack out of the room.
“You bastard!” the Master shouted, pointing his laser screwdriver at Owen and Ianto. His arm was tight with tension, and Ianto was getting dizzy watching the screwdriver shake in his grasp. “I will find them! I will find them and bring them here! I will find the Freak and I will kill him!”
“No!” Ianto shouted. “You won’t have him!” He grabbed the gun from the dead Ugorian guard behind him and threw all his strength into surging to his feet. Ianto stood still, aiming his weapon at the Master, his body radiating anger, the only thing keeping him from sinking back to the floor. He stared the Master in the eyes and aimed his weapon at the Master’s head. As he stared at the Master, he was brought back to when he held a gun to Lisa’s head. His vision was swamped by images of that night; to him, the Master became Lisa, and Ianto found he couldn’t shoot.
Suddenly, the Master’s face seemed to change for a moment. “Please Ianto,” came a soft, pleading voice, “Please do it. Please make him go. Please let it be silent again…”
“Lucy?” he asked, his knees beginning to buckle.
“Please Ianto, please. Make it end. Make the noise go away. Make him go away.”
“I’m sorry Lucy, I’m so very sorry,” Ianto said. He steadied his aim and, startling everyone, turned and fired five rounds into the clone tube. The glass shattered and the body convulsed as it slid out onto the floor. Ianto fired six more rounds into the retching form; when the body stopped moving, Ianto dropped the gun and sank to the ground.
“He’s yours Doctor,” Ianto whispered. “He’s your friend. You should decide.” Ianto closed his eyes and finally gave into the darkness.
When Jack and Gwen reappeared next to the TARDIS (or rather, when Gwen, Jack’s body, and Jack’s chair appeared next to the TARDIS), Gwen dropped to her knees, silently begging that the threatening nausea would end. She started as Jack jumped back into life, breathing heavily. His wild eyes searched the room, and he looked, confused, to Gwen for answers.
“Where are we? Where’s the Master? Where the hell is Ianto?!” he shouted.
“You were dead. Ianto told me to get you out of there. I transmatted you back to the TARDIS,” she answered, taking deep breaths to calm her stomach.
“That means everyone’s back with the Master. Get me out of this damn thing!”
“I don’t know how! There’s buttons to push; it must need a combination to open it or something!”
“Oh for the love of…Gwen, open my wrist comp. You’ll see a row of buttons below a square screen. Hit the first, third, and fourth buttons, in that order!”
As Gwen hit the last button, she heard a slight static sound and hear the metal restraints ping as they onlocked. Jack pushed himself off the chair, grabbed Gwen harshly by the arm and pulled her into the TARDIS.
“Come on sweetheart, we don’t have the time to hang around here all day. We need to get to the Observation Deck,” Jack said as he ran around the TARDIS console, hitting buttons and pulling levers. Gwen felt the room shake and shudder around her, as a feeling of extreme vertigo caused her to grab onto one of the organic-looking posts for support. Just as suddenly as it started, everything was silent and still again.
Jack ran towards the door, his greatcoat tails fluttering heroically behind him. He pulled out his Webley and waited for Gwen to take position behind him. He had no idea what the scene would look like once they exited the TARDIS doors, but he had to prepare for the worst.
When he opened the doors, he was shocked to see the bodies of several Ugorian guards on the ground, shattered glass and oozing goo surrounding the still body of the Doctor-clone, and Isaac Bevan holding a gun (who gave Isaac Bevan a gun? he wondered) to his brother’s head. He turned slightly and saw the Doctor standing next to Lucy/Master, aiming the laser screwdriver at the Master’s head. But what made Jack’s blood run cold and his heart stop for a few moments was the sight of a deathly-still Ianto lying in Tosh’s arms, Owen feeling for a pulse.
The Doctor looked up to see Jack and Gwen staring at Ianto. “He’s alive Jack. He passed out. Killed the clone and passed out. Owen, Tosh, take him into the TARDIS. She’ll show you to the infirmary. Gwen, do you have any restraints? I need something for the Master.”
“He’s alive? Ianto, he’s alive?” Jack asked roughly.
“Yea, Tea-Boy’s alive Jack. But he needs serious medical attention,” Owen answered as he and Tosh lifted Ianto to head into the TARDIS. “It would really help things if you’d get your ass out of our way.”
Jack moved silently to the side to let Tosh and Owen pass. He turned back to the Doctor. “I don’t understand.”
“I’ll explain later. Jack, go inside. Get the extrapolator. Remember Blon Fel-fetch?” Jack nodded in response. “We need to open the TARDIS, Jack. I promised Lucy I’d try to get rid of the Master for her. It’s the only way. She needs to look into the heart of the TARDIS. Maybe the TARDIS can separate the two of them.”
The Master, now fully in control of Lucy’s body again, looked at the Doctor. “Will she….I mean….will she make the drums go away? Will they finally stop?” For a brief moment, the Master looked just like a scared, lost little boy. The Doctor nodded, unable to trust his voice. If the TARDIS so decided, she could permanently kill the Master. Otherwise, she could trap him forever in her heart. The Doctor didn’t know which outcome he hoped for. Neither was what he truly wanted, but he realized now that he could never change the Master. It was all up to the TARDIS, and she tended to hold a grudge.
Lucy/Master led her group of prisoners to the main Observation Desk like she was leading a parade. Her arms flung out wide, she welcomed her ‘guests’ with an expansive feral grin. Ianto was leaning heavily on Jack, the long walk having depleted his strength. His breath was coming out in sharp gasps as he tried to fill his injured lungs, his legs were shaking with the exertion of staying upright, and his head was swimming, black dots prominently floating at the edges of his vision. He fought to remain awake, not only for his sake, but for Jack’s. Jack would undoubtedly do something stupidly heroic, and Ianto would have to be aware enough to help him. Yet, despite all of this, he couldn’t help but think that Lisa, his Lisa, had far better legs than the Master, even in his (her? It’s?) silver stiletto heels.
“Now then,” Lucy/Master crowed as she sauntered to the center of the room and spun so that she was facing her prisoners with her back to the Observation windows, “I have you where I want you. Guards! Bring the Freak over here!” Lucy/Master walked to a curtained off area of the room. The guards pulled Ianto from Jack’s grasp and pushed Jack towards the Master. Ianto cried in pain as his weakened body crumpled to the floor. Owen broke free from his guard and ran to his side, cradling Ianto’s body against his. The Doctor fought his guards as hard as he could, but nothing the Time Lord did could break his guards’ grasps.
When Jack finally reached the Master, he watched as the Master slowly, deliberately pulled back the curtain. Behind it was an old wooden high-backed chair, complete with arm, leg, and chest restraints. Each restraint was covered with metal suction-cup-like circles, and a metal band sat at the top of the chair to encircle the occupant’s head.
“Sit,” the Master commanded, pointing one, long, manicured finger at the chair. Looking back at Ianto gasping for breath in Owen’s arms and the Doctor struggling to break free, Jack looked at the chair and shrugged.
“If you wanted a little S&M time, Saxon, all you had to do was ask,” he said, sauntering over to sit in the chair. Joshua secured the metal restraints and attached wires to them at various points.
“Oh shut up, Freak. Now, this is modeled on a Sontaran cloning pod, designed for humans of course. You sit here, I attach these to you, I kill you, and when you come back to life, the bands extract the parts of your DNA affected by the time vortex. You’ll die, obviously. It’ll be painful. Isn’t that great?! The wires then transmit your DNA to….this!” the Master said happily, pulling the curtain back further. All four men gasped as they stared at the floor-to-ceiling length clear tube attached to the chair’s wires. Inside, barely visible through the bubbling pale gel, was the outline of a man, curled into the fetal position. Even from a distance, they could see the shape resembled the Doctor’s current incarnation, complete with poufy brown hair and brown mole.
“Oh now come on!” The Doctor shouted. “You can’t be serious! You didn’t even change the diploids! You’re gonna look just like me! Freud would have had a field day with this!”
“What the hell!” Jack exclaimed. “Will someone finally tell me what the hell is going on?”
“He used my DNA to create a clone body, Jack. Now he’s going to take the Time Vortex from you to make the clone body immortal. Then, let me guess, another psychic graft onto the clone? He’s going to be wandering around forever with my face! And my hair! And my mole! I love that mole!”
“Oh don’t worry, Doctor, no one will get confused. See, I plan on killing you as well, so there’ll only be one of us left. You always thought you’d win, didn’t you? Well you know what Freak-lover? You lose! You lose, you lose, you LOSE!” the Master shouted, clapping his hands and jumping around the room.
Ianto rolled his eyes, garnering Owen’s attention. “What is it, mate? You ok?”
At that, Ianto couldn’t help himself. The sheer strangeness of the situation, combined with the pain, nausea, dizziness, and shortness of breath caught up with him. He started laughing. Not just laughing, guffawing. And he couldn’t stop, not even when he could barely breathe. Even then, his chest was shaking with the exertion of laughing.
“Uh mate, probably not the best time,” Owen said nervously.
“What?! What is he doing? Why is he laughing?” the master shouted, angrily stomping over to the pair of them.
Ianto looked up at the Master. “You….monologueing…again…. You’re dead!....You’re dead and you’re wearing….. a red dress and silver heels!...And you’re monologueing!....It’s like every bad….eighties sci-fi movie….come to life!”
The Master sputtered in indignation. He looked around, his blue eyes taking in Jack, Owen and the Doctor as they each tried to stifle their response to Ianto’s statement.
“It doesn’t matter. You don’t matter! I’m finally going to watch you die, Freak’s Pet! You’re going to watch the Freak gets drained of everything he is, and then I’m going to kill you!” With that, the Master ran to the computer console in the center of the circular room, and, spinning a few times in the chair, he pushed a blue button and pulled a green level. “Say bye bye Freak!” He pulled out his laser screwdriver and shot Jack in the chest. Jack died instantly.
As Owen, the Doctor, and Ianto shouted, a bright light engulfed the round room. A popping sound was heard, and everyone on deck stared as an armed Gwen, Tosh, and Isaac Bevan (unarmed, no one ever gave accountants weapons, Isaac thought sadly, especially during tax season) suddenly appeared next to Jack’s body. “Oh bloody Christ, that’s painful,” Gwen muttered, looking around.
Seeing their friends surrounded by armed guards, Gwen and Tosh pulled their weapons and, arms outstretched like avenging angels, proceeded to pump bullets into the Ugorians.
“Now that’s how you do it!” Gwen shouted when the echoes of gunshots were finally silenced.
“Who needs a tractor when you have a transmit beam?” Tosh said, giving Gwen a high-five. “Jack’s not the only one who can make an entrance!”
“Gwen!” Ianto rasped, “Get Jack and get him out of here! Now!”
For the first time Gwen seemed to notice Jack’s dead body hooked up to the chair next to her. She grabbed the transmat device from Isaac and, pulling the wires out and wrapping her arms around the chair, transmatted herself and the still-seated Jack out of the room.
“You bastard!” the Master shouted, pointing his laser screwdriver at Owen and Ianto. His arm was tight with tension, and Ianto was getting dizzy watching the screwdriver shake in his grasp. “I will find them! I will find them and bring them here! I will find the Freak and I will kill him!”
“No!” Ianto shouted. “You won’t have him!” He grabbed the gun from the dead Ugorian guard behind him and threw all his strength into surging to his feet. Ianto stood still, aiming his weapon at the Master, his body radiating anger, the only thing keeping him from sinking back to the floor. He stared the Master in the eyes and aimed his weapon at the Master’s head. As he stared at the Master, he was brought back to when he held a gun to Lisa’s head. His vision was swamped by images of that night; to him, the Master became Lisa, and Ianto found he couldn’t shoot.
Suddenly, the Master’s face seemed to change for a moment. “Please Ianto,” came a soft, pleading voice, “Please do it. Please make him go. Please let it be silent again…”
“Lucy?” he asked, his knees beginning to buckle.
“Please Ianto, please. Make it end. Make the noise go away. Make him go away.”
“I’m sorry Lucy, I’m so very sorry,” Ianto said. He steadied his aim and, startling everyone, turned and fired five rounds into the clone tube. The glass shattered and the body convulsed as it slid out onto the floor. Ianto fired six more rounds into the retching form; when the body stopped moving, Ianto dropped the gun and sank to the ground.
“He’s yours Doctor,” Ianto whispered. “He’s your friend. You should decide.” Ianto closed his eyes and finally gave into the darkness.
When Jack and Gwen reappeared next to the TARDIS (or rather, when Gwen, Jack’s body, and Jack’s chair appeared next to the TARDIS), Gwen dropped to her knees, silently begging that the threatening nausea would end. She started as Jack jumped back into life, breathing heavily. His wild eyes searched the room, and he looked, confused, to Gwen for answers.
“Where are we? Where’s the Master? Where the hell is Ianto?!” he shouted.
“You were dead. Ianto told me to get you out of there. I transmatted you back to the TARDIS,” she answered, taking deep breaths to calm her stomach.
“That means everyone’s back with the Master. Get me out of this damn thing!”
“I don’t know how! There’s buttons to push; it must need a combination to open it or something!”
“Oh for the love of…Gwen, open my wrist comp. You’ll see a row of buttons below a square screen. Hit the first, third, and fourth buttons, in that order!”
As Gwen hit the last button, she heard a slight static sound and hear the metal restraints ping as they onlocked. Jack pushed himself off the chair, grabbed Gwen harshly by the arm and pulled her into the TARDIS.
“Come on sweetheart, we don’t have the time to hang around here all day. We need to get to the Observation Deck,” Jack said as he ran around the TARDIS console, hitting buttons and pulling levers. Gwen felt the room shake and shudder around her, as a feeling of extreme vertigo caused her to grab onto one of the organic-looking posts for support. Just as suddenly as it started, everything was silent and still again.
Jack ran towards the door, his greatcoat tails fluttering heroically behind him. He pulled out his Webley and waited for Gwen to take position behind him. He had no idea what the scene would look like once they exited the TARDIS doors, but he had to prepare for the worst.
When he opened the doors, he was shocked to see the bodies of several Ugorian guards on the ground, shattered glass and oozing goo surrounding the still body of the Doctor-clone, and Isaac Bevan holding a gun (who gave Isaac Bevan a gun? he wondered) to his brother’s head. He turned slightly and saw the Doctor standing next to Lucy/Master, aiming the laser screwdriver at the Master’s head. But what made Jack’s blood run cold and his heart stop for a few moments was the sight of a deathly-still Ianto lying in Tosh’s arms, Owen feeling for a pulse.
The Doctor looked up to see Jack and Gwen staring at Ianto. “He’s alive Jack. He passed out. Killed the clone and passed out. Owen, Tosh, take him into the TARDIS. She’ll show you to the infirmary. Gwen, do you have any restraints? I need something for the Master.”
“He’s alive? Ianto, he’s alive?” Jack asked roughly.
“Yea, Tea-Boy’s alive Jack. But he needs serious medical attention,” Owen answered as he and Tosh lifted Ianto to head into the TARDIS. “It would really help things if you’d get your ass out of our way.”
Jack moved silently to the side to let Tosh and Owen pass. He turned back to the Doctor. “I don’t understand.”
“I’ll explain later. Jack, go inside. Get the extrapolator. Remember Blon Fel-fetch?” Jack nodded in response. “We need to open the TARDIS, Jack. I promised Lucy I’d try to get rid of the Master for her. It’s the only way. She needs to look into the heart of the TARDIS. Maybe the TARDIS can separate the two of them.”
The Master, now fully in control of Lucy’s body again, looked at the Doctor. “Will she….I mean….will she make the drums go away? Will they finally stop?” For a brief moment, the Master looked just like a scared, lost little boy. The Doctor nodded, unable to trust his voice. If the TARDIS so decided, she could permanently kill the Master. Otherwise, she could trap him forever in her heart. The Doctor didn’t know which outcome he hoped for. Neither was what he truly wanted, but he realized now that he could never change the Master. It was all up to the TARDIS, and she tended to hold a grudge.