Dr Who - Fly On The Wall
Chapter 1
Angel, the alien who had no surname, carried her boots, as she walked along the pebble and sand beach, in front of the white, chalk cliffs, with her friend, Andre Coultarde. It had been two years ago that Dr. John Smith and his wife, Rose, had rescued her from a police cell and taken her to the Torchwood Hospital.
She had been abandoned on Earth, and as such was granted refugee status and asylum by the government of the Republic of Great Britain. Torchwood gave her a home and a job as a child care assistant in the child care centre on the first floor of Torchwood Tower at the Isle of Dogs.
She had human features, but her skin was marble white, with pixie like pointed ears, piercing blue eyes, and grey lips. Her wavy, shoulder length hair was silvery white. To help her integrate into society, the 'Blue Watch Babes', as Rose, Julia and Gwen were nicknamed, introduced her to a tanning salon where she got a gentle shade of tan, and taught her how to apply lipstick and eyeliner.
Andre, who was Swiss, and knew what it felt like to be a foreigner in a foreign land, befriended her, and made it his mission to show her a good time, and how metropolitan the city of London really was. Unlike Angel, he knew where his home Geneva was, and knew he could return anytime he liked. However, he'd fallen in love with London, and loved his job as a Special Operations Field Agent.
It was only last week, when Angel was in the restaurant with the 'Blue Watch Babes', that she told him that she had never seen the sea, and so he arranged that at the weekend, they would go to Dover, and she could look out over the English Channel from the top of the cliffs.
She had never seen so much water, and they had made their way down to the beach so that she could paddle in the waves. Andre smiled at her child like appreciation of the simple pleasure of feeling the cold water wash over her feet. She hung on his arm, and cuddled up against his shoulder.
"This is being wonderful," she said in her strange way of speaking. She was learning to speak English without having to rely on a translator, and it gave her a cute, if not quirky turn of phrase.
"It iz wonderful, are you glad you came?" Andre said, smiling at her.
She smiled back. "Yes, your words are truthful. When I am appearing like everyone else, no one is noticing that I am different." She was still a little apprehensive about being seen out and about, although no one had been nasty to her, the unsolicited looks and whispering were still unnerving.
"People on ze planet are getting used to ze idea of aliens, zey…" His conversation was cut short by a scream and calls for help from the top of the cliffs. They looked up, and saw a woman with her hands to her face, screaming in horror. A man was lying on his front, leaning over the edge of the cliff, trying to reach down to… a child.
Andre reached into his jacket pocket for his mobile, he had Torchwood on speed dial, and they would respond faster than any treble nine call. Angel, on the other hand, took off her jacket and stripped to the waist without any thought to her modesty. She unfurled her bat-like wings and leapt into the air, powering her wings as hard as she could to reach the toddler, who was precariously clinging on to the side of the cliff.
Within seconds she had reached the child and just before he lost his grip and fell, she hugged him around his chest and waist. It was then that she had a sudden realisation; she had never flown whilst carrying a load, and realised that she wouldn't be able to reach the cliff top. She looked down over her shoulder, and kicked away from the cliff face, trying to control her glide back to the beach.
She was coming in fast, and she would land hard, and although the sand would break some of her fall, the pebbles would hurt. At the last moment, she tucked in her wings, and pitched to the side, protecting the child from the impact. She hit the ground with a thud, skidded across the pebbles and sand, and lay still.
"ANGEL!" Andre yelled as he ran towards her and knelt down.
"Torchwood Special Operations Unit," a voice said on his mobile.
"Andre Coultarde, agent Blue Zero Six. I 'ave two casualties from a cliff fall; I need immediate Med-Evac."
"Okay Andre, I'm triangulating your phone signal, stay on the line, the airship will be in the air within minutes. What are the casualties' injuries?"
He put the phone on the sand, and started to examine Angel. "Angel, can you 'ear me, are you alright?"
She groaned, and tried to turn her head to look at him. "Andre, the child, how is the child, is he injured?"
"Don't move Sweetheart, I'll check," he said, although he knew the boy would be fine as he was crying and asking for his mummy.
"'Ello," he said with a kind smile, gently untangling him from Angel's grip. "I'm Andre, zis iz Angel…, what iz your name?"
"S, Stephen…, I want my Mummy," he cried.
Andre looked up and saw the parents running along the cliff top to the path that led down to the beach. "She's coming Stephen. Are you injured?"
"I banged my knee when I fell," he cried.
"'elp iz on ze way, be a brave boy." He turned his attention to Angel, and started to check her spine for injuries. He carefully held her chin still, and started to feel down her spine, gently rubbing with his thumb to find any tender areas.
"Tell me if you feel any pain when I rub your spine."
"My back is free from injury, I landed on my side to protect the boy," she told him.
"Okay, I'm going to check your ribs." He followed the line of her ribs down towards the sand, and gently reached underneath her.
"Aagh," she cried out.
"I cannot feel any fractures."
"No, it's my skin, it is grazed and burnt by friction, I landed heavily on my right arm and wing, I think they may be broken," she sobbed.
He gently stroked her silver hair away from her face, and tucked it behind her cute, pixie ear, rubbing away a tear with his thumb. He heard people running towards them, and quickly took off his jacket to cover her naked torso. There were holidaymakers and sightseers with camcorders and camera phones, recording the extraordinary scene before them.
This made Andre angry. "Please, she iz injured, she does not need you taking photos; she needs 'elp."
"STEPHEN! STEPHEN!" a woman shouted as she tried to run over the sand. She dropped to her knees and enveloped the crying child in a hug. The father knelt beside them and grabbed them both into a group hug.
"Oh God, I thought we'd lost you," she cried. "I thought we'd lost you."
She looked at the injured alien lying in front of her. "I don't know who or what you are…, but thank you. God bless you for what you did."
"Grateful am I for being here to intervene," Angel rasped.
"Oh no, you're injured!" the mother gasped. "Is she going to be alright…? She's not going to die is she…? I mean, it was a hell of a fall," she said, looking at Andre.
He was holding her hand, and gently stroking her hair.
"She 'az grazes and contusions, maybe a fracture, but she will live, and 'elp iz on ze way."
As if on cue, they heard the drone of the airship as it appeared from above the cliffs, and watched as it circled around and descended to the beach.
"'Elp iz 'ere Angel… Zis is not 'ow I thought zis weekend would go," he said hesitantly.
She smiled weakly at him. "How is it you are meaning?"
"I waz 'oping that you might want to spend ze night in a 'otel…, you know…, wiz me."
"Is this for what Rose told me about, when you practice making babies?"
Andre blushed and stuttered. "Er, ah, well…"
She reached up with her left hand and stroked his cheek. "That I would like very much with you. Can we come back when I am repaired?"
Dr. John Smith and Dr. Marla Jones, jumped down from the airship, and ran towards the casualties.
"John, can you check on the boy, while I check Angel?" Marla said, as she opened her field medical kit.
John knelt down in front of the family, and took his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket. "Hello, I'm John, and this is my special scanner. What's your name then?" he said to the child in a cheerful voice.
"His name's Stephen," the father told him.
"Okay Stephen, this won't hurt." He started scanning with the whistling, warbling sonic. "What happened then?" he asked casually as he scanned for fractures or internal damage.
"We only looked away for a second, and he was gone," the mother said, still upset by the thought that he could have fallen to his death.
"Tell me about it," John said with a smile. "I've got three of the little blighters, and they seem hell bent on trying to give us heart attacks. No matter how much you tell them no, they won't rest until they've tried something and realised that it'll kill them."
"Wait a minute, you're that famous scientist aren't you?" the mother said. "The one that used to be in the magazines."
"Yep, that's me…, 'used to be' being the favoured term, they tend to leave us alone now so that we can get on with our lives." He finished the scan and looked at the results. "A nasty cut and bruise on his knee…, I'll get some spray that'll clean and numb it."
He went over to Marla to get an aerosol can from the medical kit. "Hi Angel, how're you doing?"
"Better days I have had, thank you for asking."
"Fortunately, I think the soft sand cushioned her fall, she has torn her rotator cuff and bruised some tendons. She is going to be sore for a few weeks, but she'll be okay," Marla said.
John grabbed the spray can and went back to his patient. "Now Stephen, this is a battlefield spray used by soldiers, do you think you can be a soldier so that I can use it on you?"
"uh-huh," he said, looking at his parents for reassurance.
John sprayed the liquid dressing on the cut and bruised knee, and it formed a plastic skin over the wound.
"There we go soldier, good as new." He looked at the parents and smiled. "He'll be fine now, the dressing will dissolve over the week as a scab forms and heals naturally."
"Thank you SO much," the mother said. "And the young lady, will she be alright? It was a very brave thing she did…, in fact, how did she do it?"
John grinned at them. "Her name is Angel, and she's a very special young lady."
The family watched as two orderlies brought a spinal scoop out of the airship and gently fixed Angel to it, ready for transport back to Torchwood Tower. Andre held her hand all the way through her ordeal and continued to hold it as she was lifted onto the airship and fixed onto the flight couch. He held her hand during the short flight back to Canary Wharf, and he held it as she was transferred into a bed in the ward on the second floor.
By the time Angel had her right arm in a sling, and her wounds had been treated, she was an internet phenomenon. Videos and photos had been uploaded onto social media websites, all carrying the title of 'angel of mercy'. The news networks got hold of footage taken from the beach, and the cliff top, and asked the question, 'who was this angel of mercy?' Angel was quite embarrassed when she watched it on her bedside TV that evening, what with her breasts all hanging out for everyone to see.
"Don't be embarrassed Sweetheart, zey are very nice breasts," Andre told her with a cheeky grin.
"Now, now Andre, that's no way to talk to a young lady, unless you two are an item," Jack Harkness said as he approached. He gave them his perfect smile and a knowing look. He had seen it coming, that their friendship would develop into love. "The phones haven't stopped ringing, mainly from reporters wanting the inside gossip on our angel of mercy, the last call though was from the President, wanting to know who our flying field agent was."
"Flying field agent?" Angel repeated.
"Well, I didn't tell her you were a child care assistant here, but that was taking child care to the extreme. So how would you feel about taking the entrance test? I think you've got the right stuff to be an excellent field agent, and you'd have a very good mentor," he said, waggling his eyebrows at Andre. "Although, there would be one thing we'd have to change."
"What?" Angel asked, looking slightly concerned.
"Your uniform, it would have to be custom made so that it opened at the back; can't have you flashing your boobs every time you need to fly, oh, and you need to practice flying whilst carrying a load; can't have you ending up in here every time you need to fly with luggage."
Angel giggled and looked at Andre. "What are you thinking about this?"
"I am thinking zat zis iz a brilliant idea, it means zat we can work together, like Shon and Rose work together," he told her.
She looked at Jack and smiled. "Then I am feeling good about taking the test." She turned to Andre, and with her left hand, she reached up and gently pulled him into a kiss.
Central London Ambulance Station.
2004.
Andre Coultarde climbed into the cab of the ambulance, with his paramedic partner Beth, for the start of their evening shift. He had been in the Ambulance Service for eighteen months now, after moving from his home in Geneva, and training as a paramedic. His training didn't take that long, as he had already trained as an army medic when he did his compulsory national service back home in Switzerland
"Oh, here we go," Beth said, reading the jobs on the emergency call display. "They're starting early tonight; a van has overturned on the Westway."
"Okay, zat sounds like one for us, show us attending," Andre said as he started up the engine, and turned on the blue lights.
Within minutes, they were on the Westway, heading towards the accident. Up ahead, they could see the blue flashing lights of the police cars that were already on the scene, directing traffic from two carriageways, down into one. He pulled the ambulance to the side, and stopped behind one of the police cars.
While Beth went on ahead and spoke to the police, Andre reached the emergency holdall out of the back of the ambulance, and went to join her as she was being taken to the overturned vehicle.
"They appear to be foreigners," the officer told them. "The driver and front seat passenger were wearing seat belts, but the three people in the back of the van were thrown about."
"Ah, zere iz a strong possibility of neck injury zen," Andre suggested.
"Yeah, and there's something else," the officer said hesitantly. "They were all wearing wigs, and seem to have some kind of genetic abnormality or mutation."
"Wigs?" Beth said in puzzlement. "Mutation?"
"You'll see," is all the officer would say.
They started their cursory examinations of the casualties, and quickly noticed the abnormality. They were indeed bald, and this allowed them to see that the shape of the cranium was different to that of a normal person, with ridges of bone running along the sides of their heads, and very small earlobes, that could almost be called vestigial.
They were immobilising the casualties necks as a precaution, and checking for spinal injuries, when a black ambulance, accompanied by black Range Rovers, turned up at the scene and black uniformed soldiers started to take over.
"Zey're not human, are zey?" Andre asked one of the soldiers, as a doctor and nurse tended to the strange inhabitants of the vehicle.
The soldier grinned at him, apparently pleased with his insight. "Er, no, they're not."
"What are you talking about, not human?" Beth asked, not ready to believe in aliens.
Andre on the other hand, was prepared to suspend his disbelief, and contemplate more practical matters. "So 'ow do you know 'ow to treat them?" he asked, completely unfazed by the possibility that they could be aliens.
This impressed the soldier no end, and he gave Andre a business card, which was black, with the name Torchwood Institute on one side, the 'T' being made of hexagons, and the name Duncan Prescott on the other, with a phone number.
"If you really want to know how we treat their injuries, call me tomorrow," the soldier said.
The next morning, Andre called the number and was invited to an interview with Captain Andy McNab, who was impressed with the young paramedic. His military training and medical skills would be very useful in the Special Operations Unit. He offered him a job, and after finding out what the Institute was about, and the kind of career it could offer, and of course, he accepted their offer.