Torchwood fic - Assumptions, 1/2
Part one of the fic I started writing for the Countdown to Martha over at lifeonmartha. Part two will be up as soon as I finish it. I know how it ends, I just...have to write it.
Title: Assumptions (1/2)
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Martha, Owen, Jack
Spoilers: What Martha does post-S3 DW, and a blink-and-you'll-miss-it one for TW 2x06 - "Reset"
Summary: A mysterious illness rages through Cardiff, leaving Martha and Owen to figure out how to stop it.
Disclaimer: Torchwood belongs to the BBC
Martha was woken by the shrill ring of her mobile. She opened her eyes and groggily reached for the device on her bedside table, sighing when she saw that it was still dark outside. Flipping open the phone she saw that it was from Torchwood, which immediately snapped her completely awake. She was working with UNIT, which of course liaised with Torchwood occasionally, and she was currently stationed in Cardiff because Jack had made it perfectly clear to the higher-ups that she was Torchwood’s preferred UNIT contact. This had gained her a reputation at UNIT that she still hadn’t quite worked out. But the point was she didn't think Jack would be calling her this time of the morning to have a chat. Something must be wrong.
"Hello?" she answered.
"Get here. Now," came Jack's terse reply. The connection went dead.
Martha wasted exactly two seconds staring at the phone, puzzlement and worry warring for dominance within her. Something was definitely wrong.
Half an hour later she walked into the hub, immediately spotting Jack and Owen standing in a concerned huddle next to Owen's work station. "What is it?" she said, quickly striding over to them and dropping her purse on the low coffee table as she passed it. "Is it a medical emergency?"
"You could say that," muttered Owen. His monitor displayed a map of Cardiff, outlined in blue, and when he tapped a key red dots lit up all around the city, spreading out from a single spot that Martha, though still not entirely familiar with the city, could tell was near the easternmost point of the rift.
"What are these?" she asked.
Owen gave a long sigh and leaned back in his chair. "Those are the infected cases."
"Infected with what?"
"We don't know," Jack broke in. "That's why we called you."
Martha watched the growing number of red dots with concern. “This looks like it might be huge. We should contact the rest of UNIT for help.” She pulled out her mobile.
"UNIT don't know their arses from their heads," said Owen. "We wanted you."
"We called them for some military help first thing," Jack explained. "They've got people out there trying to contain the outbreak, but we thought it'd be best if we called you directly instead of going through the proper channels. Whatever this is, it's alien, and Owen's right. You probably have more experience with that kind of thing than any of the doctors UNIT can offer up."
Martha took a deep breath. This was what she had trained for, and she did have experience. She'd dealt with and diagnosed diseases on more than one planet. More than several planets. The only trouble she'd encountered while taking her exams was that she'd had to think perhaps harder than the other students when it came to human physiology. It could be difficult to keep in mind what you were actually trying to treat when visions of the anatomy and diseases of dozens of different species were all stored in your head.
"Where's the rest of the team?" she asked.
Jack sighed. "I called them all the same time I called you. No one answered. It's odd. Ianto's normally here by now anyway."
"Do you think they might be sick?"
"I wouldn't doubt it."
"All right, let's focus," said Owen. He pointed to a new red dot that had just popped up. "UNIT's sending us updates whenever they find a new case, and this thing is not exactly slowing down."
"What do we know?" said Martha.
"It's probably alien, like Jack said."
"Something that came through the rift," put in Jack.
Owen nodded and pointed out another dot. "Our first case, as far we know. Patient put in an emergency call when he noticed numbness spreading up from his feet." Owen glanced sidelong at Martha. "That's the first symptom, ascending numbness leading to paralysis. Anyway, hospital called us when they couldn't figure out what was wrong with him."
"Do they come running to you for all their strange cases?" said Martha.
"Hospital's on the rift," said Jack. "Of course, they don't know that, but enough weird things have happened around there that they've learned to call us when it all goes wrong."
“All right,” said Martha, trying to take stock of the situation. She had a feeling this one wasn’t going to end up being by the book, but the book was usually the best place to start, just to make sure all their bases were covered. “Did anyone question the first patient?” She looked at Owen.
Owen nodded. “Exactly. He was our best bet for Patient Zero. Except that he died before any of us could get there. By that time more cases had started to come in to the hospital, and then other hospitals around the city started reporting them. We got UNIT in first, but Jack thought you might have some insight if we went to you directly.”
“We thought you might,” said Jack.
Owen shrugged, looking a bit like a naughty boy who’d been discovered. “Yeah, okay, we both thought. Anyway, ideas?”
Another red dot appeared on the monitor. Owen cursed under his breath and shut off the screen.
Martha nodded at him. “So, it starts with ascending paralysis. Then?”
Owen shrugged. “What you might expect. It gets to the lungs and heart, causes respiratory distress, organ shutdown and obviously death.”
“So the paralysis is the only symptom?” said Martha.
“That’s what everyone we’ve interviewed has said.” Owen cocked his head at her. “So what do you think, Dr. Jones?”
“It’s not exactly a lot to go on,” said Martha, sitting down at Gwen’s desk.
“You’ve come across alien diseases before,” said Owen, looking at Jack as if confirming. Neither Jack nor Martha had ever elaborated on Martha’s experience with alien life outside of Torchwood and UNIT, though it was obvious to the whole team that she had some.
“Nothing like this,” said Martha, shaking her head. She looked at Jack. “You?”
“If I had I wouldn’t have called you in,” said Jack. “Okay. I’m going to leave you two kids to see if you can work this out, and I’m going to try and call the others in.”
“If they’re sick then we really need to figure out what’s going on,” said Owen.
“We need to do that whether they’re sick or not,” said Martha. She closed her eyes and thought. “Obvious question, but is it contagious?”
“Not that I can tell,” said Owen. “There are several cases in the original hospital, but those are all people who came in from the outside. None of the medical staff have shown symptoms, and considering that this thing seems to have an incubation period of approximately twelve hours, there really should have been some if there were going to be.”
“We can’t know that,” said Martha suddenly. “The first patient went to the hospital when he started feeling symptoms, but there’s no telling how long since he was exposed to whatever it was. It could have been days. Maybe once symptoms begin they progress quickly, but it takes awhile for the symptoms to show up?”
Owen gave a little shrug that Martha knew was him admitting she had a point. “So it could still be contagious. Congratulations, you’ve just made everything that much worse.”
“Doing my job then, I guess. We can’t make those kinds of assumptions about a disease we know nothing about.”
Owen reached over and turned on his screen again. At least three more red dots had appeared since the last time Martha had seen it.
“We should interview the patients again,” she said. “Interview new cases, too.”
“It’s a waste of time,” Owen argued. “I interviewed everyone in that hospital with symptoms. Their stories were all the same. Tingling, numbness, paralysis. And most of the people I talked to are dead now, by the way.”
“I haven’t interviewed them,” said Martha. “And I don’t need your permission to do so, Dr. Harper. So you can either come with me or stay here and watch more dots show up on that screen. Which would you rather?”
Owen looked back in the direction Jack had gone. “Yeah, all right. I suppose it can’t hurt.”
#
Three hours later Martha was sprawled across an uncomfortable plastic chair set out in the hallway of the hospital, trying to calm her racing heart. She closed her eyes and tried not to cry. She had just watched a patient die, just go into cardiac arrest, and there was nothing anyone could do about it because the heart had just atrophied right there in front of her, just gave up and stopped moving like all the other muscles, and the man had been conscious--at first--and had know exactly what was going on. Martha had seen people die before, lots of people, and lots of aliens, but never had she seen such terror on someone's face.
"I would say I told you so, but that might be too arsey even for me."
Martha looked up as Owen appeared next to her, holding to steaming cups of coffee. "I don't think coffee's such a good idea right now," she said. She felt like her own heart was trying to make up for the dead man's still one.
"Trust me, you're about five minutes away from crashing hard," said Owen. "At least hold it or something, I look a right idiot standing here like this."
Martha, sighing, took the styrofoam cup, made a face at the liquid inside, and set it on the floor next to her chair. "What is it, Owen? We've tried everything and nothing works."
"I'm trying to culture it," said Owen. "That's the best we can hope for."
"And how many people will die in the mean time?" said Martha. "That's assuming anything grows. We haven't been able to find any traces of a foreign biological material that could explain these symptoms."
"I've got some stuff back at the hub," said Owen thoughtfully, dropping down into the chair next to her. He looked sideways at her. "We might have to take a patient in. We'd run it by Jack first, of course."
"And then what?" said Martha. "What are we supposed to tell the patient?"
Owen shrugged. "We don't have to tell them anything. That's what retcon's for."
"You shouldn't throw that around like it's candy," said Martha. She disapproved of the retcon and everyone at Torchwood knew it. She could see its practical value, but of course if Torchwood actually bothered to be a little more careful with the whole "secret organization" thing they wouldn't need as much as they did.
"It causes side effects in only a few cases," said Owen.
"Oh, well that makes it all right then, doesn't it?" Martha snapped.
"See, crashing," said Owen. "And I think side effects might be slightly better than dead, don't you?"
"Depends on the side effects," muttered Martha, but she knew she was rapidly veering into sulking territory and there was no way she was going to let Owen reduce her to that. So she sat up and said, "All right. We take a patient to the hub, provided Jack says yes, and you try out your new toys, provided you actually know how to work them properly." She emphasized this last part.
"Don't worry about it," said Owen, and before she could remind him that she very much had reason to worry about it, he had flipped open his mobile and dialed Jack's number. He wandered up and down the hall as he waited for the man to pick up, a sign that he was as nervous and wired as Martha felt. She knew the coffee was a bad idea.
He only talked to Jack for a few minutes before he hung up and briskly strode down the hall back toward Martha, suddenly all business again. "We have to go. Bad news."
"What did he say about the patient?" Martha stood up.
"What? Oh, yeah, yeah, he said whatever we want. But we have to hurry."
"What's going on?" said Martha, frustrated, and Owen took off back down the hallway so that she almost had to run to keep up with him.
"You were right. The rest of the team? Ascending paralysis."
"Oh no," said Martha.
"Yeah," said Owen. He came to the nurse's station and stopped. "Hey there, hello," he said to the nurse on duty. "You have a lot of patients with the same mysterious illness, right? We need your sickest one."
#
A long, droning beep filled the air as a flat line trailed across the monitor. There was no other sound in the room until,
"Damn it!" A medical tray flew past Martha's head, smashing into the opposite wall and scattering various medical implements all over the floor. She didn't even duck, because it wasn't her the thrower was angry at.
"Owen," said Jack softly from the observation deck.
"I can't do anything, Jack!" Owen growled. He was leaning, head down, over the operating table, as if the force of his despair could bring the girl back to life. "I don't know what to do. I don't know how to treat this. I don't even know what this is!"
He looked like he might throw something else soon, so Martha took a deep breath and spoke up. "All right. We just need to back up, that's all. Start from the beginning again and work through it. We've missed something and if we can find it--"
"We've been through this more times than I care to remember," Owen snapped at her. "We haven't missed anything. We can't fight this."
"I don't believe that," said Martha, exchanging a glance with Jack, who stood on the platform above them, his arms crossed. Martha knew him well enough by now to know that he was very worried. "Let's just calm down and start from the beginning."
"And we'll find nothing," said Owen. "Just like the last three times we did this."
"It's more productive than throwing things," said Martha. "But if you won't help, then fine. Go to the pub, drown your sorrows. I know you want to. I'm going to stay here until I figure this thing out."
Owen sighed and Martha thought for a moment he was going to take her up on it, go sit somewhere and nurse a beer and wait for the end of the world. But then he looked back at the recently-dead body on his operating table and said, "Yeah. Fine. The beginning."
"What do we know?" Jack interjected.
Owen rolled his eyes. "It's alien."
"It kills quickly," said Martha. She turned to the table and flipped through the stack of medical charts lying on it. She bit down on a flicker of despair that threatened to overtake her when she saw how thick the stack had grown; every person in these medical files was dead. "Symptoms...we all know the symptoms. Or rather, symptom." The interviews at the hospital had only told her what Owen already had. "It doesn't seem to be airborne."
"For now," said Owen.
"We haven't been able to isolate any organisms from the patients and we're not sure if it's even a biological agent at all," Martha continued, ignoring Owen. "Standard antibiotics, antivirals, and fungicides have no effect on the disease's progress." As she recited the litany she tried hard to keep her voice from wavering. Maybe Owen was right. They had no idea what they were dealing with and all their lab results had done nothing but to tell them what this disease wasn't. They were running out of things to try. All they could do was keep starting from the beginning, challenging their fundamental assumptions until they cracked it or they died. But it didn't look good. Ianto, Gwen, and Toshiko all had it. They were running out of time.
She was developing a headache. All right. Don't think about that, don’t think about the rest of the team, focus on the problem. "Are we sure it's even communicable?" she asked Owen. "It could be a toxin that's being released at different points in the city and affecting the wider population."
"It might be some sort of concerted alien attack?" said Jack, narrowing his eyes.
Owen shook his head. "The cases have spread out from a central point, suggesting a Patient Zero who was infected and then passed it on from there. Which doesn't exclude an alien attack, of course, but I'm pretty certain now the disease is contagious."
"And?" prompted Martha.
Owen threw up his hands. "I'm out."
Martha looked at Jack, who just shook his head.
"Oh, yeah, and over half our team will soon be dead from it," said Owen. "That help any?"
There was a short silence.
"I don't know what else to do," she finally said.
"Are you two feeling all right?" said Jack. "You were both exposed at the hospital."
"Just a headache," said Martha.
"Me, too," said Owen. "Not unexpected."
Martha had to do something. Anything. She left the operating room, running up the steps into the main part of the hub, where she picked up her purse and her coat.
"What are you doing?" said Jack, as he and Owen followed her.
"Who lives closest to here?"
Owen and Jack exchanged glances. "Huh?"
"Gwen, Tosh, or Ianto? Who lives closest?"
Jack thought for a moment. "Toshiko."
"Martha..." Owen began.
"Then I'm going to see Toshiko," said Martha. "There's something we missed."
"Martha, it's a waste of time!" yelled Owen. "The only thing that will accomplish is exposing you to the disease even more than you already have been."
"I can't stay here!" she snapped back, and without a backward glance she opened the doors and left the hub. She reached her car and got in, starting the engine, and wasn't surprised when Owen slid in beside just before she put it into gear.
"We could take the SUV," he said.
"Shut up, Owen," she replied, and drove away.
TBC
Title: Assumptions (1/2)
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Martha, Owen, Jack
Spoilers: What Martha does post-S3 DW, and a blink-and-you'll-miss-it one for TW 2x06 - "Reset"
Summary: A mysterious illness rages through Cardiff, leaving Martha and Owen to figure out how to stop it.
Disclaimer: Torchwood belongs to the BBC
Martha was woken by the shrill ring of her mobile. She opened her eyes and groggily reached for the device on her bedside table, sighing when she saw that it was still dark outside. Flipping open the phone she saw that it was from Torchwood, which immediately snapped her completely awake. She was working with UNIT, which of course liaised with Torchwood occasionally, and she was currently stationed in Cardiff because Jack had made it perfectly clear to the higher-ups that she was Torchwood’s preferred UNIT contact. This had gained her a reputation at UNIT that she still hadn’t quite worked out. But the point was she didn't think Jack would be calling her this time of the morning to have a chat. Something must be wrong.
"Hello?" she answered.
"Get here. Now," came Jack's terse reply. The connection went dead.
Martha wasted exactly two seconds staring at the phone, puzzlement and worry warring for dominance within her. Something was definitely wrong.
Half an hour later she walked into the hub, immediately spotting Jack and Owen standing in a concerned huddle next to Owen's work station. "What is it?" she said, quickly striding over to them and dropping her purse on the low coffee table as she passed it. "Is it a medical emergency?"
"You could say that," muttered Owen. His monitor displayed a map of Cardiff, outlined in blue, and when he tapped a key red dots lit up all around the city, spreading out from a single spot that Martha, though still not entirely familiar with the city, could tell was near the easternmost point of the rift.
"What are these?" she asked.
Owen gave a long sigh and leaned back in his chair. "Those are the infected cases."
"Infected with what?"
"We don't know," Jack broke in. "That's why we called you."
Martha watched the growing number of red dots with concern. “This looks like it might be huge. We should contact the rest of UNIT for help.” She pulled out her mobile.
"UNIT don't know their arses from their heads," said Owen. "We wanted you."
"We called them for some military help first thing," Jack explained. "They've got people out there trying to contain the outbreak, but we thought it'd be best if we called you directly instead of going through the proper channels. Whatever this is, it's alien, and Owen's right. You probably have more experience with that kind of thing than any of the doctors UNIT can offer up."
Martha took a deep breath. This was what she had trained for, and she did have experience. She'd dealt with and diagnosed diseases on more than one planet. More than several planets. The only trouble she'd encountered while taking her exams was that she'd had to think perhaps harder than the other students when it came to human physiology. It could be difficult to keep in mind what you were actually trying to treat when visions of the anatomy and diseases of dozens of different species were all stored in your head.
"Where's the rest of the team?" she asked.
Jack sighed. "I called them all the same time I called you. No one answered. It's odd. Ianto's normally here by now anyway."
"Do you think they might be sick?"
"I wouldn't doubt it."
"All right, let's focus," said Owen. He pointed to a new red dot that had just popped up. "UNIT's sending us updates whenever they find a new case, and this thing is not exactly slowing down."
"What do we know?" said Martha.
"It's probably alien, like Jack said."
"Something that came through the rift," put in Jack.
Owen nodded and pointed out another dot. "Our first case, as far we know. Patient put in an emergency call when he noticed numbness spreading up from his feet." Owen glanced sidelong at Martha. "That's the first symptom, ascending numbness leading to paralysis. Anyway, hospital called us when they couldn't figure out what was wrong with him."
"Do they come running to you for all their strange cases?" said Martha.
"Hospital's on the rift," said Jack. "Of course, they don't know that, but enough weird things have happened around there that they've learned to call us when it all goes wrong."
“All right,” said Martha, trying to take stock of the situation. She had a feeling this one wasn’t going to end up being by the book, but the book was usually the best place to start, just to make sure all their bases were covered. “Did anyone question the first patient?” She looked at Owen.
Owen nodded. “Exactly. He was our best bet for Patient Zero. Except that he died before any of us could get there. By that time more cases had started to come in to the hospital, and then other hospitals around the city started reporting them. We got UNIT in first, but Jack thought you might have some insight if we went to you directly.”
“We thought you might,” said Jack.
Owen shrugged, looking a bit like a naughty boy who’d been discovered. “Yeah, okay, we both thought. Anyway, ideas?”
Another red dot appeared on the monitor. Owen cursed under his breath and shut off the screen.
Martha nodded at him. “So, it starts with ascending paralysis. Then?”
Owen shrugged. “What you might expect. It gets to the lungs and heart, causes respiratory distress, organ shutdown and obviously death.”
“So the paralysis is the only symptom?” said Martha.
“That’s what everyone we’ve interviewed has said.” Owen cocked his head at her. “So what do you think, Dr. Jones?”
“It’s not exactly a lot to go on,” said Martha, sitting down at Gwen’s desk.
“You’ve come across alien diseases before,” said Owen, looking at Jack as if confirming. Neither Jack nor Martha had ever elaborated on Martha’s experience with alien life outside of Torchwood and UNIT, though it was obvious to the whole team that she had some.
“Nothing like this,” said Martha, shaking her head. She looked at Jack. “You?”
“If I had I wouldn’t have called you in,” said Jack. “Okay. I’m going to leave you two kids to see if you can work this out, and I’m going to try and call the others in.”
“If they’re sick then we really need to figure out what’s going on,” said Owen.
“We need to do that whether they’re sick or not,” said Martha. She closed her eyes and thought. “Obvious question, but is it contagious?”
“Not that I can tell,” said Owen. “There are several cases in the original hospital, but those are all people who came in from the outside. None of the medical staff have shown symptoms, and considering that this thing seems to have an incubation period of approximately twelve hours, there really should have been some if there were going to be.”
“We can’t know that,” said Martha suddenly. “The first patient went to the hospital when he started feeling symptoms, but there’s no telling how long since he was exposed to whatever it was. It could have been days. Maybe once symptoms begin they progress quickly, but it takes awhile for the symptoms to show up?”
Owen gave a little shrug that Martha knew was him admitting she had a point. “So it could still be contagious. Congratulations, you’ve just made everything that much worse.”
“Doing my job then, I guess. We can’t make those kinds of assumptions about a disease we know nothing about.”
Owen reached over and turned on his screen again. At least three more red dots had appeared since the last time Martha had seen it.
“We should interview the patients again,” she said. “Interview new cases, too.”
“It’s a waste of time,” Owen argued. “I interviewed everyone in that hospital with symptoms. Their stories were all the same. Tingling, numbness, paralysis. And most of the people I talked to are dead now, by the way.”
“I haven’t interviewed them,” said Martha. “And I don’t need your permission to do so, Dr. Harper. So you can either come with me or stay here and watch more dots show up on that screen. Which would you rather?”
Owen looked back in the direction Jack had gone. “Yeah, all right. I suppose it can’t hurt.”
#
Three hours later Martha was sprawled across an uncomfortable plastic chair set out in the hallway of the hospital, trying to calm her racing heart. She closed her eyes and tried not to cry. She had just watched a patient die, just go into cardiac arrest, and there was nothing anyone could do about it because the heart had just atrophied right there in front of her, just gave up and stopped moving like all the other muscles, and the man had been conscious--at first--and had know exactly what was going on. Martha had seen people die before, lots of people, and lots of aliens, but never had she seen such terror on someone's face.
"I would say I told you so, but that might be too arsey even for me."
Martha looked up as Owen appeared next to her, holding to steaming cups of coffee. "I don't think coffee's such a good idea right now," she said. She felt like her own heart was trying to make up for the dead man's still one.
"Trust me, you're about five minutes away from crashing hard," said Owen. "At least hold it or something, I look a right idiot standing here like this."
Martha, sighing, took the styrofoam cup, made a face at the liquid inside, and set it on the floor next to her chair. "What is it, Owen? We've tried everything and nothing works."
"I'm trying to culture it," said Owen. "That's the best we can hope for."
"And how many people will die in the mean time?" said Martha. "That's assuming anything grows. We haven't been able to find any traces of a foreign biological material that could explain these symptoms."
"I've got some stuff back at the hub," said Owen thoughtfully, dropping down into the chair next to her. He looked sideways at her. "We might have to take a patient in. We'd run it by Jack first, of course."
"And then what?" said Martha. "What are we supposed to tell the patient?"
Owen shrugged. "We don't have to tell them anything. That's what retcon's for."
"You shouldn't throw that around like it's candy," said Martha. She disapproved of the retcon and everyone at Torchwood knew it. She could see its practical value, but of course if Torchwood actually bothered to be a little more careful with the whole "secret organization" thing they wouldn't need as much as they did.
"It causes side effects in only a few cases," said Owen.
"Oh, well that makes it all right then, doesn't it?" Martha snapped.
"See, crashing," said Owen. "And I think side effects might be slightly better than dead, don't you?"
"Depends on the side effects," muttered Martha, but she knew she was rapidly veering into sulking territory and there was no way she was going to let Owen reduce her to that. So she sat up and said, "All right. We take a patient to the hub, provided Jack says yes, and you try out your new toys, provided you actually know how to work them properly." She emphasized this last part.
"Don't worry about it," said Owen, and before she could remind him that she very much had reason to worry about it, he had flipped open his mobile and dialed Jack's number. He wandered up and down the hall as he waited for the man to pick up, a sign that he was as nervous and wired as Martha felt. She knew the coffee was a bad idea.
He only talked to Jack for a few minutes before he hung up and briskly strode down the hall back toward Martha, suddenly all business again. "We have to go. Bad news."
"What did he say about the patient?" Martha stood up.
"What? Oh, yeah, yeah, he said whatever we want. But we have to hurry."
"What's going on?" said Martha, frustrated, and Owen took off back down the hallway so that she almost had to run to keep up with him.
"You were right. The rest of the team? Ascending paralysis."
"Oh no," said Martha.
"Yeah," said Owen. He came to the nurse's station and stopped. "Hey there, hello," he said to the nurse on duty. "You have a lot of patients with the same mysterious illness, right? We need your sickest one."
#
A long, droning beep filled the air as a flat line trailed across the monitor. There was no other sound in the room until,
"Damn it!" A medical tray flew past Martha's head, smashing into the opposite wall and scattering various medical implements all over the floor. She didn't even duck, because it wasn't her the thrower was angry at.
"Owen," said Jack softly from the observation deck.
"I can't do anything, Jack!" Owen growled. He was leaning, head down, over the operating table, as if the force of his despair could bring the girl back to life. "I don't know what to do. I don't know how to treat this. I don't even know what this is!"
He looked like he might throw something else soon, so Martha took a deep breath and spoke up. "All right. We just need to back up, that's all. Start from the beginning again and work through it. We've missed something and if we can find it--"
"We've been through this more times than I care to remember," Owen snapped at her. "We haven't missed anything. We can't fight this."
"I don't believe that," said Martha, exchanging a glance with Jack, who stood on the platform above them, his arms crossed. Martha knew him well enough by now to know that he was very worried. "Let's just calm down and start from the beginning."
"And we'll find nothing," said Owen. "Just like the last three times we did this."
"It's more productive than throwing things," said Martha. "But if you won't help, then fine. Go to the pub, drown your sorrows. I know you want to. I'm going to stay here until I figure this thing out."
Owen sighed and Martha thought for a moment he was going to take her up on it, go sit somewhere and nurse a beer and wait for the end of the world. But then he looked back at the recently-dead body on his operating table and said, "Yeah. Fine. The beginning."
"What do we know?" Jack interjected.
Owen rolled his eyes. "It's alien."
"It kills quickly," said Martha. She turned to the table and flipped through the stack of medical charts lying on it. She bit down on a flicker of despair that threatened to overtake her when she saw how thick the stack had grown; every person in these medical files was dead. "Symptoms...we all know the symptoms. Or rather, symptom." The interviews at the hospital had only told her what Owen already had. "It doesn't seem to be airborne."
"For now," said Owen.
"We haven't been able to isolate any organisms from the patients and we're not sure if it's even a biological agent at all," Martha continued, ignoring Owen. "Standard antibiotics, antivirals, and fungicides have no effect on the disease's progress." As she recited the litany she tried hard to keep her voice from wavering. Maybe Owen was right. They had no idea what they were dealing with and all their lab results had done nothing but to tell them what this disease wasn't. They were running out of things to try. All they could do was keep starting from the beginning, challenging their fundamental assumptions until they cracked it or they died. But it didn't look good. Ianto, Gwen, and Toshiko all had it. They were running out of time.
She was developing a headache. All right. Don't think about that, don’t think about the rest of the team, focus on the problem. "Are we sure it's even communicable?" she asked Owen. "It could be a toxin that's being released at different points in the city and affecting the wider population."
"It might be some sort of concerted alien attack?" said Jack, narrowing his eyes.
Owen shook his head. "The cases have spread out from a central point, suggesting a Patient Zero who was infected and then passed it on from there. Which doesn't exclude an alien attack, of course, but I'm pretty certain now the disease is contagious."
"And?" prompted Martha.
Owen threw up his hands. "I'm out."
Martha looked at Jack, who just shook his head.
"Oh, yeah, and over half our team will soon be dead from it," said Owen. "That help any?"
There was a short silence.
"I don't know what else to do," she finally said.
"Are you two feeling all right?" said Jack. "You were both exposed at the hospital."
"Just a headache," said Martha.
"Me, too," said Owen. "Not unexpected."
Martha had to do something. Anything. She left the operating room, running up the steps into the main part of the hub, where she picked up her purse and her coat.
"What are you doing?" said Jack, as he and Owen followed her.
"Who lives closest to here?"
Owen and Jack exchanged glances. "Huh?"
"Gwen, Tosh, or Ianto? Who lives closest?"
Jack thought for a moment. "Toshiko."
"Martha..." Owen began.
"Then I'm going to see Toshiko," said Martha. "There's something we missed."
"Martha, it's a waste of time!" yelled Owen. "The only thing that will accomplish is exposing you to the disease even more than you already have been."
"I can't stay here!" she snapped back, and without a backward glance she opened the doors and left the hub. She reached her car and got in, starting the engine, and wasn't surprised when Owen slid in beside just before she put it into gear.
"We could take the SUV," he said.
"Shut up, Owen," she replied, and drove away.
TBC